I like Bob Brown. I especially like how he manages to drive those who dislike his politics into paroxysms of rage. So yesterday, we learnt from Liberal Senator George Brandis that Bob Brown is objectively pro-fascist [excerpted from yesterday's Hansard]:

I think until fairly recently the Australian people tended to divide the Greens party into two camps. There seemed to be two points of view about the Greens party. There were those Australians who thought that the Greens were a collection of well meaning oddballs — and there was certainly a degree of evidence to give comfort to that view. There were others, I think, in Australia who regarded the Greens not so much as well-meaning oddballs but as a mob of scruffy ratbags. There was certainly plenty of evidence to give comfort to that point of view. But, as their behaviour last Thursday demonstrated, the Greens are not well-meaning oddballs and they are not scruffy ratbags; they are something much more sinister than that. They have introduced into our democracy — one of the world’s greatest and most successful democracies — a new and sinister element. The journalist Andrew Bolt, in a very perceptive piece published in the —

…[Brown interjects to raise a point of order; Senator Brandis continues:]

In a very perceptive column syndicated throughout Australia in last Sunday’s newspapers, the journalist Andrew Bolt pointed out the striking and very dangerous antecedents of the fanaticism of contemporary green politics in this country, and its commonality and common source with the views that inspired the Nazis in prewar Germany. In an earlier piece, published in July, Mr Bolt directed our attention to two studies that have been written of contemporary green politics — and I have read them in the last day or so; they make chilling reading — which go all the way to explaining the modus operandi of the Greens last Thursday. The first, by an American scholar, Professor Raymond Dominick, examined the common source of the fanaticism of contemporary greens with the nature worship practised by the Nazis in the 1930s.

…[Brown interjects to raise another point of order; Senator Brandis continues:]

And I intend to continue to call to the attention of the Australian people the extremely alarming, frightening similarities between the methods employed by contemporary green politics and the methods and the values of the Nazis.

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Nicholas Kristof in the NYT muses on the findings from a recent study showing that many lesbians – like most men – will have a ring finger that is longer than their index finger whilst women generally, have an index and ring finger roughly the same in length. A quick, albeit unscientific, check reveals that I’ve got lesbian fingers and were it not for the fact that I’m also a bloke – which could explain it – I’d be off shopping for comfortable shoes without delay!

Kristof’s topic is the nature or nurture debate in respect of the origins of homosexuality. He reports that informed scientific opinion is increasingly leaning towards nature as the significant causative factor, though he doesn’t allude to whether nature might also explain television horrors like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy – or is that “Buy?” – but, inevitably… I digress.
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The National Trust is running low on Australian Living Treasures and would like public assistance in replacing the 11 Treasures who have gone to Immortality since the program was initiated in 1997. All you have to do is zap off your nomination to the National Trust. They don’t offer any insight into whether or not self-nomination is acceptable but proclaiming oneself a potential Treasure looks to be a bit like having major tickets on oneself and is probably best avoided.

A quick scan of the remaining Treasures reveals a number who might inspire blogospherical queries as to the feasibility of their re-categorisation to something like “St Vinnie’s Op Shop Remainder Bin’ rather than “Treasures” but, let’s be charitable…..

At about the point that Hu Jin-Tao was subtly making his House of Representatives case for Captain Cook being a Johnny come lately, news came through that the formidable Madame Chiang Kai-Shek had passed away. It was a timely interruption because I’d just started daydreaming about how things might have been had Bob Brown – rather than Gough – made that groundbreaking visit to Beijing back in 1971.

Given the inevitability of formal complaints about the amount of MSG in the state banquet, not to mention secondary smoke violation notifications relating to the Chinese leadership’s uniform nicotine addiction – “it’s just not the Australian way” – the relationship between Our Two Great Nations might have taken a very different course. But I digress….
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