Loose cannons

Dear Santa ...

"The enduring values and beliefs my parents instilled in me as a child are what sustain me today." — NSW Premier John Fahey.

Bulldoze 'em!

"There is nothing valuable on that peninsula ... It is substandard, inhabited by low-income people." — Architect Harry Seidler on the Ultimo-Pyrmont area of Sydney.

You just think you're unemployed

"The Minister for Employment, Mr Crean, has dismissed a sharp increase in the number of long-term unemployed people last month as a seasonal blip in official statistics." — Sydney Morning Herald, March 14.

Back scratchers

The Violeta Chamorro government of Nicaragua has presented George Bush with a medal, the Great Cross of the Order of Dolores Estrada, Battle of San Jancinto. Dolores Estrada was a national hero who fought the 1856 invasion by US mercenary William Walker. George Bush was the US president whose military support for contra rebels was instrumental in putting Chamorro in the presidency.

Obstacles

"The battle against the guerrillas must be waged on unequal terms. The defense of human rights, of democratic principles, of the separation of powers, could prove to be an obstacle for the counterinsurgency struggle." — President Cesar Gaviera of Colombia, cited by Noam Chomsky in Z magazine, May 1994.

Ideas

"[ALP federal secretary Gary Gray] said he did not accept that the Government had run out of ideas. It was just that some of the ideas which had been revealed recently ... had been 'very bad ones'." — Sydney Morning Herald, March 16.

From GLW issue 180