Friday, June 24, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The civic amusement called 'Pocket Billions'
Some mistake George Papandreou for a Socialist politician. In reality he's a Harvard man, stooging his people for Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds, borrowing his facial hair from John Lipsky of the IMF. Here he takes advice from a peer.
He looked like he thought he was a million bucks here - maybe he'd collected a few percent. He was looking a bit queasy later, however. The exile of the national disgrace may not seem so appealing, waiting with Mubarak.
Debastardising the ADF
Easier said than done. Can Duntroon survive without its core curriculum? And how to unleash a debastardised army on a civilian population, particularly one's own - lest the west demand a Spring of its own?
Without bastards they might fraternize with the people, and load their weapons with flowers.
But Australia's not defenceless yet
Without bastards they might fraternize with the people, and load their weapons with flowers.
But Australia's not defenceless yet
The top general of the army makes sure the message gets out there. I may not outrank Misery Houston, but I'm sure as hell more miserable than you.
Up at Forward Operating Base Hellhole, qualified bastards maintain discipline and morale, and secretly plot against democracy
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Danby's voodoo shrine
invoking bad juju, or trying hard anyway, today we peek into Michael Danby's personal hate shrine devoted to Elena Ceauscescu and Lee Rhianon, and any other perceived dissident from the Zionist line.
Of course, it's not real hate speech, its just for theatrical rehearsal
Khaki green Martin Ferguson
Oil's such messy stuff, and nucular, so clean, right?
In any case there's a lot of money to be made, as under the carbon tax we plan to increase coal production! Julia said so just yesterday. If someone else burns it, it's none of our responsibilty, OK, and if they burn it to make something we import we're doubly lucky, as they make the mess in their country.
We just have to dig ours up
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Premier of the Society for Boosting Bank Profits by Property Speculation
He just told a great joke about how any promises made to teachers, students, and their families in an election campaign are just some past commentary. He laughed till he cried.
Who pays any attention to that stuff! Ha! What's important is to maintain Melbourne's position as the most livable city in the world, for people with cars from Hawthorn.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The generals trade haikus
For now they seek solace in poetry, hoping to dream up a fearsome incantation
To lose Osama
is such a bummer
Where shall we get another
Mike Mullen and Ashfaq Kayani
mossad love a reformer
Hilary Clinton and MI6 love a reformer too.
Interestingly 'Bashar the reformer' was an English Opthamologist during his days as a reformer in waiting, waiting to ascend the Syrian throne. When his father died and he made his triumphant return, the foreign correspondents of the English press gloated, reflecting their masters' glee.
You could call it a conversion on the road to Damascus
Friends of democracy and freedom
As Mubarak fell, Saudi Abdullah, who's even older than Rupert Murdoch, rushed home from surgery to orchestrate a programme of repression in the region, tanks to Bahrain, support for the Yemen regime, which Obama either approves of, or he's too frightened of the people who supposedly work for him, cause he hasn't said a word
the Satyr of Middle Harbour
Advanced hair, approved by 'Klimate Septiks', and worn by Hairshirt Harry
Tony Abbott touring the provinces with General Chaos of the US marines, as the speaker Harry Jenkins supervises his errant children
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
WARPIG seminar
The western leadership listens agog at the WARPIG seminar. If you're going to manipulate public opinion, don't be wishy-washy about it. War unites the people from without and within.
Find someone for them to hate, and they're putty in your hand
In the fine print: Arms makers, spies and propaganda dealers are a law unto themselves in this system. Manufacturers of tear gas are set for record profits.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sightings of the Minister of Irritation
what apparition is that? The Minister for Irritation stealing away with our freedom? Or calling for the Riot Squad to protect it?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
the muses say "No more Dictators for Life!"
As durable and as self-promoting as Zahi Hawass - the Godfather of Egyptian antiquities- but no nearly so compelling, Edmund Capon has been dictator-for-life of the Art Gallery of NSW for since 1978
Down below, during the ArchieBald, the packing prize is decided by a dictatorship of one. Away with these unrepresentative swill, I say. The muses will not be dictated to.
No more dictatorships for life at the art gallery of NSW
The Art Gallery of NSW is a disgrace: what will the new government do?
For me what most illustrates the moribund nature of Sydney's administration is not the public transport(try Melbourne's). It's that sad old dowager, the Art Gallery of NSW, with its gappy 140 year old facade, with empty panels which should contain bronze friezes of the 19th century pantheon of western art. But for the four completed, the artists' names around the walls are an empty boast(art finishes soon after Giotto!).
Edmund Capon, appointed as an Asian art specialist and snappy, marketable exec, took a hidebound institution in the 70's and widened our horizons by creating the gallery's Asian section. He also undertook a major building program. The gallery has much more exhibition space. However, the building is a mess, and the hodge-podge lighting worse. Dim lights may be required for some unstable pigments in works on paper(though one could light them better, and exhibit each piece for a shorter period each year for an equivalent light exposure), but why bronze libation vessels need to sit in semi-darkness is a mystery to me. In the darkness the mystery appears?
When I visited on a trip back to Sydney recently there were ghastly missing teeth in the 19th century and the modernist sections, that is, paintings removed from display for conservation, but not replaced with anything more than a note. Is the budget so feeble, that there are no staff to hang artwork, or the curator's ambitions and interests non-existant?
The only member of the administration who has not held their position for decades is a CPA who parachuted in from that other dynamic body, the Australia Council.
Edmund Capon, dictator for life, appointed in 1978, has taken the AGNSW the full circle, back to hidebound again. Head curator Tony Bond has been there 27 years, in which time it seems like absolutely nothing has happened in the areas for which he is responsible. I remember him dismissing the artists at the Gunnery as ephemeral(though we survived 6 years, without any assistance from him - quite the contrary), based on his experience living in a warehouse for 2 weeks in London, during his gap year. At the AGNSW, he's no ephemeral presence, more like a sculpture acquisition. Deputy director Anne Flanagan has only been around for 19 years, perhaps she is still familiarising herself with the layout?
The gallery treats its permanent collection with contempt. Moribund, seemingly unloved and static. Worst of all is the modern Australian section, which cuts off where it did in 1978 or so. Almost nothing in the ground floor display seems ever to be rotated with the rest of the collection. It seems like no-one ever comes along with a fresh imagination to dig out and reappraise any long-neglected treasures, or tell a new story with familiar materials.
Signs of life: On the entrance level only 2 exhibitions showed any when I visited. The HSC art express, and a beautiful show of artifacts put on by a Chinese provincial government, which was the only thing that seemed adequately resourced, enhancing its air of gravity and coherence.
Down below, the Aboriginal section is much better housed than 30 years ago( its former home in a 2 metre high dungeon with a carpet ceiling had to be seen to be believed). It also looks like the only area of the gallery that acquires living Australian artists, certainly the only part hanging art by an artist I know. But it's still hidden in the basement, when it should be a key part of the Australian collections on the entrance level.
Apart from a few derisory bequests from wealthy patrons the 'modern' Australian section remains as it was in the late 70's and early 80's. Not even a Jeffrey Smart, though Capon loves him. It seems no artist has entered the Canon in Australia since Brett Whiteley. This is a triumph of bipartison policy: With resolve and good management perhaps all artists will exterminate themselves in a few decades, leaving a rump of arts workers with their jargon, and the public marooned with TV sport.
The 'acquisition policy', to dignify it with a title, is to cater to the whims of a few wealthy benefactors while trying to fill the most obvious yawning gaps left by past haphazard collecting. What state funding there is goes to maintainence, staffing and capital works. So large sums must be spent to acquire Nolan's "First-Class Marksman", because the trustees didn't have the imagination to acquire Nolans while he was alive. But it's a better purchase than competing with billionaires and well-funded metropolitan galleries for Dutch and Italian masters, or French and German modernists. The Gallery has a Beckman, a Kirchner, and a Matisse beachtowel(handpainted in Sydney), and can't expect to get a top-line work by more than a smattering of prestigious international artists.
The AGNSW is a primary custodian of the cultural record in NSW and Australia, and as such should take some kind of interest in local cultural life. It should, with appropriate intellectual and financial discipline, and also imagination and risk, go out and acquire art by some of the artists at work here today. This would sustain the gallery for a future where the collection has the depth and breadth to create changing, rotating exhibitions, with different artists, periods and tendencies, seen through the eyes of different exhibition curators and audience. Schools of artists, and styles, are reappraised with each new generation and social revolution. Fashion changes, and what is despised today may later find itself in an unaccustomed position of respect. The state gallery cannot be a private fiefdom.
The syndicated blockbusters of the past few decades encouraged public galleries to ignore their responsibilities. The gallery outside these mass entertainments has fallen into the hands of a coterie who are not serving the public interest. And nowadays, if I want to see the "Garbage of the Pharaohs" again, I can look it up on the internet, or even actually go to Egypt and see it in some context. I'd rather the gallery introduced me to treasures I'm not familiar with. If the flagship gallery in Sydney lifts its game, and engages the public with its art and history, the smaller institutions and commercial galleries have something to strive toward, promising entertainment and enlightenment to the public.
One final peeve. Silent, vigilant, and art-loving attendants, one per room, have been replaced by a noisy breed of radio-toting, constantly squealing and staticing, goons stomping from room to room chasing members of the public who look like they shouldn't be there(as if they'd know). It was probably this kind of underresourced police-state initiative that contributed to the inside theft of a $1.3million Flemish miniature recently (Not to mention the corroding effects of understaffing and the goon mentality on morale). Put the attendants back, and if obsessed with policing the 'criminal classes' (ie us) put a more competent security staff out of sight in a video control room where they won't disturb the punters.
The thumping liberal victory perhaps gives the coalition the breathing space to put Edmund Capon out to pasture, as Carr should have done after the Olympics. But more needs to change. The tired old administration, and one has to suspect, the trust, need a broom through. A modest amount of funding should be available to acquire works of art, without having to beg private benefactors seeking an indulgence and some polish on their trombone. And the gallery should have enough staff(outside the restaurants) to do their job(mounting interesting shows). And there should be no more dictators for life, lest we strip naked and hurl our shoes at them.
There are no prizes for being an also-ran in an auction for some universally sought-after object. The AGNSW is likely to make history and be noticed through using imagination(in the 'clever country' LOL), local knowledge and artifacts, and through the particular mesh of native and inmigrated traditions that make us ourselves.
And who knows, perhaps they could even commission the missing friezes for the facade, perhaps changing the 'team of all time' to include some modern favourites. After all, if in the 19th century we could create this place, surely a vastly richer and larger Sydney could finish it.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Veep punches on
Joe Bidet is a man, God's man, who loves nothing better than to mime slamming his elderly fist into the enemy, when he's not thinking about shooting
Monday, April 4, 2011
defenders of democracy
as the 'west' intervenes in Libya, 'pro-government thugs' open fire on an unarmed crowd of demonstrators at the university in Yemen, killing 50 and wounding hundreds. As Yemenis united in their demand that the president leave, his regime was orchestrating the handover of a province where government garrisons withdrew to be replaced by 'Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular', Saleh's ally and enemy ( with the added result in one of the towns of an explosion at an ordnance and explosives factory formerly guarded by soldiers, killing 120)
The US demands that Saleh remain in power as an ally in the war on Error, or at the least his sons should retain control of the 'Counter-Errorist' forces.
Saleh is also implicated in supplying Somali pirates. All these pirates and terrorists are required to justify the black ops and secret wars, so the unaccountable deep state outfits responsible for prosecuting the war on Error, and otherwise 'maintaining stability', can continue to expand their empires and influence over the world's affairs
The exorcist, the abacus and the witch, by F.R Leavis
Sunday, April 3, 2011
FitzBarrel for NSW
The avuncular Barry's head's not as fat as it once was.
he's polite enough to laugh at everyone's jokes
It remains to be seen if he's got what it takes to build some new train lines.
he's polite enough to laugh at everyone's jokes
Monday, March 14, 2011
Misery at the Frontlines
Our man Misery Houston, Air-Field marshal or some such, presses the flesh with the troops, or at least some blokes in camo in front of a shed. He's in camo himself, proving that in the Australian army, even the brass hats wear a really crappy floppy hat.
The other thing Misery proves, and with breathtaking agony, is that the Aussie military is a hierarchy of unhappiness: while the officers and other ranks are valiantly depressed and otherwise ill-at-ease, each in keeping with their rank, he is himself unrivalled at the summit, certainly in this era, if not all others.
If more evidence is required, take a look at this slightly less miserable subordinate
The other thing Misery proves, and with breathtaking agony, is that the Aussie military is a hierarchy of unhappiness: while the officers and other ranks are valiantly depressed and otherwise ill-at-ease, each in keeping with their rank, he is himself unrivalled at the summit, certainly in this era, if not all others.
If more evidence is required, take a look at this slightly less miserable subordinate
Friday, March 11, 2011
signor BungaBunga
plastic surgery has converted BungaBunga's face into a misshapen assemblage of features
western intervention
the white man's burden as a boy.
When the Stasi's offices in Berlin were attacked by protesters in 1989, Vladimir Putin is supposed to have defended the repressive apparatus's files, brandishing a pistol before the crowd. Can you see British PM Cameron, or Barack Obama, or US defence secretary Robert Gates doing the same at the offices of the Egyptian secret police. And yet seeing those files from their no 1 renditioning torturer made public is as disastrous for the US as the Stasi files for the old Honecker regime
mossad spies
suburban reprisals in Libya
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)