3 posts tagged “alexander downer”

Lucire’s Sylvia Giles has just returned from an assignment in Melbourne, Victoria, and blogged about the state of race relations in Australia. I trust Sylvia’s judgement (otherwise, why would she be writing for us?) and it was very sad to see that even regular Australians from her random sample did not have good things to say about Prime Minister Howard’s record. And I had been quite supportive of the PM and of Alexander Downer, especially when they tried to back up alleged terrorist and al-Qaeda trainee David Hicks (in contrast to the laziness of our own Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet, Winston Peters). Sadly, Sylvia gives us a lot of food for thought and may provide an answer to the age-old (well, age and a half) question, ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’

When I think about the case of Bruce Robinson, the New Zealander in jail in Poland, I contrast it to the case of Australian David Hicks.
   Why hold a New Zealand passport at all, if your Foreign Minister doesn’t measure up to his Australian counterpart’s efforts when you are chucked into prison?
   Whether Downer has been effective is one thing, but note: he has been talking to the President, to Condi, to Alberto, and to Bob Gates (and presumably Don Rumsfeld). Now, I’ll be impressed if our Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet has talked to the same parties in Poland.
   Cripes, I might travel on my Pommy passport next time.

Since it’s G'day USA fortnight there in the US, and Alexander Downer this morning pledged Australians’ true-blue, united support for the War on Terror on Fox & Friends, I thought our American friends might be interested in this little item on Australian culture:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-Life-for-Sale_W0QQitemZ110078904033QQihZ001QQcategoryZ324QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This chap is selling his life, and the new person will need to take on his persona, debts and even eight girls he has been flirting with. He’s not killing himself: he’s simply desirous to transfer his persona on to someone else. He becomes another person with another identity after the new buyer takes over.