The Smile

Most interesting:

"After escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran last weekend, the ABC gave Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi an unfiltered platform on Monday morning to peddle Iranian propaganda about Israel on Radio National's Breakfast. Marandi is a well-heeled apologist for the Islamic Republic who teaches American and postcolonial studies at the University of Tehran. Softly spoken with a smile like moonlight on a tomb-stone... " (Iranian slander against Israel goes unchallenged on ABC, Andrew Hastie, The Australian, 14/2/18)

Andrew Hastie, yet another ex-soldier gone on to serve his country in federal parliament, is, you'll recall, the member for Canning, WA. Now quite how he can detect Marandi's smile while listening to him on radio (not to mention the fact that he's wearing boots!) I leave for someone else to puzzle over.

My interest here is that wonderful simile he's deployed. Seems like there's a poet in the man! Is Hastie following in the footsteps, I wonder, of that other literary WA MP, Dennis Jensen? (See my 7/4/16 post Dennis Jensen MP: More Space Cadet than Sky Warrior)

Frankly, Hastie's inspired me. Next time I hear Fran Kelly interview an Israeli apologist for Israel, like Hastie maybe I'll actually get to see his smile and can describe it thus - with a smile like white phosphorus falling on a Gaza slum - or maybe thus - with a smile like that of the Israeli sniper who put a bullet between the eyes of Gaza's Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh.

Feel free to try to write your own.

Shit Happens

Andrew (Blazing Barrels) Hastie, desperately seeking the West Australian seat of Canning for the Libs in tomorrow's by-election, said in today's Australian:

"The biggest thing that was missing for 6 years under Labor was serious intellectual engagement with soldiers on the ground about how to best prosecute the war in Afghanistan." ('Labor MPs put Diggers at risk', Andrew Burrell, 18/9/15)

But what does former SAS captain Hastie mean by serious intellectual engagement?

Something along the lines of Tony Abbott's sage observation, in Tarin Kowt in 2011, to US commander James Creighton on the death of Australian soldier, Lance Corporal MacKinney? 

Just to jog your memory:

"It's pretty obvious that, well, sometimes shit happens, doesn't it?"

Now top that, if you can, for serious intellectual engagement!

Here's an idea: seeing Andrew's big on serious intellectual engagement, if, perish the thought, Canning voters do the dirty on him in tomorrow's by-election, what better valedictory than 'Well, sometimes shit happens, doesn't it?' could he possibly come up with?