Any war will do

The lies of war ... Andrew Wilkie and Afghanistan ... Dickie Pratt and the great box cartel heist ... Hiding evidence from everybody ... Michael Wilding gives dud journalism a whack ... Alf Parsons, diplomat, passes ... Evan Whitton observes

Monkish parping

Amis with drinkKingsley Amis (1922-95) was a falling-down drunk, serial adulterer and minor novelist.

But in Lucky Jim (1954) he eerily anticipated the weird "parp parp" of Tony Abbott's demented demagoguery, as detected by Guy Rundle and precisely mimicked by Max Gillies.

Does this sound like the Mad Monk?

I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Parp parp,
'Long as I got my plastic Jesus

Cannon fodder for the AWWD

We seem to feel obliged to supply cannon fodder for America's wars. So it is prudent to take into account:

1. The US is pretty much run by the bipartisan AWWD (Any War Will Do) Party.

2. Generals, the Central "Intelligence" Agency and politicians are capable of lying to the American people and us.

For example:

In Consortium News (August 15), Ray McGovern, a CIA intelligence analyst 1962-89, reveals that in 1967 General William Westmoreland lied about the number of Viet Cong under arms in South Vietnam.

Westmoreland said the Cong had only about 299,000, but McGovern knew from another analyst, Sam Adams, that the right  figure was some 600,000.

Their CIA boss, Richard Helms, who is said to have organised President Jack Kennedy's execution, went along with the lie.

The rationale was in a SECRET/EYES ONLY cable of August 20, 1967 from Westmoreland's deputy, General Creighton Abrams: "We have been projecting an image of success over recent months."

If the 600,000 figure became public, the press would draw "an erroneous and gloomy conclusion".

Petraeus: lots of saladAdams and McGovern regretted not having leaked the cable and saved lives.

General David (Fruit Salad) Petraeus, pinup boy for the AWWD Party, is running another useless war in Afghanistan.

On August 23, Fruity claimed that his troops have turned the tide against the Taliban.

Footnote. The War Party is said to be inciting Israel to have a whack at Iran on the basis that the US (and its loyal little allies) will then have to enter the war on Israel's side.

Telling truth to power

Ray McGovern will be interested to learn that a truth-teller to power, Andrew Wilkie, may hold a piece of the balance of power in the Australian Parliament.

Colonel (as he once was) Wilkie has the distinction of being the ONLY intelligence analyst in Australia, England or the US to resign because politicians and the CIA were lying to excuse an unlawful invasion of Iraq.

Wilkie was promptly monstered by Jackie the Lackey and his running dogs; one even resorted to the Stalinist (and Bob Askin) ploy of suggesting he was "unbalanced".

Wilkie is again telling truth to power; he says we should disengage from US policy and get out of Afghanistan.

If Parp Parp and Gillard do not listen, it will be their melancholy duty to go to more funerals.

Revealed: our biggest Mr Big Enough: Ryszard Przecicki

Przecicki: with spoilsMichael Bachelard reported (Sunday Age, July 25, August 22) that Dickie Pratt's cardboard box cartel ran for 15 years rather than four, and probably robbed everyone of some $2 billion.

Mr Bachelard also reported that Pratt (b. Ryszard Przecicki 1934, d. 2009), was a relentless briber, and that a former employee, Alan Hancock, blew the whistle on him in 1993.

The Australian Trade Practices Commission investigated, but no charges were laid, perhaps because criminal law is heavily biased in favour of criminals like Pratt.   

Why bother with detectives and DPPs?
 
As every schoolboy criminal knows:

• Harvard defence lawyer Alan Dershowitz says all judges, defence lawyers and prosecutors know that "almost all'' defendants are guilty.

• The truth-seeking system reformed by an un-lawyer, Napoleon, convicts almost all defendants.

• In ours, the DPP hides evidence from judges and jurors. Judges hide more from jurors, and even more from themselves when sitting alone.

• Statistics from the NSW Dizzo in 1994 revealed that judges sitting alone convicted only a quarter of defendants. Jurors convicted half.  

Amazingly, all states, except NSW, let criminals insist on a judge-only trial, i.e. criminals get about three chances in four of getting off. And NSW is heading that way.

Taxpayers and victims might say: why bother with detectives and DPPs?

Stupid is as stupid does

The criminal-friendly system is relatively recent.

For more than 600 years, English judges let jurors hear all available evidence. Then, about 1800, they suddenly decided that jurors were stupid and could not be trusted to hear certain evidence.

They also effectively decided that they were more stupid than jurors: they decided to conceal the same evidence, and more, from themselves.

Reading: hide everythingThey also seem to believe that stupidity is a degenerative disease, like dementia. They have hidden more and more evidence from themselves and jurors over the past 200 years.

Rufus Isaacs, Lord Reading (1860-1935) took the grimmest view of the mental calibre of his colleagues and jurors.

He gave judges the authority to hide ALL evidence in 1914. That happened in a famous Melbourne case of alleged theft of $66 million from a brewery.

It is, of course, patently absurd to say that judges are more stupid than jurors. What is absurd is that they accept an unfair system.

Here is a test question: would you prefer to hear all available evidence?

Jurors would probably say "Yes". Judges would have to say "No".

A knife in the jocular vein

Michael Wilding, 68, now emeritus prof (English) at the Camperdown Tech, aka Sydney University, had a big success with his comic faculty novel, Academia Nuts (2002).

The Times Higher Education Supplement said it is "so funny that it deserves to be the final great campus novel".

Wilding took the hint. He invented the post-faculty comic novel, Superfluous Men (2009), in which three lecturers take early retirement and scratch around for something to do.

Like John O'Hara's novels (Appointment in Samarra, Pal Joey), Wilding's stuff is almost entirely dialogue, except that his knife is in the jocular vein.

Now, in The Prisoner of Mt Warning (launched Melbourne, August 28) Wilding has turned his satiric eye to dud journalism, "creative" writing courses, the "alternative" lifestyle of the 70s, and spooks.

Sounds like more fun.

Fruity Foxtel

Is Foxtel the only fruit shop that forces you to buy a rutabaga, a Brussels sprout, a turnip, and a quince, when all you want to buy is a mango?

His Excellency regrets

Parsons: High Commissioner The sad passing of one of our ablest diplomats, Alf Parsons (1925-2010), recalled his 1985 Australia Day bash at Australia House.

The good and the great were there. Mr Mark Ella, who had lately scored a try in all four Rugby internationals, was perhaps the most notable.  

Departing at a late hour, I paused to thank the host, who was chatting urbanely with a group of military types.

I broke in: 

"Your Excellency, as plenipotentiary of a great metropolitan morning newspaper, I have the honour to convey the most distinguished compliments of The Sydney Morning Herald, and now beg leave to withdraw."

The test of a diplomat is to say exactly the right thing, whatever the circumstance.

Alf grinned:

"And you can get f*cked too."