Mood:
sharpTopic: nsw govt
Treasurer Costa has taken the political cowards path - parading his child and wife on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. Just as the Pope did a baby picture in the face of abuse whistleblowers. Just as every political figure at risk has done leveraging the innocence of childhood for their own selfish career and ambitions out of the pages of a PR-A01 text book.
Far from courageously ventilating the issue of mental health and his "14 medications a day" Costa should face up to the scathing analysis of such documentaries as Enron: Smartest guys in the room free on Google video (as posted below ... again). The experience of power privatisation in California to corporate spivs was an economic, industrial, social and in the end political disaster. Smart people learn from history and so does the labour, social justice and green movement.
Costa should face up to the profound issues of dangerous climate change leavened with the equally diabolical Global Dimming phenomenon caused by China's huge particulate pollution burden on the atmosphere.
We say this as legal tutor to our environmental colleague 'Jane' who lives independently but suffers chronic schizoophrenia this last 20 years. We visited her after a week at Prince of Wales Kiloh Centre during the hoo haa around Catholic World Youth Day. The event that Costa threw our tax dollars away for at the expense of every retailer in the CBD. She looked well fed, stable, calm, subdued and profoundly bored.
Personally I have no doubt Jane was whisked off the street at Macro Wholefoods in Bondi Junction and admitted to Kiloh so those nice pilgrims wouldn't be annoyed by a vulnerable harmless confused local. It was looking pretty crowded in there too.
Jane rang us this week, the day after WYD finished, to say she had just been allowed home. As we fully expected too. Suddenly the police are back to the usual duties and generally invisible again as they were before WYD. And Jane can enjoy her lentil soup in peace in her own home and watch her own tv and read her art books and visit her local shops in peace.
No thanks to such as Michael Costa and his devout mates like Premier Iemma. Maybe poor Jane should convert from secular Jewry to Catholicism next time?
........................
Saturday, 17 May 2008NSW public energy heist?: Enron 'smartest guys' free 109 min film on Google Video
Mood:special
Topic: nsw govt
As indicated in this profound film, staff of Enron (a US $65 billion corporation, 7th largest in the USA, which went bankrupt in 24 days in 2002) were regarded as the "best and brightest" in business. This has an eerie ring to it echoing a phrase for those selected for the recent 2020 summit blessed by PM Rudd.
PM Rudd also as it happens has endorsed the public energy sell off plan of the NSW Premier Morris Iemma who is in China as we write presumably to further progress the $15 billion sale 'the best and brightest idea' he can come up with for future governance of NSW! Enjoy (!?) the film. We will.
When you've digested that "magic of the market" and "de-regulation", have a look at this 60 minutes plus BBC doco on Youtube of the history of the public relations industry based on the theories of psychoanalyst Freud. It's a cracker.
And if you are still up for it this chestnut, less than one minute:
