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Most revolting line thus far from Mark Latham’s diaries:
I detest war and the meatheads who volunteer to kill other human beings. The US alliance is a funnel that draws us into unnecessary wars; first Vietnam and then Iraq.
Here’s Latham last September with one of the meatheads he despises, at a time when Latham was promising to increase the size of Australia’s army:
Latham lied. Paul Kelly spells it out:
The diaries are frightening on the US alliance. They reveal Latham as the first Labor leader who wanted to ditch the alliance and fold Australia into the New Zealand model. They show that Latham misled the public, concealed his real opposition to the alliance for electoral reasons and was utterly hostile to Australia’s 20th-century history as an ally of Britain and the US. The book confirms that George W. Bush was correct in seeing Latham as a threat to the alliance, and that the media outcries in this country on Latham’s behalf and against Bush were misconceived.
Even Labor’s Wayne Swan says Australians were right to reject Latham:
Australian voters made the right choice by not electing former Opposition leader Mark Latham prime minister, senior Labor frontbencher Wayne Swan said yesterday ...
Mr Swan said the electorate “absolutely” made the right decision by not sending Mr Latham to the Lodge.
“The Australian people always get it right and that’s why I think Mark is somewhat embittered,” he said.
Labor defence spokesman Robert McClelland says lying Latham would have been removed by the ALP had he been elected:
“Latham misled both his colleagues and the Australian public,” he said. “He most certainly would have been rolled. I and others would have moved to remove him.”
Mr McClelland — whose vote delivered Mr Latham the leadership in December 2003 — said the US alliance “was certainly a live issue during the leadership contest. He reassured me personally of his commitment to the US alliance,” he said.
Latham’s word is worthless. More from McClelland:
Mr McClelland said he personally had asked Mr Latham what his position was on the United States alliance during the leadership contest.
“He indicated to me then that he had a strong commitment to it,” he said.
“(If he hadn’t) I certainly would not have voted for him, and I know a number of others would not have voted for him.”
In fact, Mr Latham even held his first press conference as Labor leader in front of an American flag, Mr McClelland said.
“His first press conference as leader he placed himself in front of the American flag rather than the Australian flag to convince the voters of Australia that he was committed to the alliance,” he said.
“He was misleading not only his colleagues but also the Australian public.”
McClelland also reveals that several Labor identities are seeking legal advice in the wake of Latham’s claims. Legal issues are flying everywhere:
Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd is reviewing its costly agreement with Mark Latham’s publisher after a day of recriminations about who broke exclusive access deals.
Mr Latham’s publisher, Louise Adler, who negotiated the reputed $125,000 deal with News to promote his diaries, yesterday criticised ABC management for sparking the legal fight over access to Mr Latham.
The ABC’s managing director, Russell Balding, decided to break into normal programming and air Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope on Thursday night because Mr Latham had given an interview to Lateline that day. Anxious to protect its exclusivity, News then won a Supreme Court injunction at 8pm blocking the ABC broadcasts by arguing they breached confidentiality ...
Denton was worried Mr Latham would allow other TV interviews before the program’s scheduled airing on Monday. “In the end the party at fault, ironically, was Mark Latham.”
Says The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell:
I’m pleased we were able to disrupt the ABC’s schedule after they welshed on their obligations, and am amazed that yet again the accountant managing director of the corporation has marginalised news and current affairs on behalf of an (Enough Rope’s) outside production company.
Latham is also calling his lawyers:
Mark Latham has threatened legal action against his former wife, a rival author and a publisher over a semi-authorised account of his rise and fall, claiming it had not put his side of the breakdown of his first marriage.
Mr Latham demanded his allegations, some of which were of a sexual nature against his then wife, should have been included in the book Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy by Bernard Lagan.
In letters from his solicitor, Mr Latham claimed to have been defamed in that book but he has not included those allegations in his own effort, The Latham Diaries.
His former wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, told the Herald yesterday she feared Mr Latham would pursue her through the courts. “He knows no restraint. He can’t stop himself,” she said ...
Mr Latham’s allegations were not included in the Lagan book because Mr Latham could not provide details to support them. Ms Gwyther denied them.
“I can’t believe he would stoop to making such allegations … The thing is, when I met him I was the most sexually inexperienced 22-year-old in the country,” Ms Gwyther said yesterday. “That obviously haunts him.”
In light of which, this self-portrait is haunting indeed:
Control yourself, Mark! One bizarre byproduct of the Latham debacle is that the Age’s Michelle Grattan has been moved to satire:
Dear DIARY,
I said to Janine and Mum today, as we sat round the barbie: isn’t it great to light a REAL fire? To burn Kim, maim every caucus sewer rat in sight, and scorch the mealy-mouthed media mice. This time last year it was so hard to pretend. That I believed in the Labor Party, in the US alliance, in my front bench. That I could be trusted with those matches on the Lodge mantlepiece. Good God, I had to be civil. Me swearing off crudity’s like a heroin addict going cold turkey. Only you, dear diary, knew my pain. What comfort you gave me.
Now I can be myself. I can yell (as I did the other day) from my veranda at a photographer, “You’re a kiddy fiddler - leave the street”. I can claim Senator Stephen Conroy contributed to my mate’s suicide. I can say the Bomber’s not good enough to clean Parliament House toilets. (Well, actually, Mum - once a cleaner herself - was not too happy about the slur on the workers. I don’t care. I’ll never see a Parliament House cleaner again. And who knows - they might have been spreading rumours, too.)
Diary, I feel great. At least ... I think I do.
That’s actually pretty good. Also funny—Laborite recollections of policy-making during Latham’s campaign:
Frontbencher Stephen Smith, drafted into the campaign’s second week, found a “mad scramble” to complete Labor’s tax policy, the day before it was to be unveiled. “Mate, this is a bit of a shambles,” he said to Senate leader John Faulkner. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Faulkner laughed.
Could have been our government. Scary. Michael Gawenda is annoyed about John Howard’s good luck:
Kevin Rudd came to New York to press his party’s view that Australia had to remain committed to the UN, that the UN remained the best hope for peaceful resolution of potential conflicts after the Cold War.
Instead he had to deal with Mark Latham’s revenge on him for sins he did not commit. Will John Howard’s luck never run out?
Not so long as Labor appoints the likes of Latham as leader, and the ALP keeps seeking celeb candidates. Canberra press gallery reporter Phillip Coorey writes that Latham’s luck has run for years:
Not that we needed to hear rumours about Latham because we saw him as a backbencher, as a boorish and ugly drunk. His swaggering menace was best avoided should he be encountered in the pub on Wednesday nights ...
Latham decries the cesspit of politics and its smutty culture yet did more to drag it into the gutter with his mouth than any of his contemporaries.
He breaks confidences and snitches on people’s personal lives, knowing, but not caring, they will be caused severe embarrassment and even the loss of their jobs.
Yet he rails against those who he believes did the same to him.
He asked us to make him prime minister and now tells us he never really wanted it.
The only thing missing from Latham’s explosion is him claiming the CIA has planted a chip in his head and is reading his thoughts.
We don’t need a CIA device; Latham’s thoughts are offered direct from the man himself:
Mr Latham, who takes exception to rumours about his own sex life, also comments in crude terms on the antics of former MP Ross Cameron.
“Ross Cameron, the brilliant but creepy Liberal member for Parramatta, has talked me into participating in his youth leadership forum in Canberra. I rather suspect it’s a front for mobilising Christian soldiers, plus some quality box for Ross.”
Charming. Utterly charming. Final word to ex-Latham supporter Chris Sheil, who is rightly disgusted:
Even if the diaries have been produced in full, as written contemporaneously, was this with a contract for commercial publication from the outset? If so, does this publication deserve the title of ‘diary’ in any traditional sense? Otherwise it is a deliberately plotted book on current politics, written contemporaneously but calculatingly, by a guy cashing out every implicit trust given in his life.
Imagine breaking every trust you’d ever made in your entire life. That’s Latham’s world.
And I thought Al Gore lost it following the 2000 election. Sheesh.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 09 17 at 04:34 PM • permalinkThe Australian left really has no option but to ignore Latham or to laugh him off. There is no way that what he says can be faced or acknowledged because they come out of any such examination so badly.
Either he is simply a bitter twisted madman and they have to explain why they were so keen to impose such a madman upon us - or there is some core of rationality behind what he is doing and they deserve, to some unknowable extent, what he is saying.
My opinion is that he is as mad as a cut snake - but that is true for everybody on his side of the house. He literally was the best they could come up with.
The libs should use images of Latham in all of their campaign literature.
Grrrrrr, those “meatheads” are the people who give everything up for us.
I feel like swearing right about now. Oh, flying fig-leaf, Latho, go to see a shrink, mate.
Actually, Latham’s bullying and creepy personality is not a surprise. He’s, as I argued on a recent humble post, a spoilt brat.
By the way, it’s probably time for his ex-missus to get over it as well.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 09 17 at 06:00 PM • permalinkYou fools, Ha Ha HA! It was all a CIA plot; they have worked out that dirty tricks don’t work so instead they created a man like robot (oops sorry about the boobs) who is SOOOO full on as to be a self-parody!! Not even the esteemed Margo has seen through it!!! Nothing like that could be truly human!!!!
(Note :Lots of exclamation marks!!!!!)Posted by missinglink on 2005 09 17 at 06:05 PM • permalinkOK, found some meself:
A certain Tim Blair wrote: “In 2002, Kingston condemned Latham as the “antithesis of the progressive vision”. She would have been quite happy, three years ago, to see him forced from public life. Latham subsequently won Kingston over by pandering to idiot anti-US prejudices.”
In Margo’s own words: “Mark Latham’s first life dream has gone. Australia has lost one of its finest and most idealistic politicians, the bloke who took on the system and broke the rules and lost. Labor has lost it’s [sic] high stakes gamble and seems to be freefalling - into what? Noone [sic] knows.”
Here’s some choice Margolese: “Tis harder, and maybe more noble, to seek a goal with determination and fail than to make the same commitment and succeed [???????? - WTF?!*]. It is a tragedy for Australia as well as for Mark Latham that his health has forced his departure from public life.”
[*Personally, it seems to me it’s easier to fail in an election than succeed - just give a speech telling the voters they’re a bunch of sister-humping retards who can suck your tool. Mission accomplished.]
So….was McLelland actually saying he and the Labor caucus would have attempted a coup against an elected PM?
Why the hell did they want to put the guy there in the first place?
My God the Federal Labor party is a shambling, lumbering mess…
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 09 17 at 06:22 PM • permalinkYou fools, Ha Ha HA! It was all a CIA plot; they have worked out that dirty tricks don’t work so instead they created a man like robot (oops sorry about the boobs) who is SOOOO full on as to be a self-parody!! Not even the esteemed Margo has seen through it!!! Nothing like that could be truly human!!!!
(Note :Lots of exclamation marks!!!!!)Not CIA, but otherwise you nailed it. Latham was a Roverdyne Systems 120-A2 Synthetic, Latham Model. Currently withdrawn from service as the A2’s have always been a bit twitchy. However, the T100 Gore and the T160-A4 Kerry are still putting in stellar service, just “nutty” enough to accomplish the job without the mission-compromising excesses of the A2. Of course, there was a lot of debate about whether to ratchet-up the T100 Gore’s Smarm Processors, Whopper Generators and Condescension relays in the T160 Kerry, but they worked like a charm, along with the new Shameless Hypocrisy sub-routines. Our biggest ongoing problem is trying to make them more realistically human, although they do seem to be passing - and I think you’ll agree that the Kerry model, while far from perfect, is a big improvement over the Gore (let me tell you, the T100’s dancing and kissing caused a LOT of flopsweat here at Rove Underground HQ.)
Sorry that we had to give you boys the lemon, but our resources aren’t without limit, and we have to save the top models for the main theater of operations. I’m sure you understand.
Holy moly, you guys dodged a big one.
Loony tunes times.
This does serve as a lesson, though, for those in America who complain about the laborious and often silly primary elections and process where candidates have to exhaustively campaign for months on end with interview after interview, debate after debate.
We probe and prode them like cattle.
I’d like to believe that that process, as risible as it often is, would weed out a Latham. He dropped the mask and reveal his true nature to the populace.
I’d like to believe that….
SMG
Posted by SMGalbraith on 2005 09 17 at 07:10 PM • permalinkDr Alice.
That was his face when Gough was doing his “bad things” to him.Will have to reserve my copy at the library when I get back, should be fun.
I read the other book on his loss not long ago and it seemed quite neutral and reserved on his ex wifes comments. Id be watching to see if he attends any mosques or converts suddenly. Prime suicide bomber material methinks…Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 09 17 at 08:03 PM • permalinkWayne Swan is being incredibly patronising to now be patting the Australian electorate on the back for recognising an unstable and extremist personality when we see one. Like a toxic coral reef fish Latham had danger written all over him. Prod him gently and watch the iridescent colour changes. His whole campaign of class envy was an absurdity from the outset. Whilst his latest anti-American statements are outrageous and troubling, surely the “troops home by Christmas” election pledge was a big hint at what might lie beneath.
Really it wouldn’t surprise me if Latham came out next week telling us of his unrealised secret plans to nationalise the financial sector, he just seems to be making it up as he goes along now. Which is what people do when they publish their memoirs, complete with typical revisionist additions and a good dollop of pure fiction. Latham is not a distinguished retired politician but a minor one still playing us for mugs hanging on his every fruit-loop utterance.
As for the Labor party, they have been on a talent-famished losing streak for as long as many younger voters can remember. To have pitched Latham as an exciting experiment in generational change was as obviously disingenuous as it was comical. The truth is that Labor risked their last remaining chips on one big roll of the dice and everybody knew it, including Latham’s supporters.
By a strange coincidence, Latham’s first interview on ‘Enough Rope’, taped when he was Opposition treasurer, aired on ABC Asia Pacific yesterday.
Its chilling watching Latham, there was something manic about him that some voters found exciting. Its strange that other voters picked up on his instability but the(now damning) press didn’t. It just goes to show how desperate Labour are for a win.
Gee, they don’t get it do, they? The Australian voter doesn’t vote you in, and then let you sort yourself out, it wants you to get your house in order FIRST.
The reason the Liberals spent 13 years in opposition was more to do with their own shambolic attempts rather than any great claims of competence for the ALP post 1990.
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 09 17 at 09:30 PM • permalinkTo think that this pathetic prick could have become our Prime Minister. To think that the ALP knowingly elected him as their leader / potential PM. The ALP knew him inside out, he was a product of the ALP, and for them to feign ignorance is a bloody lie!
To think that the taxpayer funded Bolshie Collective and the likes of Margoid the hideous grovelled at his feet!Thank God for the sensibility of the Australian electorate.
#26. You’re right about the anti-American attitudes within the Labor party. Robert McClelland’s also crapping on about how they would’ve dumped Latham if he’d endangered the US/Aust alliance. I reckon the whole Labor party would’ve been happy as pigs in shit to shove it up the Americans.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 09 17 at 11:52 PM • permalinkDo they really expect us to believe Labor would have had the stones to turn Latham out? Two words: Senate Democrats.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 18 at 12:14 AM • permalink#10 By the way, it’s probably time for his ex-missus to get over it as well.
His former spouse has been diginified and restrained under provocation.
It’s also time for his current missus to walk, before she is destroyed. I give her six months.
Latham’s background is typifies the problem of Labor today. They’re all products of the machine, starting from Young Labor. None has any real-world or business experience. Being a school teacher doesn’t count as they’re also unbusiness-like and naive (qv Barry Jones, Joan Kirner). Dems in the US would likely be the same. They are theoreticians with a chip on their shoulders and a dose of class envy.
At least with the Libs and Nats there are members who have worked in their own businesses, or as employees. The Libs are derided occasionally as a party of lawyers, but at least a lawyer deals with business.
Labor’s solution - celebrity candididates - won’t work. Two words: Mary Delahunty. They end up with actors or sportsmen who struggle to put two intelligent words together.
Latham is now unemployable. No one in business will touch him. The Party won’t be giving him sinecure in a quiet quango. His future employment: Jim’s Mowing (unless he tops himself first, which seems likely). He couldn’t even run a fish and chip shop, which requires people skills.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 09 18 at 12:30 AM • permalinkIt is tragic that this man will have noone left beside him as he goes on with his life, noone who believes his side of the story and noone who will sympathise with him. No matter how left of centre people are they cannot see anything in Latham as he has shown himself to be bitter and unconstructive. That includes his sons, who on enough rope he was constantly referring back to as the purpose of his life from now on. What are they going to think wen they explore the story of their father’s demise and the indignity with which he handled it?
Andrew Denton is a national living treasure, he asked some hard questions the other night and shaped the interview beautifully. Latham was grasping at straws to avoid the reality of his situation. I wonder how his book will sell, quite well I imagine, and perhaps that was his motive for being so controversial and outspoken, albeit from a pathetic position. He has sold a lot for that hundred or so grand though, he will find it hard to work again and he has a lot of enemies, at least the 40% or so of people who vote labour for a start, and none of the ret will take him seriously.
Put Mark Latham on suicide watch, he is going to have some difficult times ahead.Actually, I think the most revolting thing in the dsiaries so far is not by Latham himself but Kim Beazley’s comments on Janet howard. Beazley has always had the image of a basically decent many, whatever his short-comings as a political leader. That is gone now.
His father was always a very decent man and wouldn’t have spoken or written like that.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 09 18 at 12:45 AM • permalinkAll I can say is that the man (Latham) is a Tool squeezer and the left loved him, and I bet some of them still do secretly.
I think you guys are on the money with Julia Gillard. She invested a fair bit of political capital in Latham’s political success and I think it is plain to say their views on the US are not far apart.
I agree that Latham was the last throw of the dice for the Federal ALP. There is no one left to stand up and unite them, let alone win them an election and anyone who does will get more than one knife to the back.
Not even this idea that the MSM have thrown around about State premiers making cameo’s on a federal level could save labour. Many of them are loathed outside of their states and none of them have clean sheets.
Let’s just face it; the federal labour party is a breading ground for mental health problems. In a way the place is Machiavellian, everyone is out to get each other and every agreement requires them to make deals with their enemies.
One thing Latham has shown us is that federal labour is well and truly divided their hatred for the right is only matched by their hatred for each other.
Can an enterprising publisher re-issue the late Prof. Patrick O’Brien’s 1977 masterpioece, “The Saviours” which points to the historical broad streak of actual, insanity in the ALP leadership?
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 09 18 at 01:14 AM • permalink#36 - It’s ‘Labor’. This spelling is probably a throw-back to the days when the British were regarded as the world’s war-mongers, and the noble Americans were throwing off the dead weight of class and developing simplified, non-English spelling. Now the US is Labor’s bete-noir they’re embarrassed about aligning themselves with the USA via spelling, hence the exaggerated anti-Americanism.
Isn’t Julia Giuillard early her 40s? If so she sure hasn’t aged gracefully.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 09 18 at 01:17 AM • permalinkI have a nice Julia story tucked away from my detention centre days.
Will save it for her election shot I think.
Mind you I would have given her one, if she asked nicely. (dont want to appear cheap you know)Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 09 18 at 01:29 AM • permalink#38 Piss off mate, Australia spells it Labour. We are more culturally aligned with England on the basis of our history and also this reflects our general preference. Our relationship with the US is genuine but is based on motives of self benefit, exactly as they are reciprocated.
We resent the simplification of written English into “or’s” and suchlike, with “z”‘s all over the place. It is “civilised” and “organised” because it looks better that way and the “s” is easier to write than the “z”.
I quote shakespeare to put an end to this issue: “Z thou unnecessary letter”.
Another thing that we find particularly grating is this Americo-centrism with which people like you assume that the rest of the world looks up to you or should imitate you. No culture or society has the right to presume this.Did anyone see Barry Jones on Sunday trying to duck and weave around the questions from Laurie Oakes? Why did they send old spaghetti and meatballs to get smoked, he had a shocker.Mind you I dont know how anyone in the party could possibly put a decent spin on this Latham disaster.
Bloody hell Tim your job has been made pretty easy. Margo on one side and Latham on the other. All you have to do is google, link and paste - enjoy!
I find this whole thing disturbing; it is like we have a group of psychos lurking on the other side of the house wanting to take this country down the road to leftie Euro-superciliousness. It sounds like the knife-wielding malice of Student Union politics writ very large. Even when I was still a leftie I never had any time for Student Unionists. Their hatred for the real working class almost rivals their hatred for the right.
We resent the simplification of written English into “or’s” and suchlike, with “z“‘s all over the place. It is “civilised” and “organised” because it looks better that way and the “s” is easier to write than the “z”. I quote shakespeare to put an end to this issue: “Z thou unnecessary letter”. Another thing that we find particularly grating is this Americo-centrism with which people like you assume that the rest of the world looks up to you or should imitate you. No culture or society has the right to presume this.
Well, maybe that’s so. But I can certainly tell you that Karl Rove likes z’s. And when he’s done, you will all be living in Auztralia and New ZZealand. Unless he renames them JohnHowardland and Bush Gardens. He’s still deciding.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 09 18 at 02:46 AM • permalinkActually, “Labor” in ALP has been spelt that way since Federation.
It was American-born King O’Malley who convinced the Labor caucus to adopt the spelling.
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 09 18 at 03:15 AM • permalinkLabor defence spokesman Robert McClelland says lying Latham would have been removed by the ALP had he been elected
Bullsh*t, they would have made him an ALP life member and a national living treasure.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 09 18 at 03:23 AM • permalinkMan, he really is nuts, isn’t he:
Former federal ALP leader Mark Latham is ‘thrilled to bits’ with the response he has received so far to his book, his publisher said today.
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 09 18 at 03:25 AM • permalinkSteve Waugh for PM?
That’s what the ALP thought
Celebrity Candidates! Each more surprising that the first!
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 09 18 at 03:28 AM • permalink#38 LOL! You had me fooled with that pic. Her Mexican classmates gave it away but!
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 09 18 at 03:59 AM • permalinkGak! I’ve just been reading some of Mad Mark’s rantings in the newspaper. Does anyone here have his email addy? I’d like to ‘communicate’ my feelings to him.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 09 18 at 05:43 AM • permalinkNot scary, because he was not within a bull’s roar of being PM.
The people of Australia rejected as comprehensively as the intelligentsia failed to see his flaws.
The focus on Latham is laughable. Focus instead on the idiot Labour Party - and their idiot fools in the media - who posited Latham as their choice of PM for Australia.
I mistakenly saw Latham’s ascendancy as a potential victory for social conservative values - the Labor Party had been jerked to the Centre - a recognition that John Howard had captured Australia’s imagination - and some of Latham’s initial mutterings confirmed that. Certainly his views on inner-city lefties and their obsessions.
Latham’s better ideas should not be lost in the jeering.
From either side.
The 5/7 RAR digger in the photo would probably say that Latham’s ‘as guilty as quilty’
Posted by platey mates on 2005 09 18 at 09:41 AM • permalinkI remember a blog that was up and running in the last election campaign called marklathamsucks.com Bring it back I say, complete with a foreword from the big man himself. What an ingrate.
Posted by platey mates on 2005 09 18 at 09:43 AM • permalink#57 The point is, it exposes Beazley as a gross shite. We already knew Latham was.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 09 18 at 10:12 AM • permalinkCartoons have been saying it all really..
Latham as a giant Frankenstein,bolt in neck,lurching maniacally along,totally out of control, clutching a helpless tiny alp figure in each massive fist(bomber and the swot womble).Other tiny alp also rans cowering in front.
The other classic was the conga line of Marks all attempting to stab in the back the Mark in front.ilibcc — Oh, come on! Remember, Margo said Howard got barely 55% of the vote… didn’t you get the flyer?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 18 at 12:16 PM • permalinkAnother thing that we find particularly grating is this Americo-centrism with which people like you assume that the rest of the world looks up to you or should imitate you. No culture or society has the right to presume this.
I’ve read the post you’re responding to (#38) five times now, and I can’t see how you’re getting this impression. The irony in the post is spelled out in ten-foot-high letters.
Relax, dude.
Personally, I have no desire or expectation for the world to “look up to” or “imitate” us. I’ll be happy if the rest of the world would just knock off the cheap insults, the gross misrepresentations, and the schadenfreude any time we have some kind of problem.
Kip and Wolf
Yeah. I saw M113A2s in the armoured column advancing on Baghdad a couple of years back. I think the USMC still uses them, as well as the Army - but only for support and recovery. No doubt, the National Guard still uses them also.
They’re pretty much phased out of front line service in Australia. My old regiment 2/14LH is using ALAVs now.
Rissole, Russell, Quentin: I have a dim recollection that dropping the ‘u’ was part of the Bulletin’s style guide back when it was the bible of the labor/labour movement in the 1890s. I should go and check, but I suspect it is still part of the Bulletin’s style. If only there was someone on this blog whose word was authoritative on such things ...
It seems to me that the Latham phenomenon is a parable and a metaphor: he is to the ALP what the left is to the Western world. This man’s self-delusion, selfishness, treachery and irrationality is merely the behaviour and mindset of the so-called progressive left, writ small. That the so-called elites in Australia once lauded this egomaniac merely exposes them, yet again, as mere minions in search of a cult.
It may be extreme optimism on my part, but I like to think that the problems now besetting the ALP are a reflection of where the left is in the Western world – a nihilistic ideology in its death throes.
larrikin, interesting point on the cult issue. Sometimes I have dealt with people trying to recover from cults, and more than one has been involved in ‘political cults’, which are guilty of the same kinds of mind control that characterise extreme religious groups.
A Squadron 3/4 Cav? Just easier to say buckethead isn’t it? ;-)
“The Australian people always get it right .....” he said.
Well thanks Wayne. Now will all you lefties finally admit we got it right with the banana republic too? No.. I didn’t think so.Posted by DropDeadUgly on 2005 09 19 at 04:33 AM • permalinkHis future employment: Jim’s Mowing (unless he tops himself first, which seems likely)
Suicide by Victa*?
*Victa = Aussie icon motor mower (as seen in Sinney Ahlimpic Opening Seremoany) Scroll down to Two Stroke Motor Mower.
(the site is interesting for it’s Aussie inventions!)
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Has he ever actually tried to intimidate people who do it for a living? Mark had best hope he never actually meets a soldier, sailor or airman who has read or heard these words.