Now For The Judges...

EVEN if you credit the City Square Occupists with the best of intentions, the fact remains that others might not be quite so pure of motive. The ruffled demonstrators’ coming legal actions, which the Phage previews today, stand to generate quite a bit of the folding stuff, not least for the lawyers who will be clogging the courts with pleas for justice (and damages). Sensible Melbournians who watched Friday’s efficient and relatively bloodless eviction can take heart from the comment of an unnamed walloper, who was delighted to note that Christine “A Gal Has To Eat” Nixon’s era of non-policing policing is now officially over. Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana, who led the operation, can also smile, as his handling of the situation confirms that he deserves to be on the shortest of short lists for the job of Victoria’s next top cop.

Now that the Square has been swept clean and the action shifts to the Ombudsman’s office and, most likely, the courts, it is time to consider what the former Bracks/Brumby government did to the judiciary and the public’s ability to have faith in it. On magistrates benches and more elevated legal perches, a legion of Labor-aligned hacks appointed over the past dozen years continues to deliver an often peculiar justice. What are the odds, do you think, that Friday’s lawyered-up malcontents will find themselves before judges imbued with the leftoids’ typically abstract concern for issues, rather than the circumstances of particular grievances and the merits of resulting claims for redress? The absurdity of some allegations against police, one fears, will be no obstacle to minds such as those.

Precedent makes that prospect even more unsettling. As the Herald Sun reported in March, 2007, 47 protesters who claimed injuries as a result of the police response to their anarchy outside the S11 gathering shared a windfall payout of $700,000. And that was on top of the $600,000 slipped to law firm Slater & Gordon, the former employer of both our PM (who was “young and naïve” back then) and the luvvies’ current toast, Andrew Bolt’s nemesis Judge Mordy. The deal was cut, and much taxpayer cash bundled out, on the pretense that it made good financial sense to end the actions before legal costs became even more outrageous.

The question, though, is why those cases were allowed to proceed so far? The S11 mob started the violence after defying orders to disperse, and nobody seriously questions that the protesters laid siege to the Crown complex with an arsenal intended to injure police and, most despicable of all, cripple mounted officers’ horses. A decent justice system, one overseen by judges who wear the public good on their sleeves, rather than party sympathies, would have sent the plaintiffs packing on Day One. Instead, all sorts of low specimens were made wealthier, and public trust in the courts suffered further erosion.

Will it be any different this time? That depends on Premier Ted Baillieu, who was scathing in denouncing the closed-door settlement negotiated by the then-government and Slater & Gordon. “The Victorian public will be rightly outraged," he said at the time. "This is yet another backroom deal and people are sick of Labor's backroom deals.” True, he cannot boot the Labor holdovers, nor would it be right to do so. Labor made a slather of bad appointments, but reversing them by executive fiat, if that were possible, would only do further harm to the legal system.

But what about a simple, no-nonsense statement from the Premier’s office?

Suppose Big Ted announced that his government would not, under any circumstance, settle the coming actions, even if that meant shouldering the additional cost of appeals, no matter how steep that might be. After that, he could vow to pursue the demonstrators and their lawyers for costs.

The business of fixing our Nixonised police force appears to be going quite well, but that gain will count for little until the courts are brought into line.

Over to you, Big Ted.

A COUPLE OF NOTES: First, Fontana’s credentials go beyond Friday’s action. On Black Saturday, when his boss rated dinner more important than Victoria’s worst disaster, Fontana stayed at his post and demonstrated that rarest of Nixon-era qualities, leadership.

And second, if, as seems likely, Slater & Gordon becomes the protesters’ counsel, how will the anti-capitalists reconcile hopes for a payout with their movement’s disdain for the stockmarket, on which shares in the law firm are traded?

No Turkish Delight

YES, yes, this multiculturalism is all very well and good, and even if some of those New Australians are a bit slow to grasp cricket, everything will be just fine if  they open a few more exotic eateries and, beyond that, make it a very definite point to behave themselves. Four years, that’s all it now takes for the new arrival to get a gum tree from the local mayor. It does not seem very much time to invest in acquiring something quite so valuable as the all-but inviolate right not to be deported, and Akin Sari, pride of Northcote, rather makes the point.

If the young fellow’s name rings a bell it is probable you remember the events of the G20 conference in November, 2006, when a group of young people decided to trash Collins street, smash a police van and do serious injury to two officers. Akin Sari was perhaps the biggest pest of the marauding lot, and he scored a 14-month sentence even after swearing that he had examined his conscience and would never again mix violence and politics. Never. Not ever, and certainly not as he was doing in the photo below.

Mind you, the magistrate had quite a list of charges to consider, and he could not have been impressed by the young man’s initial cockiness, especially when the arresting officers testified that Sari accused them of being disciples of Christine “Make Mine Flame Seared” Nixon, whom he regarded as something of a joke. Bad he might have been, but not entirely stupid – and just a little bit lucky as well. Admirers of the then-Police Commissioner? It is a marvel those cops did not have his guts for garters.

Sari’s most interesting boast was that, even though he had arrived from Turkey only five years earlier, he was a dinki-di Aussie. “You can't deport me,” he was reported to have crowed. “You can't do anything to me. Your laws are pathetic.” Back then, when Sari swore allegiance, two years’ residency was all that was required. This has now been doubled, with some other, very minor conditions added.  

All this is worth dredging up because, when Sydney’s wallopers followed the lead of their Melbourne counterparts and moved along the Martin Place Occupisants, an unreformed Sari was there to give them grief, in this instance with a metal torch that he allegedly used to wallop a copper over the head.

Once again a thoroughly nasty piece of work has been arrested for belting policemen. And once again he cannot be deported.

Would it be too much to ask that an Abbott government extend citizenship’s qualifying period to, say, six years, and perhaps add another five years of probation on top of that? Sari is about to cost the taxpayers another significant sum. He doesn’t like Australia, and Australia has no reason to like him.

It would be so much better to ship the bastard back to Istanbul and be done with him for good. Unfortunately we can’t, and that needs to be fixed.

A Real Money Saver

NEITHER Phage nor Silly is worth paying for, as we all know, but it is still interesting to see what is animating their feature supplements' writers and editors. How many fresh editions from Text will be reviewed this week, for example? If it is a normal Saturday, quite a lot, as the Phage seems to have such an affection for the imprint that one hopes the leftoid publishing house's editors and authors will always remember to flush. Should they fail to do so there is every chance the Sorbent will be fished out and given a five-star rating.

Or perhaps you are curious to know what young people are up to these days -- the sort of young people, which is to say almost all,  who generally do not read newspapers. Well the feature supplement always has quite a bit for those hip, non-reading kiddies, and studying the latest hot DJ's antics will make you wrinklies seem cool, very down with the youth. Your children will be most impressed late in the afternoon, when they have slept off the XTC binge of the night before, and you greet them with plimsols laced in the latest ghetto style.

And there is Leunig, always Leunig, whose ducks and curl-topped cliches will rekindle an interest in religion, most particularly Ecclesiastes 9:11

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,

nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,

nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;

but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Time and chance certainly happenth to Leunig, whose time was 40 years ago and whose chance it has been to luck into a gig at a newspaper where everyone professes to find him funny because everyone else says the same thing. Nobody really does, of course, and probably not even Leunig himself, whose biggest chuckles must come when the cheques arrive.

Anyway, all of the above can be yours without spending a cent. When you buy The Australian, simply ask the newsagent if you can take the Phage or Silly supplement as well. Not once in more than a year has the Professor's request been declined. As the newsagent said only yesterday, "Take it! It'll save me bundling it up to send back."

As the Occupists were fond of chanting -- the same Occupists hailed by Age sometime-editor Michael Short as belonging to "a valid and important movement" -- corporate greed sucks, man. So don't support it. Yo!

The Saab Of Journalism

IT IS far too nice a day to be deciphering what Guy Rundle is on about. For those with the fortitude and stamina, here is a sample:

...hollowed-out Anglosphere economies are hostages to stagnant capital. Thus, when Saab, one of Sweden's five auto manufacturers, failed after the global financial crisis, it could be allowed to do so, with no social cost. When General Motors teetered on the brink in the US, the government had to buy it, or face an implosion in the economy.

If Saab goes to the wall, the hope at the Billabong is that it does so at maximum velocity. A Saab 9000 once sat in the driveway, and then it would sit at the mechanic's, then the driveway, then the mechanic's once again. In between times it sat beside the road with the bonnet up. Other than its near-permanent immobility, it wasn't such a bad vehicle, given that the exhaust manifold was on the front of the block and the transmission-fluid cooler  inside the radiator, meaning the slightest leak stuffed the gearbox. Twice. The seats were comfortable enough, but then they had to be: all that time waiting for tow trucks and the RACV made for lots of unscheduled naps. What else? Oh, yes... interior panels shook loose on dirt roads, the dome light fell out on a suburban speed bump, plastic  fittings became brittle and cracked, the turning circle was bigger than Phillip Adams', and the fuel line was apt to develop vapour lock if attempts were made to re-start the engine when warm.

Saab, a marque so stupid it would suit Guy Rundle perfectly.

Anyway, the golf club beckons. More later.

PS: Who are the "five Swedish" auto makers? Saab, Volvo, Scania and, and, and...

The Age Meets Some Typical Readers

IN today’s Sunday Phage, reporter John Elder, who must be sorely in need of a bath, tells of his week embedded with the City Square rabble. He slept with them, he ate with them, he communed with them – and now he wants you know the image presented by the profit-driven media, a category that no longer includes Fairfax publications, was scandalously, slanderously wrong. Yes, there were dreadlocks and green hair aplenty, and “the poor skin of hardcore green and socialist-left protesters”, but the untold story was of all the normal, meek and mild Melbournians who turned out for a better world. That was the angle every other media outfit missed, and Elder feels obliged to set the record straight by quoting a representative sampling of the “many … who decided to stand against the police [and] were not part of the abusive shouting contingent that dominated the media coverage.”

Given that Elder spent the week in their company, his lack of curiosity about the upstanding citizens he quotes is, well, par for the course at The Age.

Take Nicola Paris, for example, whom Elder describes only as “a former nanny and now full-time activist”. She is a bit more than that, having shipped out three years in a row as the resident vegan cook aboard the Sea Shepherd. As for being a laid-back, no-trouble sort of gal, WA Greens Senator Rachel Siewert might tell another story, having fired Paris after her staffer was arrested for taking part in a violent scuffle with police outside the office of then-Science Minister Julie Bishop. (Memo to Elder: when even the Greens regard you as a ratbag, you’re a ratbag absolutely.)

Then there is psychologist Jane Morton, 58, who is “ ‘Just someone having a quiet professional life … part of the 99 per cent who wants a safe future for their kids’.''

The only problem with that worthy goal is Morton’s belief it can be achieved only by shutting down the LaTrobe Valley and banning the use and export of coal after 2020. She advances the cause by cluttering the entrance to local member Martin Ferguson’s office and editing voluminous position papers on the need to shut down the carboniferous economy yesterday.

After that, there is still time in Morton’s “quiet professional life” to indulge her interest in other worthy causes, which she lists on her Facebook page. There are a lot of them: Rising Tide North America, Six De6rees, The Story of Stuff Project, Beyond Zero Emissions, Friends of the Earth International, The Transition Decade 2010 - 2020, Avaaz, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, OurSay Australia, Wikileaks, friends don't let friends vote for Tony Abbott, 10:10 Western Australia, Occupy Melbourne, Join me and take online action now for Aussie forests - No Harvey No!, Stop the Machine! Create a New World, Farms Not Fossil Fuels - No New Coal Mine In Bacchus Marsh, The Global Mail, ACF: Protecting the Kimberley, Tar Sands Action, Your ABC. Worth fighting for, Climate Reality, NewsStand: Standing Up for Fair and Diverse News, Black Saturday Community Organiser Arrested by 'Baillieu\Ryan' Government for Defending the Last Remaining Green Forests in Toolangi / SAVE Sylvia Creek Toolangi / Community / MyEnvironment Inc - My Environment, urban support for rural communities fighting coal and coal seam gas development, Stop the National Schools Chaplaincy Program, Peaceful Uprising, 10,000,000 Strong for Comprehensive Climate Legislation, Democracy Now!, Huon Valley Environment Centre, Petition International Criminal Court to Investigate Sri Lanka's war crimes against Tamils., Yarra Climate Action Now, Save The Kimberley, GetUp!, The Oil Drum, 'Better Access' to Psychologists, Support decriminalisation of Homosexuality at UN!, Boycott Network 10 and their Ultra Right-wing Andrew Bolt show, Saving the Nature of the Kimberley, Footprints for Peace, Free Kids Inhalers from Coal Cares, Say Yes Australia, No Fracking Way, Virginia Rising: Stop Mountain Top Coal Removal Now, IPS Inter Press Service News Agency, Christine Milne, Save The Murray, A Climate for Change, Protect Native Forests for Climate Security, Presidential Pardon for Tim Dechristopher, Climate Summit 2011, Stop HRL - No new coal power for Victoria, Unfriend Coal, 100% Renewable, Camp for Climate Action Australia, Appalachia Rising, The Psychological Flexibility Group, Janet Rice for Footscray, PNC: Stop Funding Mountaintop Removal, HELP!!! Recognise Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution, Stop Native Forest Fueled Electricity in Australia, Amnesty International NYC Women Human Rights Action Team, causes.com, Union of Concerned Scientists, Perfect Connection Golf Swing, League of Conservation Voters, HANDS OFF COUNTRY - Help us to save a beautifull place of Australia!, Australian Student Environment Network, 1,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling, 350.org, Coal Free Future Project, Australia Needs a Carbon Tax, Everest Women 7 Summits Eco-Action, Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, International Youth Climate Movement, Camp for Climate Action, Australian Youth Climate Coalition

Finally, the gently quoted Fran Murrell, who swears, “'I'm not a youthful radical. I'm from a nice middle-class family concerned with our food supply” – especially food grown and marketed by capitalism’s earth-raping tractor panzers. As Fran puts it, “Business extremism endangers us all. We live on a finite planet and yet have an economic system that collapses without continuous growth.”

It took about 15 minutes to Google the backgrounds of those harmless, altruistic souls. Given that Elder was on hand for a week in which his fellow campers enjoyed free and unlimited internet access courtesy of the nearby Westin Hotel, whose WiFi network the protesters hacked, you might think he would have found a moment between the singing and chanting, the assemblies and vegan curries, to do, you know, just a little research.

Loaded For Swine And Porkies

THERE was a time, not so long ago, when Saturday mornings began with a peculiar excitement, the sort a hunter knows upon spying the fresh spoor and easily followed tracks of a favourite quarry. At the Billabong that was Phillip Adams, whose columns in The Australian so often led straight to bits and pieces lifted without acknowledgement from the New Yorker or The New York Review of Books. Along the way, of course, there were his many errors of fact and, and just to confirm the trail was indeed the Philcher’s, those weekly distillations of standard-issue luvvie prejudice, like his observation just days after 9/11 that the U.S. is a thoroughly worthless place and richly deserves whatever ills befall it. Toss in those oft-repeated anecdotes of life at Kew Primary and all the bitter memories of his clergyman stepfather (who must have had a lot to put up with) and he framed himself in the crosshairs week after monotonous week.

Hunting the Philcher was fun at the time, but the appeal eventually faded, there being little challenge to a target so compelled to place itself in the crosshairs. And anyway, what did it matter? Regardless of his specific sins, the New Establishment would never, ever move against one of its own, hence the pulpit and prominence Radio National continues to provide its leading plagiarist, bigot and blowhard.

This morning, though, it was like old times when the Australian’s magazine fell open at Adams’ latest dribble:

“…only a fool would fail to see the links between the Tea Party movement and – no, not the Bostonian Tea Party, but the U.S. Civil War. Many Americans seem rather unhappy to have a Negro in the White House.”

The nostrum that many Americans dislike their President for his melanin content, rather than an arrogant and spendthrift incompetence, sits so comfortably with Adams and those who support his ego and bank account, it was inevitable the columnist would sooner or later draw that particular bow, which is a long one indeed.

If Adams genuinely believes it is racism, and racism alone, that has driven down Obama’s popularity to levels only our own PM and Moammar Gaddafi have been known to exceed, perhaps he can explain why the current Tea Party favourite is Herman Cain, who is both a good deal darker and considerably more accomplished than the testament to the folly of affirmative action which now occupies the Oval Office.

He won’t, of course. Next week -- same page, same colour magazine – Adams will have mustered another mob of clichés and errors, herded them into print and departed with one more ill-deserved cheque in his grubby little trotter.

Perhaps Rupert Murdoch, who is not quite so sharp these days, and his Australian executives, who have lost the stomach for a fight, think that keeping Adams on the payroll works to News Limited’s advantage. It may be that they see Adams’ chronic name-dropping as proof his Rolodex is still  worth plumbing – a belief that would be true only if there were favours to be curried from the ghosts of the Whitlam-era has-beens who haunt those endless trips down memory lane. Good luck with that, John Hartigan, if you think Barry Jones and Moss Cass can deflect the media inquiry ordered by co-PM Bob Brown.

It has been quite a while at the Billabong since Adams’ work was given thorough scrutiny, but it is evident that somebody has to do it. So here is a warning, Phillip, you are back under the microscope. Nothing personal, mind you, but with a Coalition government waiting in the wings it will be handy to have a ready dossier on Radio National’s star gabbler to inform whatever committee or investigation Tony Abbott orders to report on much-needed reforms at the ABC.

That way, finally, Adams might serve a useful and original purpose.

Hell No, We Won't Work

CAPITALISM has the last laugh. If you go to the Occupy Melbourne livestream you now get .... an ad for McDonalds!

http://www.livestream.com/occupymelb


UPDATE (via twitter): Call 043412651 for free legal advice (but only if you are a protester being ground beneath the pro-chocolate Zionist jackboots of the running dog enforcers)

UPDATE II: Follow the twitter action at  #occupymelb.


UPDATE III: This feed is working  http://www.justin.tv/occupymelb/b/297951749 (for what it's worth) 

UPDATE 4: Why didn't police make their move at 3am? Just asking

UPDATE 5: Sign says "Obama Is With Us. The Masonic Queen Is Not". Who knew she is into billygoats AND corgis?

UPDATE 6: Adam Bandt gets behind the Occupists. Figures

UPDATE 7: All the usual suspects. Phage luvvie Michael Short sides with public nuisances: "riot police the WRONG response to a valid and important movement#occupymelbourne".

"Valid and important, eh? Yeah, valid and important like The Phage.

If you have trouble getting home from work tonight, remember what the Phage stands for when you go to the newsagent tomorrow morning. Then buy The Australian instead.

UPDATE 8: An adult (sort of) leads a scared little girl into the heart of the protest.... ignores her terror ... and then sits the sobbing tot in the middle of the street.