March 11, 2010
Byron Shire Echo – Ph 02 6684 1777
Byron Shire Echo May , CommentThe strange bright era of American impotenceLandcare launches its hero searchEnvironmental heroes are being urged to step forward and be identified by the national Landcare awards search for local projects and people who have done something to help save Australias precious land and water resources. Landcare Australia has launched the search for environmental heroes as the - national awards get under way. There are a number of categories in which to enter with all state and territory winners being own to Melbourne for a special celebratory function in , hosted in conjunction with the International Landcare Conference. Last years event was a massive celebration of the power of landcare, with the nalists clocked up a remarkable , hours of voluntary time on landcare projects. This is the equivalent of people working for landcare fulltime on a purely voluntar y basis and figures show that last years nalists planted a staggering million trees, shrubs and grasses. For more details, visit com.au.May 5 to was a bad week for the American Empire and its funny little wars. Blairs electoral bloody nose, General Janis Karpinskis demotion for prisoner abuse, the Afghanistan protest marches against the goons in Guantanamo who put the Holy Koran on the toilet with, some say, human turds on it, the UNs abandonment of Jellalabad, the dud hand grenade ung at Bush in Georgia, the errant Cessna that panicked and emptied Congress and White House, Putins deant praise of the Soviet Union, Kim Jong-Ils fuel rods, John Boltons ame-out, Downers grovellings on al-Jazeera, Doug Woods brothers charitable donation to his torturers, Laura Bushs breezy defamation of her husband, and the continuing slaughter of Iraqi police and civilians show a War on Terror going badly and Americas Loony Right pretty much on the ropes. The idea that Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld are leadership material and leading anyone anywhere seems sillier by the hour.Aers ascent at Kitty Hawk the American Century is over and the strange bright era of the New American Impotence and a multipolar world begun. And there is no viagra for this. The orgys over. And this was the week it became plain. Eight and a half years after I first helped out with Beazleys Budget Reply Speech, a lot is the same.The same big office, the same three ageless, protective backroom girls, the same delighted yelps of merriment from the Leader down the corridor, the same impression of chivalrous climactic battle with the same Prime Minister and Treasurer, the same stoic urry round 6 p.m. Its good to be back. Kims odd mixture of qualities innocence, gravitas and self-mockery has no parallel in politics. Whitlam had the last two, Clinton, Joh and Arafat the rst and last, but nobody else I can summon up has all three. Does this mixture, plus the physical hugeness, the mental sharpness, the garrulous wit and cubic hectares of learned information add up to a Prime Minister Well, it hundred and one years cer tainly adds up to a after the Wright Broth- Candidate, as lame duckSimon and loose cannon Mark never did, and Ive begun in prayerful hope the third part of my triptych, Hello Jerusalem. I always knew hed be back, said one of the backroom girls. I never, ever doubted it. Well see.The reasons arent too hard to guess. Under international law Saddam is still President of Iraq, the war that overthrew him having been illegal, unsurrendered and unconcluded, and he, a lawyer, knows this. He might say so to anViewpointThe idea that Bush, Rice and Rumseld are leadership material and leading anyone anywhere seems sillier by the hour.by Bob Ellisaddam Hussein cant watch television, read newspapers, telephone his wife or consult his lawyers. He can read novels, though, write poetry, tend a small rock garden. No television interviewer can go near him, no friendly or hostile biographer, no prosecutor from the ICC. Unlike everyone in the democracies, he cannot ask for bail, or asylum, or something John Paul might have given him sanctuary in the Vatican.Sinter viewer and might moreover mildly ask why Americans bombed and burnt his proper ty and murdered his sons and fourteen-year-old grandson. Why, in particular, they burned his yacht. What good did that do Are the Americans crazy Americas actions in Iraq, the killing of twenty thousand children, thirty or sixty thousand women and old men, twenty or fty thousandWhat a way to celebrate turning sixtyCarol Page Three Mullumbimby girls Christel Taylor, Robyn Baker and Raylee Delaney, pictured right, left the sub tropics a few weeks back to join a horse trekking adventure near Adaminaby in the Snowy Mountains. No cups of tea and keno at the club for these girls, theyre far too outdoorsy for that, and they wanted to do something special for Christels th birthday. Up in the