"Peter Gray, a Hunter Valley resident and member of Rising Tide (a Newcastle climate change action group)'

Says it all. No rational. Earth worshipers are highly predictable.

Everyone it wouldn't make a difference what the ABC did (although like any channel, they'd never shy away from showing any entertaining antics in an interview);
Might I add that this incident was covered WELL outside the ABC

These people simply assume their actions will make a difference.

Someone throws a shoe at John Howard in an obviously humorous gesture, and all of the right wingers start frothing at the mouth.

John Howard the two-faced lying roden (called such by a member of the coalition) helped create the murder, mayhem and collective misery described in Erasing Iraq. His thus very real crimes are silently ignored by the same mouth-frothers. He was even awarded a "freedom medal" by George the boy emperor, for services rendered (in the destruction of Iraq).

Australian democracy allows dissent and criticism made openly and fearlessly. You can squabble over left wing and right wing editorials all you want but everyone has a right to an opinion. Writers of left wing articles & books and right wing writers of papers amd articles and letters cant be sure they areon the money andeveryone else is wrong. History unfolds and reveals what the truth is and that doesnt happen by being correct and having a mortgage on the truth.
Even smelly shoes throwing is a form of democratic expression.however daft we call it.Demented are also citizens but you can spot them a mile away.

socratease

Hi Ho Hum,

Shoe-throwers, mouth-frothers - what's the difference ? Inarticulateness is not an argument in itself for or against anything. What are the arguments, the rationales, the context and background and motivations of guilty parties ?

In this case, Iraq: the first war has been over nearly twenty years, and the second has been going nearly eight. Amongst what seems a multitude of players, who is doing what sort of damage ? Whose blood is on whose hands ? How easy it is to fix all evil on one or two people (Bush, Rumsfeld, Howard - all now out of it) and overlook the many other contributors, Shia, Sunni, al-Qa'ida, Iran, the Saudis, the Syrians, tribal groups, and so on.

Yes, it was illegal for the Yanks to invade the second time around, but what ants' nests they clumsily and inadvertently stirred up were not their sole responsibility: many parties were itching to get stuck in. It may even transpire, from the Shias' point of view of majority rule for the first time ever, that in spite of all the destruction and turmoil, they may experience something like democracy, rough as it may be - and no thanks to the Yanks.

There always seems to be a way of arguing, not necessarily solely on the Left, that if you complain about something having happened often enough and loud enough, it will somehow reverse, or go away. No it won't. What's done is done. What do we do about it from now onwards - that's the question.

This quote from Culture Against Man by Jules Henry (1962) sums up the situation we are in.

"In Western culture today one must make a distinction between the culture of life and the culture of death. In the minds of most people science has become synonymous with destructive weapons, i.e. with death... Where is the culture of life? The culture of life resides in all those people who, inarticulate, frightened, and confused, are wondering "where it will all end". Thus the forces of death are confident and organized while the forces of life - people who long for peace - are, for the most part, scattered, inarticulate, and wooly-minded, overwhelmed by their own impotence. DEATH STRUTS AROUND THE HOUSE while LIFE cowers in the corner."

Cowered to such a degree that the only way to resist the wall to wall lies and liars is to make symbolic gestures such as throwing shoes at insufferably smug self-righteous toadies.

Nearly 50 years later the situation described by Henry is hugely worse by many degrees.

The politics and culture of the open hand versus the politics and anti-"culture" of the closed fist (which awards "freedom medals" to its fawning toadies)

Meanwhile the politics and "culture" of death scored a huge victory in the USA yesterday. A very dark day for the USA, and by extension the entire world.