Clarification
Crikey writes: The headline “Multimillion dollar real estate business collapses amid claims of harassment and fraud”, published yesterday in Crikey, did not relate to Cody Live but related to the business Live Board Holdings, which was placed in administration in February. Pierce Cody and his fellow directors resigned from that company. Cody Live purchased the assets in full of Live Board Holdings and continues to operate as Cody Live. While Cody Live is involved in the litigation referred to in yesterday’s article, Pierce Cody told Crikey that the claims made in a statement filed in the NSW Supreme Court by former Live Board Holdings director Costa Koulis were “spurious at best and we will seek to knock them out”. Cody Live has not collapsed and according to Cody is performing well.
Crying wolf on terrorism
John Richardson writes: Re. “The deceit at the heart of the terrorism hysteria” (yesterday). Bernard Keane is right on the money with his claims about the latest deceit being practised by Western governments in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism, so as to bolster their arguments in favour of even more stringent security measures at the expense of democratic liberties.
Notwithstanding the clear evidence to the contrary, our politicians’ favourite malevolent fear monger, outgoing ASIO Director-General David Irvine, only last night was busy “crying wolf” on ABC TV, urgently spruiking the argument that Team Australia was confronting an “elevated terror threat” from radical Islam.
Of course, notwithstanding the expanded powers and billions of dollars thrown at Western security services to combat terrorism in recent years, including ASIO, Irvine was unable to explain their apparent failure to succeed, given current alleged threat levels and their insatiable demands for even more powers and more funding.
Like most of our contemporary leaders, Irvine appears to subscribe to the view that if you promote a particular thesis long enough, you will eventually be proved right, or we’ll all die waiting for you to be proved wrong.
Student politicians’ real agenda
Peter Wildblood writes: Re. “Why aren’t uni students jumping to the Left?” (yesterday). As a long-time observer of universities here and the UK I can assure you that “politics” on campus has always been a matter of organisation. Mostly the Left do it and the Right don’t, but whenever there is an issue burning the souls of the right they always have the numbers. This was so at the LSE when I was there in the ’60s and it has always been so at the UNSW and in particular in my time there in the ’70s and ’80s the “Left” was basically Right … if you only dug a little deeper than the street slogans; think medicine, engineering, science, etc, not to mention applied science. Same applies at Sydney, where Abbott seemed to have little enough trouble gaining traction,you may recall.
My “heads up” on this came from a Conservative MP who I met at the LSE; it’s a thesis I have never seem breached.
Regarding Mr Richardson’s contribution and the ever-present existential threat from terrorism ‘world wide and forever more’, there is a clear confluence of interest between the government of the day and the Security Agencies.
The Agencies will always cry wolf, that is their raison d’etre. What’s the point of being a Security Agency and telling everyone that they are quite safe. The ‘confluence’ is in the government of the day always turning to security issues to help ‘manufacture consent’ by fear.
I’ll bet we never hear a government tell us that the billions spent on security these days is largely a waste of money, even though it is a reasonable argument to make, and one that is hard to refute when we are talking of billions of dollars.
And what do we get for our billions – existential fear and terror, mainly drummed up by the Agencies with the media’s dumb assistance.
I want to get a job where I’m paid yonks of money and the proof that I am doing a good job is that nothing happens, and I justify my continued drain on the public purse on the basis that something might happen, one day.
And if perchance something did happen, I can reasonably argue that there was no way anyone could have foreseen it.
As a past student politician who came close to being entitled to long service leave from the University Union that I was a Director, Treasurer and President of for 7 years, I feel entitled to support the discussion that Left and Right at uni are not analogs of the real world L&R.
I am and was essentially Left-leaning on social issues and very much Right when it came to governance and corporate management.
Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple any more.
Corporations now operate primarily for the benefit of their executive management above their shareholders and way above that of their customers. There are so many versions of Right, from the Tea Party Nutters down, that there is no such thing as Right.
Left no longer includes divisions into recognisable flavors of communism, socialism and labor. There is no such concept as a modern Left.
It has been Us and Them for at least 50 years. Money Vs Less money. That is the everlasting truth. US and THEM.
Know and stick by your rich mates. The rest is only BS. As the NSW ICAC hearings demonstrates daily.
Think of Irvine’s budget?
As for their credibility – how long before we get another Muhamed Hanif?
JohnB
Thanks for the clarity. I agree – my experience was about 40 years before yours (I presume) but bluntly, just the same.
Cheers
Sailor, my experience spanned 1967 – 1974. 40 years difference? I doubt it, unless you are writing from the grave.