One term that gives me the irrits – neoliberalism. It sounds like a good thing – new and liberal – so it’s a cheer word not a boo word. But what it means is rule by business elites who believe that anything socially managed, eg public transport, education -- or socially minded eg clean air and water, art, theoretical science – should be run by businesspeople according to their values. In any case, not many pub-pundits lace their epithets with “neoliberalism” except in Mullum’s Couthouse Hotel.
Read MoreJuly 29th 1970. I find her in a recording studio where Janis Joplin and band are finishing Pearl. Like on stage in San Jose, she’s drinking Jim Beam while the boys smoke dope. “Who the fuck knew I had fans in Australee-a?” she yells. Her energy’s bursting her seams – it’s a force of creativity, or a cry for help.
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They loved it when he promised to drain the swamp in Washington but now they get you don’t hire the Creature from the Orange Lagoon to do it.
Read MoreRobert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor during Bill Clinton’s presidency, says that “barring a ‘smoking gun’ that shows Trump’s complicity with Russian operatives in interfering in the 2016 election – Trump’s fate seems to hinge on the midterm elections of 2018. Right now, Trump still has the support of 75 percent of Republican voters, which makes Republican officeholders reluctant to dump him.
Read MoreI’ve worried lately about the pile of reasons to abandon all hope that’s accumulated in the corner of my office. So this week I went to the orchard of awfulness that our world often seems to be and plucked these precious four cherries of hope, from the ever-unpredictable USA:
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Ron Cobb cartoon of the US spy-satellite base at Pine Gap, Australia. When Ron drew this for the third issue of The Digger, in 1972, the Whitlam government was considering closing down or taking over the US installation. Malcolm Fraser proposed doing that two years ago, shortly before he died.
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