Weekend thoughts?

3 Responses to Weekend thoughts?

1. pablo says:

   December 9, 2006 at 3:15 pm

   I have yet to read any media comment on where our intelligence services were when trouble happened in Tonga. Did anyone in the various agencies see the violence in Nu-kua-lofa coming when their excuse for a people’s parliament shut shop on talking democracy until next year. Equally, was the Honiara riot forseen? Did the fomenting Fijian dictatorship ring alarm bells enough in Canberra that some countering steps might have been taken? Do we need to go further back to June 06 and the Dilli disaster. All of this is costing us taxpayers, either now or in anticipation of eventual ‘recovery plans’. How are things in Port Moresby I wonder? Anyone heard anything from Vanuatu? Hopefully new sedition laws don’t prevent us merely asking?

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2. Nicholas Gruen says:

   December 9, 2006 at 5:02 pm

   Swiss Army Knife link here.

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3. Nicholas Gruen says:

   December 10, 2006 at 3:06 pm

   Following DW Griffiths post above Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch had some quirky and interesting stuff on it, Leunig doesn’t get on with his family, and David Barnett is barking mad.

   Viz.

   Republicanism is like Satanism. You can’t be a Satanist unless you believe in a whole lot of Manichean mediaeval claptrap, otherwise you wouldn’t be committing the sin that is the whole point of whatever it is you and your friends are getting up to. It would just be a frolic. And the same goes for Republicanism. You really have to believe in the royal family. You have to believe that the royal persons are a danger to society, that the world would be a better place if they were all trundled off to the Tower. You have to believe that the Queen harbours ambitions to suspend the parliament, that Charles, when he becomes King George, would be another Charles I, whose head did indeed have to be removed, or another George III, whose ineptitude cost Britain the American colonies.

   And so the column continued, in its (barking mad) way.

   That last sentence – including the words in the brackets – is Hendo, not me. But I’m afraid I’ve got to agree.

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