From Democracy Now (oh dear!):
Organizers of the U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, are facing criticism for accepting corporate sponsorships from major car manufacturers, oil companies, steel manufacturers and coal firms. Meanwhile, the Polish Ministry of Economy has teamed up with the World Coal Association to put on a parallel “International Coal & Climate Summit,” also in Warsaw.
I do not agree with many of the views espoused by Herald Sun columnist, blogger, and Channel 10 TV host Andrew Bolt.
I do, however, most wholeheartedly agree with his views on what he has — brilliantly — described as “The Age of Seeming”:
Whenever the general topic of pretentious preening and posturing by those who care more about “seeming” than “doing” arises, I often recall Bolt’s column of December 2nd, 2009.
This, dear reader, is in my opinion one of the best op-eds I’ve ever read.
Period.
In particular, though, it is one of the best op-eds I’ve ever read that so brilliantly skewers the zeitgeist of our times.
Consider whether anything has changed since Bolt penned these words, nearly four years ago:
THE AIDS ribbons were the first red flag of this Age of Seeming – this great explosion of public sanctimony.
For a long while, no celebrity dared turn up at a big do without wearing that loop of red ribbon to show they cared.
Was a single AIDS patient actually saved by this flaunting of compassion?
Don’t be silly. These ribbons were for advertising the wearer’s good heart, not the sufferer’s weeping sores.
It was weird the way they suddenly vanished. Do edicts on the cause-du-jour get published in Vanity Fair, so the fashionable don’t risk turning up to an event caring about the wrong thing?
How mortifying if Cate Blanchett was the only one in a room of red AIDS ribbons to be wearing the brown ribbon of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
But if red ribbons vanished, this new virus of “consciousness raising” stayed, mutating into ever more offensively reproachful forms.
Only last week, I watched Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the now deposed opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, boast they’d taken the following oath, which they urged all other men to swear, too:
I swear: never to commit violence against women, never to excuse violence against women, and never to remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath.
Pardon? Were Rudd and Turnbull saying it was this oath that now stopped them from belting their wives?
Of course not.
Was their oath likely to be sworn by the kind of men that would?
As if.
Were they telling me to swear it, too, because they think I’d otherwise punch a woman?
How dare they.
So what was all that really about?
Rudd’s smug face told the story. Here was another preening ritual of seeming good without achieving it, while making even the innocent feel accused.
Creepy, yes, but how many such Seeming Ceremonies we’ve had. There was last year’s apology to the “stolen generations” that no one can actually find, and now a sorry to the “Forgotten Australians” for having been removed from lousy parents for their own safety.
What on earth did such sorries achieve? That’s not saying sorry. That’s just blaming someone else (and the wrong people, too), while gloating over your far finer moral feeling.
It’s a seeming contrition, with none of the searing regret of a real one.
But on these Seeming Ceremonies went. They’d dance at Make Poverty History concerts that didn’t raise any money; they’d acknowledge traditional owners whose descendants weren’t present; they’d stage naked protests against fur that attracted only the sticky-handed; and they’d catch jets to signings of accords that only pretended to cut the gases they’d just belched.
Once you had to show your goodness by doing something practical, like slogging through malarial swamps to build a health clinic in a jungle.
Now you do it by jogging with mates to “raise awareness” – which means asking someone else to do the real work.
Maybe the next ribbon should be yellow, so the Seemers can raise awareness of the Doers who have got the rough end of this moral pineapple.
It pleased me greatly this afternoon to see from the above video, that Bolt is continuing to try and bring this topic of “seeming” into the public consciousness.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we may someday as a result begin to witness the king tide of “seeming” receding.
From Yahoo!7 News:
Get budgets in order, Swan tells Europeans
Treasurer Wayne Swan will tell his European counterparts at this weekend’s Group of 20 meeting in Washington they must continue to adopt the reforms needed to boost economic growth and get their budgets under control.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Swan said Australia not only needed to get its policy settings right but would do everything it could to help the world avoid a repeat of the “devastation” caused by the global financial crisis.
“There is a difficult road ahead for many advanced economies, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see bouts of instability continue for some time to come,” Mr Swan said in a statement on Friday.
“That’s why I will first and foremost be making clear to European finance ministers the need to continue putting in place the reforms needed to lift economic growth and get their budgets in order.”
From the 2008-09 Budget forecast:
Total Revenue (estimate) – $319.464 billion
Total Expenditure (estimate) – $292.470 billion
From the 2008-09 Final Budget Outcome:
Total Revenue – $298.933 billion ( -$20.53 billion)
Total Expenditure – $324.569 billion ( +$32.09 billion)
Deficit – $51.44 billion
From the 2009-10 Budget forecast:
Total Revenue (estimate) – $290.612 billion
Total Expenditure (estimate) – $338.213 billion
From the 2009-10 Final Budget Outcome:
Total Revenue – $292.767 billion ( +$2.15 billion)
Total Expenditure – $339.239 billion ( +$1.02 billion)
Deficit – $46.472 billion
From the 2010-11 Budget forecast:
Total Revenue (estimate) – $321.822 billion
Total Expenditure (estimate) – $354.644 billion
From the 2010-11 Final Budget Outcome:
Total Revenue – $309.89 billion ( -$11.93 billion)
Total Expenditure – $356.10 billion ( +$1.45 billion)
Deficit – $50.5 billion
From the 2011-12 Budget forecast:
Total Revenue (estimate) – $349.961 billion
Total Expenditure (estimate) – $365.817 billion
From the 2011-12 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (November updated estimate):
Total Revenue – $344.11 billion ( -$5.85 billion)
Total Expenditure – $371.747 billion ( +$5.93 billion)
Deficit – $43.38 billion
Oh yes.
By the way.
We will not bother to mention the tens of billions in spending on such things as the NBN, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, that are not included in the budget.
Because they are hidden Off Balance Sheet.
Wayne. Europe.
Pot. Kettle.
Both slowly but steadily boiling dry.
Submitted by collaborator and stylist, Zeg.
G’day,
If you were unfortunate enough to watch one of the most one sided and non objective screenings of the ABC’s Q and A show last night then you are also privy to yet another disgusting display of the twisted and bitter mind of Germaine Greer. This once General of the Sisterhood turned around last night and defamed PM Julia Gillard by telling us all with a grin on her smug face “Face it Julia, you have a fat arse.”. Nothing was gained from such a comment except for a quick giggle from the other collection of clowns on the panel.
Can you imagine what the outcry would be like if Abbott or Joyce or really any man had said the same thing? This would be headline news but for some reason this FORMER Feminist ( that is what she is now after this attack ) has managed to get away with this slur with bugger all outrage from the sisterhood and the useful idiots of the left.
I guess when you are that much of a legend in the minds of those who would rather see us all dressed in the same drab green clothes and carrying little red books, then you can just about get away with anything, even if it goes against all that you have claimed to be about for decades.
Seriously speaking though, this proves once again just how irrelevant, self deluded and out of touch Germaine Greer has become and that the Female Eunuch was never about the cause of equal rights for women but more about breaking down the family unit thus weakening the foundation stones of our Western Capitalist society….. MARXISM 101!
Greer is no longer paid to think but rather to cause controversy and to throw a spanner in the works of decent debate when she hasn’t appeared in the headlines for a while.Don’t take my word for it, go to this link if you feel so inclined to download the episode and see for yourself just what a horrible bitter person she really is now and for that matter how such a comment can pass unchallenged on this show of “objective debate???” and with this panel of “experts???”, without a whimper.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/vodcast.htm
Godspeed
Zeg
Twitter – @Zegcartoonist
Blog – http://zegsyd.blogspot.com/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own. They should not be interpreted as reflecting any views held by Senator Barnaby Joyce or The Nationals
The red mist has descended.
Your humble blogger is angry.
Very angry.
Wayne Swan has publicly attacked three local, homegrown Aussie miners.
Ms Gina Rinehart. Mr Clive Palmer. And Mr Andrew Forrest.
Wayne claims that he is fighting for a “fair go”, for “equality”, against “rich” “vested interests” that are “threatening our democracy”.
Oh really?
Wayne Swan did a secret, exclusive deal on the design of the mining tax with the Big Three foreign-owned multinational mining companies, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Xstrata, just before the 2010 election.
Wayne’s secret deal is widely claimed to favour the Big Three foreigners, at the expense of the much smaller local Aussie mining companies.
Wayne’s secret deal is alleged to have come about after the Big Three foreign-owned mining companies “gave the nod” for Julia Gillard to knife democratically-elected PM Kevin Rudd, and promised to pull their anti-mining tax ad campaign.
Tell us again, who is a “threat to democracy”?
Wayne Swan accuses three local Aussie miners – two of whom are self-made, from humble beginnings – of being “champions of privilege”.
Oh really?
Wayne is a career political hack, with an Arts degree, and zero business experience.
Wayne receives $346,000 per annum, $6,653 per week, paid for by the taxpayer.
Wayne voted himself an $84,000 pay rise late last year.
Wayne blew $75,440 of taxpayers’ money on empty RAAF VIP “ghost flights” to collect and ferry him around, in just 6 months last year.
Tell us again, who is a “champion of privilege”?
Wayne Swan is a vile, disgusting, public trough-swilling, grossly overpaid, thoroughly under qualified, pathologically dishonest, monumentally repugnant, morally destitute, vomitous, self-serving, bottom-dwelling, anti-Australian, treasonous, galactic hypocrite.
* I have chosen to keep this piece focussed on Swan and his attack on locals in the mining industry. I could write an entire new piece on other “vested interests” that Wayne oh so conveniently neglects to mention, much less publicly attack. For example, the unions who finance (and rule) the ALP, and the clubs industry whose “power” and political activism prompted the Labor government to brazenly renege on a written contract with Andrew Wilkie for poker machine reform. And that’s just for starters.
** The media in this country are deserving of very similar epithets to those attributed to Wayne Swan above. I am not aware that a single journalist has challenged Wayne Swan on any of the above facts.
*** Note well: this blogger is no fawning acolyte of miners, big business, or “free markets”. On the contrary, if it were within my power I would nationalise all mineral, petroleum, and natural gas resources – see “Why I Hang Farther To The Left Than Bob Brown”.
Barnaby Is Right 
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