Disconnect

The Middle East imploded.

There are samples from some of the major Middle Eastern blogs at:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19785441-401,00.html

Miguel D'Souza from Reuters reports:

"AS Israel launches major offensives and goes toe to toe with militants on two fronts the conflict inevitably has spilled into the blogosphere. Bloggers, some of them posting from the affected areas, have captured the panic, anger and sorrow that the violence has unleashed."

Meanwhile, in the antipodes, we've had headlines that the rail stations are not terror proof - der - and another week of leadership skirmishing, our own version of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown saga in the UK.

The headlines have run all week: "One of these Men Is Lying"; "Get Back In Your Box Peter"; "Howard Costello face off in Cabinet"; "PM won't be stampeded".

The day after the so-called cabinet showdown, with Howard still Prime Minister and Costello still Treasurer, Howard went to the Bankstown Workers' Club where once again he confirmed his bizarre rock star status. Nobody can work a room like Howard. I noticed it years ago, when it started up; he would walk through the airport and suddenly there would be mobs of school girls going silly with excitement. This bizarre popularity is probably under-reported in the media at large; the disconnect as they say between what interests journalists and what interests the general public.

The demonstrators outside sang "We've Got the worse gov-ernment, in the world" to the tune of "He's Got the Whole World, in his hands".

As he arrived, after an unplanned detour to MacDonalds, where he shook all their hands too, he strode into the club to the now traditional chant of ``Hey hey, hoh hoh, Johnny Howard's got to go''.

The Blacktown Workers Club is the social centre of Greenway, the Liberal's most marginal NSW seat and their third most marginal seat in Australia.

The seat of Greenway, which envelops the classic western Sydney working class suburb of Blacktown, fell to the Liberals for the first time in its history at the last election. It is a quintessential working class seat, home to the ``Howard battlers'' who have been so influential in his success. It is held by just 800 votes.

In his oft applauded speech he reminded people that he too had been born in the suburbs of Sydney. He co-opted Western Sydney into his vision of the country, as an area full of people aspirational for the future of their children, a place where people could start with nothing and build a life, a small business, raise a family. "Can I express my admiration for the spirit of Western Sydney, the way in which they have embraced the ideal of aspiring to build better lives for themselves, their children and their community. It is the essence of modern Australia.''

He moved amongst the crowd, shaking just about every hand of the 800 or so present, a bubble of activity surrounding him as he moved amongst friends, stopping to talk about schools, about volunteer groups. Thousands of photographs were taken as he posed cheerfully with children, parents, pensioners.

This strange celebrity status, and his enthusiastic shaking of hands, is one of the keys to Howard's success. It's the simplest thing, shaking somebody's hand, but the fact that he is actually prepared to meet the voters goes a very long way. I've seen him do it even when therewasn't a vote in it. One morning a few years back he went out to the airport to meet the disabled athletes coming back from the disabledgames after the Olympics. None of us, well certainly not our chiefs of staff, cared less about noble stories on disabled athletes and even back then the only question they were asking was about Costello and succession.

One of the athletes, a gallumphing mongoloid, ran through the airport gates and jumped into his arms, nearly bowling him over. After shaking every last one of their hands Howard then gave a stirring speach on how the sight of the green and gold always made him immensely proud and lifted his spirits high, and never more so than on that day. The media didn't want to know but the athletes all loved it. And to this day I bet you they remember the morning they shook the prime minister's hand and he told them their country was proud of them.

A group of Southern Sudanese present him with a soccer ball as thanks for his help. I love the PM because he loves Australia, and that is all important to me, said one 70 year old woman. He's greatly respected, said a 17 year old.

That Peter Costello had a ``hide'' to tell Howard when he should go.

At the presser Howard expressed his sympathy for the terror victims of India, but all the questions were on succession. His final, perhaps mischievous, line to the media as he departed was: ``Ten and a half years and counting''.