Rudd’s foreign policy
Uncategorized - - Posted on November, 3 at 6:55 am by Ken L
A while ago I posted about our prime minister’s apparent wish to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and bathe in the reflected glory of our long-ago deeds of war. In particular I criticised his assertion that in 1942 ‘a young nation found its very survival at risk’, on what I thought were the very good grounds that the assertion was not true.
My post attracted a flood of righteous wrath and some conspiracy nuttery that would have done the ‘Bush bombed the WTC’ mob proud; I was apparently in league with Alexander Downer and some bloke called Peter Stanley to traduce John Curtin’s memory and thus bring down the Labor government, or something along those lines. Like all conspiracy theories it was a bit light on detail.
Anyway it prompted me to find out who this Peter Stanley was and why his views were apparently so incendiary to all right thinking people. I discovered that he’s Director of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia, which is not generally regarded as a hot-bed of unreconstructed Liberals. He’s also published 19 books. In short, his CV inclines me to place a bit more weight on his opinions than on anonymous comments in the blogosphere.
Conveniently, Stanley wrote a piece in Online Opinion not long ago where he summarised his recent work:
Since 2002 I’ve written a succession of historical pieces exploring the question of whether Japan intended to invade Australia in 1942, and reflecting on the meaning of the way Australians look at their wartime history. In Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942 (published by Penguin in July, 2008) I summarise and elaborate upon my research.
The rest of the piece elaborates on that theme: whether Japan intended to invade Australia. Not whether they had the capacity to do so, but the intention.
Now this is the kind of question that can keep professional historians happily writing papers and publishing journal articles for years, with the outcome being perhaps a consensus that finds its way into a paragraph in history books in 2020. It’s an intrinsically difficult issue; one might just as well ask if the USA intended to follow up the invasion of Iraq with an attack on Iran. The answer is that some people in a position to influence events might have had that intention and others probably didn’t. Trying to synthesise all the various shades of hope and ambition into a national ‘intention’ is fraught with difficulty. The same problems must arise in trying to establish any sort of consensus among the rulers of Japan in 1942, who were by no means agreed on war objectives or strategy.
Fortunately the point is immaterial to my post. I wasn’t writing about Japan’s intentions in 1942 but about the reality of the threat that it posed to Australia. Rudd wasn’t speaking about intentions but about actuality: he claimed Australia’s ‘very survival’ was at risk and that ‘We’ll never know what success [in New Guinea] by the enemy might have meant for Australia – invasion, occupation or isolation.’ These statements have to be evaluated not by the standards of what was known or feared in 1942 but in the light of what we know today, and clearly the statements are wrong.
By 1942 Japan’s offensive capabilities had run out of steam. Regardless of anyone’s intentions in Tokyo, Australia’s survival was not at risk and Japan lacked the means to invade or occupy our nation. This has been widely known and accepted by historians and military analysts since the mid 1940s and for Rudd to state otherwise is simply peddling a romantic fiction.
Does it matter, or is it just a semantic argument as someone suggested in comments on the last thread? I believe it matters very much, because beliefs about past events influence present day attitudes. The belief that Australian forces defeated the Japanese where other nations had collapsed in a heap and that the USA subsequently saved us from invasion and occupation underpins all sorts of wrong-headed attitudes that have caused us to adopt misguided foreign policies from 1945 to the present day.
For example:
1. The belief that Australian soldiers defeated the Nips after much more populous nations like China and the Philippines capitulated under the Japanese onslaught encourages supremacist ‘one digger is worth 10 Asian soldiers’ jingoistic nonsense. This reinforces racist attitudes that lead to us lecturing Asian countries about the superiority of ‘Western values’ and smugly announcing that we’ll strike first any time we suspect someone might be up to no good in one of our neighbouring countries.
2. The belief that Australia’s position in the Pacific War was more or less like that of other countries like China and Korea leads to puzzlement when people in those countries are so slow to forgive and forget. I mean if we can do it why can’t they?
3. Most importantly, the belief that the USA saved us from enslavement has made unswerving support of the US the bedrock of our foreign policy since 1945. People can disagree about whether this was ever in Australia’s interests; my own belief is that a policy of non-alignment similar to that adopted by the Scandinavian countries would have served us better. The main factor preventing it has been this bipartisan myth that only the USA saved us from being overrun by yellow hordes in 1942.
Needless to say, it’s one thing to believe in retrospect that a policy was misguided and quite another to argue that there was a feasible alternative at the time. Until Vietnam, it would have been electoral suicide for any political party in Australia to suggest developing a foreign policy stance independent of the USA. However the Vietnam catastrophe revealed the stupidity of so much US dogma that the way has been open ever since for leaders with vision and the national interest at heart to put us at arm’s length from the increasingly thuggish empire builders across the Pacific. New Zealand has managed to do just that but not us. Gough Whitlam’s government started to do it of course and the Fraser Government did not wholly reverse that direction, but Hawke and Gareth Evans seemed very happy to nestle once again under Washington’s wings and while I’m sure Paul Keating would have taken us in a very different direction, he was not there long enough to make an impact. In any event he seems more concerned to diss the Brits than to question the US alliance.
After 1996 we had 11 years of Howard and Downer with results that are well-known. Once again we are joined hip and thigh to the USA and their struggles are our struggles. Rudd (one tends already to dismiss Stephen Smith as anything but a cipher in foreign policy) has a great opportunity to break the ties and resume a progressive path to an independent foreign policy where we act in our own interests without the over-riding fear that if we offend the USA OMG 1942 will surely come again and this time the yanks won’t come rushing to save our necks!!! We’ll all end up speaking Bahasa Indonesian/Cantonese/Vietnamese/Japanese (the last for the handful of RSL warriors who are convinced the old enemy will return sooner or later).
It’s early days and Rudd has sent mixed signals but to date, indications are that he leans towards continued fealty to Washington. As he wrestles with economic crises, he will be increasingly tempted not to buy a fight with the Libs about our ties with the USA, knowing how easily any proposals for change could be misrepresented and exploited by the opposition. Nevertheless he should do it, and progressives who care about the future wellbeing of Australia should keep pressure on him to do it. The United States of America has become much too wilful and amoral an actor in world affairs for us to keep being its best friend forever.
*****
By the way … I’ve always blogged for one reason only and that’s to satisfy my own urge to write. Some time ago I let Tim know that the fun was fading and that I thought I’d finish up at Surfdom in December; a couple of weeks ago I decided to bring the date forward.
I might be back on a political blog some time in the new year and I might not; if I was a betting man I’d put a substantial wager on not. Thanks for reading and all the best for the future.
Posted in Uncategorized |
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 am
I’m going to miss you and your intelligent postings, Ken.
All the best for the future and I hope to see your writings again some day (soon?
).
Cheers mate.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Ken, I’ve always enjoyed your posts. I wish I had commented more often to provide some positive feedback.
Regards,
Adrian.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 am
I’ll miss you too. Thanks for the great writing.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am
Thats a shame. You have educated me frequently. Thanks for that.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Another perceptive and well argued post. You’ll be missed. Best wishes for the future.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
Yeah!Ken!Have a spirit psychological rest from this stuff,it is as boring as thinking Murdoch is a great man,sometimes even posting , in the limited way I do…with the bumps.You are generally right in your questions,although I knew a young Tim,who fought the Japanese,and didn’t really say anything bad about them,just got on with life.Ended up being one of the R.S.L. Bastards racing monies for others.In the war zone time,only recently has a book been written about the then womanising P.M. Couldn’t help himself really had to get his end in.Which says a lot seeing many soldiers here and there,were not seeking the extra-marital affairs of the day,but,engaged in deadly disputes.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
Um.Raising rather than racing!
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Dear Ken
wish I had thanked you for your efforts at ‘roadtosurfdom’ more often as I’ve greatly enjoyed and appreciated many of your postings.
all the best
iain
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
As a Yank, I’ve especially enjoyed the bicoastal perspective you’ve given your posts. Hope that you find you need to scratch the itch, at least occasionally, and return to enlighten and entertain us.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Right to the very last you argue cogently about issues that should be more fully debated if we are to make any progress as a nation.
I too will miss your contributions and hope we will see you some time in the future. Best wishes for where ever you decide to venture.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Well wtf are we gonna do now? Without Ken’s daily epistles from his Bible of sanity, reason & decency I suppose we’ll all have to revert to choking on the twisted & spun crap pap from the looney MSM: the Murdoch world-wide propaganda machine, and the infinite lies of politicians and the spin industry.
Doesn’t matter I suppose, because soon we’ll have our own censored internet, the Great Firewall of Australia, and blogs will be one of the first items to face the chop. Already the frothing, fuming & furious fundies are champing at the bit to wreak their own vested interests onto the bonfire of freedoms once accorded the world via the WWW and its blogs.
Pathetically disguised by the need to block child porn, every raving Fred Nile is now campaigning to remove their own pet hatreds from the Net: Online casinos, euthanasia sites, sites about anorexia, etc. Next will be any site against the government, or any other point of view other than the Nazis who seek to control our information super highway. The list is endless and will eventually result in Australia’s internet showing nothing but sanitised ABC news every half hour.
And the blogs (the first true global freedom of speech) will be gone forever while the brilliant literary skills, highly entertaining topical comment and cutting satire of Ken Lovell will not be available for the world to read and enjoy.
But our very best wishes to him for his voluminous tomes that have enlightened so many of us in so many ways, while there’s nothing much else to say except thanks Ken.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
As sad as Ken’s departure may be, it’ll be largely irrelevant if soon blogs and indeed the Internet itself don’t exist anymore.
Gizmodo is apparently Australia’s most popular blog and this is what they say:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/11/you_have_every_right_to_be_angry_the_government_wants_to_kill_the_internet.html#more
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Looks like we’ve been ‘de-blogged’ already. The space above must be reserved for all the Killjoys and Mary Whitehouse’s to insert their boundless idiocy into our lives and thoughts and minds.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
You’ll leave a big hole in the blogosphere, mate.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
And only a horse with the name of Zip will be remembered,sounding like a code for American,with or without Green Bottles.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
May your travels be fortunate ones Ken. You wrote some insightful, passionate & imaginative posts…and made the long journey along this road that helps take us away from Serfdom and ever closer to Surfdom a more interesting & stimulating one.
Your efforts are appreciated.
And as for the WORRIED…I wouldn’t play the death bell for the INTERNET yet.
If this Labor government has an ounce of common-sense & courage…& I reckon it has shown tons worth so far…it won’t kill the alternative messenger and news filter that helped Australians slip out of King John’s iron cage.
Living in that stale, musty, old-fashioned dungeon FED on propaganda served by the corporate aristocracy was enuff to fck the health & sanity of any normal citizen. Returning to that place is not an option.
The MANY need to SPEAK…for the living…& the dead.
And Ken, I’m sure you’ll RISE AGAIN…on fire, refreshed…just like Bill Clinton this week.
———-
From Miller’s Crossing:
Verna: I thought you said you didn’t care about Leo no more.
Tom Reagan: I said we’re through. That’s not the same thing.
N’
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Peter Stanley had a great essay in Griffith Review a while back on the misinterpreted meaning of the bombing of Darwin Harbour, the other bit of evidence commonly produced as evidence of imminent invasion. I suspect the invasion myth is too strong for a few inconvenient truths to get in the way.
Sad news on your decision Ken. Understandable, but sad all the same.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Cheers Ken.
We have such an aversion to thinking in this nation don’t we, and it’s got to the point where the dumb choice is taken as some sort of validation of the success of anti-intellectualism.
It’s pitiful.
I’ll miss your well constructed insights.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Thank you, Ken for your powerful, intelligent, and insightful writing. You will be sorely missed for the forthright and courageous way you made your case, expressing opinions many of us share but cannot express as eloquently. I hope you re-find your writing mojo!
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Ken, you doing this just adds to the drought of intelligent opinions. Guess some will think that another will fill your shoes, maybe, problem is that I can see this is the decline of RTS and maybe just a finger on the forehead will cause it to topple.
Hope I’m wrong, your articles held me here from the start, I took a while to join in, so thanks for the effort you have taken, and I may add that you and the other writers have made RTS a place to visit daily and with some eager interest, as you have kept RTS a solace from the tripe that other so called Blogs present. Maybe a few of us will rally a call’Wonder what Lovell would think of this’, just in case your looking..:)..Lang.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
According to my late mum, you would have had a hard time convincing Sydneysiders looking across the harbour at the wreck of “Kuttabul”; reading about Darwin and the Brisbane Line, Tobruk, the Blitz, Stalingrad, Singapore then New Guinea, that there was no problem. I got the impression from that generation that they didn’t beleive it was finished until for some time after .
Which is not to say that Japan might not have spent itself by 1942. But the Axis in general appeared to be on a roll and at its peak at that stage of the war- ok to say it was over the hill with 20/20 hindsight but it’s a bit like 11/9 when it happened, compared to now.
Watching the twin towers topple looked apocolyptic, but it has been the one and only event of real significance of its type- but back then, people wandered if war had been declared on them.
Shame you are packing it in.
I reckon there is a sense of anti climax since Rudd turned out Howard, but that complacency operates at a dangerously high level.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I wonder if the whole history of Clinton,has been displayed in its entirety,for it must be like any statement that declares a decline in intellectual life in Australia.One person,amongst many that can be thanked for that,is the lobbying power of one Rupert Murdoch,who ran over councils to install cable TV,and was instrumental in the decline of book publishing,here in Australia.I have decided,against my own potential to be really hurt,that targeting Murdoch every day is worth it.His story unwinding here and there,and even a thief of my ideas to rip people off,even if the same idea may have already existed,proved to me he had little darlings every ready to help his payola.And the other I am going to find new stuff on,by probably others snooping around is Richardson our Australian Ambassador to the U.S.A. If this site no longer exists soon,I will find a way to weave,both Richardson and Murdoch into the dilemma of some decisions made by the U.S.A. that has had Australia follow like sheep.And if I find it,Richardson will be the first Australian Bureaucrat and Diplomat stripped of every entitlement he has accumulated.No thirty year rule will work.I say this with a confidence,borne of carrying spiritual pain,for things,I already know.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Nask’
for KenL ” If the world were good for nothing else,it is a fine subject for speculation”
Music please,for the occasion.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Beethoven Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ - Part 1 - Karajan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFltqVS8d9I
November 4th, 2008 at 12:31 am
And: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Who’ll Stop The Rain?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPan-rEQJA
Time to cross CHANGE BRIDGE…see what awaits us on the other side. A brighter day perhaps. HOPE so.
N’
November 4th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Not anti-climax in my case Paul but sheer hopelessness and despair. Our late prime minister was the first in our history to wage aggressive war against another country and its people; he and through him our nation are morally complicit in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the immiseration of millions.
Yes Howard will be on Our ABC on Thursday night, engaged in more mendacious self-justification, and there is no sense at all in either the government or the community generally that he is a repellent individual who has disgraced our country. Quite the contrary; most of the ruling classes and the media in particular still seem in awe of the little grub.
Meanwhile Our ABC annoints the owner of Fox News - an institution that is every bit as vicious and anti-democratic as the Ku Klux Klan or the Communist Party and the antithesis of everything that the media should stand for - Our ABC annoints him as one of the Great Minds of our age and gives him a platform of pseudo-intellectuality from which to mouth his recycled Fox News talking editorials.
Over in the USA, their equivalent of Pauline Hanson runs for vice-president and inspires mass adulation from millions of people who are passionate in their defence of ignorance and stupidity, and back in my home state the administration of government seems to have become completely dysfunctional and nobody in either Sydney or Canberra has either the will or the wit to do anything about it. The main business of politics after all is scoring points in the weekly Newspoll.
Chronicling it all and railing against it simply becomes too exhausting after a while. I’m going to devote my time and effort to the local for a while and the global can make its own arrangements.
Thanks all for the compliments and good wishes.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Just to make your day Ken, our mate John Howard is costing you, me and all of us $8,560 a week in lavish snout-in-the-trough perks.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24592611-5007133,00.html
This is apart, of course, from his measly pension of $330,000 p.a. So there’s obviously big money to be made in telling whopper lies and invading innocent countries for no justification whatsoever.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I can understand why you might be exhausted, Ken. All in the same week, Rupert tells us our schools are not good enough (where has he been?), and The Australian prints a story about how stupid Dubya is, then when Kevin says it’s not true, they insist he should apologise for it. So much material. You’ll be sorely missed, but as Lang Mack says, many of us will look at rampant stupidity in future and think ‘Wonder what Lovell would think of this’.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I have just been told by a cattle farmer Russians have not been able to pay for Australian meat,and its on the way back.I thought our meat went to South Korea,if this story is true in part or full,there is a standing ,but not necessarily total panic.This puts pressure on domestic suppliers in a credit crunch.My direction would of been leave it there unship it, a sign of good will,even if the brutality of not being paid along the supply line would of hurt relationships other than the customer. And a Russian company with that problem,if true means,the Russians maybe hard pressed in some way.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Nov 4th 08 the final hours
I have to agree w/ the bulk of your observations & statements at #26 Ken. There is a sickness in the ABC that needs curing. Too many in that organisation seem to kneel at the altar of the man who combines Goebbels-like discipline & strategies with tabloid toxins in order to create a poisonous batch of addictive news outlets for the ignorant & gullible to slurp from. Even Rudd can’t stop playing sycophant around this Rupert (Moriarity) Murdoch.
Many on the Labor front bench have demonstrated courage & tenaciousness in standing up to the constant onslaught of a media that just can’t get over their adoration of the faux free marketeers & those mocking men & Luddite ladies that made up Howard’s motley crew. But that courage doesn’t always extend to Rudd & some of his close associates…particularly when it comes to this master of the media.
It seems they are hypnotised by the pulsating, intrusive and agitated tentacles that extend from the core of Murdoch’s empire…as Tony Blair was…and in the long run this will be their undoing if they cannot break away. They will probed, seeded & manipulated to fulfil his utmost desires & goals…and be convinced their actions are PROGRESSIVE…when in fact they will contribute to a further enslaving of the populace…conned, controlled by their fear & fascination w/ the beast.
A reminder:
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed — the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught — never so much as suspected.”
Sherlock Holmes, in “The Final Problem”
“You stand in the way not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize. You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.’”
Professor Moriarty, in “The Final Problem”
—-
CHANGE IS COMING…I hope Rudd et al know it…LIVE IT…
Barack, may your Grandmother’s LIGHT illuminate the path to FRESH AIR in these final hours…
N’
November 4th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Ken despairs that Howard is a repellant individual who has disgraced our country while OUR ABC annoints him as one of the great minds of our age.
The inescapable conclusion then is that the vast majority of Australians are bloody dimwits while our media are supreme fuckwits. It’s only been a year and already they’ve forgotten that the abysmal turd John W. Howard was turfed from office, and from his own electorate, on his lying arse, in grand style and with great force.
Ken’s great anguish and enormous frustration over his most hated enemy were painfully reflected in his long and illustrious ‘sermons from the mount’ in this great blog, and now his capitulation to Howard’s current retirement where the little schmarmy shit is grinning like a Cheshire cat and rolling in wealth as he sucks off our taxes in a grand final in-yer-face & up yer arse rejoicing – has perhaps been Ken’s undoing and final inducement to retire from RTS.
Certainly, who could blame him? To see this country’s most disgraceful prime minister – and worst Australian who ever lived – who possesses a Masters Degree in Smartarsery and a Doctorate of Dishonesty with honors in moral bankruptcy - to GET AWAY WITH IT ALL surely makes any decent human’s blood boil with rage.
Howard’s massive crimes as an international war criminal know no bounds nor respect any laws of decency. He aided and abetted the bribing of Saddam Hussein with $650 million which he diverted from starving Iraqis and their children and babies. He waged war upon two nations where neither had ever perpetrated any misdeeds against Australia. He delighted in threatening all of Asia with pre-emptive military strikes by Australia whenever and wherever his insanity saw fit. And he aligned himself and therefore all of us with the worst-ever president of the United States, a dangerous fuck-knuckle whose memory will forever be shrouded in shit because he trashed his own nation’s economy and world-wide reputation in just eight short years.
So let Howard and his smirking sewer-rat Nazis wallow in their retirement wealth and hurl shit in our faces while we continue to pay for them to exist.
And let the absurd and idiotic OZ Media like the ABC parade, fawn and grovel to him ad infinitum, because we know that at the very least there remains a few Aussies like the wonderful bloggers here who fully support Ken’s great comments over the years and know, for a fact, that we’re right and that ultra low-life Howard is an absolute CUNT, and at the going down of the sun and in the morning, will forever remain just that.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
The ABC on the radio now,is going on about the environment again,the Greenness blowhards since the wind was associated with the more modern word fart.All about governance. The problem when I hear the ABC experts and questions ,I just dont think it is sharp enough!Someone with one of those caring older English accents just went on about Lang Hancock was still alive.Can you believe it.And he didn’t correct it,just thanked him.Shit!!!!!!!I was going to raise the point of something that came up on Lismore Radio this morning Geo mapping of the coast.Which will explain the high water mark of previous centuries,thus indications of tsunamis .polar shifts,and Greenhouse related stuff,if in fact the planet is getting warmer.I am as frightened as anyone about tsunamis,and polar shifts,as I am of ice age realities 30 year or longer.I have seen iced roads up this way,where the hills are steep,and potato loss in the paddock because temperatures were just too cold to get out.SA. maybe seeing drought,but it maybe soil loss,disallowing moisture uptake and thus drought is then more present.Here ,I could bite my fingernails,already about world food production,and how the bloody poms dominate what we think.After ten years of continuous drought conditions in S.A. you would think,if you were quite normal is the soil is just too hard and lacking friable natures but to be a drought effected area.They talk about the Murray like it is like the Big River running through Grafton.But as a person that loves the Murray its eroded banks and not very wide countenance suggests that maybe the whole Murray was flooded under by the sea,as in Lake Eyre.And if Australians dont understand that as an implication.God might be helpful.I lived at Bittern on the Mornington Peninsula,and there was quicksand deposits.What does this mean.It means outside the memory of all biological creatures was a ocean countenance.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
A couple of DavidIcke.com sites suggest that when Ken is on furlough,he might have to rearrange his attitudes to 9/11,and the confidence in Obama winning isn’t universal .The voters,many not showing up as voters,have already been robbed.The voters who will vote Obama,will find their faith shattered again,by the process of Bush cunning.The man has no mercy.He has at least 6 million voters eliminated from the voting process already.The Lebanon Star ,todays date,suggests hijackers of 9/11 are related to Israelis,in the catchy catch spy games of those countries.If ,you cannot believe Murdoch.Ask yourself the pertinent question,why wouldn’t you believe this report and what it implies as another condemning evidence.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Winds of CHANGE are a blowin’:
Huffington Post, Glenn Adams, Nov 4th 08
Obama Wins Dixville Notch, NH, The First Place To Vote
DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. — Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.
Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday’s first minutes. The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns’ ballots but got no votes.
“I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised,” said Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson, whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch’s first voter.
With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.
Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation’s earliest presidential primary and the central focus _ however briefly _ of the vote-watching nation’s attention every four years.
Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about halfway between the White Mountain National Forest and the Canadian border, followed suit in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year, and before Tuesday, the town had gone for a Democrat only once since then. That was in 1968, when the tally was Democrat Hubert Humphrey eight, Nixon four.
——
It’s a shame we didn’t get a recent US election post/thread on this site. Sure could use one.
Well said at comment 31
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Whilst we’re patiently waiting, stomach a flutter w/ butterfly swarms, might as well play some good tunes:
The Doors - Waiting For The Sun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj5WvpkYHz0
November 5th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Led Zeppelin - In the Light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWSCAm6qVHU
And if you feel that you can’t go on. And your will’s sinkin’ low
Just believe and you can’t go wrong.
In the light you will find the road. You will find the road
——-
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
A fave band from Pennsylvania:
bardo pond - tantric porno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTgSQ1e-CtE&feature=related
Good onya Penn voters
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Thumbs up to Latino voters:
VIVA OBAMA 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fd-MVU4vtU
November 5th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
An interlude showing another Chicago great:
Bobby Hull Montage - Part I CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoCONk_jKl4&feature=related
:)…almost there
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
ROARRRR…Karl Rove & Sarah Palin can EAT MY SHORTS
well done Obama team!
RRROOOAAARRR!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpBVEpDlUI8&feature=related
DONE.
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove 1978
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msNgZ2nexC0
Funk all night long…
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Nask, dropped in to see my mate the Texan this ‘arvo and he was grinning and drinking Gin. Gin??? FFS. He said that if McCain and Palin had been elected his thoughts were ‘what will my Aussie,now my fellow country men, friends think of the country I came from..’.. Gin???.:).
November 5th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Such a pity that Ken is long longer here with us on RTS to rejoice in Barak Obama’s great win and to breath massive sighs of relief at the imminent demise of the most evil administration ever to hijack the USA, with its most deadly president and associated mob of thugs.
We can only imagine what shrieks of delight Ken would have been victoriously tapping out right now, but will be forever indebted to him for his vast volumes of anti-Bush/anti Howard comments over the horror years of the recent ‘dark ages’ that all turned out to be, well, dead right of course.
Let us now hope that America really has turned a corner and adopted change, for the alternative of ‘more of the same’ was nightmarishly unthinkable.
Perhaps Ken would write that.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
lol LM…I’ve been on the vodka & orange since lunch.
It’s not often we get to witness a DREAM come to life. I’m humbled to be a part of it.
And I reckon this blog kicked arse, as did the majority of my fellow commentors who often said what needed to be said.
Sometimes the strategies & tactics may have seemed confusing & messy…such is politics I’ve learnt…but trust me when I tell you I can see the surf in my mind’s eye…hear it calling…along down that road…& was willing to take criticism & silence to get there. As I’m sure plenty of Obama’s supporters did.
The INDEPENDENT vote was important.
Can’t resist this, being the corny bugger I am sometimes:
The Natural - The Final Homerun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54-6yimtjtA
Obama is A NATURAL. Saw it at his 1st convention speech.
PEACE OUT
N’
November 5th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
THIS is the day the world changed. Imagine the reaction of the rest of the world had amerika gone for McCain!
“You had your chance to rejoin the rest of the civilised world - and you BLEW it!”.
For the record, for all my fears & reservations I say, “Congratulations to the People of America.”
November 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Yes nasking, this blog DID kick arse! How true. We were right all along. Will Australia now admit they actually hitched their coat-tails to the enemy? What a disgrace.
All those other mealy-mouthed blogs who for so long praised Bush, Howard & Blair, the TRUE Axis of Evil, were, how shall I say it? Ah, wwwrrrrrr . . . WRONG?
Ha! Laughin’ me tits off, I am!
November 5th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Strange story on film Nasking,lights blowing out from a walking wounded already,without the glass flying around.Natural to you it maybe,but,stay sane if this video your chosen becomes a horrible nightmare.I dont know what is the U.S.A. future with or without Obama with in the game now!? Just a feeling,not related to another a word more a B word,as some believe the ending of Kennedy had this and that connection,from jealous powerful C.I.A. to LBJ and ambition.America the U.S. hasn\’t learnt much,except and endless projection of images,if not everything else they,the machine calls Progress.And I think he might be a very boring President.problem again
November 5th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
#43&44&45&46, plus all the other RTS’ers, smug bastards aren’t we,,well, we bloody well told ‘ya,didn’t we, told ‘ya about the repugnant “rodent’, the abhorrent Chaney and Bush and by christ we stuck to our guns.
Had fuckwits on here being shit stirrers and so bloody self convinced, lots of know all bloody prophets, but we never changed, and to some of you, not all, you really deserve what you didn’t wish for. Simply because you never read the future or the intelligence of the common man.So, rally and come back with the whinge that your opprobrious attempt at oppugn is your way of discourse.
So, the future of RTS,too good to be left idle, too good to cast aside, any idear?. I’ll within reason prop up the joint if others wish to,if some others will join in. I have not a clue what it costs to maintain this site, and I’m not good enough to do a ‘Lovell’or anyone else,would seem a shame that it be cast adrift though. Maybe some sort of direction could be pointed out to us?.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:32 am
All the best Ken, have thoroughly enjoyed your threads, mark c
November 6th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Screw blogging, Ken. Start a party. I’d join.
Country needs a progressive party that’s not saddled with a name that screams “single issue numpties”. As much as I like those numpties, quite often…
But some straight talking would compare wonderfully to the weasel words we’re soaked in now days, maybe some day enough for some change.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Jesus H.! I think I’ll head to my local, the Bethlehem Cock ‘n Bull, to get rissed as a pabbit.
(But watch this space)
November 6th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
All the best Ken, I too will miss your in depth writings.