Ave amici
From the recesses of my childhood memories I drag up the word ‘prestidigitador’. It is a seldom used Spanish word which means magician. It can also be used for conjurer and illusionist. It doesn’t take a genius to work out its etymology. Quick and finger from the latin praestus and digitus.
Then there are the political conjuring tricks of the red herring the non sequitur and the furphy, not to mention the not answering the question.
Is Julian Assange a journalist or a traitor? Does he have a hygiene problem? Is he a narcissist? How many cats does he own? Did he rape someone in Sweden? Was the Ecuadorian embassy justified in inviting the British police in?- Never mind the video of civilians being murdered out of a helicopter.
I remember that when I was 14 years old our ship en route to Australia called into the picturesque port of Aden, then a British Protectorate. So is Iran building an Atomic Bomb? Is Bashir al Assad a ruthless dictator and the main protagonist in the Syrian civil war? Is Mohammad bin Salman the crown prince of Saudi Arabia a reformer, as evidenced by Saudi women now being allowed to drive?- Never mind the TV pictures showing the utter pulverisation of no longer picturesque Aden. Never mind that Australian weapons systems are being sold to Middle Eastern clients.
Highly publicised Australian Federal Police raids on journalist Annika Smethurst and the ABC Sydney office have sparked a months long debate on legal protection of journalists and whistle blowers, on freedom of speech, on civil rights versus national security and so on. Never mind that Australian Soldiers may have been involved in war crimes in Afghanistan.
Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently attended the Pacific Islands Forum on Tuvalu. The nation of Tuvalu consists of 9 islands with a total area of 26 square kilometres. An utter red herring but the area of the Yuendumu Aboriginal Land Trust is almost 85 times as large. At the forum Scomo refused to cave in to demands from the island nations that Australia should adopt policies to phase out coal mining. This prompted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to make some scathing remarks about Australia, which prompted prominent radio shock jock Alan Jones to tell Scomo to put a sock down Jacinda’s throat. This resulted in a furore which homed in on Alan Jones’ misogyny. Scomo deplored the Jones outburst and declared “I have two daughters”. Never mind the concerns of the Pacific islanders that their tiny nations might be submerged into oblivion. I really don’t know what they’re so worried about. As that other intellectual giant, our Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack told us, the islanders can always come to Australia to pick fruit.
You’ll all recall the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory. A long debate ensued. What can be done to reduce the incarceration of Indigenous children? To what extend are these children to blame for having been caught up in the justice system? Have they been sexually assaulted earlier in life as Warren Mundine declared on the Drum programme? What diversionary programmes could be rolled out? And more recently the controversial decision by the Northern Territory government to build a youth detention centre which will replace the closed down Don Dale detention centre right next to an adult gaol, is being debated.
Myself I see no problem with the latter, just think of all the savings when on their 18th birthday the inmates are smoothly transferred to their new abode! Never mind the images we saw of adult child protectors torturing the Don Dale detainees.
So it came to pass that under the new paradigm of believing the victim, Australia’s highest ranking Catholic clergyman was put in detention, yet we all saw Dylan Voller tied to a chair wearing a spit hood and having his trousers pulled down whilst held down by his protectors and no one talks about the unnamed torturers, who were just doing their job. No detention for them.
Remember that scene in A Fish called Wanda when a family walks in on naked Archie Leach (John Cleese) in a flat he isn’t supposed to be in? When it turns out that the family knows him, Archie exclaims “Ah, that’s all right then!”
Don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYajHZ4QUVM
Bob Dylan- It’s all right ma (I’m only bleeding)
It’s all right then, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has two daughters.
Te visurum
Cicero