Power pyramid

".....as you move up through society's power strata, there's a point where morality flips.
A sort of moral inversion layer, beneath which the rules apply but above which they're reversed."


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/truth-of-assange-is-stranger-than-fiction-20120411-1ws4o.html#ixzz1rnDJ9uZa

What is the Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire”. - i agree

The Inside Men

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/25/3226510.htm
Karl Bitar, professional politics and the end of belief

By Jonathan Green

The unsettling truth revealed by that possibility is that the ......'s of this world - and they are legion - would presumably be unimpeded in pursuing either aim by anything so professionally debilitating as personal belief.

And there lies a sobering truth of modern politics: it's simply a professional game played by people with no allegiance other than to the outcome required by the moment. It is a game of influence, opinion control and issue management, a sophisticated lark for the dispassionate professional. It is certainly no place for deeply held conviction.


Without belief we have nothing but self-interest. Without principles we just blow in the breeze of opportunism. Politics becomes friable, the voters disloyal, and ultimately disengaged. The process that results is almost by definition incapable of delivering on the hard decisions, the calls that once upon a time would have been driven by resolute leadership backed by belief. Such romantic notions have no place in a modern, professional political game that has become a captive of the careerist, mobile, ideologically androgynous political class: there's simply no percentage in tackling the tough issues.

Aus 2010 Election quotes

"The whole situation has gone from being 'on the edge' to being irritating. Just want things to move on so we can get into our 3 years of mud slinging. The independents suggest a new stability and 'paradigm shift'. This will just be a severely malfunctioning Parliament which gets nowhere. Those bloody bells will be rung off of the walls!

Posted by: rupy | Sep 07, 2010 at 01:50 PM " - ABC

Don'ts
..... slavish adherence to the focus groups where they become iron law

SMH arctile ..." .....political skill over the last nine months has been in defining the battleground.

He did not turn around the...... fortunes - and bring it to the brink of victory - by taking his stand from the mushy centre and compromising with his opponents."

Paul Krugman,The New York Times’ economics commentator, called the plan “the audacity of dopes”.