Friday 29th of November 2024
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shit happens .....

shit happens .....

It was as unexpected as a red gum, impervious to all that could be thrown at it, suddenly toppling days after the storm.

Julia Gillard, scorned for weeks during the dreadful summer of natural disasters as lacking empathy, as wooden, as incapable of displaying emotion, finally could no longer withstand the strain.

Standing in the Parliament yesterday, she unfurled a muddied Australian flag recovered from the flooded Queensland town of Murphys Creek in the body-strewn Lockyer Valley & her voice began cracking.

With each short sentence, Ms Gillard's voice faltered & by the time she got to the business of courage, for which she said the summer would always be remembered, she could barely speak.

We had seen Bob Hawke weeping at the drug-addiction of his daughter & the brutality in Tiananmen Square; John Howard overcome by the massacre at Port Arthur & old battles at Gallipoli & the Western Front; Kevin Rudd choked up while consoling survivors of Victoria's bushfires two years ago & breaking down last year after the loss of his prime ministership.

But Julia Gillard? Until yesterday, she had seemed too controlled .... a Prime Minister whom Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had described as ''unconvincing'' in her efforts.

And whilst on the subject of being "unconvincing", the little budgie smuggler was super quick to phone the wife of a soldier killed in Afghanistan & apologise after his callous "shit happens" gaffe hit the airwaves.

But Ian MacKinney, the father of the dead soldier, Jared MacKinney, said the Opposition Leader's comments were ''out of line'' & made him ''feel sick''.

He described Mr Abbott as thoughtless, ignorant & uncaring. ''It just shows how good he is, or isn't. I'm not going to let it bother me, but it just shows he's not very thoughtful. He doesn't care too much.''

Last night Mr Abbott furiously rejected claims of insensitivity & said his words, captured on Defence Force video during a trip to Afghanistan in October, had been taken out of context.

Dopus dei strikes again!!

caught in the light .....

from Crikey .....

A constant theme of responses from governments and the foreign policy establishment to WikiLeaks' release of US diplomatic cables has been that it is absurd to expect governments to operate with full transparency. In particular, the reasoning goes, transparency is toxic to diplomacy, where secrecy is crucial to the conduct of statecraft aimed at settling international disputes and even preventing war.

That claim can be put to the test now in relation to Egypt.

The protests against the Mubarak regime and protesters' demand that Mubarak immediately step down have been reinvigorated in recent days, particularly by the remarkable interview conducted by Wael Ghonim after his release from detention by the regime. The United States, however, appears eager to facilitate a "transition" that will leave Vice-President Omar Suleiman in control and the apparatus of the Mubarak regime intact.

Suleiman is a torturer and murderer who has co-operated closely with the US and Israeli governments in the past. He is clearly the preferred outcome for Washington and Tel Aviv in terms of "stability".

As the Washington court reporter from The New York Times showed yesterday, some of the vilest regimes in the Middle East are backing the Americans and the Israelis to ensure Egyptian "democracy" does not undermine regional "stability". Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are all mentioned by the NYT as lobbying strongly for the Americans to relax the pressure on the Mubarak regime.

It seems leaks from diplomats are OK if they're made to mainstream media outlets that can be relied on to co-operate closely with governments.

But this is in effect a conspiracy between Western interests and several appalling dictatorships to undermine the wholly legitimate democratic aspirations of Egyptians who have called for greater freedom in, literally, their millions.

This "diplomacy" deserves no secrecy. It deserves exposure and censure. And it directly undermines the claim that diplomats should be allowed to determine what the public knows, and when. It's clear demonstration of why WikiLeaks is right to subject the world's diplomats to the threat of exposure.