With things going so spiffingly well in Iraq, it was handy to catch up on Mark Danner's Donald Rumsfeld revealed, though it's currently inside the paywall for The New York Review of Books.
Happily however, those who like things for free, you can catch the piece in full at Mark Danner's site here, together with Danner's earlier meditation on the folly of being Rumsfeld, here, though in sum, the pair of articles make for a singularly depressing read.
Suffice to say that it reveals Rumsfeld to be an unimaginative goose who did indeed end up with his own Pearl Harbour in a way that requires much talk of the unimaginable to explain his folly, and that of the administration he served.
And now, like the brutal folly of the colonial British, drawing up the boundaries (Iraq: Conflict in Context) with a casual stupidity, the world, and more importantly, the people of Iraq go on living with the consequences.
It's likely to make the viewing of Errol Morris's film about Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, a singularly depressing experience.
And no doubt in a few years time, the same sort of entrail sorting will be all the go in relation to a fragile Afghanistan ...
The knowledge that Tony Abbott was part of the war monger government that participated in these colonial follies does little to assuage the pain, especially as he and Scott Morrison now continue their Christian crusade against invading refugees by all means possible (the stench of humbug coming from Rumsfeld about the torture he authorised and his flippant comment that he stood eight hours a day and so should his victims is something to read, and is no doubt a favourite Morrison text).
It's all too much, and if contemplated too long, likely to induce a bout of melancholy in the pond, or some more futile raging against the machine, so it seemed right to catch up with the meandering mendacity of Paul Sheehan, the Fairfaxian answer to the Murdochians.
It turns out that while the pond was away, the cat would play, and Sheehan decided he would ruin the career of Tony Burke.
Yep, he scribbled Tony Burke likely to be next Labor PM, and thereby doomed the lad to a life of thwarted expectations.
The "likely" in the header is of course the coward's way out when making predictions, so let's face it, it's highly likely that, if the "magic water" man taps you on the shoulder and promises you life at the top and a golden crown, all you can do is prepare for a really long and hard fall.
Sheehan did the same thing a little earlier when he also offered the top job to Christian Porter, in Christian Porter: Meet Australia's future Prime Minister, and it made the pond deeply afraid for Porter.
The expectation of course is that in these troubled short term memory loss, intertubes warped times, no one will pause to remember the risible sight of Sheehan bestowing the Prime Ministership like a drunk farewelling a ship with a flurry of confetti ...
In the case of Burke, his ascension only lasted a week, before a truly exhausted and sputtering Sheehan came up with One wedding, three stories and fish porn.
Fish porn? Yep, that's the way it goes in the world of the Fairfaxians these days, as click bait reigns supreme.
How did Sheehan earn the header? Well he talked with a fisher person who sounded like he was three sheets to the wind at the wedding party:
Along with the rest of his industry, he believed Australia was engaging in what I term fish porn. Thanks to the zeal of the environmental movement, personified by the Greens, Australia has shrunk its fishing industry by 90 per cent even though it is one of the most highly regulated and scientifically scrutinised in the world.
Uh huh. This from a man who on other days likes to fancy himself as a real environmentalist, unlike the greenies ...
What a pity that Sheehan proceeded to quote the same fisher person claiming that the carbon tax was responsible for a 40% increase in his electricity costs over three years, the sort of common gossip that does nothing to separate the impact of the tax from the many other rorts in the world of electricity.
When you're an alleged member of the crony commentariat, it seems these days that recycling common gossip, without challenging wacky notions or figures, provided they're suitably rabid and right wing, is all the go.
And so it was with Tony Burke:
He singled out as a particular villain Tony Burke in his role as minister for sustainability and environment in the Gillard government. I listened knowing that my column coming out the next morning, last Monday, singled out Burke for praise and offered a prediction he would be the next Labor prime minister. The column also noted he was a former union official who had never spent a day working in a wealth-creating business.
Because, you see, Sheehan himself has spent many days in a wealth-creating business ... a wealth of bile, bitterness and paranoia.
Sadly the click bait only produced forty odd comments, unsurprising because it was such a shoddy, lazy festive season piece, dull column filler as wretched as the foam balls in bean bags that are soon crushed flat.
So in the next outing Sheehan moved to safer ground and a little Muslim baiting, in Arab spring yields to Muslim winter, with most of the column dedicated to regurgitating the views of the current reprehensible government of Israel.
Yep, you won't find Sheehan scribbling a column with the header, Rumsfeld and Bush's folly yields to tribal, ethnic and religious conflict, and a heady brew of fundamentalism.
It got the pond to wondering whether it was possible, instinctively, to disagree with almost anything a member of the crony commentariat writes, and sure enough today proves it's possible as Sheehan scribbles Paul Sheehan: Agenda is suspect as police union leaders put politics first in fiery comments over assaults.
Now this required a shift from pushing the right wing/fundamentalist Jewish government's line, as Sheehan did in Muslim winter, to union bashing, and Sheehan was up to the challenge.
He transforms a debate on what to do about alcohol-fuelled violence in the streets of Sydney, into an assault on representatives of the police union.
In Sheehan's sights is one Sergeant Prue Burgun, who was allegedly punched in the face by a drunk on New Year's Eve. Cue Sheehan:
Normally, this would prompt natural sympathy for a member of a police force that has, for too long, had to deal with too many drunks. But I think Burgun has a problem. She concluded her opinion piece with this taunt to the state government, which was typically shrill:
''Get out of the pocket of the Australian Hotels Association, get out of the pocket of Tourism Australia and represent the people who should matter in this state. They want something done about the scourge of alcohol-related violence and so do the people who mop it up every night. The decision is easy. Just have the guts to make it.''
This is typically shrill? Typically shrill is a statement of the bleeding obvious?
Sheehan, in his typically shrill way - yep he knows what really is typically shrill - then goes on to sink the boot, wield the truncheon, zap the taser on the hapless NSW coppers, claiming that they're behaving like bogans with badges.
It's a classic example of conflation and confusing of issues, denouncing the coppers for union activism while ignoring the bleeding obvious in relation to street violence. Standing up for the O'Farrell government while failing to note its complete inertia on the matter.
George Souris. Do we need to say more? George Souris. Yes the pond knew Souris long ago, and he was a doofus then and he's a Rumsfeldian doofus now.
So what's the worst of the coppers' crimes according to Sheehan? An open letter by Inspector Pat Gooley, which inter alia says:
''It is time for the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, to demonstrate that he is running this state for the benefit of his constituents. Because at the moment it appears the Australian Hotels Association is running the minister's policies for the benefit of a handful of licensees who hold late night trading licences. If your government is willing to take $11 million a month out of drivers' pockets through speed cameras to reduce crashes by 42 per cent in black spots, why won't you tell your minister to trial the Newcastle model to reduce assaults by 37 per cent in violent black spots?''
Somehow Sheehan manages to construe this as Labor party favouring, police union political activism of the kind the police and the public sector unions have been indulging in since big Bazza came to power.
But truth to tell, the government is acting as if it is running its policies for the benefit of the powerful Australian Hotels Association. It has the Newcastle trial as a model and it refuses to embrace it. There are any number of other policies that could be embraced but inertia is all the go.
In this context, all the blather about union feather bedding and the NSW Labor machine sounds exactly like the sort of rhetoric you'd expect from the Australian Hotels Association.
You only have to pause for a moment and remember that the NSW state Labor party was also in the pocket of the Australian Hotels Association during its time in power to confirm it ...
Why not do a Greg Hunt, and head off to the AHA wiki, here, and get all the footnotes for this?
The AHA is considered one of the most influential lobby groups in Australia, and the AHA NSW Branch provides considerable financial support to the Australian Labor Party. Between 1998 and 2006, the AHA NSW Branch contributed over A$700,000 to the NSW branch of the ALP.
In April 2008 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the AHA NSW had frozen all political donations. The association's new president, Scott Leach, announced the decision to freeze the donations 2 weeks after his election as president. Mr Leach said "the move was part of a review of how the association operated. Political donations made by the AHA are under review - we've pressed the pause button."
However, the AHA (NSW) donations declaration lodged with the NSW Electoral Funding Authority in February 2009 showed that its political contributions had resumed the next month in May 2008, with donations to political parties between May 2008 and December 2008 reaching nearly $100,000.
The AHA (NSW) made another $81,317 in donations to political parties in the period of January 2009 to 30 June 2009, bringing contributions in the period from Leach's announcement to the end of June 2008 to over $180,000, twice as high as the average annual donations made in the 8 years preceding leach's election to the AHA Presidency. In 2010, in anticipation of a Coalition victory in the next state election, donations to the Coalition rose, while those to Labor fell.
The result? The extraordinary sight of the pond agreeing with the NSW coppers, while wondering exactly what sort of piss Paul Sheehan was imbibing over the festive season ...
It must have been a blinder if he couldn't see how the AHA is the piper and others are playing its tune.
Somewhere along the way, an envious Sydney tried to emulate Melbourne's excellent civilised laneway culture, which the pond enjoyed over the break.
Instead Sydney ended up with the worst of King street, and mated it with the worst of Kings Cross, and all Sheehan can do is blather on about unions and political machines and the need for more punitive sentences, as if locking more and more people up is the only way forward.
Sheesh, the next thing you know, Tim Wilson will be having a bash at the crypto-fascist state of Campbell Newman's peculiar state.
Oh wait, he has: Tim Wilson: Queensland's anti-bikie laws are violating human rights.
The truth of any matter is that rabid ideology will always blind insight.
It did with Donald Rumsfeld, who bungled on a large stage, and it does with the frothing, foaming Paul Sheehan, who week after week, trots out mind-numbing stupidities, while berating people for not being part of a wealth-creating business.
Mindless stupidities as a wealth-creating business?
No wonder the Fairfaxians are now well down the tubes in their very own version of a ''wealth pissing against the wall'' business ...
On some gloomy pond days, it seems like there's only one Fairfaxian who knows how to staunch the flow ... and you can of course always find more Popery here.
“She undistinguished herself in this way when the government started to wind back the culture of police perks, the excessive disability, excessive overtime and excessive moonlighting.”
ReplyDeleteThey’re not perks.
Does Sheehan want to see unrivalled public-funded perks?
Then he should read the Sept 1, 2012, article by SMH journalists Stuart Washington and Tom Allard on the subject of The Perks of being a Politician.
http://tinyurl.com/kvsjev5