Income and wealth inequality seem to be getting quite a bit of press.  Research in the UK published under the title “The Spirit Level” (by Richard Wilson and Kate Pickett) indicated a plethora of social indicators exacerbated by high levels of income inequality, research supported by other work in the USA.  Phillip Adams wrote in the Weekend Australian, News Limited’s Australian flagship, about the growing problem.  (Adams mentioned gina Rheinhart, James Packer and a number of north American wealthy, yet his boss rupert Murdock failed to score a mention)  (Access to the Murdock site is of course limited to subscription, although it appears the profits of his operations are not subject to Australian Taxation)

Today we received feedback from “Disgusted of Tolmie” on the issue.  We publish this diatribe without reservation.

Disgusted has been pointed in Tarquin O’Flaherty’s direction in the hope that this is linked to Man as Machine at some stage.  We wait, passively,  in hope.

our quote this week is from a reader: My linguist-builder friend Hugo swears this to be true ….  heard first at Bunnings:
“We have deranged them”  – we don’t stock/carry those any more

Now down to business.

Our first post of the week was also our very first sports post, from the Washington Post about a competitor in the Winter Olympics where, in elite sport nutrition is so important “Chocolate. Onion rings. Chips. We were chilling really hard. Then we fell asleep watching ‘Fight Club.’ Getting stoked, you know?”  is how Sage Kotsenburg, UDS Gold Medalist prepared for his big day

This was followed by Tarquin O’Flaherty talking of the rise of ‘bogey-men’, from fascists to communists to Muslims.  ” All this has served to do is provide American armament manufacturing with almost a hundred years of non-stop production.” He wrote in a piece title ‘Beef Huddled”.

Simon Jenkins for The Guardian apologises in advance to the Germans: ‘Germany, I apologise for this sickening avalanche of first world war worship.  The festival of self-congratulation will be the British at their worst, and there are still years to endure. A tragedy for both our nations’.  And Australia is outspending Britain in celebrations! a tragedy for Australia too, I fear.

Tarquin O’Flaherty returned taking up the cudgels in Man as Machine positing “If the new money had no sophistication, no education and no style it at least had the money to rectify these deficiencies.”  This series is becoming a superb primer for today’s Politics 101

Friday saw a response to our posts regarding the re-arranging of history -The HMS Bismark(sic)!! as example –  of last Wednesday and Thursday from our dispatchee who offered this from his father’s anecdotes:  Amongst what the Germans had taken over when they invaded the Netherlands was the Pander factory…..

Our Dispatchee returned on Saturday with a chilling post. Napoleon is alleged to have said this: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”.  This post is as relevant today as it was when first published in 2010.

And Ira Maine rounded of the week with another Poetry Sunday gem.  “Ogden Nash, as you can see, concerns himself with the great decisions that men are faced with every day of their lives; the advantages of procrastination, particularly with regard to household chores, the prepoceros  rhinoceros, children’s partys and the disadvantages of kids in batches, being in the dog house, and, from his home in America, Mr Nash offers this advice regarding  a particular Australian marsupial”

thanks for reading, join the conversation.

Cheers
Cecil Poole

The Pander Mark 4 experimental.

After some considerable research we have found these rare photographs, (the only known) images of the Pander Hs 4 experimental, (Holzshuhe).  These images (below) were taken at the Luftwaffe proving ground at Rechlin. 

It was here that Oberst Rudi Schtenkentopf put it through rigorous testing before the seconded dutch pilot, (Flt Lt Hans Brinkler) absconded with the prototype at the Amsterdam Shiphol. 

There was a mine sweeping variant, Type Hs Dt, (De Tromp) designed for low estuaries along the Medway, a camouflage variant, the Hs Ds, (de Stijl) and the Hs Ww (Wee Wilhelm) smokescreen version.  Others, namely the Hs Vg, (Van Gogh) and the Hs Ve, (Van Eyck) were considered but deferred for the more popular Hs Vd (Van Dyke) a hybrid aircraft possessing both dyke arrestor apparatus and the ‘Alte mann’, (long tom) swivel gun.

This aircraft was revolutionary.  An experiment in the use of composite materials.  Conceived well before the mosquito, (‘the wooden wonder’), it incorporated wooden, ply and glued fuselage and wing parts.  The distinctive ‘windmill’ propellors and the ‘clog’ fuselage established a first for subsequent innovation.  It was fast, (upwards of 400 mph at above 20,000 feet), had considerable range, (2000 miles) and was estimated to achieve a swift retreat across Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, (if required) in record time.  The prototype possessed amphibious characteristics through such innovation as the Dyke arrestor hook, the “Dykefinger”, (literally ‘finger in the dyke’) fuel feed system, the rancid Tulip oil feed system, and the Mein rad kaputt, (the broken bicycle) auxiliary landing system.  Not to be confused with the ‘Fliegender Hollander’ carburetion system as installed at Rechlin.

Of particular interest, though the prototype cost over 500 guilder to manufacture, the export model for overseas customers had a projected cost of over 5000 guilder.  Apparently this presented a stumbling block for export contracts as the fine print requested amongst other items an advance payment for air usage, cloud dispersal, and propellor turbulence tax.  This in addition to the tyre rent resource surcharge and the hydraulic fluid dispensation tax were considered too onerous for the projected clientele amongst the copra, sugar and tin magnates of Dutch East Indies.  Apocryphally one prototype for export was commandeered by the IJN, (Imperial Japanese Navy) for a reconnaissance flight over Darwin and crash landed upon return.  This plane, designated Hs St, (Shitsu tonka) is being meticulously repaired and will be soon on display to the public at the newly refurbished Australian War Memorial, (AWM) annexe, which shall be devoted to an analysis of those remaining areas on the globe not yet invaded by Australia as allies to the United States or Great Britain.

Cheers

Quentin Cockburn curator militaria, AWM Canberra.

As presented to our publisher by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor, with these clear instructions:
Poetry Sundae. 9.02.2014  The punctuation in Nash’s shaving/bathing poem is as it is laid out in my copy of  his work from 1972. I tell you this simply to avoid the possibility of you thinking that I had disappeared completely round the twist.
Elias Dumpleton-Tewkes

IRA MAINE

AND THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX IN A LEAP YEAR.

A poem by Ogden Nash (1902-1971) the American writer of achingly amusing verse.

Some people shave before bathing.

And about people who bathe before shaving they are scathing,

While those who bathe before shaving,

Well, they imply that those who shave before bathing are misbehaving.

Suppose you shave before bathing, well the advantage is that you

don’t have to make a special job of washing the lather off

afterwards, it just floats off with the rest of your accumula-

tions in the tub,

But the disadvantage is that before bathing your skin is hard and

dry and your beard confronts the razor like a grizzly bear

defending its cub.

Well then, suppose you bathe before shaving, well the advantage

is that after bathing your skin is soft and moist, and your

beard positively begs for the blade,

But the disadvantage is that to get the lather off you have to wash

your face all over again at the basin almost immediately after

washing it in the tub, which is a duplication of effort that

leaves me spotless but dismayed.

The referee reports, gentlemen, that Fate has loaded the dice,

Since your only choice is between walking around all day with a

sore chin or washing your face twice.

[END.]

Ogden Nash, as you can see, concerns himself with the great decisions that men are faced with every day of their lives; the advantages of procrastination, particularly with regard to household chores, the prepoceros  rhinoceros, children’s partys and the disadvantages of kids in batches, being in the dog house, and, from his home in America, Mr Nash offers this advice regarding  a particular Australian marsupial;

THE WOMBAT

The wombat lives across the seas,

Among the far Antipodes.

He may exist on nuts and berries,

Or then again, on missionaries;

His distant habitat precludes

Conclusive knowledge of his moods.

But I would not engage the wombat

In any form of mortal combat.

[END]

Where would we be, I ask you, without this profoundly significant intellectual insights?

Personally, it leaves me breathless.

Nash grew up in that glorious era of the New Yorker, the Algonquin Hotel, Dorothy Parker, Dashiell Hammett and the Round Table, with Thurber, Woollcott and Benchley attending. This was the period when Parker wrote, with the most astonishing subtlety;

But now I know the things I know’

And do the things I do;

And if you do not like me so,

To hell, my love, with you!

[END]

We shall hear more of the Round Table anon.

This dispatch was first published on 30 September 2010.  Like so many of these dispatches it is even more true now, in this time of growing and indeed shrill cries for assimilation.

Bonjour mes amies,
From Crikey- Napoleon is alleged to have said this: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”.
He would have said it in French: “Ne jamais attribuer à la malice de ce qui est bien expliqué par l’incompétence”.  In a Corsican accent.
Je pense better still: “… explained by incompetence and/or ignorance.”

Jenny Macklin, Mal Brough, Warren Snowdon, Tony Abbott, the bureaucrats working for FaHCSIA and Centrelink and the Northern Territory Government, the Bennelong Society and assorted other assimilationists, that I have maligned in the past; I take it all back, je suis desolé.  You’re not mean and nasty, just plain stupid. Warungka-patu.

A friend sent me a wonderful book by Isabel Allende: ‘La isla bajo el mar’ (The Island Beneath the Sea). The first half of the book deals with slavery in Saint-Domingue, which was to become the world’s first black independent nation of Haiti in 1804.  We have to assume that the unsuccessful attempt of suppression by Napoleon of the slave rebellion was not motivated by malice.  The second half of the book is set in New Orleans around the time of la vente de la Lousiane (‘the Louisiana purchase’).  Napoleon’s sale of what now constitutes a quarter of the U.S.A. for $15 Million, also should not be ascribed to malice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTFYR01hzX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbmSmg1IhZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXId-5dYJjE

New Orleans became part of the United States of America in 1803, much to the dismay of the French and Creole population of New Orleans, which included large numbers of refugees from Saint-Domingue.  It wasn’t until the 13^th. Amendment of the Constitution was enacted in 1865, that slavery became illegal in the whole U.S.A.

Warlpiri people are not severely whipped for attempting to escape.  They are not overworked and underfed to be replaced when they leave this earth for the Island Beneath the Sea after only several years in the cane fields.  They are not chained and put on the auction block.

Slaves were regarded as property.  They were owned.  One aspect of slavery is that slaves have no power over their destiny.  No say in their future.  No say in how they should run their lives.  They weren’t regarded as fully human:

From the book: Valmorain the plantation owner argued with his friend Dr. Parmentier.  The doctor was of the opinion that negroes were as human as whites.  Valmorain disagreed, “what do you think?” he asked Tété the slave girl, “the master is always right” she answered. “so in your opinion negroes aren’t fully human?”, “beings that aren’t human don’t have opinions, master” she replied.

Nobody these days claims Aborigines are not human.  Aboriginal men are widely believed to be lazy, violent, depraved, uneducated, alcoholic and inferior, but human none the less.  So often is this stereotype reinforced by political opportunists and others with vested interests in the failure of remote Aboriginal society, that it becomes a self-fulfilling reality.

Warlpiri people are not slaves, yet many in ‘mainstream’ society persist in claiming some sort of ‘ownership’ of Aborigines.  They arrogantly have opinions as to what Aborigines should or shouldn’t do, and believe they have some sort of right in deciding what is best for them.  Warlpiri  have no power over their destiny.  No say in their future.  No say in how they should run their lives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmOrWG2FTbg “…don’t tell me what to do, don’t tell me what to say…”

Not all is lost however.  The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) is advertising temporary jobs for community members in the next census to be held in less than a year from now (August/September 2011).  An opportunity well worth waiting for!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEWCLL5eR2s  “…the sun is gonna shine….”

A bientot,

François

In response to our posts regarding the re-arranging of history -The HMS Bismark(sic)!! as example –  of last Wednesday and Thursday our dispatchee offered this:

This from my dad’s anecdotes:

Amongst what the Germans had taken over when they invaded the Netherlands was the Pander factory.
Pander built ships and aircraft.  A prototype of a very manoeuvrable twin fuselage fighter plane had been built, and a demonstration of its capabilities had been arranged for a group of German military big-wigs. The demonstration was held at Schiphol and my dad attended it. The Dutch test-pilot was showing off some magnificent aerial acrobatics when suddenly he took a low dive and disappeared skimming the roofs of Haarlem, destination England, never to be seen again. A dismayed German said “Der ist weg, der kommt nicht wieder!” “He’s gone, he isn’t coming back!” and dad feigning anger replied “Nein, das Schwein ist verschwunden!”
“No, the bastard has buggered off!”

Footnote:
Pander started of as a furniture factory.  A Pander plane had taken part in a 1930’s air race and been destroyed.  Henk Pander, the son of the founder, had been a member of the N.S.B. even before the war started and had reopened the factory with the aim of assisting the Nazis.  He was arrested after the war and tried as a traitor.

Being the story teller that he was, Dad may have gilded the lily or not remembered correctly.
This I wrote in the introduction:
APRIL’07- Delving into the past has made me think about the nature of memories. A friend once told me that “your memories are your own; no one can take them off you”. This is true for as long as you are alive and have your mental faculties. As I add to this yarn, dad is both alive and retains all of his marbles.

“… muerte no llega con la vejéz, sino con el olvido…”          (Su Despedida:Gabriel Gárcia Márquez)

“…death doesn’t arrive with old age, but with forgetting…”        ( GGM’s ‘Letter of Farewell’ )

APRIL’07- We have all seen it: -siblings, or couples, tell of some common experience- you get continuous interjections: “No, it wasn’t like that!” “You made that up!” etc. Everyone experiences or remembers according to themselves.  Memories fade or get embellished or distorted.  How we ‘think’ is ever changing and affected by new experiences; thus our memories are continuously ‘re-interpreted’ or modified.  To some extent we are the sum of our experiences.  A truly wonderful thing…the human brain.

Sometimes, when I press dad about some detail: “did that happen before such and such or after?” “ how old were you when that happened?” he gets a pained expression on his face: “…Frenk!..dat was al zo lang geleden…” “…Frank!…that was so very long ago!…” That’s when I back off.  This is meant to be fun…I have to remind myself: it’s not a task.

Strictly speaking, therefore, these stories are not necessarily what happened, but how dad remembers and tells them, and how I pass them on.  Does it matter? …I don’t think so. I only hope you enjoy reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.  If not… pity (je suis desolé to have wasted your time).

And this footnote:
G.M.Edelman in ‘The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness’(1989) wrote: “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination” (To some degree, it could be said, I wrote the same above)

Now back in 2007 my Googling did not turn up anything about the prototype twin fuselage plane. Did Dad make it up? (everything else fits the story).

I do know that Dad’s telling of the bombing raid on Haarlem had a batch of Lancasters flying overhead. They weren’t Lancasters, they were Lockheed Venturas

http://virtueletochten.noord-hollandsarchief.nl/?pc_id=20&pp_id=101

Perhaps Cockburn and Poole can throw some light on the Pander plane?

Frank

This is all we have found, although as I write our diligent research staff promise to have extraordinary revelations for Monday, including never before seen pictures of the Pander Mk IV Experimental Aircraft.

by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY

Despite the fact that the King of France had been overthrown, that all sorts of independence activity was going on in the Netherlands, this alone was not enough to convince Earl Grey’s Whig government that real and deep reforms were needed.  One of the principle goads was the astonishing level of hostility generated throughout England by the now landless poor.  In late 1831 the House of Lords rejected the Reform Bill in the midst of an economic downturn.  This double whammy was felt so heavily that food riots, combined with sheer frustration and anger, erupted all over the country.

The middle-class reformers, who had worked so hard to achieve their goals were suddenly swept aside.  Mobs attacked and burned buildings, castles and whole towns.  The entire city of Bristol was taken over and held for three or four days.  Mobs openly attacked the King’s carriage as it progressed through the streets of London.  Derby jail, another obvious symbol of oppression, was broken into and sacked.  These sorts of activities were repeated all over the country, during which Nottingham Castle was put to the torch.  There is little doubt that had economic conditions been otherwise, if trade had been brisk and people employed, the level of rioting would have been much less.  Equally, the level of Reform in Grey’s Bill would have been much less.  In the end it was the entrenched ‘Born to Rule’ utter blindness of the House of Lords, combined with the worst possible economic conditions which galvanised the drive for reform.  Naturally enough, the reformers were now in something of a panic.  With all of the rioting, widespread as it was, there was a great danger that the mob would triumph, and that all of the reformers’ efforts would go for naught.  Reformers, Radicals, middle and working class, Whig aristos (and terrified Tories) combined to support the Bill in it’s entirety.  Widespread unemployment continued into 1832, aiding the cause.  The Bill was passed, with minor amendments, in 1832.

What was achieved, in the end?

In all about 200 of the ‘rotten boroughs’ had their seats removed and redistributed to areas which had hitherto had no representation at all.  56 of these ‘rottens’, returning about 110 members were abolished, about 30 or so reduced from two to a single seat, and some of the other bigger boroughs reduced from four seats to two.

At least three dozen important towns received, for the first time, parliamentary seats, the biggest receiving two seats and the remaining twenty, one seat each.  Birmingham, Swansea, Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds amongst other industrial towns were granted parliamentary seats.  In London, the capital, at least four new constituencies were created, the City of London already having four seats, in addition to the old seats of Southwark and Westminster.

In the English countryside, large counties were broken up into smaller constituencies and the number of seats rose from 94 to 159.

All of these reforms were undoubtedly revolutionary, hugely welcome and probably halted all thoughts of revolution in their tracks.  Nevertheless, and welcome as these reforms were, it continued to mean that four out of every five men still didn’t have the vote.  The landless worker, the agricultural labourer still did not have the franchise.  This was not accidental; the Tories, the Whigs, and the arriviste middle class had one thing in common; money.  If the new money had no sophistication, no education and no style it at least had the money to rectify these deficiencies.

How successful were they in achieving these goals?

The rise of the middle class in England, despite the glorious examples of Chippendale and Hepplewhite, produced some of the most spectacularly tasteless drawing room vulgarity on earth.  Despite what the ‘experts’ say, Victorian glassware, furniture and ceramics are some of the most hideous ‘decorative’ items known to man.  The fact that auctioneers value them highly nowadays merely serves to prove that vulgarity is alive and well in the hallowed halls of our great auction houses.

TO BE CONTINUED

Germany, I apologise for this sickening avalanche of first world war worship.  The festival of self-congratulation will be the British at their worst, and there are still years to endure. A tragedy for both our nations

by Simon Jenkins for The Guardian, Friday 31 January 2014 07.11 AEST

I must apologise to the Germans. They are about to suffer an avalanche of often sickening Great War memorabilia, largely at their expense. It will be the British at their worst: sanctimonious, self-congratulatory, worshipping at the tomb of the unknown, awful German. The centenary of the first world war is already flooding the television schedules before the date of its outbreak (in autumn 1914). History bestseller lists focus on little else: there are no fewer than 8,000 titles on the subject. War magazines cram newsstands. Churches will fill with candles for the fallen. Children carry flowers “of reflection and remembrance”. The horror, the mistakes, the cruelty, the crassness of war will be revived over and over again, “lest we forget”.

The government and the BBC are leading the charge. Jeremy Paxman and Dan Snow have gone over the top. Kate Adie is doing women, Hugh Pym money, Gareth Malone songs and Ian McMillan poetry. Historians Hew Strachan, Max Hastings, Margaret MacMillan, Chris Clark, Niall Ferguson, Richard Evans, Norman Stone and others have answered to Kitchener’s Your Country Needs You. There are war poems, war propaganda, war nurses, war horses everywhere.

And there are four years of it still to come. David Cameron has found £50m to celebrate the Somme, Gallipoli, Passchendaele, Jutland and anywhere else that comes to mind. He has compared the occasion to the jubilee of 2012 and even appointed a minister, Andrew Murrison, for remembering the first world war. The lottery has come up with another £12m.

The essence of the outbreak of the Great War was that no one thought it was the start of anything. It was a sabre-rattling face-off expected to last a month or two. To revel in a final victory is one thing; to revel in these squalid initial miscalculations is gratuitous. Yet already the “secretary of state who should know better”, Michael Gove, has seized the moment for tub-thumping jingoism against his political foes. He claims our brave boys were fighting for “western liberal values” against the evil Jerry, and decries the Blackadder Brigade of the leftist “blob”. He is like Putin, demanding that Russia’s history be rewritten without “imposing a sense of guilt on us”.

One aspect of the centenary is undeniably welcome. Rarely can a historical event have become so wrapped in argument. The causes of the war have analysed in their intense complexity by authors such as MacMillan, Hastings, Stone and Clark. A recent debate in London between the latter two turned into a swirl of cause and counter-cause, accident and counter-accident, until they came close to concluding the cause was indeed Princip’s Sarajevo bullet of 1914.

No less fierce has been argument over whether Britain needed to fight at all. Niall Ferguson yesterday called it “the biggest error in history”. Britain had previously held aloof from the feuds of Europe’s nation states. Germany was no existential threat to Britain. Even if Britain had wanted to intervene, it and America should have waited for Germany to win or lose to Russia and France. As it was, the war was staggeringly expensive. It lost Britain an empire and left Germany fit only for Hitler and catastrophe. It was hardly a triumph.

Ferguson’s trouble is that any war a nation wins is thereby rendered “worth it”. Historians can argue whether the Great War was noble, well-fought and sensibly resolved. But the more appalling the sacrifice, the more inexcusable it is to challenge its worth. Hence Germany must be depicted as so evil that the very idea of not declaring war on it is taboo. All wars start as popular; all wars end as just.

In his state of the union speech this week, Barack Obama bravely pleaded with America to “move on from a state of war”. Any visitor to his country knows what he means: a place seemingly embattled and paranoid. Britain may be less militaristic, but it is no less obsessed with war as such, the second world war as much as the first.

The publishing industry swims in a sea of Hitleriana. Of some 800 books a year written on Hitler, 80% emanate from Britain. The school curriculum is stuffed with war. Television schedules are crammed with it. So, too, are opera sets, costume dramas, video games, comics. Nazis charge from every orifice. GCSE websites get three times more hits for Hitler than for the Tudors. Video game designers claim they always use Nazis (rather than Arabs) as baddies because they incur no moral relativism.

A nation trapped in nostalgia for past military triumphs is not healthy but weak and Ruritanian. Germany may understandably prefer not to commemorate its 20th-century conflicts, despite the losses its people suffered. Yet it must put up with its conquerors rehearsing their victories, year after year. Britain and Germany have always seemed to me to be the two European countries that have most in common, including a shared Anglo-Saxon ancestry. It is tragic that one feels constantly impelled to an orgy of recalled hatred for the other.

History is the orphan of politics, abused and forgotten. A year that promises a festival of history is thus a good thing. But why does it have to be a festival of war? Over the centenary horizon lies Magna Carta (1215). This year we should be commemorating the Hanoverian succession, the demise of the Stuart monarchy and the advent of modern politics. Then comes Peterloo (1819) and the pathway to the Great Reform. Will the government stage festivals, parades and lottery grants for these? Come the anniversary of the 1918 armistice, will it also remember votes for women? Can we really not do history without war?

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) wrote both the novel and the screenplay.
Hammett was a huge leftie, an alcoholic, suffered from chronic emphysema, was jailed for his leftie views, and was blacklisted when he refused to answer questions before ‘The House of Un-American Activities’.
This ‘House’ was the Yankee equivalent of the Inquisition with Joe McCarthy as the Witchfinder General.  To a man this was a cowardly, contemptible rabble of which America should be thoroughly ashamed.  It ruined lives and careers, turned people against each other, and had famously gutless Hollywood actors betray their colleagues and fellow actors in order to save their own careers.

Another ordinary week for Australia’s psyche – outpourings of emotion and innumerable inane discussions about a paroled convicted drug runner, whilst cultural genocide under the guise of assimilation progresses apace – and our government seems to have much in common with the Whig governments of Britain in the 1830’s as discussed in Man as Machine.  Amongst the good news Ali Cobby Eckerman’s verse novel Ruby Moonlight is to be translated into Russian.  Many of her poems have been translated into various Indian and Asian languages.

This is way to heavy so lets have a quote from a car sticker in the US
“You don’t have to believe everything you think”.

Last Monday’s post took us to a link that explored growing Income and Wealth inequality in the US. “The vast bulk of wealth creation (and wealth transfer) since the Global Financial Crisis has been to to already seriously wealthy.”  And Ira Maine gives us little story about Father Ignatius and the Rabbi.

Ira Maine returned on Tuesday with another labyrinthian episode of Endette Hall in which “Nurse Birch, showered and in her flimsies is abed” for what that is worth.  I’m hopeful pictures will surface in due course.  For now just read it and use your imagination.  Or send the pictures to me.

With the current push from Australia’s (re)Education Minister of rewriting History to his own imaginings Quentin Cockburn has produced a challenging story of Airfix, the British model making company, who have produced the “HMS Bismark” (sic)!! and swastika less World War Two German fighter planes.  “You might as well go the full monty then, and replace Hitler with Dart Vader.” says Quentin.  Read it here
And Quentin followed this up with more comments and a brief story of German fighter pilot Major Hans Ulrich Rudel.

Friday brought us Guy Rundle who wrote, “As (Australian Prime Minister) Abbott arsed around in the first weeks, his loyal retainers in the Murdoch press kept repeating, with diminishing degrees of conviction, “government by adults, government by adults” — even as most of the trouble seemed to come from Christopher Pyne, the one member of parliament who appears to be forever nine years old.”

Our Musical Dispatch this week took us to Mali, Africa and the home of Boubacar Traoré, the renowned singer, songwriter, and guitarist.  This story concerns the eating of cats and French colonialism.  Here

And to finish off a great week Andy White provided this poem: “saturday night’s alright for judith e. wrighting” from his anthology “Stolen Moments”

Good reading, join the conversation.

Cheers
Cecil Poole