The Depression We Had To Have

George Soros is no screaming Trotskyite, but even he can see what's happening to global capital.
In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, he has blamed "market fundamentalism" for the crisis afflicting global capital markets. He could have a point.
Deregulated financial markets in the US allowed capital traders to create easy credit, with no oversight from the Federal reserve. This is turn led to inflated property values as a whole bunch of people jumped into a market they had no place being in the first place.
The loans were chalked up by financial institutions - some of them banks, but a lot simply mortgage warehouses - who onsold these liabilities to a lot of chumps left holding a pile of candy no one wants to eat.
The financial institutions reward themselves with NINE figure incomes (The CEO of one mortgage warehouse, Countrywide, was on US$615 Million a year) and walk away whistling while the end-gamers - often retirement funds and municipalities (including here in Australia) take a bath.
Meanwhile, the poor marker who took the loan just loses their house. In reaction - and this is reaction as in reactionary - the leading candidates in the current race to be Emporer Of The World are falling over themselves to embrace Keynesian pump priming. This will, of course, horrify the very "market fundamentalists" Soros has been warning about. But will the pump priming make any difference?
Welcome To The Wankersphere has pointed out that the US recession - which is an actuality, if not technical reality - stems from over inflated asset values, not a lack of economic activity. Yet. Which is precisely the problem that bedevils the Australian finance market. People borrowing against homes that are vastly over inflated. It's not hard to see what will happen once the Easy Credit crisis starts to haemorrhage around the globe.
We are already seeing it with the bearish stock market fluctuating like manic depressive on amphetamines. The real crunch will come in the form of a credit squeeze, the like of which we have not seen in some time. Which is no doubt why Central Banks are flooding capital markets in an attempt to stay that frabjous day.
But western capital reserves are not exactly flush - witness the US deficit - and diving further into an already empty cookie jar will have to be paid for somehow. Which is when the Chinese will come along with the greatest foreclosure of all, and bye-bye liberal democracy for the duration.
Mind you, this seems to fly obliquely over the heads of a general populace - concerned more about partying teenagers and sooky cricketers than the fact that the roof over their heads is about to disappear like Dorothy's house in Kansas.
Housing is a significant player in the Australian economy - if it tanks then it is going to screw up the retirement and savings plans of millions of Australians. The flow on through the economy by a credit squeeze will affect the big employment sectors of retail and hospitality. We could see money dry up, along with jobs. All this at a time when the economy is 'growing'.
Of course a lot of this stems from the legacy of ten years of doing nothing with the proceeds of a mining boom apart from splashing cash around and inflating a housing bubble (that's now about to burst).
While responsibility lies with Howard and Costello, this won't wash with the Australian public - they'll be calling for Wayne Swan's head on a stick by Christmas. I noticed that the Harvey Norman retail chain has announced sales growth of over A$3 Billion, or a little over 12%, for the first half of this financial year. The bulk of these sales will be on credit, and if we drop into a recession that looks like being of the scale that Soros predicts, Harvey Norman won't see half of that money.
This is the problem with credit - it only works if there's a capacity to repay - and years of supply side market fundamentalism has destroyed the household sector's ability to do exactly that.
I was travelling back from Lithgow before New Year and was amazed at the number of cars, boats and bikes saw on the side of the road for sale.
The last time I remember this phenomenon was in 1990 when the then treasurer Paul Keating was assuring us that there was no recession . Later that became the recession we had to have.
This recession promises to be much deeper, as Soros has pointed out. The financial sector has gone a bridge too far - simultaneously calling for, and getting, policies that squeeze those on the bottom, then trying to milk those very same people through credit, as Ralph Nader pointed out this week.
They could never have it both ways and now the harvest shall be reaped. And a bitter harvest it will prove to be.

Play Abandoned #22 - We Hate Ricky

An interesting observation by Thomas Hunter over at Crikey regarding public attitudes to the man holding the highest public office in Australia - the captain of the Australian Cricket Team. Cricket is a game of numbers - a statistician's orgy - so it was interesting to see a collation of numbers courtesy of Mr Hunter from some online polls regarding the Australian cricket team. Hunter rightly points out the unreliability of voluntary online polls, but even so, the sentiment is rather staggering. The Age asked 'Are Australian cricketers bad sports?' to which 76% agreed. The more parochial Herald Sun asked 'Should Ricky Ponting be sacked as captain of Australia?' to which a staggering two-thirds, or 67% - 6958 votes - agreed. The Hun's sister paper, the Daily Telegraph, posed the question 'Do the Australian team play in the true spirit of cricket?' A suspiciously similar number, 6918 votes, said no, which equates to 82% of respondents. The considered folk over at Today Tonight asked: Do you think Ricky Ponting should be removed as Australian cricket captain? 28% agreed. Pay-as-you-go Foxsports offered three answers to it's 'Has Australia's behaviour in the current Test series changed the way you will support the team?' Yes: I will no longer support this side romped home with 61.8%, or 5342 votes, while 'Yes: but I still love the baggy green' lagged third on 11.63%, or 1006 votes; while 'No: I think their behaviour was appropriate:' captured 26.56%, or 2296 votes. Of course you'd think you'd have to allow for the participation of cricket fans from the subcontinent, who are unlikely to hold Mr Ponting in high esteem, but nonetheless these are pretty damning numbers. Hunter's contribution was somewhat more useful than that of Geoff Lewis Raglan who, in a letter that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on January 22 under the sub-headline 'Mongrel goes missing' wrote:

The Indians and the media had cricketer A. Mongrel dropped from the Australian XI and they lost. The same player was not selected in the Wallaby World Cup team and they lost.

Lewis may wish to reflect on the fact that A Mongrel is an insecure little bully who shouldn't be on the sporting field in the first place - and if winning means winning ugly, then it is no victory at all. In the meantime the Third Test in Perth was a cracker. With a highlight being Sharma having R. Ponting all over the place, the first time I've ever seen him batting like that. Ponting looked all at sea against the young Indian quick - weaving, leaving, missing and taking a few on the body before edging to first slip. With the series at 2-1 to Australia, there is a lot to play for in Adelaide. If the Indians finish this series 2-2, with a moral victory in Sydney, they will be well set to roll Australia in India this September. There is no doubt Australia missed Hayden, who was suspiciously omitted after the shenanigans in Sydney. The godbotherer was officially out with a bung leg, but was fit enough to go deep sea fishing the day after the 'injury'. But the Indians bowled better, and batted well when it counted. A spirited rear guard action made the final day's play a riveting spectacle. Adelaide, a city not known for its excitement, could be a defining moment - not just for this summer, but also for Australian cricket. If the Indians win, it could mark the end of an era.

The Man Who Wasn't There

Interesting developments in the race to be Emporer Of The World, with new data in the US showing the country is pretty much in recession. Which, of course, is no news to working stiffs in the States, as they've been pushing shit uphill with a toothpick since the big NAFTA job losses started to bite, and modern management practices meant growth went north while wages went south. In short Yanks are working harder for less. This successful business model has been having the sort of effect on the US middle class that Vikings had on monasteries in Britain in the ninth century - it's a litany of pillage and plunder from corporate America. Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards, of course, cottoned on to this sentiment writ large amongst American proles being squeezed by unsustainable credit and declining incomes. His anti-corporate position was viewed with concern, not just by Wall Street, but by hard heads in the Democratic National Committee, who have long plumped for the corporate friendly Clinton II. But this piece in The Nation by William Greider illuminates how Hillary and the ubiquitous Barak are now jumping on Edwards' Keynesian bandwagon. They're not alone, over to you Bill:

Bill Gross, the insightful managing director of PIMCO, the major bond-investment house, has called for virtually doubling the federal deficit in order pump hundreds of billions into new economic activity. When bond holders are more alarmed about the economy than political leaders, you know something is backwards in American politics.

This is gonna be one hell of a ride kids. There may just be enough fuel in the tank for this election to turn into an "I'm more left wing than you" slanging match. Bring it on I say; after all, these people are shallow enough and hopeless enough to get led around by pundits and pollsters then this is the sort of lunatic groupthink it leads to. In the meantime the architect of returning to the sanity of a pump priming economy after three decades of supply side economic madness, John Edwards, has been run over in the stampede by Obama and Clinton to seize the populist high ground. Strange days indeed. As the good Doctor would say, Mahalo

Vote Kang

I am indebted to Nathan Brown over at the WankerSphere (now part of my must read list) for the following:

Very very funny

On Weirdo Cults And Loving Thy Neighbour

"We should drink enough water so that our urine is not yellow and smelly. This will save us great amounts of money and we will not have to flush the toilet so much." - Elbert Eugene Spriggs, founder of The Twelve Tribes, Brazil 10/19/92

The Blog That Never Sleeps has the pleasure of living across the road from a wacky crew that locals say is called the Seven Brothers, or the Twelve Brothers, or Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, or something somesuch wonderful.

In fact the group is The Twelve Tribes The Commonwealth Of Israel, a messianic cult.

On their website they proclaim that living in the Blue Mountains allows them to hear the voice of creation - which apparently sounds something like a hammerdrill, with these bananas out since sparrow's fart wielding one for the last week, punching bricks off the front of their 'shop'.

The hammerdrill is such a soothing sound. It promotes calmness and concentration. It is like meditating whilst having your temples sliced off with a rusty razor blade.

It could be karmic - hell, I've never been in the running for neighbour of the year - but it's not just my discomfiture that is causing me concern here.

Rather it is the very nature of the groupthink over the road.

They moved in about five years ago, buying up a dilapidated building in the middle of Katoomba. One of those pre-war brick edifices that takes advantage of the sloping terrain to create three stories where there should be two.

The group themselves is populated by about half a dozen or so bearded chaps who seem to spend their entire day beating swords into ploughshares. They have turned their back on society (well, that part of society that involves engaging with the community - they seem to be very happy with that part of society that uses power tools and spends money on their organic mush - more on that later), and appear to believe that God is some kind of DIY handyman - a sort of cross between Charlie Manson and Backyard Blitz - which isn't far from the truth, as the cult was founded by a former carnival spruiker and has some weird beliefs.

The bearded band of brothers is accompanied by about three or four permanently fecund womenfolk, who appear in handmade dowdiness reminiscent of the nineteenth century, along with about half a dozen overly energetic kids who appear to be insane with boredom. Which is not surprising given that The Twelve Tribes' "teachings instruct that children not play with toys, play imaginary or fantasy games, have candy, or watch television or movies".

When there is a stubborn child you should shorten the child's life. It limits the family.
- from "Training Up Our Children In The Way They Should Go" by the Twelve Tribes.

No one has called the Department of Community Services yet, as they tend to keep to themselves - except when doing some kind of passive-aggressive good deed, which always seems to be in their interest. But this is not the case elesewhere, where their activities have drawn the attention of the authorities.

One of the cultists delivers papers for the local newsagent, while another helps the arsehole with the furniture store on the corner.* They make their quids by trucking around to festivals far and wide where they dispense wholesome food for a fee and, according to their website, they live off the proceeds from two other communities, including one in Picton, where income is generated from plumbing, building and running the 'Common Ground Cafe' at festivals around the place. So, while they reject the licentiousness of popular culture, they are more than happy to make a quid out of it.

They shared the building with a Chilean upholsterer called Raoul and a Thai restaurant. They 'did up' Raoul's upholstery business preises (a garage) and then promptly evicted him. They're in the process of turfing out the popular Thai restaurant as well.

On top of all this they've been doing up the building, which in and of itself sounds like a good thing - until you have an angle grinder starting up at 7am on a Saturday morning.

They've been threatening to 'open' their organic cafe for about three years, but their always seems to be some bit of work that needs to be done that stymies their ability to 'open'. A lot like those people that build seagoing boats in the backyard - the whole project appears to never be meant for completion, with the constant building being reason enough for existence.

Which, of course, is symptomatic of cults - keep the kids busy and they never get their head around how they're the butt of some narcissists weird joke.

All of their activities, from evicting the infidels to the ever present home-handyman-for-Jesus routine, is accompanied by the passive-aggressive smug superior air associated with your usual cult-like activity.

They pepper this with a lot of pseudo-biblical tosh, claiming to be the first real Christians (where have we heard that before) since the Apostles - with what we understand to be Christianity actually run by Satan (which will be news to Aaron Badderley) - along with some homey palaver parried around as a 'revelation' and being (yawn) God's Chosen People, all underpinned by the usual 'get out of jail free card' gibber that passes as playing on your average human's fear of death. They all want to go to heaven, but they don't want to die.

But what really exposes these people for the cant that they are is the hypocrisy of their brotherly love - which, of course, doesn't extend to loving unbelieving brothers (ask Raoul) or even members of their own flock. Like every other manifestation of religion there are haves and have-nots, rulers and ruled, bosses and slaves - and the Golden Rule applies, those with the gold, rule - controlling the lives of the cult's footsoldiers, who end up doing all the dirty work. It's laizzes faire capitalism with a beard.

As my live-in Legal Counsel says, "it sounds like typical religious dribble", and he's right.

So, if you're out at a festival and you see the Common Ground Cafe, just remember they think their urine is nice and clean.

Enjoy the coffee.

* This bottom feeder unilaterally turned off my neighbours power supply a while back in some weird attempt to avoid a power bill, then refused the electrician access to turn it back on again, complained about the car parking arrangements and has generally managed to give everyone the shits in a five kilometre radius.

Thoughts On George Orwell

Before George Orwell there was Eric Arthur Blair, an Eton schoolboy who signed his letters to friends 'Eric Blair, FAMOUS AUTHOR.'
His descent into writing was no accident. As a 'scholarship boy' at Eton he grew to hate the wealthy, understanding all too well the relationship between money and power.
It was Eric Blair that went off to civilise Empire in the twenties, serving in the Imperial Police Service in Burma, before delving deep into the underclass of Britain and France. The experiences that informed his first books and essays.
Equally, he despaired of the 'keeping up of appearances' inherent in the shabby genteel English middle class.
His knowledge of power informed his attitude to class - that defining structure of English life - roughly if passionately expressed in books like Coming Up For Air and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. But equally he saw the flaws of the working class for what they were, and he understood them far better than many of his middle and upper class 'friends' on the left in the thirties.
Orwell's wartime essays and classic The Road To Wigan Pier reveal his experiences amongst the invisible people that kept England functioning. He rightly predicted that the protesting English working class of the thirties would turn out to be patriots when the crunch came. He understood the paradoxes that made ordinary people in a way that few writers have before or since.
In many ways he was a misanthrope, never more happier than in his garden or around animals, although paradoxically imbued with a tolerance for his fellow human beings that eclipsed his acerbic writing.
He was no backscratcher, savaging friends and foes alike with his typewriter. In one famous incident he referred to Stephen Spender as a 'useless Nancy poet', then invited him out to dinner. He has the same relationship with H.G. Wells, that lead to Wells cutting off their friendship after an Orwell essay ripped Wells' utopian visions of future technology to shreds.
It was the sort of intellectual rigour that railed against the black and white vision of the cult of Russia Communists in the world of letters. He had a strong aversion to hubris.
But in the end the man who fought with the Trotskyites in the Spanish Civil war has his grand work, Nineteen Eighty Four, appropriated by the Right. His political legacy bastardised by bastards.
Orwell, of course, was criticising from the left. He realised how power worked and this book is an indictment of the language used today by the free market - the Market Totalitarianism that tells us that food is 'light but filling', that McDonalds has 'healthy choices', or that going into debt through easy credit is 'freedom'.
Newspeak is Advertising 101, and the world of telescreens and constant surveillance has been brought to us by marketing corporations as much as by government.
Orwell was a socialist who understood that freedom was something to be acted by control of your life, not being controlled by employers, landlords and debtors.
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four are books that started on the Road To Wigan Pier and were honed by the duplicity of his experiences on the Aragon front in Catalonia and, later, in Barcelona.
Although his writing was hijacked by the Right during the cold war (a term he invented in the thirties to describe the relationship between liberal democracy and totalitarian states such as Russia and Germany) the humanism of his writing lives through.
Despite Orwell's warnings freedom in the west is more undermined than ever in our permanent war against an adjective (terrorist), when the real threat to our lifestyle comes from insatiable consumer culture.
A man who himself possessed a keen sense of irony and a black humour I have no doubt he would chuckle at the thought of his greatest invention - Big Brother - being used to sell cosmetics to pre-teens and immature western adults. He was a man that understood that colonisation started from the mind before it enslaved the body and he foresaw an age when XBox, McDonalds and Coca-Cola would define freedom over the right to a dissenting lifestyle and the right to air grievances.
As a member of the ordinary poor I find Eric "George Orwell" Blair an inspiration in these days of having to believe five contradictory ideas before breakfast in order to function in this society. Nineteen Eighty Four (he always insisted on spelling it out) and Animal Farm are as removed from the solopsistic hubris of our times as barbed-wire is removed from comfort.
In the end Eric Blair died and George Orwell lived. And Eric Arthur Blair was buried by a millionaire, Lord Astor, with a fresh wife, Sonia Brownell, who had been installed there by his publisher Frederic Warburg to ensure his literary estate was in pliable hands.
His funeral was organised by a mate of Malcolm Muggeridge - himself a temporary class traitor who returned to his roots before too long.
Orwell's most recent Biography, Orwell, A Life by D.J. Taylor (Henry Holt and Company), points to Warburg's CIA connections, and it is hardly a state secret that the CIA saw in Orwell an opportunity to win their hearts and minds battle in Europe.
His widow spent a lot of time keeping his for more left-wing essay writing from the public eye until hounded into publishing his essays in the early seventies by a combination of dwindling finances and estrangement from the people (like Warburg) who had put her where she was. Orwell was no saint - being a bit of a pants man - but then again who of worth is.
He liked a drink and smoked like a chimney. Enjoyed Opium in Burma and a few friends wives.
In his essay on Dali he pointed out a shocking fact to the modernists and classicists of his age; an artist could be a good artist and a lousy human being. It's probably the first post-modernist essay in English.
He pretty much invented the socio-political essay as an artform, and gave us an insight into 'ordinary things' that are too often ignored by our visionary betters in academia.
His legacy is profound, if a little misunderstood.
I still know lefties of a certain age who hate him because he attacked Mother Russia; but who on the left really just wants to join a cult that replaces one boss with another boss?
Maybe he was, as he described himself, a Tory Anarchist. After all, he had little love of bureaucracy and a was a withering critic of power for power's sake.
I don't think we should worship him, but I do think we should listen to him, and watch how his ideas about power and language assault us every day from supermarket shelves, televisions and press statements.
He is a valuable voice, but the greatest appropriation of his work in our time is a bizarre game show.
Eric Arthur Blair FAMOUS AUTHOR, lived briefly and died young (he was only 46 when the TB got him), but George Orwell found immortality, escaping Eton, the Left, and now even the Right, to become a spectre, haunting those who seek to manipulate words to dubious ends. For that alone he is to be thanked.

Play Abandoned #21 - The Beginning Of The End

In hindsight this was always bound to happen sooner or later. I remember watching how the Australian cricket side carried on over the last decade and thinking 'one day the rest of the world is going to get sick of playing these wankers'. Well, that day has come. And India, with 70% of the world's cricket revenues, looks like taking it's bat and ball and going home. For Australian cricket this is a disaster. A lot of this began under Alan Border, a man who learnt humility the hard way - by getting flogged - but it accelerated under Tubby Taylor (who at least had a bit of dignity about him) before it soared to new heights under the coaching of that nazi Buchanan, to the point where Ponting now defends winning ugly. When even Shane Warne is saying you need to learn some humility, as he did prior to the Indian series, you know that there is a problem. Years of arrogance is coming home to roost this afternoon, when we find out what the Indians intend to do. Even if Harbijan did call Symonds a monkey, so what, Ponting overreacted by having him charged. At that stage in the game India were on top and the whole thing smacked of sour grapes. That Harbijan had Ponting's number in the first two tests just adds to the murk - it looks like Ponting has gone hell bent on having the guy rubbed out. Then we get to the disciplinary hearing that comes down to the Indians' word versus the Australians' word, and match referee Mike Proctor lumps for the Australians. Obviously the white man is more trustworthy than his sable brethren. The reaction of Clarke isn't even at centre stage here, and the mediocre umpiring is a sideshow to this, but these, along with the Australians' reaction at the close of the test, are a symptom of the greater malaise that infects Australian sport across the board. It's probably best summed up by that godbotherer Hayden crossing himself like Saint Francis while churlishly disdaining any good words about his opponents' cricket. His reaction during the first test that the Indian spinner 'stole' wickets sums up his ungenerous, grasping triumphalism. The sad thing is that so many Australians will not see anything wrong with this sort of behaviour. They too have become infected with the infantile braggartedness of a 14 year old bully. They live their lives and dreams by proxy through the experiences of cocooned and spoilt elite sportsmen who swagger like so many pint sized Liberty Vallances around a hall of giants. From Greg Norman through to Lleyton Hewitt we are lumbered with this white-bread jackasses that, in the scheme of things, have done nothing worth a fraction of what they are paid. They are not heroes but insecure little losers. They win by theft and discriminating thuggishness. They look, and are, ridiculous. As Peter Roebuck points out, it is possible to love a country and not it's cricket team. There are many Australians that are heartily sick of these prima-donnas. Roebuck has called for Ponting to be sacked. I wouldn't stop there, but sack them all until we find an XI that can play with a bit of humility and grace.  
Any resemblance to persons living or dead I consider a compliment.

Whacky Conspiracy Theories 101

One for 9/11 Truthers out there (and we mean out there). Frank Lowy's Westfield group has just announced it will be pumping $600mill into developing a shopping centre on the old twin towers site in New Yoik. A very own Fountain Gate for lower Manhattan. As the smug yuppies say, noice. Apparently Westfield acquired the rights in July 2001, which makes the World Trade Centre attacks two months later seem a little too convenient, if you know what I mean. It wouldn't be the first time a property developer has torched an old building in order to replace it with something more amenable. Let's face it, Westfield are a damned sight more competent than anything to come out of Washington in the last eight years, and no more crazier than the theory believed by up to third of Americans - that the US Government attacked it's largest city to create a pretext for war. Then again, this is from a country where four in five people believe in angels. God help us all, they have the bomb

Play Abandoned #20 - Making A Monkey Out Of All Of Us

The Blog That Never Sleeps revives an ancient tradition from an ancient game. The factually unreliable and irregular Play Abandoned column ran as an unsolicited email from sometime in the nineties until January 2002 - it returns once more. As I write this highly civilised people have made the most popular six stories on the Sydney Morning Herald news feed all about cricket.

These stories are part of the tens of thousands of words swirling around the carnage that remains from the Second Test in Sydney in the current Australia v India series.

That this remarkable match has descended into a farce, possibly taking the tour along with it, is a sort of minor tragedy - with character failings littered like McDonalds' wrappers along the M4 - that appears to be engulfing more than just the game of cricket.

In a world beset by soaring energy costs, post election Kenyan violence, Iraq and Pakistan on the brink of civil war and a climate gone feral it's rather quaint that such a distraction can occupy so many minds.

While some point to the poor umpiring as the root of the problem, and others the behaviour of essentially spoilt brats, the seeds of this current conflict go back at least to Australia's last visit to India and the ugly taunting of Andrew Symons by the Indian crowd. I say 'current' because there is a fairly steady connection between Australian cricket and sledging, often defended by some in the game, including current test captain Ricky Ponting. What do we do about Ponting? This is the guy who got into a fight with a Big Brown Bear at the Bourbon and Beafsteak Bar over Carlotta. As TISM said, he comes across as such a boring Yobbo cunt. The sort of bloke who'd be working as an insurance assessor if he couldn't hit a ball remarkably well. When Chris Cairns sister died in a train accident New Zealand the Black Caps were playing Australia. After Cairns had taken guard the bowler was running in when one of the Aussies started a chant of "choo, choo, choo". Current conflict in the Sydney test came to a head when Symonds asked Indian Spinner Harbijan Singh on day three "did you call me a monkey?" Harbajan denies it. The umpires didn't hear anything. Essentially it has descended into a "he said/she said" playground spat. On what basis Harbajan can be rubbed out AND receive natural justice is a mystery. Ponting's (and Symonds) petulant reaction to what Harbajan may or may not have said really does reinforce the attitude that the Australian cricket team can dish it out but they can't take it. In short, they are bullies. And no one likes a bully. We now all know that Symonds was out long before he rattled up 160-odd, helping Australia to 400 plus, and there are a fair number of other decisions that have taken a shine off a game that included a wonderful batting performance by India, highlighted by Sachin Tendulkar's century. This has now led to the series being in doubt and incredibly strained relations between the two teams. If this series is to not become a fiasco both sides need to pull their heads in. Ponting needs to be reined in - he appears to have lost completely any sense of proportion or even the consequences of his side living by the sword for so many years. It would be really nice to be able to like the Australian side but, sadly, they aren't very likeable in their current guise. As someone who plays lower grade cricket I see how this sort of behaviour filters down to the lower levels of cricket - taking the fun out of the game for many. Comments directed at opponents just shouldn't be on, but sadly they are now part and parcel of playing cricket. It also legitimises a lot of the unfunny comments that can be heard at any international match or suburban pub that, while they might be overtly racist, aren't that far from a Cronulla beachside barbecue. The Australian cricket team might be celebrating, but it's ringing pretty hollow for many. While Ponting and Coy's behaviour is pretty obviously undermining the standing of a great game in the eyes of casual observers and the international community - it's also a reflection on how seriously public standards have collapsed in this country during the Howard decade. After all, Punters attitude is seen as reasonable by quite a few 'ordinary' Australians, who shrug and say it's 'a part of the game'. No doubt Howard - if he was still in power - would back Ponting to the hilt. Ponting, surrounded as he is by the white-bread world of Australian cricket probably doesn't even realise what a wally he is making of himself. What should have been a great series will now be remembered for controversy and bitterness. Cricket is now smaller and poorer for the behaviour of all concerned in creating this fiasco - the umpires, Harbajan, Symonds, Clarke and Ponting; the commentators and coaches and predecessors who created this bully-boy culture; a country too gutless to confront it's own insecurity - and a rampant win-at-all-costs sporting ethos that equates sportsmanship with being a loser. There is no glory here, no victory. Everyone has lost.

Methuselah – playing uppishly over mid wicket.

Playing Hide And Seek In The Library Of Alexandria

I am indebted to the ever prescient Neale Towart for the following observation that seems to place blogs, citizen journalism and all this Web 2.0 palaver in some sort of context...

On blogs in general, a warning I found in this book by Michael Dibden (a crime novel set in Sicily actually), when the cops were talking about the backward beliefs of the locals versus so called sophisticated enlightenment people:

"...after all, just what are we doing with these values? Take the internet. Here's the most powerful intellectual tool in the history of the human race and we use it to write narcissitic online journals and to "have our say" like a swarm of squabbling starlings. Enlightenment values? We're playing hide and seek in the library of Alexandria"

It's something worth remembering. I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to "look-at-me" journalism. I should be writing something devastating and worthwhile about the second test. I should get out for a walk. I should write something devastating and worthwhile about something worthwhile. I should get my hand off it. Who cares what I should do.

Dibden (and Towart) are right. We aren't that much further along the modernist goat track. Are we just adding to the background static? Will all this pop eat it itself? We carry on as if there's a million William Cobbett's changing the world, but it's just so much graffiti on the walls of a Pompeii knock shop. If we're not careful, one day someone will be cleaning the Internet and it will go off.

Not For Publication I

From the cleaning out the email inbox department: Despite most journalists disdain for such an amateur hour section, Letters To The Editor are very well read and very popular amongst readers (how unusual for journalists to have disdain for something that interests readers?). There is a perennial Sydney Morning Herald letter writer called Rosemary O'Brien - famous and marked by her caustic wit, narrow mind and malapropisms par excellence. Rose is one of those people that just doesn't get modern society. One of those people, as ubiquitous as fibro, who think they're above the hoi-polloi and have a withering, destructive and somewhat small view of their fellow human beings. In short she's a dumb as dogshit conservative jack-ass! I wrote the Herald in December following her commenting on her fear that myths develop from people not being reminded of peoples true characters. I replied:

-----Original Message----- From: Methuselah Sent: Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:46 AM To: SMH Letters Mail Subject: Letter to Ed Don't worry Rosemary O'Brien (Letters, December 12), as someone who has been reading your mendacious tosh for years, I'll take great satisfaction in reminding people of it for decades to come - just so any myths don't get out of hand.

And I received this reply

Hi Methuselah

Even though this wins my unofficial Letter of the Week award, I don't
want to encourage a general slanging match between and about
correspondents (especially Rosemary O'Brien) so I'm afraid I won't be
publishing it. But thanks a lot for sending it.

Letters co-editor

The Quiet American

The quadrennial popularity contests that are the US Presidential Primaries are being inflicted upon us again for the right to see who will take the reins of empire from Nero as Rome slowly burns. It should be a doddle for the Democrats after eight years of malfeasance under the most corrupt and incompetent Republican administration since, well, the last one. But the Democrats have an uncanny way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and this years fun could go the way of so many others in recent memory. Who'd a thunk that a wealthy trial lawyer could re-invent himself as a champion of the little guy? But that's exactly what the former junior senator from North Carolina, John Edwards, is doing. Edwards, but a blip on international consciousness, is probably best remembered as John Kerry's southern insurance policy in his ill-fated tilt in 2004. But Edwards has sniffed the wind and learnt fastest and best from the mid-term shellacking the GOP received in 2006 when voters turned out in droves and threw out them there Republican bums. Why? Because organised labor - the dreaded unions - outreligious-righted the religious right, by rocking (literally, if John Cougar Mellencamp is to be believed) out the vote on the first Tuesday in November and snatching control of Congress by turning those elections into a referendum on the minimum wage. Most of the dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers international media didn't get it, particularly our own wine soaked brand, reading it as a referendum on Iraq. Sure, Iraq was floating around in the background, but every credible exit poll had conflated Clinton's dictum, "it's the economy, stupid", into "it's the economy, you goddam corrupt sons'o'bitches!" Edwards got that message and has hopped into bed with organised labor faster than a sailor on shore leave into Madame Fifi's House Of Relaxation. It was telling that in Iowa he gave his final stump speech at a Steelworkers Union function in Ottumwa (which Australians probably know best as Radar O'Rielly's home town). The result is that he has come from nowhere to take second spot in Iowa and is holding up in New Hampshire. This pushed Clinton II into third spot, made the excellently named Barak Obama frontrunner and the whole Democrats nomination process a wide open free for all. Despite being all but ignored by the Mainstream Media he is saying things middle America wants to hear. He has a credible single payer health care plan and is running the most populist presidential campaign since Truman. It's not every day you hear a Presidential candidate saying stuff like "Unions made manufacturing jobs the foundation of our middle class, and they can do the same for our service economy." or "Union membership can be the difference between a poverty-wage job and middle-class security." but it's all there over on his website. But does he mean it? He's probably no Joe Hill, but his plan is to make it easier for service industry unions to organise, so obviously manufacturing would go the way of Betacam in a John Edwards America, which NAFTA is ensuring anyway. But it's the best deal working stiffs have been offered in Septicland since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. It is also dawning on Yanks like Euclidean geometry on a 14-year-old that the good ole land o' the free mightn't be quite ready to share that freedom with either a woman or what is politely referred to in progressive circles in this week's most powerful nation on earth as "a man of colour". And sitting next to that elephant in the room is another elephant - Iraq - as this excellent piece by Scott Ritter explains. Remember Scott Ritter? He was the UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq who suggested to the Bush Administration that they might wanna just hold on a cotton pickin' minute here, before Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all those other Loonies pushed him out the door. He seeked Weapons Of Mass Destruction here, he seeked Weapons Of Mass Destruction there, the length and breadth of Iraq, before coming up with nada; which was not what his betters in the Pentagon wanted to hear. And, as he points out, there isn't a single candidate in the whole goddam shooting match who has the vaguest clue about what to do with that stinking fish. Especially the Republicans - for whom the "surge" in Iraq is working. Thank the Lord and pass the sauce that the Nutjob Huckabee won Iowa - the man's unelectable. Scarier though is Rudy Giuliani, who is electable, and who will run a tarred and feathered Ms Hillary or Obama out of town on an iron rail - and take US foreign policy to the solarium for a few years. It shall be an interesting election, but it will be fought on domestic issues. This 'sub-prime mortgage' BS is just code for easy credit - too easy credit - but they can't call it a credit card crisis (which is what it is) or US consumerism will gridlock into a depression that will make the Thirties look like the Fifties, all on the back of what economists call 'sentiment' and what the rest of us call blind crazed mass hysteria. The US economy is going to hell in a handbasket and there isn't really much the Yanks can do except drown in cholesterol and exhaust fumes - and learn Mandarin. Someone who knows Rudy Giuliani all too well put it nicely a few years back:

Its like what my painter friend Donald said to me Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they're done

Have a nice day!

Tool Of The Week: There Is No I In Iemma

Tool Of The Week Maurice Iemma is now making Barry Unsworth look like David Beckham.

Unsworth, of course, was the laughable log swept away by the Greiner landslide in 1988, when the ALP received swings against it of up to 25%.

On a positive note, Iemma is doing a spectacular job in filling the void left by the hopeless incompetence of the late Howard administration.

Just when we were thinking we’d miss the bumbling keystone cops performance of Julie Bishop, Kevin Andrews, Philip Ruddock and Tony Abbott, along comes the star team of Joe Tripodi, Reba Meagher, John Hurtzhisgoats and Michael “Doctor Evil” Costa.

And, as the Omo commercial says, just look at the results!

People dropping foetuses in hospital toilets, ships getting the OK to park on beaches, cops with a vague understanding of the rule of law and the state’s electricity network put on eBay for the highest bidder to snap up.

Which doesn’t even cover the sterling state of transport in a city gridlocked by pay-as-you-go freeways; trains that are dangerous, filthy and unreliable; buses that are overcrowded and even more unreliable and a ferry service that is about to be flogged off to the Pirates of Penzance.

The problem with Iemma is that he has too many number one priorities.

He inherited Job Creation as the “number one priority” of the Carr Government - itself a wilfully useless administration run by an egomaniacal weirdo who was half nerd, half spin-doctor android that left the mess we have inherited today.

Actually, you wouldn’t have thought that Iemma could have done any worse than Carr at first glance, but it’s a tribute to his incompetence that he has managed to wreak further damage and continue to lower public administration standards even further.

Of course the man who replaced public accountability with spin and schmoozing while the state went to hell in a handbasket had already run through education, police numbers and crime as various number one priorities in his time.

After the state election Morris Iemma was to make public transport a number one priority - the result being that public transport got infinitely worse, with a part of that number one priority - ferries - to be sold off.

Certainly selling something is a unique take on making it a priority - and extraordinary evidence of a complete absence of responsibility to not only the people who he is responsible to, the citizens of NSW, but even to his job, his legacy and himself.

By December 2007 he had narrowed down his number one priority to commuters. No doubt preparing to sell them somewhere - down the river no doubt - before too long.

The New Year dawned with a new number one priority - health. With Morris playing a straight man to the Jerry Lewis performance of the Turrumurra girl who doesn’t even like the area she represents, Reba Meagher the member for Cabramatta - who believes that politics is about getting power and, ahh, getting power and, ummm, power apparently.

The reality is that Maurice Iemma has taken public administration to a low not seen for a century.

We have to go back about a hundred years ago, to the days of Paddy Crick to find someone as willfully and incompetently corrupt as Iemma - and at least Paddy Crick got thrown out of parliament after urinating in the corner of the parliamentary chamber.

The reality is that Iemma’s real number one priority is the same it has been since the days in the eighties when he joined Young Labor. His number one priority has been his own personal self-aggrandizement, regardless of how far his abilities fall short of his responsibilities

Like his mates Reba Meagher and Joe Tripodi, little Maurice believed in nothing then, and he believes in nothing now.

He put on his furious face when Stephen Chaytor, the state member for Macquarie Fields, was accused of domestic violence, throwing Chaytor out of the party and saying he had a zero tolerance to domestic violence.

Curiously though when similar allegations were aimed at Blue Mountains MP Phil Koperberg all Iemma could do was mumble a press release. Some are obviously more equal than others.

Another shining example of the competence, consistency and intellectual gymnastics of the man who stands for nothing, does nothing and still manages to screw things up monumentally.

His latest brain explosion surrounds the rather novel idea that we will be better off if we lease off our power assets to people motivated purely by profit. It’s an extraordinarily feeble argument that we will expect people to do good when they are motivated by the most loathsome of motives. That a privatized power generator will somehow do all sorts of wonderful things despite the fact that it has been a screaming disaster in every single jurisdiction where power privatization has been implemented.

The cleverest and most decent thing that Iemma could do is resign and get a job driving a courier van, which he may be ideally suited for - given that he appears to be motivated primarily by what the last journalist told him.

Then we can hand executive power over to the person who really runs NSW, the former front man for Adelaide band Cerveza Y Putas (Spanish for Beer And Wh*res), Daily Telegraph Editor David Pemberthy.