A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill
Politics
Australian
Apathetic Sarah takes Julie Bishop’s latest pronouncement to its logical conclusion |
Apparantly, out of the blue everyone has come to the conclusion – via the Petrol Kommisionar – that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Niall Cook and Joshua Gans have their say.
Pommygranate criticises the critics of the most recent marijuana decriminalisation scheme.
International
Avi Shlaim makes some tough calls about Israel on the 60th anniversay of its foundation:
In 1923, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism, published an article entitled On the Iron Wall. He argued that Arab nationalists were bound to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Consequently, a voluntary agreement between the two sides was unattainable. The only way to realise the Zionist project was behind an “iron wall” of Jewish military strength. In other words, the Zionist project could only be implemented unilaterally and by military force.
Norman Geras keeps the focus on ever worsening Mugabe thuggery in Zimbabwe.
Aung Zaw argues that post-cyclone events in Burma show that the junta is incapable of running the country, let alone helping the victims. (Trouble is, like Mugabe they’re entirely capable of brutally suppressing opponents which is all that counts from their own viewpoints and in the short term renders all other observations marginally relevant at best).
Turcopolier is deeply suspicious about what Dick Cheney is up to in the Middle East at the moment.
Mark Edward Manning is ecstatic about the election of Boris Johnson as London Mayor (well, more about the demise of Red Ken really), while Brian Micklethwait ponders why Boris’s blog was such a non-event. ((rather like all the oz politicans’ blogs except Andrew Bartlett, and look what happened to him ~ KP))
Economics
Nicholas Gruen’s quick quide to What Is A Public Good? ((I seem to remember that it is the behavious of player character paladins. Publically good, bastards when no-one is watching.~gilmae))
Joshua Gans continues his series analysing the policy rationales for parental support payments, while Harry Clarke continues a running rant on the “impending wages explosion“.
Law
Andrew Koppelman maintains the rage on Bush v Gore, Justice Scalia and conservative academic lawyers in general, while conservative academic lawyer David Bernstein suggests he’s full of s**t.
If you were looking forward to using IceTV’s online program to drive your digital video recorder, Kim Weatherall has some bad news for you from the Federal Court.
Peter Timmins is cautiously optimistic about the Rudd government’s sincerity on FOI and general transparency reform.((Personally I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the bullshit rhetoric to be translated into action ~ KP))
At her new SL-colonised digs, Legal Eagle explores the fascinating question of when a lawyer can dob in a client.
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Issues analysis
Helen Dale joins battle on the long-running blogosphere debate (kicked off by Troppo’s Don Arthur) about the prospects of progressive fusionism (alliance between libertarians and “progressives”).
John Quiggin bravely strives to redeem the reputations of the eco-doomsayers of the old Club of Rome.
Jonathan Pearce looks at an anti-greenie dystopian satire and laments that most people miss the point of such efforts.((I never cease to be amazed by “libertarians” whose ire always focuses on greenie/leftie “anti-Enlightenment” authoritarianism but seldom mention the more extreme and influential – at least in the US – version thereof peddled by the Religious Right and neocons in general. It’s one reason why I don’t think either the term or the concept “progressive fusionism” makes any sense; it erroneously assumes that most libertarians are “progressive” in any meaningful sense, rather than just hypocritical Tories who seek to exempt their own selfish interests from the right wing authoritarianism they otherwise happily endorse by their silence. ~ KP))
Arts
The Happy Antipodean considers the colourful life of poet Robert Adamson, exploring his 2004 autobiography Inside Out
“Out of gaol, Robert grew wings among the inhabitants of the counter-culture. Glue was Rimbaud and drugs. Girls became women. In addition – and it’s strangely something the author doesn’t spell out – his habits of social structures learned inside were very useful in taking control of publishing ventures.
His relentless truth-telling stumbles, at this point, amid obstacles he creates by making visible, to the reader, stories half-told and feelings unexpressed. There’s so much we’re simply not told about entry into the ‘alternative’ mainstream (don’t laugh).”
Perry Middlemiss has a high opinion of Susan Midalia’s A History of the Beanbag and Other Stories, suggesting from this collection of stories there are possibilities of a writer with a big future.
Bardassa reviews Bruce Norris’s class satire The Pain and the Itch (directed by Görkem Acaroglu), a “bitch epic” that in this solid production keeps the “dysfunction afloat at all times.”
Bardassa also reviews Opera Australia’s production of Richard Strauss’s Arabella
Currency Lad appreciated Underbelly but feels insufficient attention was paid to the victims of the Melbourne underworld.
Chris Boyd at Morning After reviews Michael Dalley’s one man show Death in White Linen, applauds the riches of theatre in Melbourne so far this year and mentions his own Hun review (not online) of Bruce Norris’s play The Pain and the Itch.
Sport
Shaun Cronin is feeling the pressures of prognostication but prodigiously produces his NRL Round 9 predictions just the same.
Tony the Teacher is distinctly underwhelmed by ICC proposals to let umpires utilise some but not all available high tech aids in test matches.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Kathy G posts a long hateful piece about the hateful veteran American pundit Phyllis Schafly.
KP, your footnotes as ever are masterpieces of grump. Bravo!
Another thing The Luvvies would do well to appreciate is that “Neoconservative” is not a synonym for “Reigious Right.”
I hope this helps.
The other thing being, of course, their silly misunderstanding and use of “Tory.”
JG
Have you considered enrolling in an evening college course in remedial grammar? The expression “the Religious Right and neocons in general” is semantically incapable of being read as an assertion (or assumption) that the terms are synonymous. The most it could connote is that one term is a subset of the other, which wouldn’t be entirely accurate but isn’t a million miles from the truth either.
JG
Get a new schtick.
I hope this helps.
Is chair-sniffing illegal Down Under There? How about Cigar Sniffing?
Whenever I hear somebody conflate “Neocons” and the “Religious Right” I reach for another bottle of Scotch.
Henry Thornton agrees, judging from the excerpt on the opinion page in today’s AFR. I don’t think I can link to it, though.
“John Quiggin bravely strives to redeem the reputations of the eco-doomsayers of the old Club of Rome.”
This is an odd misreading of my post, which had pretty much the opposite aim .
I was pointing to some evidence supporting a claim I’d made earlier that the Club of Rome wrongly predicted exhaustion of many mineral resources by the end of the 20th Century (more precisely, that, among the various projections in Limits to Growth, these were the ones that were considered at the time to represent the Club’s view). So, while I think there were some points of value in Limits to Growth, the point of the post was that they were wrong about resource exhaustion.
That was me John. I read your post as arguing that the Club of Rome was in large part arguing/drawing attention to long-term and justified concerns rather than imminent dangers of resource depletion, but that political debate at the time focused almost exclusively (and understandably) on its ill-advised shorter term “worst case” predictions of doom.
A more worrying “stretch” than the Club of Rome angle is JQ’s recycling of that bizzare canard about Howard and “lying” about the GST. I would hope an eminece grise of the blogosphere like Le Qiggin would be above such nonsense.
Out of curiosity, is it a canard or is JG just bullshitting?
No, he really is a duck. Rhymes with duck, anyhoo.
And a duckwit who doesn’t know what the phrase ’eminece grise’ (sic) actually means.
Ah really? Please explain where I am in error.
The answer to your question is right in front of your eyes, you dimwitted luvvie.
You are not the sharpest couteau en le tiroir are you?
He’s more Clouseau than couteau.
Des kangourous dans le pr
Sorry, but you remain in error.
Quiggin Luvvies hurling abuse hiding behind anonymous screen names? Imagine what your “academic” work must be like. He he.
“Cut & Paste” doesn’t know what anonymous means, either. Shock. Horreur.
Fyodor – damn straight. Everyone knows who Cardinal Richelieu is.
Mon Dieu! So many rendezvoyeurs de la Madamoiselle Hathaway in this thread!
But seulement un but.
Troppo has a new troll, I see.
– rendezvoyeurs?
Even in French you retain a tin ear for language.
– Sorry, but you remain in error
How do you know? You still don’t even know what your original mistake was.
On voit bien qu’il n’a pas fait Polytechnique.
“Troppo has a new troll, I see.”
No it’s only Nabakov having a bit of Friday arvo fun.
Peut-
“Only” Nabakov?
Tch.
Ahem, I believe M. Niall was referring to John Greenfield/Jethreau de Beaudine
Oh well, apr
– Peut-
La plume de ma tante.
Quelle horreur! I ‘ave, ow you say, been misidentified!
No more butcherin’ the French parley-voo for me.
“never cease to be amazed by libertarians whose ire always focuses on greenie/leftie anti-Enlightenment authoritarianism but seldom mention the more extreme and influential – at least in the US – version thereof peddled by the Religious Right and neocons in general.”
Well you can’t be talking about us at Samizdata then because we have a long standing tradition of heaping invective on for the Tory party, Big State Republicans and right-statist rent-seekers generally… which is why we probably get most of our hate mail from self-styled ‘conservatives’.