Last paragraph in Ben Cubby’s story in SMH:
‘As well as its interest in unmanned spy planes, General Atomics has employed human spies. Last year it was caught hiring a former undercover police officer-turned-private investigator to infiltrate Australian environment groups and report on their actions. The former officer was posing as a Kurdish refugee and feeding information back to General Atomics.’
No wonder activists get paranoid about spies – who’d suspect a ‘Kurdish refugee’?
Great doco on Robert McNamara, US Statesman, on lessons he’d learnt. Eg. Immoral if you lose, moral if you win: if you kill 100,000 civillians – as he did in Tokyo one night via ordering fire bombing – you’re a war criminal, but if you win, you don’t get prosecuted.
“In order to do good, you might have to engage in evil.” i.e. kill foreigners to prevent deaths at home.
“Belief and seeing are often wrong.” The US thought the North Vietnamese had escalated fighting in 1964, but they hadn’t (sonar guys misread the sonar.) Oops!
SPIN: He delayed announcing more troops going into Vietnam until the late afternoon to “avoid the morning editions” of the papers.
And he said the best way to deal wth press interviews was to ignore the asked questions and just say what you want. That got him the best results.
So posthumous TULIP of the Week Award goes to: Robert McNamara (died July 2009).
Liberal Rule was like flicking through a picture book – didn’t learn anything new. Peter Costello’s comment on the NT intervention: “This is the democratic experiment – for better or worse.” I like it when politicians admit they don’t really know what they’re doing.
Be more productive. Save more. Get more education. Be healthier. Avoid chronic disease (this would mean “100,000 deaths” could be avoided.) Faster broadband and everything will be put online.
Rudd writes that productivity is down and faster broadband will fix that problem. We have to become the ‘knowledge nation’ so we’re less susceptible to China imprisoning our mining executives resources ups and downs.
QUOTES
“The digital revolution will be the single greatest multiplier of productivity growth.”
“For the past decade or more, many Western countries consumed too much, living beyond their means and racking up debts from those countries that saved too much.”
After the Asian financial crisis years ago – “many economies to accumulate massive foreign reserves to guard against external vulnerability”. [didn’t Japan do that? Why are they in such a mess now, then?]
He quotes Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman: “Productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything.”
“Creating the best-educated, best-skilled, best-trained workforce in the world is a core element of the productivity agenda.”
The only bit of Ruddbot- speak was “compact” – I think “contract” or “pact” would have been better. He writes: “A Jobs and Training compact with Australia” and “a compact with young Australians so that anyone under the age of 25 must be earning or learning” – makes no sense. He should use normal English.
It’s impressive that Rudd and Obama are hard workers, churning out their thoughts.
Turnbull must be furiously scribbling away on a 6000-wd reply.
Treasurer Keating was on the 10-week campaign trail in the run-up to the December 1984 Federal Election. He was visiting Perth and promoting deregulation of the banking system.
This has an element of public humiliation – I was a journalism student but not a TV journo. I was very sing-songy and totally inexperienced. Am the one with crimped ginger hair – it *was* the 80s!
After the interview he sincerely asked us what we thought the ALP’s chances were of winning the election and how their campaign was going.
Cotton Ward 