STOP PRESS!!!
Cockburn and Poole through Passive Complicity bring you the 0′Cearmada Compendium “Election 2013”.  This is the definitive work outlining in detail the finer machinations of the 2013 Australian Federal Election.  0′Cearmada’s writing will re-establish your faith in democracy, and enthuse you to ask “when can we have another”.
Published on the softest of recycled paper stock, with precisely placed perforations this work deserves a place on your bedside table or any of your other regular reading places.  In fact we see a need for two copies in every home.
NOTE:  Only available on line as a digital copy, this may not be suitable for the uses suggested.
AND THERE IS MORE.  We have available the most gorgeous Broadsheet of the Election one metre high by .3m wide, at only $10 each.  With each poster purchased you also get the full compendium.

THIS WEEK

Paddy 0′Cearmada wrapped up the election (almost) with Unrepresentative swill.  He says of the Senate it ‘has become the kind of democratic expression of the truly weird that only a continent possessing the last of the monotremes could produce.’

Cecil Poole and Quentin Cockburn combined with a piece comparing the influence of Sophie Mirabella to that of Pauline Hanson in that their extremism gave room for otherwise despicable policies and behaviour to appear normal.

‘Prior to the Industrial Revolution people knew their place.  ….. Then along came canals and turnips and steam engines and people began to dream.’ wrote Tarquin O’Flaherty in the second instalment of ‘Man as Machine’, (read the first part here), 

Two pieces specifically spoke of threats to democracy.  The first by Jesselyn Radack: Bradley Manning’s conviction sends a chilling message – The Washington Post,  2 August 2013 where she argues ‘The work of the government is supposed to be public and people’s personal lives private, not the other way around.’

The second, by George Monbiot in two parts is on Chemical Weapons and the UN Security Council.  (Second part here) He says that the permanent member of the Security Council (US, Russia, France, UK, China) ‘have collaborated…. in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.’

Saturday’s MDFF was the promised rejoinder to the previous two dispatches that  tackled stereotyping and its nefarious results.  This piece argued for the clear distinction between racial and cultural prejudice, a most valuable contribution.

Poetry Sunday brought W B Yeats’ Leda and the Swan, with comprehensive comments from our Poetry Editor Ira Maine.

“A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.”
  

And, dear reader, please feel free to add comments about this and any of our postings.

Regards
Cecil Poole