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We wish all our visitors a Happy Christmas and New Year

This is the time to wish all our readers a Happy and Relaxing Festive Season with your Family, and to thank all of you who have sustained The Political Sword throughout 2017.

First, thanks go to our writers. Ken Wolff and 2353NM, who joined me to author countless articles on TPS and TPS Extra during 2017. Sadly, dear Ken died during the year. We miss him greatly.

Their pieces have been of universally excellent standard on subjects of relevance to the political scene here and overseas. The insights that these pieces have brought to readers have been deeply appreciated.

The Australian Independent Media Network (AIMN) has reproduced many of these pieces on its site. Our thanks go to Michael Taylor who operates the Network.

Backing up our authors is our coding expert Bacchus, who, working behind the scene, ensures that the pieces appear in word-perfect shape with graphics in place. This is a time consuming and exacting process, for which we all thank him. He, with the other authors and my dear spouse, proofread the pieces to ensure that they appear error-free. We are thankful for their attention to this demanding task.

Even further behind the scene is our Webmaster, who maintains the backend of The Political Sword. He has ensured that it performed as expected. We thank him for his support, now in its tenth year.

This year he has spent many months reshaping the site, using a blog engine that he designed himself. It offers many new features and a unique vibrancy. You have experienced it since its launch in October. We are sure you will continue to enjoy it during 2108.

The TPS Ambassadors have given great support to The Political Sword throughout 2017 by publicising on Facebook and Twitter every new piece posted on the site. We thank all of you for your continuing contribution to TPS.

Finally, we thank all of you who have visited The Political Sword during the year, and those of you who have left comments that have added so much to the value of the site.

We hope you have a refreshing break over the end-of-year period and that you will join us again in 2018.

There will continue to be much to write about in these turbulent political times, here and around the world. Now we have a brilliant new blog site on which to display our offerings.

With warmest Christmas Greetings and every Good Wish for 2018.

Ad Astra
Ad.astra5@me.com

Fomenting fear and loathing

What appalling scenes we’ve witnessed recently in Melbourne: its streets engulfed by protestors marching to who knows where, or why. Do they? The Westgate Freeway, the major arterial to the Western suburbs, was blocked and traffic disrupted by marchers plodding to the other side. Then where? Who ...

  • 27/09/2021

A tale of two ideologies

Once upon a time, the newly elected progressive Australian Government was told by their advisers that financial calamity was to sweep the world, bringing financial ruin, uncertainty and pestilence (the last one might just be made up) to humanity. The newly elected government, being of the mind that ...

  • 20/09/2021

Nature abhors a vacuum

In the past year or so, most of us would have become quite familiar with the group of people that seem to front up almost daily to discuss the current state of the COVID19 pandemic in each Australian jurisdiction. Usually there are a couple of politicians ably backed up by the experts in public heal...

  • 13/09/2021

What is revving up the bully boys?

This is a short piece. There is no need for lots of words. Images are sufficient. Have you noticed the cluster of loud-mouthed men that has appeared recently on our Melbourne streets, fists raised, shouting messages of defiance directed at our those in authority? Who are they? What is their ag...

  • 6/09/2021

We should be better than this

In The Guardian’s detailed history of the ‘Tampa affair’ which occurred twenty years ago, you will notice a number of similarities with the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Sadly, you will also notice that the response by current Prime Minister Morrison is worse than then Prime Minister H...

  • 30/08/2021

Toad of Toad Hall

This short piece is not intended to be a serious treatise; instead it’s a light-hearted appraisal of federal politics. We have had our fill of commentaries on the ins and outs of the Canberra scene written by self-confident ‘experts’ who believe they understand the machinations of the political clas...

  • 23/08/2021

The environmental vandals

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at some of the less savoury aspects of the current Coalition Government, led (for the moment) by Scott Morrison. This week, how about we look at the environmental record of this government, which reaches back to the days when Tony Abbott was the Prime Minis...

  • 16/08/2021

Protest and perish?

There have recently been a number of ‘freedom’ rallies across Australia where participants seem to be claiming that the current pandemic is somewhere between a farce and a ‘deep cover’ operation by unnamed authorities to exert control over the mindless minions (that’s the rest of us). Some who shoul...

  • 9/08/2021

The dog ate my homework

When you were a toddler and those responsible for looking after you asked you to do something you didn’t want to do, you probably threw a tantrum. A couple of years later when you had learnt to communicate, you probably expressed your disapproval (then threw a tantrum when your disapproval was noted...

  • 2/08/2021

Sameness

Asked what he wanted from life, a wise man said: I want to live; I want to be loved; and I want a little variety. This piece is about the latter: “a little variety”. Are you, like me, wearied by the sameness of so much of contemporary life? Multiple lockdowns occasioned by Covid-19 has afflict...

  • 26/07/2021

Compassion – you’re kidding

In October 2019, this website discussed the fate of the Murugappen family who were forcibly removed from their home in Biloela, Queensland by Border Force. At the time we questioned how someone who claims to have a fundamentalist Christian view of the Bible as the absolute truth (despite the ‘over 7...

  • 19/07/2021

Just get the jab(s)

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you can currently hear in your community isn’t a product of the sporting results last weekend or the sudden correction of housing prices. Rather it is the anti-vaxxers and their fellow travellers living the experience they feared — namely those who are vaccinat...

  • 12/07/2021

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3 COMMENTS

2353NM

24/12/2017

I too wish all the 'co-conspirators' and readers of The Political Sword the happiest of Christmases and a wonderful 2018. Enjoy some time with your families, celebrate the everyday, drive safely and take care.

TalkTurkey

26/12/2017

Hi to all at TPS. I'm still around but Comrades I find it hard to say anything helpful. If I say anything more it will inevitably be unhelpful - I'm so sorry to you personally Ad that we haven't beaten these bastards and so now we get Trump and Barnaby Joyce and craziness reigns supreme all around the world. So all I will do to the wise people here - because Ad's friends are indeed wise - is to wish you well and happy for the times to come. But you know you always have those wishes anyway. Cheers.*

*Anagram of Escher! 

Ad Astra

27/12/2017

Talk Turkey

How good to see your comment.

Indeed the world is in a sorry state, and politics is distressingly awful. I suppose it has been worse, but it’s hard to remember when it was as bad as it is now.

All during 2017 politicians the world over have exhibited the most selfish, the most incompetent, and the least statesman behaviour we have ever seen.

With Donald Trump raving daily from the White House, Kim Jung-un raving recklessly from Pyongyang, Therese May stumbling at every step as she tries to achieve Brexit, Benjamin Netanyahu aggressively pursuing his selfish agenda, Chinese leaders flexing their economic and territorial muscles, Vladimir Putin making international power plays, African leaders in cut-throat fights for power, and at home a pathetic Malcolm Turnbull constrained by uncertainty and indecision, it’s hard to pick an admirable world leader. Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau are the only ones who come to mind.

I suppose all we can do is to go on pointing out the worldwide scourge of inequality, the widespread disregard for the environment, and the incompetence of our politicians in dealing with these existential threats, and hope that 2018 might be a brighter year.

The voices of the people, our voices, may be the only ones that can influence political behaviour. So try we must, always.

All the best to you and J for 2018. 

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How many oranges do I have if I have 3 oranges and take ONE away?

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

Theodore H White

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Homer

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Hubert H. Humphrey

Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky.

John Lennon