dieter

Also, are you aware that the secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee that awarded this bulldust award before Obama even said 'I do' at the inauguration sincerely regrets their decision.

Dear Choke. I abhor everything Trump stands for. However, I have absolutely no regard for Obama either. If you can be bothered, please listen to a podcast on Radio National, Conversations, with a the Nigerian/African writer Teju Cole. What he said about Obama is telling.

Sorry to disagree about Mr Speedo. Before he won office he said there were many things he WOULDN'T DO: example, emaciate the ABC, and while I'm struggling to recall the nighmarish goulash of bulldust that came from his vile gob, I know there were other things he reneged on. I recall Kerrie O'Brien nailing him about 'core promises' and things a politician said off the top of his head. I'm so glad he's gone. Trouble is we now have Turnbulldust. I guess it could have been worder, for example Morrison or Dutton or Brandis or Barnaby.

Chook, he was a centre half forward mainly...

Is that what the USA is doing in using its considerable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction by starting all those wars and then paying its Terrorist proxies to start others? Just a question..

Yes, I can see Richard De Natalie praying to god to save our planet. On the other hand, I can see a lot of preying on the fears of the Australian public, E.G. Children Overboard, Weapons of Mass Destruction - This isn't about Regime Change , said the Lord Johnie - and subsequent fridge stickers about being alert but not alarmed... Then again, those who read Rudolph's Press fell for all of the preying hook line and sinker.

Hasn't been for the want of takers. By the way, that Communist Broadcaster the ABC - even after Turnbulldust and his gang of cut throat fascist butchers has totally emaciated it - is showing Climate Change on Four Corners tonight. Utterly shameless, these Climate Change Warriors!

Once again, Herr Sniper, Zis means nuzhink. All is really means is ze temperatures und weather patterns zind topzy turfy to the max. But dumkopfs like you zink it means hell ist freezink over the rainbow. You zilly, zilly boy..

I used to sell him records at John Clements in the mid 70's, Discurio in the early 70's. All classical of course, Barry is, like myself, a cultured chap.

Get em all. Celebrate in style. I can tell you're' Epicurus's only sonne...'

Tell ya what, Jara, he's a bloody good fighter, that A Bolt. What a man. Gave those rude dudes who tackled him in Carlton a run for their money. That's what we need more of in this great nation of ours, fighters, fisticuffs swingers, all in the name of righteousness. And it's also a great Christian virtue, an eye for an eye, as the good book says...

Also, not sure that the likes of the Climate Change Deniers are familiar with the frog in the saucepan scenario. Just an intuition, if you get my drift...

Go back over the past three years and just about in month of these years - according to statistics kept by BOM - the average monthly temperatures have risen. It ain't just summer time, my boy, there are 12 months in the year.

I hardly see the comedy any more. The world is in a very dangerous place at the moment. The Goebbels paradigm that the sheep are the most inclined to believe the big lies has never been more apparent.

Yes, it's almost ghoulish how the world is fascinated by this complete psychopath who is also certifiably insane. The trouble is how dangerous he is. The US was dangerous enough - witness Iraq just for a start - before this amoral, lunatic, loose canon came along. Once again, it just shows how insane the Us is: how can they have elected this lecherous, fraudulent imbecile???

Ah, Earl. we're pounding our heads on brick walls. I note yours is made of porcelain. Don't ya know, baby, The Age is a distributor of Far left Propaganda. My advice to ya is switch to the Herald/Sun and the Australian. These journals tell you THE TRUTH. Just ask Andrew Bolt and Miss Credlin and Ms Devlin , they knopw what's best for us and this country. It's all about JOBS, mainly jobs for the boys and their mistresses...

I agree with the petition. It just goes to show how corrupt and immoral the USA is in the she was the alternative to the Strumpet. The USA is the greatest Terrorist organisation in the world.

For what this is worth. I've recently returned from a trip to the Hilltops/Young/Mudgee wine producing areas of NSW. In Mudgee I stayed at a Motel run by an ex WA dude and we had a conversation about AFL footy. ( AFL footy is not big in Mudgee.) It turned out he is the brother of a certain West Coast Eagle backman who played in the Worsfold era. One of the things he said was that the Whoosh was also called the Chemist. Yes, that was/is his profession. He then said West Coast players were using drugs in that era. Not all of them, just most of them. He claims it was a well-known 'fact'. He mentioned the usual suspects, the dead one and those still alive, including a surfing type who played a few games for the Demons in 1996. He also said drugs were and are rife in the AFL. He said Essendon's biggest problem was they were caught. For what it's worth...

Just proves you can fool most of the people most of the time. The bigger the lie...to quote Goebbels.

Alle-fluckin-luia!!!

Why America is the World’s Most Uniquely Cruel Society Or, How Punching Down Became a Way of Life In this essay, I want to share with you a tiny theory of what it means to be American. It is up to you to judge, as ever, whether it carries any weight. All that I will say is that when I look around, it explains, a little, what I see. Any theory of being American must explain one salient and striking fact: cruelty. America is the most cruel nation among its peers — even among most poor countries today. It is something like a new Rome. It has little, if any, functioning healthcare, education, transport, media, no safety nets, no stability, security. The middle class is collapsing, and life expectancy is falling.Young people die for a lack of insulin they cannot crowdfund. Elderly middle-class people live and die in their cars. Kids massacre each other in schools — when they’re not self-medicating the pain of it all away. The combination of these pathologies happens nowhere else — not a single place — in the world. Not even Pakistan, Costa Rica, or Rwanda. Hence, the world is aghast daily at the depths of American cruelty — yet somehow, they seem bottomless. (Of course I don’t mean that all Americans are cruel. I just mean that in the same way we say countries have attitude, dispositions, that there’s such a thing as a French or German national attitude or disposition, so, too there is an American one. Nor do I mean America is “the most cruel society in the world”. Can we really ever judge that? But it is uniquely cruel — a kind of special example — in weird, needless, and singular ways.) Let me throw that into relief. Scandinavians are the happiest, longest-lived, and most prosperous people in the world because they do not punish one another constantly — but lift one another up. But Americans do not believe this reality. The underlying sentiment that unites America’s manifold problems is a myth of cruelty. So. Where did the myth of cruelty come from? That is the question before us if we really want to understand America. I’ve wondered since I was a kid, to be honest. I thought, once, it was about capitalism, patriarchy, race, once. But now I think that while those are expressions of it. That something more primary, fundamental, and unique happened. America was a strange, improbable combination of things, singular in history. A Promised Land —but one for the despised. Waves upon waves of them washed up on its shores. First, the Puritans, mocked and loathed in England. Then peasants and farmers and outlaws from across Europe. Then Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, and today, Muslims. These emigrants all tended to share a common trait. They were at the very bottom, the lowest rung, of social and economic heirarchies in their own countries. All of them. That has changed a little recently — but America was founded by and for the despised, loathed, hated. People referred to as trash, nobodies, serfs, exiles, outcasts — who were never given an ounce of respect, dignity, or even belonging, in their societies of origin. Let me make that clearer. We did not see nobles and landed gentry emigrate to America. British Lords and German Counts and Italians Barons. We saw German peasant, Irish villagers, Swedish farmers, the dwellers of Italian slums. People from the very lowest of heirarchies elsewhere, the oppressed and the subjugated, came to this Promised Land. So first the English and French settlers supposed that this New World was theirs (and began a kind of genocide against its natives, of course). But it wasn’t just the natives that they came to hate, for threatening their natural right to this Promised Land. It was the next waves of settlers, too. The English settlers hated the French. The French hated the Germans. They all hated the Irish. The Irish hated the Italians. And so on. That much is historical fact. Do you see the pattern forming yet? This is very abstract, so let me make it concrete. Here came one wave of settlers — English. They dominated their way to the top of a hierarchy, above natives and blacks. Then came a new wave — German. They were punched down too — and began punching down — to bitterly establish themselves in this hierarchy, as high up as they could. Then another wave — Irish. Punched, punching down. All desperately vying for relative dominance among the rest. You see, the crucial fact is that this didn’t happen elsewhere in the world — waves of settlers, all desperately trying to establish themselves above the next, last, most recent, in a hierarchy, all the more so, because they were despised, at the bottom, to begin with. In Europe, Asia, South America, heirarchies were long established — and broken only by revolution. America was the only nation where this constant reconstruction of hierarchy happened to such a degree, over and over again. Hence, the establishment of cruelty as a way of life — how else but to establish one’s self above the next wave of migrants? Each new tribe that came to this Promised Land brought the burden of being despised, subjugated, oppressed, with them. They were finally above someone else in a social hierarchy. They were not at the bottom anymore. But to be above requires somone else to be below. And so there was a constant battle for relative position within a growing hierarchy — hence, dominance, competition, conquest soon became the prized cultural values, norms, and institutional goals. Cruelty as a way of life was born. When we noted that the despised of England hated the newly arrived despised of France hated the newly arrived despised of Germany and so on, not to mentions natives, blacks, and Asians, in an endless vicious circle, we are also saying: America was learning to be cruel, by forever constructing greater heirachies to seize the fruits of a Promised Land. But greater hierarchies require greater cruelty to climb up, too. And the irony is that all this is what the despised came to America to escape. (I’ll add peripheral point. The despised, when coming to a Promised Land, are the least likely, perversely, though we might not immediately think so, to want to share it — because they, at last, have something that they feel is theirs. Today’s servant wants to be tomorrow’s master. Today’s peasant wants to be tomorrow’s landlord. Today’s victim aspires to be tomorrow’s oppressor.) Now. What was really happening here, in more modern terms? People were learning to “punch down”, as we might put it today. Americans were being taught to take out their anger, rage, and fear on those less powerful than them — usually, the most obvious and immediate ones they could find. An Irish mutt bastard moved into the neighbourhood? Get them. No Chinamen allowed. Those Italians? We’ve got to move them out of our city. Intern those Japanese. Punching down began to be institutionalized and normalized. Cruelty was becoming a way of life and a norm. Tribe after tribe of the despised fled to a Promised Land, but each one demanded their position above the last, having never had anything before. People who had been hated and outcast had status and belonging at last — but only by punching down the next wave. So no mechanisms ever really developed to allow the Promised Land to be shared wisely, well, or reasonably. Might became right. Now, American leaders tried to intervene every now and then. FDR’s second bill of rights, JFK’s vision for a fairer society, and so on. But they were not very succesful — because they were fighting a history of cruelty that they did not really understand: one that went to the heart of what it means to be American itself. So they never really said: “Wait. What do we all really have in common, us Americans? We are the despised and mocked of history. Its outcasts and its exiles. This is what unites us! Let us stop punching down, then. Otherwise, what have we really learned? We are only repeating the very history of cruelty that we tried to escape from.” How sad. How funny. Americans came to a Promised Land — but they could not escape themselves. Each new wave, trying to rise above the next, built a world even more cruel than the old one. Punching down, down, down, endlessly. So, today, here we are. Punching down has become a national institution, a norm, and a way of life. School shootings? Can’t ban guns — let the kids have “active shooter drills”. We are punching all the way down to our little five years olds. Life expectancy falling? Can’t have healthcare — let them self-medicate with opioids. We are punching down to the poorest. Education cost a fortune? Too bad, take out debt. We are punching down to our young people. I could give you endless examples. But perhaps you get the point by now. What does it mean to be American? To really “be” — see, feel, think, act American, so much so that you are not self-aware of it, because it is unconscious, reflexive, invisible, this way of “being”? Well, it means what it always has. Punching down, not lifting up. Punching down is hardwired into America by now, thanks to a unique history of settlers — who had never had any — punching the next wave down for relative hierarchical position. An attitude of cruelty was born. And so today cruelty is the point of its institutions, the purpose of its norms, and the linchpin of its perverse idea of virtue, that by punishing people, we can better them. It is all that Americans expect from each other — and give to each other. That is the terrible burden of a Promised Land that history’s despised warred among one another for domination of. The problem is this. A society of people punching one another down must collapse. What else could it do? It cannot rise, can it? If I am punching you down, and I am punching the next person down below me, how can anyone ever lift anyone up? But without lifting one another up, a society cannot grow in quantity or quality of life. This, too, is what happened to Soviet Russia. America has never reckoned with its history of cruelty. Instead, it developed a defensive mythology of being welcoming — even while every new wave of immigrants had to fight, sometimes quite literally little street by street, against the last wave, for a piece of the Promise Land. Like all myths, that one — was a lie that revealed the truth: America was a Promised Land for the huddled masses to roam free — but only if they could fend off the other tribes, by punching them down, endlessly,. A Promised Land is like a Garden of Eden. But who can live in the Garden peacefully but angels? Human beings, flawed, indelicate things, are only meant to be cast out— they are ever in conflict, in tension, hungry and ravenous. And that is never truer than for their most despised — who need to be healed most, or else will ravage their Gardens worst. In this way, a Garden, given to the despised, is a war, waiting to happen. A war against itself. America is at just such a war, and has always been. The name of this war is cruelty. But the end of this war is not victory, but collapse. I don’t say any of this to blame, shame, or judge. But only so that, perhaps, this history of violence can at last be reckoned with. Umair February 2018

Got anyone in mind? No way ECT, no wuckin fay. Apart from drugs and alcohol, what brought you to the culmination of St Paul's fascist way? The great Damascus moment, the city the USA has spent billions trying to destroy lately. Thank you ISIS, thank you Hilary, thank you CIA, thank you all the mindless dumbfluck lunatics who have perverted the course of history to oblige the Neocon way.

Also, I've read the Schlesinger article you referred to. A couple of things about it. Firstly, it was written in 1959 when the world was different. This was the world Kennedy inherited, what is referred to as a kind of Camelot, a kind of cutesy apple pie innocense. Well, unfortunately, bubbling away in the background was what Eisenhowere - who ironically was one of the architects of it - called the Military Industrial Complex. The USA had already napalmed Greece - though nobody in the west knew about it - had reduced North Korea into a lunar, rubble filled wasteland - to the extent that MacArthur, when he was flown over the flattened debris called North Korea was reduced to tears - had deposed the democratically elected government of Iran and replaced it with the Shah who became as filthy rich as the British and American Oil Companies who ran Iraq until the Ayatollahs. Vietnam was already brewing and 'niggers were still niggers and forced to the back of the bus. And McCarthy was always hovering, and Joe Edgar Hoover was rounding up gays while all the while pretending he wasn't the biggest gay in town And in the meantime, Hollywood and Disneyland painted a noble picture of white American toil and effort, the wagon train scenario, the American noble white man defending his kith and kin on his quest to 'open up' the West. In other words, this article is a kind of glossy whitewash, a broad canvass populated only by Great and Noble White Men whose aims were decent and kind and honest and true. Notably, there is massive silence in this article about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The problem is that the evidence is there if, you want to stare it in the face and uncover it, that this canvass Schlesinger tries to paint was/is pure Fantasyland.

Great reply. I was going to add 'writers, musicians, artists, music' to my list but the edit time had elapsed. The 'Democracy' claim always gets me because the American Constitution was written by a dude who kept slaves. Therefore it is a racially biased piece of pomp and ceremony, in reality not worth the paper it's written on. That's just my view. You mention the medicine, the science, all the technological advances. Once again, true to a point. It's just that most of the scientists, doctors and inventors were European emigres. The human rights clause is in my view a total furphy. Human rights for who? The white, privileged elite? Try telling the Iraquis, the Afghanis, the Vietnamese, the El Salvadorians, the 5000 poor who were slaughtered by US Marines when they invaded Panama ostensibly to capture Norriega, the Communist Greeks who the US napalmed in the late 40's, the North Koreans, or the Syrians, or the Libyans, or the Iranians and Iraqis who were slaughted by US ordinance during that obscene US brokered war between Iraq and Iran. I could go on. We won't mention the human rights of the American Indians who had the nerve to try to stop the wagon trains. Granted, it made for great Westerns when we were kids and dumb and brainwashed enough to believe only white settlers had the right to kill and protect their land or property. And, until the Civil Rights movement of the 60's, tell me about the 'culture of human rights' in the US for its Blacks. Yes, the Yanks helped to defeat Hitler. It's just that if the American clowns who were one of the main architects of the Treaty of Versailles had any brains or foresight or wisdom, Hitler would not have been possible in the first place.

Precisely. They certainly know how to kill, those so-called Americans ( as though Canada and Central and South America don't count as 'Americans', if you know what I mean.) In an ideal world, they'd stick to just killing each other. What perplexes me to the point of being prostrate with bafflement is that there are people in the so-called civilized world who simply refuse to see that a country which has such a high turnover of horrific mass shootings is sick to the core, that it is one of the biggest, most hypocritical basket cases in the history of the world. Trump, if you like, is the festering puss-filled pimple of this mess called the USA, an entity totally devoted to and ruled by weapons, most of them weapons of mass destruction. Equally as sickening is that the next choice the voters of the USA had was another imbecilic, corrupt war machine called Hilary Clinton. God spare us.