"Little Black Bastard"

An eagle-eyed regular Whisper's reader (we have thousands) draws our attention to the photograph we published of the late Stephen Hawkings (with walking stick) marching to protest the Vietnam War with Vanessa Redgrave, writer Tariq Ali and others in the late 1960s.
Directly behind Hawkings and holding the banner is a very young Australian dancer, actor, director and choreographer Noel Tovey.
Tovey is part Aboriginal and enjoyed a very successful theatre career in the UK including teaching at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre and the world famous RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). At one stage he also ran a successful Art Deco antique store in London.
His autobiography Little Black Bastard is recommended reading.
The title refers to an earlier life as a teen in Melbourne when he worked as a male hustler for a time . The insult was hurled at him by coppers as they shoved him into a cell after arresting him.
By co-incidence Whispers just borrowed Tovey's second book And Then I Found Me from the local library.

The last time Whispers encountered Noel was at an event at the Sydney Town Hall where the guest of honour was then PM John Howard. As Howard got up to speak Tovey hurled some choice insults at Howard over the Iraq War, and then stormed out of the building.

God Save Us From Pompous Gits : Dawkins, Hitchens, Fry

A regular reader has forwarded a YouTube piece (below) in which the increasingly tiresome Stephen Fry interviews nutter Richard Dawkins who (the reader) believes decimates the concept of 'respect' and believes we should publish it. We have. It's real thigh slapping stuff.

There is a madness that encapsulates the navel gazing stuff being churned out by the disciples of New Atheism who are threatening to descend upon Melbourne in 2012 en masse to flog more books encourage enlightened discussion in their crusade against organised religion.

Recently Dawkins, author of one of the dreariest tomes in recent years The God Delusion refused to debate Christian theologian William Lane Craig (probably a pointless task) and explained his reasons in this nonsensical spirited piece in The Guardian.

One of Dawkins oddest reasons was that Craig apparently supported God's (whoever that is) decision to slaughter the Canaanites, a tale from the Bible, that may or may not be true, (or a fable as Dawkins would call it) but which Dawkins quotes from ad infinitum. Dawkins declares Craig an "apologist for genocide".

Oddly, Dawkins is more than happy to share a stage with bore writer Christopher Hitchens who openly supported via numerous editorials, the invasion of Iraq- an atrocity he called "a war to be proud of" in which at least 113000 have died with official figures (according to Wikileaks) of civilian deaths at 1300 but possibly far more and with over one million Iraqis displaced. That was a war that George Bush Jr claimed : "God Told me to end tyranny in Iraq". Maybe some genocides are more equal than others.

Confused ?. So am I.

'A Celebration Of Reason' will take place in Melbourne on 13th to 15th April 2012. You can book tickets here but hurry, the ranks of Atheists are already splitting into different religious factions.

the things people say...

    A political moment overcomes tSS as we read today that the Sydney Morning Herald reports: Iraqi rage at Blackwater decision in US court by their Baghdad correspondent Michael Hastings.

A speech by former PM John Howard to Parliament in 2004:

 " I again take the opportunity of reaffirming the correctness of the government’s assessment in predeploying our forces, and I record the bitter opposition of the  Australian Labor Party when that decision was taken. Not only was the military operation completed quickly and successfully but it is also worth recording that all of the doomsday predictions, particularly the many that came from those who sit opposite, were not realised.

     The oilwells were not set on fire; there were not millions of refugees; the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were not breached to bring on catastrophic flooding; and there was no long, drawn out, bloody, Stalingrad style street-to-street fighting in Baghdad. For all of this we must be immensely grateful, but it is a reminder of the hysteria and the doomsday predictions that often accompany operations of this kind. And, just as many of the predictions about a Western Front style holocaust that were made in 1991 when the land war commenced were proved wrong, so the predictions on this occasion have been proved wrong.

       The decisive  victory of the American led coalition reflects enormous credit on the strength and the determination of the leadership of President Bush.

      Again I remind the House of the way in which his role was vilified and traduced by many of those who sit opposite and of the way in which speaker after speaker from the Australian Labor Party impugned his integrity, assaulted his judgment and called into question his ability to lead the United States in this very difficult conflict. History has proved them wrong.

The performance of the President has illustrated how infantile their protests were, and the leadership that he has given on this occasion, I believe, will bring about a permanent change in attitudes in the Middle East."

Yeh, sure.

update ## my favourite green-grocer in Kings Cross was very excited after the fall of Saddam and made a trip back to Iraq in 2005 where he was born. He returned within a week and said he had secured a job in a government ministry and was off again within the month. His family in Australia..or relatives in Iraq have never heard from him again.

If you think the noughties were fun...wait until we bring news of what is in store for us all according to Nostradamus !

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Apologies accepted !!

  And it was nice to see the same newspaper yesterday finally picked up our tale of Nicole Kidman attending the Carols by Candlelight delivered by us on 22nd December after she had previously claimed life in Sydney was a living hell because of the media (we politely left her alone on the night) and demolished the utter nonsense printed in an unnamed newspaper ( the Daily Telegraph ) that actor Matt Damon and his family were cutting a swathe throughout small holiday townships on the south coast of NSW during their non-existent cruise aboard the giant liner The World. He was skiing in the US.

                          Check out The World's website-there are still plenty of apartments for sale including the 6 bedroom penthouse where for a lazy few million dollars you can sit and watch the sea for hours on end. What fun

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