Fellow travellers, I'm sure that you are as sick and tired as I am of all that fuss about that shovel left out the front of the home of the Health Services Union's Kathy Jackson.

Appalling right-wing commentators have gone into overdrive carping about the culture of thuggery and intimidation in so many unions. But of course this stereotype is completely divorced from reality. The truth is the exact opposite of what they say, as usual.

As we on the green left all know, union officials a...
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Fellow travellers, as you well know I write this blog out of love. I selflessly offer my deep wisdom for the good of all humankind. And while knowing that I am making the world a better place is deeply fulfilling, there is a downside. Being so far ahead of my time and so spiritually advanced, I do suffer feelings of isolation from time to time. It's lonely at the top, as they say.

That's why it's nice to know that there are others who share my deep compassion, and visions for a kinder, gentle...
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Sassy sister Cate Blanchett recently, and quite movingly, said of her activism on the issue of climate change: ''I can't look my children in the face if I'm not trying to do something in my small way and to urge other people."

I applaud such courage and conviction. But for me, the sense of urgency is even more immediate. If I were not waging a (peaceful) war against the denialists and alerting the world to their appalling lies then I wouldn't be a able to look Gaia Herself in the face (and I ...
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Fellow travellers, I just heard Julia Gillard on the ABC at the official launch of the National Broadband Network in Armidale, NSW. At the risk of sounding a little patriotic this is clearly a great day for Australia.

Now that the program is well underway, and - as Stephen Conroy said, on time and on budget - all those appalling NBN naysayers will just have to shut up, won't they!

The Government is truly doing it once, doing it right and doing it with fibre! And a year or two down the track, wi...
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Fellow travellers, why am I not surprised that the appalling Andrew Bolt thinks that our Tim Flannery's latest searing insights into the state of our planet and its potential future are "wild" and (as he said on the radio) "freaky".

But there is nothing unscientific or totalitarian about Professor Flannery's theories. They are clearly logical and undeniably egalitarian. I mean, what could be more fair and equal than a society that does not banish nature and all its teeming life forms as "the o...
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Fellow travellers, there has been much talk in the media about recent anti carbon tax rallies. One increasingly common angle is that they have been the result of a genuine grass roots movement of working class Aussies angry about Julia Gillard's "lies".

This is obviously not the case. As we all know, the great unloofahed are overwhelmingly shiftless and apathetic. You couldn't rouse them with a cattle prod. All they want to do is stare blankly at their plasma televisions and guzzle McMuffins a...
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Fellow travellers, I'm really starting to wonder what is going on in our PM's mind at the moment. Her behaviour does seem to be very odd. I mean, she's just attacked her official partners in government with some astonishingly extreme and false claims. She's clearly trying to create a real perception of difference between Labor and the Greens in the tiny minds of the great unloofahed.

Here is some of what she said:

The Greens will never embrace Labor's delight at sharing the values of everyday...
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In a nauseating display of triumphalism, the appalling Tim Blair describes an entirely reasonable admission from Tim Flannery in his interview with Andrew Bolt on MTR1377 as if it was some gigantic faux pas that "blows the entire scam wide open".

The offending quote was this:

If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.

Far from exposing some kind of scam, it just shows how wise, visionary and far-thinking Professor Flannery is. It also reve...
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Fellow travellers, like many of you I tend not to watch the ABC as much as I used to. It seems to have become so much more conservative lately. It all started with the appointment of that revolting Janet Albrechtsen to the board a while ago. I mean, can't we just have a purge of reactionaries and right-wingers so that balance can be restored to our ABC?

One show in which this appalling bias is always depressingly clear is Q&A. The producers are quite brazen about it. They have people like Mira...
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It's a given that conservatives are eeevil, hateful bigots who desperately want to hurt the planet. But sometimes they cloak their sinister intentions in "rational" arguments.

Take this appalling screed by Terry McCrann, one of Rupert's rotties, in which he claims the proposed carbon tax is akin to a suicide pledge. While at first blush it may seem like a logical take on Julia Gillard's bold promise and its consequences for our nation, there is much vile prejudice and falsehood at work undern...
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Fellow travellers, as we all know, conservatives want nothing more than to take Australian society back to the fifties. But when we point this out they always deny it. It's very much like their reaction to accusations of racism. You know for sure that someone is guilty of that if they deny they are. Really, it's as clear as black and white (and I don't mean that in a racist way of course).

But sometimes they don't deny it. On the contrary, they occasionally proudly claim allegiance to some opp...
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Yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard committed to the introduction of a carbon tax.This brave, visionary pledge to the planet was verballed into a betrayal of the Australian people by the usual conga-line of Gaia-phobic right-wingers.

I mean, really. Why are they so scrupulous all of a sudden? Remember when Tony Abbott admitted that what he said wasn't always the "gospel truth". That was so ironic because clearly that was one of the few times he actually was being straight up. They were all...
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Fellow travellers, reactionary right-wingers often claim that the mainstream media are completely dominated by liberals, environmentalists and left-wingers. But as is usually the case, the exact opposite is true.

Take this report about the impending demise of the McMansion in Perth due to fluctuations in the property market. The possibility that these immense, carbon-spewing excrescences have finally had their day in this city is seen as a bad thing. Can you believe it?

The piece is full of n...
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Fellow travellers, I know that many readers of the Sunday Times would have found this article about a Perth man who helped the irksome Andre Rieu recover from his bedridden state due to chronic and severe dizziness very uplifting.

Frankly, I found it nauseating. So nauseating, in fact, that after purging the soy smoothie I had just imbibed, I was actually struck with severe head-spins and had to have a long lie down myself!

Because of Bill Henshall's advice, Rieu is now back to recording and t...
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Fellow travellers, there's no denying that our unique Australian environment needs protecting and nurturing. And wherever possible introduced pests should be compassionately dealt with so that they do not damage the delicate local ecosystems.

But being such a life affirming soul, I still find some of these culling techniques a little upsetting. Take, for instance, the use of carbon dioxide to euthanase cane toads, which has just been approved by the Department of Environment and Conservation. ...
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Well, well, well, isn't this interesting. The scientific community is having conniptions over the discovery of a life form that can live only on arsenic. "Huh? That's just not possible!" they shriek, brandishing their yellowing old biology textbooks. "It's against all the rules of nature!"

Well, it is possible. And they'll just have to accept it. But it's obviously going to take a while. Old thought habits die hard, after all - particularly when they have been inculcated into the scientific c...
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