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
No sooner had I completed a piece titled: How would YOU revive the economy? than it became redundant. A quick glance through it will show why it dated so rapidly. Like me, do you ponder why it took the dramatic events of recent days, of which you are all well aware, to bring about what can ...
Recently I watched an episode of Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery where she ‘delivered’ Gillian Triggs back to her high school and university while discussing various elements of Triggs’ life. Towards the end of the program, Zemiro invited Triggs to read some of the commentary made about Triggs in her r...
Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is attributed with the maxim that ‘change is the only constant in life’. If he came back to life now, you would hope he wouldn’t be surprised to see the maxim is as accurate now as it was 500 or so years before the modern era when he was alive. We don’t react we...
Although recent public opinion polls have suggested that some people are losing faith in democracy, how many would prefer another style of governance? Very few! Yet our Australian democracy does have one telling defect: usually, we have a chance to vote for a federal government only once every three...
You would think after a month or two, Senator McKenzie’s ‘own goal’ in the allotment of sporting grants would have subsided. If anything, the stench is now worse than when McKenzie’s largess to shore up political positions first came to light. In Senate hearings, an executive of the Australian Audit...
People the world over are understandably alarmed by the recent eruption of a novel coronavirus (now named COVID-19) and its spread to countless countries, bringing in its wake widespread disruption, chaos, panic, illness and death. Previous coronavirus infections: SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Sy...
The Australian Federal Police have dropped the investigation into the political ‘hit job’ Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor failed to execute on Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. For those who came in late, we noted last December. Morrison has also spent a considerable amount of political capit...
Naturally enough in the wake of the catastrophic bushfires that have affected most states since last October, there has been a national discussion on theories that, according to their proponents, would have reduced the risk of bushfires starting or would allow us to more effectively attack the ragin...
Sometime in the future when Australia is finally taking real and meaningful action on climate change by reducing emissions across the board (and hopefully we aren’t all suffering a reduction in quality of life due to the compressed timeframes and drastic action required to obtain a result), it would...
The Festive Season is over. Christmas, with all its seasonal trappings, delighted and enriched us. The joy of being with family and friends remains a cherished memory. The summer break refreshed us. Now, the prospect of another long year looms. What does it hold? How well will the pleasures we’v...
This blog site traditionally has a look back at what we commented on in the past year as our last article come December. This year, we’re going to break the cycle and look at what Prime Minister Morrison should be considering over the next month or so instead of asking ‘how good is the cricket?’. Th...
You’ve probably heard Prime Minister Morrison offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ to those affected by the bushfires that continue to burn in parts of Australia, or the ongoing drought, or perhaps the bombings that occurred in Sri Lanka last Easter. Morrison isn’t the only ‘world leader’ that follows t...
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.
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!
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.
Liberty is so precious - so precious that it must be rationed.Lenin
Liberty is so precious - so precious that it must be rationed.
We just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice.Tony Abbott
We just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice.
Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before eighteen.Albert Einstein
Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before eighteen.
To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.
Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of.Polly Toynbee
Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of.
Exactly. I haven’t been here for years but do have a new website up and running. I had hope to put it in the URL to not directly promote it.
The closet MMTers are coming out of the woodwork and MMT is being proved correct!
wam
Thank you for your kind remarks.
Yes, I was depression baby. It was when I was living in Nambour in Queensland as a child that I first saw unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hopelessness. Unemployed men came to our door asking for money to buy food. But after seeing the...
Congratulations old fellow, a metal horse, from a youngster who was in awe of your words when I thought you were a war baby to discover you were a depression baby makes you amazing.
