The Long March Forward

HOT from Treasury Gardens, where Occupists have gathered beneath a tree, there is progress toward a better world. The latest news from the front.

Asher_Wolf Asher Wolf 

@ 

@mikestuchbery tents: not tonight - but to work towards it. #OccupyMelbourne

50 seconds ago 

 

Even the possums are laughing.

The Age's Sward Of Justice

MELBOURNE'S Occupists must be feeling most unloved these days, having been evicted from the City Square and finding themselves with no particular place to go. Treasury Gardens is mooted as one possible site on which to build a just society, albeit a small and stinky one, but the campers would be preaching only to the converted. As the original Occupists, the park's possums have long presumed the right to invade private property, keep residents awake and crap in their ceilings. As for public servants from the adjoining government offices, they need no convincing that wealth is to be left in a citizen's care only until the state can manufacture its next excuse for additional levies, taxes, fines and speed cameras.

But there is one place the Occupists are welcome  -- the patch of grass outside The Age office at the corner of Collins and Spencer streets. Best of all, the invitation to relocate is almost an official one, courtesy of senior investigative reporter Melissa Fyfe, who is all for it, as she explained to tweeting activist Perry Stalsis (who surely has the stomach for revolution):

Perry Stalsis: @melfyfe been trying to move #occupymelbourne to grass outside Age office, where we can be seen and reach commuters. Your thoughts
15 hours ago
in reply to @PerryStalsis1 ↑
Melissa Fyfe:@PerryStalsis1 a good idea, I would have thought. Do you think you can do it?11 hours ago

Blow off the Treasury Gardens, you anti-capitalist crusaders, and move to the Age's front door. As Fairfax shareholders can testify, your hosts share a no less pronounced aversion to the profit motive. And it is not as if Age journalists would be critical, not at all.With just one exception, they love you guys.

Melbournians would benefit as well. Could there be a better example of what the paper represents these days than a filthy, chaotic, noisy and incoherent mob of group-thinking public urinators taking up residence in The Age's front window?


(Thanks to tipster Spencer Collins for spotting the tweets and dashing off a very informative email)

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?

Let's Drink To A Quick Eviction

ONE of the best places in Melbourne to get a vodka and tonic is a little bar that fronts the City Square. Unlike many other establishments, staffers always open a fresh, cold mini-can of tonic with every glass, meaning lots of bubbles and a sharp, vibrant beverage. Lesser establishments all too often keep a large bottle under the counter, draining it slowly and caring not all that the contents will have gone flat long before the last drink is poured. It is a cheap, mean and nasty practice that produces nothing but disappointment  with a slice of lime -- and it is one of the reasons why that City Square watering hole is the Professor's favoured spot for rendezvousing with friends and lovers.

On Saturday evening, Opera Melbourne will be staging Carmen at the Athenaeum, just across Collins Street, so the Bar of Fresh Bubbles would have been the perfect spot to meet the evening's winsome companion.

Sadly, the City Square occupantists have put pay to that idea -- and, one assumes, to the profits of the businesspeople who operate the bar and the City Square's other coffee shops and eateries. Who wants to step over rubbish, be hectored by fools or obliged to view a broad acreage of bongo-banging idiocy?

The right to rally and protest is undisputed, and the occupiers have exercised it in spades.

For much longer will Melbourne's city fathers allow the protesters' pleasure to diminish that of others?

It is time they were served an eviction notice, with dogs and fire hoses if that is what it takes.

UPDATE: Reader Jim observes that the calendar will force the authorities' hand. With Christmas coming, the municipal tree needs to go up where the protesters are camped. As for the stage, that is where Santa sites his throne and magic tent, to which he repairs for a smoke (and probably a stiff drink) whenever the Ho-Ho-Hoing gets a bit too much.

Perhaps, if the city council promises that this year's Santa is keen on pogroms and plans to rob rich children of their presents, the occupiers will welcome him. If he is your more traditional Santa, it may be that he finds his most useful elves are wearing riot gear and blue uniforms. With Christine "Golly, Those Fires Make Me Hungry" Nixon no longer in charge, they may be a tad more confident in deciding who is naughty, who is nice, and who needs a truncheon around the ear hole.

Those One Percentensteins

A FRIEND of the Billabong stopped by  Occupy Melbourne on Saturday, when the Soap-Free Shock Troops were in the first flush of making speeches, if not much sense. He reports being particularly struck by "a porky shiela" and her beau, a Malaysian student ostensibly in Australia to attend one of our fine institutions of higher learning, who both became quite passionate about the plight of Palestinians

Having whipped themselves into a froth, the female concluded her address with this advice:

"Palestine's enemies are our enemies -- the One Per Cent."

It received a lusty cheer, the Billabong's informant reports, adding that about half the crowd then marched off to annoy police, coffee sippers and Max Brenner's chocalteers.

Well it seemed incredible. Re-branding Jews as "the one per centers" and blaming them for all the world's ills -- that is not the sort of thing one expects in Melbourne, where columnists get dragged into court for noting that some Aborigines seem particularly pale. Surely people cannot be that vile or quite so dangerously stupid? A video of the tubby gal's speech would settle all doubt, so if any reader has one or can find one, please point it out in comments.

But anti-semitism does seem to fit quite comfortably with the mood of Wall Street's Occupiers.

Again, any reader who can provide a video of Ms Piggy denouncing the One Per Centers will have the Professor's gratitude.

(HT to Jammie Wearing Fool for the video)

 

Signs Of The Times

NOTHING to do on Saturday? Why not head for the City Square and work out some of those bourgeois fixations – you know, that oppressive compulsion to roll out of bed, go to work, pay the mortgage and, much as it rankles, accept with silent forebearance that large chunks of your weekly earnings will be re-directed to the producers of Crownies, The Drum’s contributors, Jonathan Holmes’ beautician and, of course, sundry departments of Indigenous Lesbian Studies & Climate Justice at Australia’s proliferating institutes of higher learning. Don’t be shy, it’s easy, and the Occupy Melbourne crowd will take you unto its bosom without a moment’s hesitation, for such is the commitment to justice that all manifestations of public idiocy will be accorded equal respect.

The key is to look the part, so skip the morning shower and shun that comb and hairbrush. Wear your gardening clothes, and wear them with distinction if they bear evidence of recent manure-spreading. And carry a sign. You must have a sign, so begin right now by putting some thought into its sentiment.

“Saddam’s Oil, Give It Back” might work, as would anything denouncing the Zionist Entity. According to the #occupymelb tweeters, many protesters will move from City Square to a second demo against evil, chocolate-pushing Jews. Apparently Melbourne Museum is a site no less sacred than the Wailing Wall to local Hebrews, so that is where the crowd will gather to stop Palestinian babies being dipped in  dairy milk, stuffed with a sweet gefilte fish filling and garnished with Arab grannies’ eyeballs.

Jew-baiting not your thing? Not to worry, many other acceptable options present themselves. “Crew Cabs Are Spew Cabs” is sure to win a warm endorsement, and you could be mistaken for Don Watson, which might also provide an instant education in the Left’s reverence for its leading snobs. So, in addition to spurning soap and grooming, spare the Sorbent after the morning’s movement. There will be plenty of eager tongues to perform that service for you.

Then again, why not break fresh ground? The animating spirit of the Occupiers is so catholic in its resentments, so broad in gathering diverse grievances, that your sign should probably be pointedly obtuse. “Patriarchy Begins With Dad” – that’s a ripper, and sure to resonate, as lefttoids from Phillip Adams to Margo Kingston all seem to have had big problems with their fathers.

“The Hegemon is Not A Rastafarian Gardener” might make an easy entre to the always popular topic of race, which would open an opportunity to note on your placard’s obverse, “McMansions No. Gunyahs Yes” or the straightforward “Protect Free Speech. Gag A Dutchman”.

And since it is an Occupier’s duty to challenge all comfy nostrums, give serious thought to the disconcerting. Remember, as the ABC demonstrates nightly, it is now polite to be vulgar, so manifest your appreciation with “ABC: All Bourgeois C___s”, which will mightily confuse any of Aunty’s representatives who assumed they would be covering a larger, outdoor version of lunchtime chatter in the broadcaster’s Southbank cafeteria. Your fellow protesters may be baffled by the attack on their favourite media source, but the obscenity will win them over quick smart.

So get out there on Saturday and embrace democracy. If your fellow protesters get their way, we may not have it for too much longer. 

UPDATE: On second thought, why tax your own grey matter when Occupiers in the US are such a font of inspiration. Check out Urban Infidel's picture show and make a point to play the final video. You will have to listen hard, but you should be able to make out the speaker's insistence that the right to have sex with animals is a fundamental freedom.  Must be what they mean by dog whistlin'.

Fools Squared

IT IS not just naked lies that scoot around the globe while truth struggles with its trousers. Idiocy is fast on its feet as well, something that will be demonstrated in the City Square on Saturday, when many of the same people who decry US imperialism take their latest cue from across the Pacific and turn out to Occupy Melbourne. Organiser Nick Carson, a former Greens candidate, is such a modest fellow he did not wish to burden another with writing his Wikipedia entry, so he did it himself. And he has much to be modest about, starting with that runty John Waters moustache and extending, according to Andrew Landeryou, to a mental block when it comes to filing the paperwork expected of charitable and non-profit groups.

 

The Age mentions none of this in today’s promo for Saturday’s gathering, and the strong suspicion at the Billabong is that future coverage will be no less gentle. Making a laughingstock of yourself and your employer is a predilection of many Fairfax writers, so an incoherent mob camped for no recognisable reason at the front door of a five-star hotel, for which the City Square serves as a publicly funded forecourt, will inspire a good deal of sympathy -- and maybe just a little jealousy. Age writers must struggle daily with syntax and grammar in order to crystalise stupidity, yet their share-house cohabitants need only mill about in the CBD to achieve the same result. Why bother with a journalism degree?

Perhaps because that credential establishes the correct and proper perspective for reporting on fellow simpletons. But don’t take a Bunyip’s word, consult instead the tweeted edicts of New York University’s Jay Rosen, whose most recent visit to Melbourne inspired Swinburne solon Margaret Simons to such a fit of hero worship it is a wonder he did not leave the Wheeler Centre stage draped with her flung underwear.

Not one to see fools branded as fools, Rosen took CNN reporter Alison Kosik to task for being less than reverential to Wall Street’s occupiers. Asked what the protesters were on about, Kosik had quipped that their aim was to “bang on bongos, smoke weed!” Other media gurus, no less horrified, soon piled on:

"What is her job? Is she a straight news reporter?" Eric Deggans, media critic of the St. Petersburg Times, asked sarcastically. "And if she is considered a straight news reporter, it crosses the line because she is revealing contempt for the protesters before she even gets there."

Media critic David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said Kosik needs to understand the power of her tweets.

"It's public record. You can say 'I'm doing it in a different forum, it is not in the story or the post or the report,' but you are still making a public utterance about this story," Zurawik said. "I think this is really a management problem at CNN New York. I don't think their standards are there. You have what is really an important story, literally on your doorstep and you go out and make fun of it."

Zurawik is right about CNN having "a management problem”. Kosik withdrew her tweets and apologised, one assumes at her network’s insistence.

So that is what to expect come Sunday when, if Melbourne is lucky, a clot of public nuisances will have done no worse than impede traffic. And if the mob grows testy? Well memories of the G20 riot that trashed Collins Street in 2006 come very quickly to mind.

But not to worry. Nick Carson and friends represent “an important story” which all the wisdom of  an expensive tertiary education insists must be reported with immense respect.

And know what? You can bet your bongos and high-fibre organic hash cookies it will be.

UPDATE: It requires seven minutes of waffle and soft-soapy questions, but Carson eventually gets around to telling the ABC of his urge to make like a seagull and crap all over the City Square. He must pay for a university education and his landlord expects rent.

What a hard, cruel world.