With the Tea Party movement starting to exercise its political muscle within the Republican Party (it’s primary season in the USA), it’s timely to look at some of the ideas driving the teabaggers. Luckily for us in Australia, there’s a great Flickr photo set showcasing some of the more creative protest signs from various rallies [...]
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#NoCleanFeed campaign starts to focus messaging
The #NoCleanFeed movement is not an organised campaign, but rather a loose connection of disparate groups including ISPs and civil liberties organisations. For a while, I’ve been arguing that the #NoCleanFeed campaign should drop the focus on censorship: I suggest avoiding commenting on the refused classification – most Australians aren’t going to be sympathetic to [...]
Iron Men ideal to lead Australia: More great news for Tony Abbott
Kim Crow from Back Page Lead opines in Crikey: What Abbott achieved on Sunday by finishing that ironman is phenomenal. He swam 3.8km, biked 180km and ran 42.2km. For me, that demonstrates incredible guts, courage, determination, persistence, resilience, strength of character, strength of mind and … fitness! These qualities are exactly the qualities you look [...]
Best April Fools Gag of 2010: Vote Labour. Or else.
The Guardian has a very serious looking, credible sounding article about British Labor’s election strategy. It reads so seriously in fact that it’s not until the fourth paragraph that it becomes clear that it is a fantastic April Fools gag. Following months of allegations about Brown’s explosive outbursts and bullying, Downing Street will seize the [...]
The term “queue jumping” encourages people smugglers
Conservative politicians like Tony Abbott and Steven Fielding who widely promote the use of “temporary protection visas” and that boat people are “jumping the queue”, are in fact giving people smugglers a product to sell to desperate refugees. …We will put the temporary protection visas back in place. (Abbott, 18 March 2010) Temporary protection visas [...]
Lessons from the Modern Prince, Part 3: He was against it before he was for it (aka: the Barnaby principle)
This week has seen what appears to be the end of the honeymoon period for Tony Abbott, coinciding with his triathlon run, resignation of key powerbroker Nick Minchin, reshuffle and demotion of Barnaby Joyce, and his disastrous health care debate with Rudd. Abbott’s reversal of fortune is a case study of Machiavelli’s advice to “avoid [...]
This triathlon is great news for Tony Abbott
With Tony Abbott on the bike part of the triathlon while I write, Insiders has pointed me to an article in The Age about the physical effects of extreme physical exertion. VIS sports scientist Danielle Stefano cites the risk of dehydration, heart strain, cognitive impairment or heat stroke in today’s forecast 28-degree heat in Port [...]
This was a great week for Tony Abbott
I heard on News Radio today that Tony Abbott will be running a triathlon (a 3.8km swim, 180km bike ride and a 42km marathon run). ”I haven’t done anything like the training that I should have for this event because it is impossible to get out for the two and three hours a day that [...]
Lessons from the (Modern) Prince, Part 2: Timing of reform
Following from my previous post on the lessons that Machiavelli’s The Prince can give us today, I thought I’d discuss the timing of policy reform. This is applicable, in my view, for most policy makers, especially political policy makers, and for large reforms. This series of posts is part of Project 52 – one post [...]
Lessons from The (Modern) Prince, Part 1: The CPRS
As part of my Project 52 posts, I thought I’d spend a few weeks musing on the lessons of Niccolo Machiavelli not learned in our modern times. I’ve added a parenthetical “Modern” as a reference to my favourite theorist Antonio Gramsci‘s famous treatise The Modern Prince. In The Modern Prince, political parties are cast in [...]
Happy Women’s Day
Today is International Women’s Day: International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday. The first IWD was run in 1911. Of course, as we celebrate this day, [...]
The #Nocleanfeed campaign, DoS and political nous
The #Nocleanfeed (aka, #OpenInternet) movement won’t succeed in blocking the Australian Government’s filter because its leadership are captured by the dead-end Democrats and fringe libertarians with little political campaigning experience. This capture means that unfortunately the movement is receiving ill-informed political counsel from serial Democrat losers like elitist apparent drug-taker Kathryn Crosby (links to screenshots [...]
Tea Party warning
For my Project 52 post this week, I thought I’d quickly comment on Karl Rove’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Karl Rove writes that the conservative, anti-Obama Tea Party movement needs to avoid being co-opted by the Republicans. They strength, he writes, is their decentralisation and their ability to “hold the feet of [...]
Alan Kohler shows he doesn't know about politics
Alan Kohler, of Business Spectator fame, wrote yesterday in Crikey: Against all expectations, Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt have actually come up with a clever climate change policy, and certainly one that will change the debate in Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will now have to quickly do a deal with the Greens to get [...]
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Lessons from the (Modern) Prince, Part 4: Understanding the Greens in Tasmania
- No Clean Feed campaign needs to drop their "censorship" obsession
- Alan Kohler shows he doesn't know about politics
- The Robin Hood Tax
- Seven ways for unions to use Twitter
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