God And Caesar

God and Caesar

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Pell and Caesar

Straight Eye for a Queer Pope

Cardinal Pell -

Ephraem Replies to Fr Brennan SJ

The Cardinal and the Jesuit

Food Critics

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Now that the moral panic of the media over the Apology to the Indigenous Peoples of Australia has peaked and wilted, we might reflect on what actually happened - not that we are able to ask that question anymore. That is a question for outdated cultural warriors - let's not let facts interfere with a good political show.

It was a triumph of organisation. It was well photographed. The media apparat of bimboid, adolescent girls found the most photogenic and emotionally vulnerable members of the indigenous audience to interview.

Now, where have we seen that sort of thing before?

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Posted By: Ephraem - Category: No Category

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Herr Rudd

February 5th 2008 11:09

I will indeed make submissions to the Assembly of the Best and Brightest, the 1000, the Optimates (or in Greek, the Aristocracy). Has dear Kevin read Thucydides?

There are three implications that I can see:

1. We do not trust our elected representatives to represent us and we would rather our views be represented by unelected people chosen by Kevin. So we haven't elected the best and brightest? Ta, K! Maybe you should reform the ALP!

2. We have lost faith in the system and would rather have people rich and influential enough to take a fortnight off work and hang around in Canberra to speak for us. I believe a previous Labor Leader famously refered to such people as unrepresentative swill.

3. We trust implicitly in K's Government bureaucracy - do you expect K to go through every application from a "Mate" - to choose for us. So who chooses the 1000 Optimates.

The Council of a Thousand is an afront to representative democracy. God and Caesar sets its face against it. It is a ludicrous imposture. The only thing that would save it is pro rata payments - unless Herr K wants to keep the best and brightest as a personal fiefdom with other undisclosed emoluments - research grants, accesss to Ministers - and Brian Bourke, etc.

I am deeply ashamed by all of this. Paid Parliamentary entitlement was the foundation of Representative Democracy of the Labor Variety. Dear K take a night off and read some history - perhaps with Malcolm Turnbull, a similar sort of misguided elitist who would also profit from a dose of constitutional history.

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Keating is Still a Cad, but mostly Senile

January 31st 2008 11:20

Paul Keating, that paragon and arbiter of working class virtue, has seen fit to distress those who mourn a dead friend and father on the eve of his funeral.

Paul Keating is cad and a bounder - and probably senile. Thankfully, I'm no longer a member of the ALP. Being a working man I may not be able to make the funeral, but I shall certainly track down the wake! I reflect on Mark Latham's full frontal's on Paddy in the House - at least Paddy got a chuckle out of it. If there is a Heaven for pre-Vatican II atheists, I'm sure he's sharpening his lightening bolts. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

Paul Keating isn't a Labor Man's bootlace. He's just a grocers' Stalin - a self-educated, freidemanite dictator with an understanding only of the failings of the working class, especially when it suited his rhetorical purpose.

I hate to sound like Gerard Henderson, but Uncle Ben would never, never, ever have said that. I hope Keating turns up at the Union so I can punch his lights out! Hardly a proper wake if the police aren't called.

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Paddy has died

January 28th 2008 02:11

Paddy McGuinness has died

I am sad at Paddy's death. He was a challenging, even startling, interlocutor. He was a generous soul and never took umbrage at me giving back as good as I got. He had a horror of verbiage and lazy thought - only equalled by his detestation of intellectual simpering and pandering

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Frank Brennan

January 28th 2008 01:45

Frank Brennan is a frequent and welcome visitor to God and Caesar. He left this in a comm box below. It may be of interest to other readers so I publish it here.

Room for Church Views
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Peter Roebuck

January 21st 2008 10:17

I was shocked but not surprised by the nasty attack on Peter Roebuck in The Weekend Australian of the week before last in the Inquirer section. To provide a link would compound the calumny. I found this whimsical paragraph from my own published works - a food column a few years old now - and pass it on for what it's worth. I also draw your attention to Frank Devine's article in the Oz on the cricket question - a masterpiece of undertsatement. Here

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Back on Air

January 21st 2008 09:42

Sorry that I have been a deliquent blogger - by my absence rather than my presence. I have been expending my energies learning Farsi - shall we say - writing my book and having inconvenient work times.

The Farsi is going swimmingly and the book is just touching 80,000 words - more than enough to interest a publisher. I'm not sure whether the latter should be fiction or a documentary

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ABC Typos

December 23rd 2007 01:21

Here's a report off the ABC website.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has used his annual Christmas message to ask for hope and peace across Australia.
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The Christian Lobby

December 17th 2007 22:12

Christian lobby supports PM's same-sex stance ABC REPORTPosted Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:48pm AEDT

The Australian Christian Lobby has backed the Federal Government's position on same-sex relationships, which includes state-based relationship registers

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Gay Marriage and the Christian Lobby

December 16th 2007 22:19

Christopher Pearson comments on the upcoming stouch between the activist ALP ACT Government and the Australian Christian Lobby, with poor old Kevin in the middle. Gay Civil Union has reared its ugly head, Christian civilisation is yet again at risk but not to worry -Hillsong and the SDA will ride to the rescue.

My view is that traditional marriage will stand or fall on its own evident merits. It is no sexual Trebizond - heterosexuals will continue to marry and beget children regardless of whether or not gay people (and others in an interdependency relationship) can commit to one another and be registered. The barbarians are not battering down the walls of the last citadel

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February 2008

2 Posts

January 2008

5 Posts

December 2007