Steve Bell on Gordon Brown

Support the people of Burma

From today's Guardian

Min Neing, an unemployed 22-year-old economics graduate and member of the National League for Democracy, has taken part in four days of demonstrations in Rangoon.

"The whole place is rife with rumours the government's going to arrest protesters. That's why I moved from place to place. Close friends of mine have been picked up, either on the street at protests or when the authorities make 'guestlist checks'. Everyone who's got someone staying in their home must register them with the local authority. If they're discovered and they're not on the list, they'll get arrested."

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The Burma Campaign

Orphans by Tom Waits

Bought it yesterday. Listened to it today for the first time. Mad. Brilliant.

Once

Lovely movie. Wonderful music.

Clubland

Mawkish, sentimental drivel with a central performance from BB that makes one seek out a pistol so you can blow your own brains out before her hamming it up does that for you. One fine scene with son and dad in the kitchen. Maybe two scenes ... son and dad in the supermarket car park is quite enjoyable too.

As posted to Guardian Unlimited

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change

Interesting video promoting Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine"

The title of today's post is a quote from Milton Friedman used by Klein. The man always was a total shit but even he recanted in part (from his money supply madness).

On Phil Collins

Caroline Sullivan's blog in The Guardian started a hare running with this opening:

I wish I'd never heard of Phil Collins ...
... because that way I'd be able to appreciate In the Air Tonight for the great song it really is.

I don't know why but I added this

Forgive me for interrupting so late in the day but I'm increasingly confused (one is a 70s tragic so all this 1980s debate seems altogether too modern). Here's my problem: I can't stand Tories and, although Against All Odds is clearly excruciatingly embarrassing (as opposed to raw and honest, which, let's say, might describe Mandy by Bazza), Phil Collins self-serving tosh, one can't help but hum along with the tune.

Does that make me culpable? If we are what we eat may we not also become that which we give voice to whilst driving through the night listening to FM Radio (PC is quite big on Australian retro radio).

By the way (and not really to do with anything) but what might the Phil Collins who appeared at the Al Gore Save The World From Itself By Becoming Carbon Neutral Bash think of the Phil Collins who flew helicopters and Concorde between stages when the next big charity thing was Help The Starving Sub-Saharan Black People Who Us Good White Folks Need To Patronise Bash? Or is that unkind?

The Gondoliers

My first-ever Gilbert & Sullivan. Lacking real insight (as I do) I've probably been a bit snooty about the English whimsy of the form. I was wrong of course. Opera Australia gave us a lovely evening. Beutiful music, delightful singing, simple but enjoyablle dance and a good few laughs

My gut still says our Tories will win

Every time I'm asked about the imminent Australian election I tell people I have no real sense that Australia is ready to dump the Liberal / National Coalition led by John Howard. People react as if I'm mad or still not assimilated after 8 years here. Well, I simply think the right wing leadership of this nation is far more resilient than the rather self-deluding Labor Party hopes / believes / wishes (Take your pick). I hope I'm wrong. I fear I'm not.

Here's a short story from this evening's Sydney Morning Herald online:

The Federal Government has clawed back significant ground against Labor in the latest Newspoll but still trails by a margin of 55 to 45 per cent in two-party terms.

The Coalition's vote is up 4 points from the previous Newspoll a fortnight ago, despite the recent Liberal leadership turmoil, while Labor's vote fell four points, according to the ABC.

The narrowing of the gap from a massive 18 points to 10 points still means the Coalition would lose office if an election were held now but the improvement is likely to end speculation about John Howard being replaced as Prime Minister before the election.

It will also provide a boost to the Government as many of its MPs had expected their stocks in the polls to worsen after uncertainty about Mr Howard's leadership dominated last week's headlines and he was forced to announce he would hand over the leadership to Peter Costello at some point during the next term if the Coalition won this year's election.

The Herald Neilsen Poll last Monday ignited the leadership troubles when it showed Labor ahead 57-43 in two-party terms and that the Coalition's primary vote had dropped to 39 per cent compared with Labor on 49 per cent.

Labor is urging Mr Howard to call the election this weekend, although some in government ranks believe he will continue to use the benefits of incumbancy and could wait a few more weeks before formally starting the election campaign.

France 0 - 1 Scotland

Unbelievable but true

God bless The New Yorker

The New Yorker

A good day in Europe

France 0 - 0 Italy

Georgia 0 - 0 Ukraine

Scotland 3 - 1 Lithuania

It couldn't have been better, if you think about it.

Guggenheim in Melbourne

We flew to Melbourne (to escape the tedium of APEC) where today's highlight was our visit to the Guggenheim exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. There were fewer works on display than I imagined there might be but that's churlish. I guess it takes a huge effort and massive insurance bill to get the works into a plane and across the Pacific. There were four rooms of memorable, sometimes confronting, art on display. Well worth the visit.

De Kooning's Who's Name Was Writ In The Water (1975)

"Because no battle is ever won he said ...

... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” (William Faulkner)

Today's Guardian: The road from Basra: to some a handover, to many a retreat

Today's Times: Iraqi forces pledge to keep the peace in Basra as British military moves out

Take your pick. Either way, Faulkner was right.

If I can't learn from this, I can't learn from anything

So … I started Part 2 of Don Delillo’s Underworld: Elegy For Left Hand Alone. It’s a terrific novel, of course but when I reached page 170 the text simply took off. This is what writing is about.

“You feel sorry for yourself. You think you’re missing something and you don’t know what it is. You’re lonely inside your life. You have a job and a family and a fully executed will, already, at your age, because the whole point is to die prepared, die legal, with all the papers signed. Die liquid, so they can convert to cash. You used to have the same dimensions as the observable universe. Now you’re a lost speck. You look at old cars and recall a purpose, a destination.”

And on page 173 there’s the geo-political analysis of Marvin Lundy”

“Excuse me but if you rotate the map of Latvia ninety degrees so the eastern border goes on top, this is exactly the shape that’s on Gorbachev’s head. In other words when he’s lying in bed at night and his wife comes over to give him a glass of water and an aspirin, that’s Latvia she’s looking at.”

But best of all, there’s the breathtaking description of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island on pages 184 to 186. Try this for size:

“He imagined he was watching the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza – only this was twenty-five times bigger, with tanker trucks spraying perfumed water on the approach roads. He found the sight inspiring. All this ingenuity and labour, this delicate effort to fit maximum waste into diminishing space. The towers of the World Trade Center were visible in the distance and he sensed a poetic balance between that idea and this one. Bridges, tunnels, scows, tugs, graving docks, container ships, all the great works of transport, trade and linkage were directed in the end to this culminating structure. And the thing was organic, ever growing and shifting, it’s shape computer-plotted by the day and the hour. In a few years this would be the highest mountain on the Atlantic Coast between Boston and Miami. Brian felt a surge of enlightenment. He looked at all that soaring garbage and knew for the first time what his job was all about. Not engineering or transportation or source reduction. He dealt in human behaviour, people’s habits and impulses, their uncontrollable needs and innocent wishes, maybe their passions, certainly their excesses and indulgences but their kindness too, their generosity, and the question was how to keep this mass metabolism from overwhelming us.”

Brilliant.