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catsidheIt seems fairly obvious that John Howard wants Australia to have Nuclear Power. One point of evidence is how he keeps re-opening the 'Nuclear Debate'.
Note: re-opening. You see, we've had the Nuclear Debate already. Several times. He lost. Every time, the nays had it resoundingly.
That is, of course, simply Not Good Enough for our man Howard. This is evidently a man who simply cannot stand to lose -- or even admit to weakness (Sorry is the hardest word... might it be Short Man Syndrome, d'yer think?)
Given that, the result is now clear. We are not going to be allowed to stop having the Nuclear 'Debate' until John gets the answer he wants.
This isn't 'Manufactured Consent', just Consent which is being Managed into a more convenient shape. Note also how masterful he is at using his opponents' points against them.
Once again I say: It's not your goddessdamned country, John, to sell off or chop down or dig up at your pleasure. It's not the country of the 51% who handed the government to you either. Nor is it my country. It is all of our country, and you are a caretaker. You hold the country in trust for the betterment of all. Not just the rich. Not just Liberal voters. Not just bogans. Especially not the whims of Emperor Bush II, or the zaibatsus who, in the game you have mistaken for reality called The Market, have declared themselves the winners, and thus owners of the planet and everything on it. You do not have the right to sell off our telecommunications network, even if you have given yourself that power. You do not have the right to dictate what shall be taught in schools, or what history actually happened, even if you have made your opinions on these matters painfully clear. You cannot dictate to us what opinions we should have, while you and your mates (amongst others) keep whinging about how groupthink is so pervasive in academentia, and those intellectuals just can't be trusted -- they're all unreconstructed Stalinists, you know -- but real Australians think just like you do, indeed, that's the definition of a 'real' Australian is that they have the same opinions as JWH. FUCK I'm sick of that bullshit. And you only get away with it because Labor are too useless to be relied upon to do anything right, the Democrats aren't long for anything, and the media seems to buy your tendentious crap that Bob Brown is an eco-terrorist, and the Greens are all, to a man, dreadlocked and stoned hippies out to destroy western life as we know it, man.
Oh, it must be so hard to have more-or-less complete control of the government, the economy, and the daily agenda, and still find yourself thwarted by the opinions of meremortals peons citizens, not to mention when reality comes in and bitchslaps your favorite highfalutin bullshit ideological constructs well-founded theories. Why, all you can do then is blame the Left, or terrists. Or conflate the Left with terrists -- a vote for Bob Brown is a vote for Osama bin Laden!
Feh.
Dammit, I want my daughters to grow up in a world where what is now considered basic infrastructure is not delayed or denied because, basically, it is infrastructure, and other people might use it. I want my daughters to grow up in a world where the neighbors who wear a hijab are a source of curiosity, if that, and not reported to ASIO if they hold a family barbeque. I want my daughters to grow up in a world where intellectualism is not held to be somewhere between 'unaustralian' and outright traitorous.
Do I want too much?
Note: re-opening. You see, we've had the Nuclear Debate already. Several times. He lost. Every time, the nays had it resoundingly.
That is, of course, simply Not Good Enough for our man Howard. This is evidently a man who simply cannot stand to lose -- or even admit to weakness (Sorry is the hardest word... might it be Short Man Syndrome, d'yer think?)
Given that, the result is now clear. We are not going to be allowed to stop having the Nuclear 'Debate' until John gets the answer he wants.
This isn't 'Manufactured Consent', just Consent which is being Managed into a more convenient shape. Note also how masterful he is at using his opponents' points against them.
"So you want power that doesn't come from dead dinosaurs? Fine! We can do that! The only possible way is to go Nuclear. It's not as dangerous as all those 'experts' (lefties, greenies and tree-huggers all) have been hyperbolising about, so just remember that all comments against Nuclear Power (oh, and the wholesale export of uranium to whoever can pay for it, did I forget to mention that bit?) are complete hyperbole, and anyone who is against Nuclear is objectively pro-oil and rapes endagered quokkas -- won't somebody think of the quokkas? (Oh, did somebody say 'solar/hydro/tidal/ethanol'? Well they're just peddling pipe-dreams -- that is unproven technology which will never fly (especially if we 'forget' to fund any research in it -- did I say that out loud?))"
Once again I say: It's not your goddessdamned country, John, to sell off or chop down or dig up at your pleasure. It's not the country of the 51% who handed the government to you either. Nor is it my country. It is all of our country, and you are a caretaker. You hold the country in trust for the betterment of all. Not just the rich. Not just Liberal voters. Not just bogans. Especially not the whims of Emperor Bush II, or the zaibatsus who, in the game you have mistaken for reality called The Market, have declared themselves the winners, and thus owners of the planet and everything on it. You do not have the right to sell off our telecommunications network, even if you have given yourself that power. You do not have the right to dictate what shall be taught in schools, or what history actually happened, even if you have made your opinions on these matters painfully clear. You cannot dictate to us what opinions we should have, while you and your mates (amongst others) keep whinging about how groupthink is so pervasive in academentia, and those intellectuals just can't be trusted -- they're all unreconstructed Stalinists, you know -- but real Australians think just like you do, indeed, that's the definition of a 'real' Australian is that they have the same opinions as JWH. FUCK I'm sick of that bullshit. And you only get away with it because Labor are too useless to be relied upon to do anything right, the Democrats aren't long for anything, and the media seems to buy your tendentious crap that Bob Brown is an eco-terrorist, and the Greens are all, to a man, dreadlocked and stoned hippies out to destroy western life as we know it, man.
Oh, it must be so hard to have more-or-less complete control of the government, the economy, and the daily agenda, and still find yourself thwarted by the opinions of mere
Feh.
Dammit, I want my daughters to grow up in a world where what is now considered basic infrastructure is not delayed or denied because, basically, it is infrastructure, and other people might use it. I want my daughters to grow up in a world where the neighbors who wear a hijab are a source of curiosity, if that, and not reported to ASIO if they hold a family barbeque. I want my daughters to grow up in a world where intellectualism is not held to be somewhere between 'unaustralian' and outright traitorous.
Do I want too much?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 03:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 07:41 pm (UTC)Evidently.
BTW, thought you might find the following ...something... I was going to say amusing, but that's not quite the right word for it somehow.
Nuclear debate a farce: Garrett
My personal take on nuclear power is that it's a viable option, provided that 1)the costs of setting the bloody thing up in the first place are more than outweighed by the energy gains (which I think is what your commenter above is also thinking, and from listening to various experts debate the subject, seems unclear); 2)safety and maintenance are seriously stringent, and 3) we work out what to do with the waste.
My opinion on 3 is that we shoot the stuff into the sun, and Australia develops its space industry for exactly that purpose. We make money disposing of other people's nuclear waste, and possibly even wind up with enough money to explore other alternatives ourselves. There's the odd issue about risk, and what the Australian people (and the rest of the world) would consider an acceptable risk profile for such an option, but I think the idea is worth exploring myself.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 10:27 pm (UTC)And I'm pulling numbers from my arse here, but I imagine the long term average number of rocket breakups within the atmosphere has to be of the order of 1/100, right? 100 launchings of radioactive waste, and roughly one of those launchings results in release of large quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere. I don't know what kind of waste container is going to be gauranteed to survive a high termperature rocket explosion.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 10:30 pm (UTC)Indeed. There's no point in spending the equivalent of six gigawatt years of electricity to commission, fuel, and decommission a power plant that will provide only five gigawatt years of power (as an illustration; I pulled those figures out of my butt, but they illustrate the point well enough). And that's without considering the political issues.
My feeling is that it can be a net gain, provided we reprocess the spent fuel. If we don't, I suspect it ends up being a net loss. As I've already implied, though, reprocessing opens up a massive can of worms, not least of which is how we dispose of the irradiated chemicals used in the reprocessing plant ...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-23 07:26 pm (UTC)