Posted by Sigismund on January 15, 2009, at 2:44:14
In reply to Anybody happy to see the end of the Bushies?(nm), posted by Neal on January 14, 2009, at 21:17:21
It's the same way it was with Howard.
They are just a symptom of the problem.
Let me quote from this public servant who was intimately involved with the SIEV-X issue.
Don't worry that you have not heard of it.
It too is just a symbol of something deeper.
>I had also come to understand how the disturbing public history of this nameless sunken boat that I named the SIEV-X was symptomatic of a much larger trend, a disturbing collapse in previously assumed public standards of truth in government and respect for the human rights for all in the community. In these matters Australia's experience in recent years paralleled that of the US and Britain. More and more, the English speaking democracies - the cradles of modern representative constitutional government - seemed to be losing the plot. More and more, our nations' civil discourses seemed to be swamped in moral panic, heartlessness, xenophobia and artificially fostered 'new realities' promoted by governments now in the business of promulgating the politics of fear and spin against people they define as 'the other'. More and more, our governments' basic operating rule seemed to have become : 'Whatever we do is alright, as long as we are not found out; and through our management of the news agenda and public information, we will seek to ensure that they are never found out'.>My sense of distress that defenceless groups of homeless people were being gravely abused by my national government, but that the majority of my fellow citizens just did not seem to know or care about such injustices, or to see the danger in these trends to their own personal freedoms and security, was curdling inside me. I was becoming bitter, harshly judgmental, retreating from old friendships, sleeping badly, eating and drinking too much. I knew that I needed t break out of what was becoming a self destructive cycle.
poster:Sigismund
thread:874066
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20081212/msgs/874107.html