Duped Into Believing

*



"Care to elaborate?"
"Only to say that everything you cherish, everything you work for, everything you hold precious will have its end. You are very proud of this intricate little community of yours, with its ten thousands habitats, its ticking clockwork mechanisms of absolute democracy. And perhaps in your own small way you are entitled to some of that pride. But it won't last for ever. One day, Prefect, there will be no Glitter Band...

"For now she hides, flitting furtively from shadow to shadow, surviving by her wits. She lives in your world, but her influence over it is limited. I believe she means to change that. She means to become more powerful. She will rip control of human affairs from your fumbling hands... You must be ready for her when she shows herself. She will move quickly, and you will not have much time to react."

Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect.

But do you know my problem?

It’s not just that I hate mobs, knowing there’s no wisdom in them.

It’s not even that I’m stubborn by nature, and like the answer Albert Einstein gave to One Hundred Authors Against Einstein—that all it took to defeat his Theory of Relativity was not 100 scientists but just one fact.

My real problem is simply that in my 48 years I’ve lived through so many pack-panic attacks over nothing that I won’t fall so easily for the next.

Your parents or grandparents may know what I mean. Go ask if they remember all those plagues we were told would surely smite us if we didn’t sign some cheque, praise some god, or vote for some politician.

Ask if they remember scares like the nuclear winter, DDT, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, Repetitive Strain Injury, bird flu, the millennium bug, SARS, toxic PVC, poisonous breast implants, the end of oil, death by fluoride, the Chernobyl doom, the BSE beef that would eat your brains, and other oldies and mouldies.

It’s amazing we’re still alive after all that, let alone richer and healthier.

Andrew Bolt.



It's as if they were all there, the friends that he had acquired, the young, earnest journalists he had admired. It was an African state at war, Nubia, which he had never previously heard of. He had engineered yet more time off from his job in Australia, although his predilection for the rest of the world, for a life beyond the narrow confines in which he had spent so long, was raising eyebrows back in the office. There was always some one, everyone had a boss, and he too was controlled by the vicious sagas that made up modern life, the cruel contempt that was displayed as they all searched for the top, climbing over each other to get that great, well paying job.

The trouble was, the plundered weren't being paid enough to make it worth their while. They looked around at their lives, paying ridiculous mortgages and peddling furiously to stand still, and they realised there was no longer any point. They fled in their thousands from the chaos that Sydney had become, leaving broken dreams, even broken families, behind. They packed whatever possessions they had and drove into a new life, usually northwards, into the warmth, the beaches, to enact their own sea change in a coastal village somewhere, the crash of the surf replacing the drone of the traffic, living on benefits like everybody else. What was the point of doing otherwise?

The trouble for the Australian punter was that they were betrayed by the left as much as the right. They were curious and slow, and put up with a great deal before they finally revolted. They were stripped by mortgage brokers and financial advisers, by petrol companies and grocery cartels. They were stripped by public servants who were paid several times what they were to do nothing but stalk corridors with their clip boards, filling their days with endless useless meetings, achieving nothing. It amazed him, always, how tolerant they were of corruption, how indifferent they were to the outcomes of their policies, as long as the victims were unfashionable ones.

And so it was that he found himself in a ragged African state, away from everything. He was at the capital's bus station, watching the media, many of them westerners, gathering in a familiar routine. He had seen it for years, the gathering of the pack prior to any major announcement or event, or after some disaster, large or small. The camera crews set up their tripods, the reporters swapped notes. There had been a coup and everyone was on edge. The shrill ringing of the rickshaws filled the air. Hawkers shouted out, extolling their wares. Indifferent, but nonetheless dangerous soldiers stood in the corners, hoisting their guns, scratching their crotches, watching the westerness with a curious, semi-hostile air.

Who's coming, he asked one of the TV crew. Maybe he could do some work while he was on holidays; that would be typical of him. The opposition leader, a cameraman replied, he's expected to be shot, probably right here in front of all of us. They don't give a rats. And Dan Box is coming too, on the same train. From The Guardian. He had got to know Dan during his stint in Australia, when he had stayed for several years and endeared himself to everybody for his straight up and down honesty, his thorough and complete decency. He had always joked with him, you'll be a professor of journalism at Cambridge one day, I'll come and visit you, when I'm an old man. You're already an old man, he would spark back, and they would laugh for no reason.

All around him the darkness and the wealth, the chaos of that vast continent, the seething cities, the stunning landscapes, the gorgeous mountains. The people filled every last pixel of his eye frame, and he admired the gleam of their dark skin, the bright white of their teeth flashing in dark faces, the ebony glow of the torrent, the wonderful clashes of colour from their bright bright clothes. He had never belong anywhere, except perhaps in remote mountain villages where he could never return, and he was sure of the danger in a new acceptance.

He thought he saw John O'Neil standing by a pole, surveying the scene, the chaos, the dust, the noise. In reality O'Neil had been a reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1980s, and had gone on to take a string of high profile public service jobs, the last being as head of Tourism NSW. Tourism went backwards after the Olympics, as a government which couldn't find it's way out of a paper bag failed to exploit the world wide interest that had flowed from the "best games ever". O'Neil took the fall for government incompetence, but had already made his fortune from Sydney real estate, and didn't need the job. As he drew closer he realised it was someone else, probably from one of the British networks. He went to speak to him, and then a shout went through the crowd. The train was coming.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.theage.com.au/national/iemma-wont-pressure-della-bosca-to-talk-20080630-2z7w.html

NSW Premier Morris Iemma says he will not pressure Labor MP John Della Bosca to speak to police about his role in the Iguanas nightclub fiasco, because to do so would interfere in the investigation.

News Ltd said Mr Della Bosca and his federal Labor MP wife Belinda Neal were expected to be interviewed by detectives on Monday, more than three weeks after the Gosford nightclub incident.

All the other major players have given their version of events to police, who are investigating the altercation between the couple and nightclub staff, and the conflicting statutory declarations produced in its wake.

Staff members involved in the incident at Iguanas incident on June 6 have reportedly already been interviewed by police.

But with the main players in the drama yet to be interviewed, Mr Iemma was asked why he had not pushed Mr Della Bosca to speak to police earlier.

"I have no evidence that he is not (co-operating)," Mr Iemma said.

"The police will determine the course of the investigation and the people that they wish to interview and the manner that that will take."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23945975-5005961,00.html

NIGHTCLUB staff involved in an argument with a Labor power couple should be commended for their courage in giving their side of the story, Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says.

Staff from the Iguanas nightclub, on the NSW Central Coast, will tell their side of the story on the Channel Nine's A Current Affair tonight. Nine has refused to say if the nightclub's staff had been paid for the interviews.

NSW MP John Della Bosca was stood down as Education Minister after he and wife, federal Labor MP Belinda Neal, were involved in an altercation with Iguanas' staff on June 6.

Neither MP has given evidence to the police, but their public comments that they did nothing wrong conflict with statutory declarations by nightclub staff and with statements by a former staffer of Belinda Neal, who was present during the incident.

Ms Neal has been accused of threatening the staff and threatening to have the "f***ing licence" of the club.

Dr Nelson commended the staff today for going public with their version of what happened.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23942337-30538,00.html

TODAY is the unofficial start of the Government's July festival of climate-change policy. Professor Ross Garnaut opens the show today when he delivers the long-awaited draft report of his climate-change review to be issued publicly at the Canberra Press Club on Friday.

A day earlier, economist and Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin will issue a paper questioning the effectiveness of the Kyoto model of national timetables and targets. McKibbin's model for a hybrid tax and trading scheme was dispatched in a speech given by Garnaut earlier this month, so the timing is curious.

Next week, climate change heads the agenda of the group of eight major economies (G8) meeting in Japan although oil prices may have something to say about that. And then we're back to Canberra for the release of the Government's climate-change green paper, over which Cabinet has been burning the midnight oil in the past few weeks.

The Government promised plenty of action on climate change at last year's election and basked in the warm glow of an electorate duped into believing it was just another moral eco-challenge, like stopping the Franklin Dam or commercial whaling.

It's got a lot colder since then.