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February 28, 2006
Clarifying Johnny's biggest moment
Here's a two slide PowerPoint presentation sent by one, Jerry Mander, that further defines what our beloved leader meant when he got all goosebumpy a few years ago while declaring: "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come."
NOTE: At the moment this only works (using a Mac) in Camino, Firefox and Opera. Safari and Explorer show a page of gibberish. Not sure why. TGW
Posted by Willikers at 10:29 AM
February 26, 2006
The Weekly Gee (10)
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Ode to the Pied Piper from Hell on his tenth anniversary of rule by Maurie Gee He can't be flushed, this non-core turd Truth is smeared with his shit Vandal, thug and philistine The cunning scum he calls friends All is corrupted by his touch His many low, contemptuous acts He thinks he's well and truly won His life is born of a witch's curse Those he hurt hide their fury Much too late to hide his face |
Posted by Willikers at 3:06 PM | Comments (1)
February 23, 2006
The next Howard Decade: Coming to a Labor electorate near you
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Posted by Willikers at 4:41 PM
February 22, 2006
John Howard: Into hith image hath he maketh uth
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Posted by Willikers at 10:31 AM | Comments (1)
February 21, 2006
HowardFest: three days to celebrate the triumph of his will
John Howard invites you and yours to join he and his for a night of taxpayer-funded revelry to celebrate ten years of successfully conning the Australian electorate. The final event in a three-day display of conservative triumphalism, the party will be held on 3 March in Melbourne at the Myer Family's Toorak mansion, Cranlana.
OK, you're not really invited, even though you've got three or four hundred thousand dollar cars in your driveway. But you can always crash the party. Just bring along your chequebook and offer to pay the $10,000 cover charge for a stool in the back. Promise you will only eat the leftovers with your own silver service and Reidel glasses. After all, the Liberal Party Fighting Fund needs all the cash it can get. Fighting democracy, the fair go, egalitarianism and peace in our time doesn't come cheap, so don't be a cheapskate. Ha-ha, just kidding. John knows that when it comes to forking out for The Cause, Liberal Party supporters are second to none.
Well, almost. You'll be competing with the crème de la crème of our esteemed business community, who, after all, are the only citizens that matter in Der John's Cowardly Old World.
Hob nob with Sol Trujillo, the Yankee Cowboy responsible for giving ongoing anxiety attacks to that other demographic that matters: shareholders.
Rub shoulders with Transurban's Kim Edwards and National Bank managing director John Stewart.
Other "dignitaries" on the roster include, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Linfox founder Lindsay Fox, Paul Little of Toll Holdings, Former CRA chief Rod Carnegie, Former Committee for Melbourne chairman Jack Smorgon, Village Roadshow's Rob Kirby, Coles Myer's John Fletcher (naturally, it's his house!), and BHP chairman Don Argus.
But all these good and upright folk are nought compared to representatives of investment bank JP Morgan, who will pay $50,000 for their seats. O' course JP Morgan has an interest here; they hope to garner the key selling role with the upcoming $20 billion sale of Telstra.
And don't forget, Peter Costello will be there as well as a few (or maybe less) Coalition MPs and ministers who can be counted on to keep their mouths shut. Danna Vale, the sycophant who once compared John Howard's visit to her electorate as being as exciting as a visit by Clint Eastwood, will be home knitting doilies on the night.
But wait, isn't Lleyton Hewitt invited? As soon as he gives up losing tennis matches, he'll be ripe for investing his absurdly gained millions in keeping the electorate ignorant for the next decade of Howard rule.
The day after will see Our PM launching a new book (published by the businessman's uni propaganda arm of choice, Melbourne University Press), entitled The Howard Factor: A decade that transformed the nation. Well, they got the title right.
If you're a Sydneysider, you'll get your chance on 2 March at the Westin Hotel. Sorry, but the kickoff gala will take place on 1 March in the Great Hall of federal parliament. That event is closed to all but some 600 Coalition politicians and business figures. Should be a tight fit. As for the prostitutes recruited from the nation's many poor Labor electorates, they will offer no seating problems as they will spend the evening on the floor between the legs of each citizen above suspicion. This looks to be the best of the nights for our power elite. The finest cuisine followed by Cuban cigars and cognac and blowjobs galore.
Links:
PM's 10-year bash a bonanza
Liberals' poster boy is staying for his party
Posted by Willikers at 10:55 AM | Comments (1)
February 19, 2006
The Weekly Gee (9)
| Undaunted by the temporary set back suffered by women-fearing Aussie Tories (and their simpleton doormats), expect a resurgence of good clean fascism from John Howard's greatest totalitarian hope, the All-White, All-Misogynist and All-Australian |
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Posted by Willikers at 2:45 PM
February 16, 2006
Conscience carries the day: women's bodies their own
And here we thought that no one could stop John Howard. Not Steven Seagal or Billy Jack or Batman or Superman or Spiderman or Captain Marvel or the Green Lantern or the Power Puff Girls or even the Family Guy. But the conscience of parliamentarians has done the job.
RU486 has passed both houses and is now set to become law.
The vote was carried on voices, but the amendments were quashed by 90 votes to 56.
You have to wonder what would have become of the recent IR legislation, the pro-terror bill, and student unions, if a conscience vote had been allowed.
Just shows to go ye that democracy works when not shut down by the likes of John Howard.
Links:
MPs pass abortion drug bill
Controversial bill passes
Posted by Willikers at 4:45 PM
February 14, 2006
News of the day: corruption, stupidity, hubris, and a dirty trick
Corruption
Four Corners returned with a bang. The Greenhouse Mafia is another indictment of the Howard Government's culture of corruption and secrecy, this time on how industry insiders have hijacked global warming.
A whistleblower tells how industry representatives have infested the federal bureaucracy to write greenhouse policy to serve their ends. The minister irresponsible, Senator Ian Campbell, has been well coached by John "I know nothing" Howard. Unable to answer a simple question put to him repeatedly, he exhibits an apparently endless repertoire of weasel words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and would still be doing so today if reporter Janine Cohen hadn't stopped him.
As if that weren't bad enough, scientists from CSIRO describe the censorship imposed on them by government bureaucrats working conveniently out of earshot of their ministers, particularly when the scientists' research on global warming directly contradicts government policy.
The show will be aired on ABC TV again tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 11 pm, and also on digital channel ABC2 at 7 pm and 9:15 pm. Don't miss it, but make sure your dinner is well behind you.
Here is the transcript of the program.
Stupidity
Poor old Danna Vale is a simple soul. She's not a bad person; she would have been fine in some ladies auxiliary serving tea and cakes to volunteer churchgoers. But as a federal Liberal MP she has mostly embarrassed herself over the years. Then again, with the voter awareness quotient hovering between wha...? and duhh, Vale may be the one they can really relate to.
Anyway, she believes that if we keep "aborting ourselves almost out of existence," we may find ourselves at the mercy of Muslims, who never abort.
To that end, she and four other Coalition doormats are promoting a compromise amendment to retain political interference for abortion drug RU486. The TGA can go ahead and make their decision, but parliament would now vote on whether to approve it. And you can bet there would be no conscience vote.
Links:
We may become a Muslim nation: Vale
Vale 'on her own' over Muslim population comment
Hubris
So John "I stand by my Stalinist values" Howard has gagged public servants from answering questions relating to AWB during Senate estimates hearings.
Senate Clerk Harry Evans says it's illegal and they must testify.
ASIO chief Paul O'Sullivan has refused to answer questions, even when put on the spot by Labor Senator Joe Ludwig, who said, "It's an interesting point Mr Sullivan whether you are going to cooperate with this committee or whether you are going to cooperate with the Government."
Ludwig and O'Sullivan are living in two different Australias. Ludwig belongs to the Australia that used to be a democracy, O'Sullivan belongs to the one that could be described as Corporate totalitarianism.
Links:
Iraq issues ban, public servants gagged
ASIO chief refuses to answer AWB questions
Labor questions legality of Senate estimates gag
The dirty trick
The man who eschews competitions of any sort, Age cartoonist Michael Leunig, is the subject of a vendetta by someone who hates his left-wing views.
This someone, posing as Leunig, entered one of his cartoons in the Holocaust competition launched by Iranian newspaper Hamshahri.
The cartoon in question was deemed inappropriate for publication in 2002 by then Age editor Michael Gawenda. Because of this the "Leunig double" said, "...here is this cartoon which cannot be published in my own country."
There are two panels to the cartoon. The first shows a poor man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance. The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan "War Brings Peace" over the entrance and the same man walking towards it bearing a rifle.
David Marr obtained a copy and published it on Media Watch. Harold Hark's Scum at the Top published it from the Media Watch website. Click here for the SCATT posting, which will take you to the Media Watch website.)
Leunig's cartoons are a unique combination of compassion and political incorrectness. There is both gentleness and intense anger in his drawings of John Howard's desecration of Australia's ethos. Leunig is as dumbfounded and outraged as the rest of us. Talk about a national treasure.
Link:
Leunig suspects pro-war hoaxers
Posted by Willikers at 2:49 PM
February 13, 2006
Attention dope smokers: John Howard is after your stash
Whereas the stillborn weasel who walks among us usually presents in drag as Margaret Thatcher (that dear old friend of Augusto Pinochet), he is currently enjoying a makeover as Nancy "Just say no" Reagan. He wants you to abstain from smoking dope because it's bad for business and if you don't he's going to confiscate your stash. But wait, that's not all. If you refuse to do his bidding, he and those who do do his bidding, the Laboral premiers, will reopen those concentration camps and stash you there until Jesus Christ (with Bill Heffernan's help) comes to redeem your worthless, heathen soul.
With his conservative fraidy-cat agenda to stop everyone from doing anything he doesn't like, dope is next, on the pretext that it causes mental illness. Who is more mentally ill than a conservative preaching abstinence in the 21st century?
Marijuana has always been smoked by people for whom getting high and perceiving multiple realities is far more interesting than getting stuck in the littlest reality of all, the one where you waste your entire life shifting beads on an abacus.
Huffing and puffing as they try to catch up are the prohibitors who, following the historical evolution/regression curve, inevitably wind up in power after a brief interlude of life-affirming discovery made possible by the dreamers. Their return is as inevitable as a cancer defying remission. And everything gets shut down all over again.
Enter John Howard, who should have exited years ago. After a decade in which he has successfully revoked Australian democracy, he's now looking around for new restrictions on the progress of the local species.
In the 1980s Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" campaign was a convenient front for the CIA's importing of crack cocaine (under the supervision of Vice President George Bush, aka Moron The Elder). In California during the 1960s you could go to prison for three years for possession of a single joint. Oddly enough Ronald Reagan was governor then. In the 17th century you got burned at the stake for having sexy eyes or a wart on your nose or a heretical idea. And so bloody forth.
So here we go again. Abstinence is the new core value being preached from the hypocrite's parliamentary pulpit. Of course if the polls were to show that people -- even Howard supporters -- would rather be toking adulterers, then ridding the nation of the devil's work would become just another non-core promise. Meanwhile, it's abstain from everything but shopping.
Will prostitution be next? They never tire of going after the prostitutes.
There is one area our sanctimonious lot of religious hucksters won't be touching. The only place in Australia where you can buy hardcore pornography is Canberra. After a hard day of retributive policy making while using God's name in vain every time he utters it, your pious conservative likes nothing better than wanking in a taxpayer-funded expensive latex vagina sleeve while slavering over multi-penetrated maidens on the taxpayer-funded plasma widescreen.
Link:
Bill Bush: Cracking down on cannabis
Update: I have been reminded that in the last few decades the THC levels of specially grown varieties of marijuana have risen to the point where some users minds are being blown into an outer space they are incapable of returning from. Veteran dope smokers tell me the stuff is too strong even for them. While I have yet to try these souped up varieties, I have smoked some pretty strong hash; such that, moments after the last toke, I had no idea where I was. Such is life. Some of us come back; some of us don't. The same certainly applies to the drug of choice for conservatives, alcohol. What then is the proportion of those driven to schizophrenia from high-powered pot to those who go bananas from booze, killing themselves, their families and strangers?
Posted by Willikers at 3:10 PM
February 12, 2006
Pro-choice poster: you're chance to be (in)famous
Monica Dux (Bloody tactics blur the truth on RU486) suggests pro-choice people should counter the "ghoulish fascination" of fundamentalist pro-life websites and their bloody depictions of aborted foetuses by recruiting Jesus for their side.
I see the proud poster now; our Lord, wearing an apron, a screaming child tucked under each arm, his hair and beard greasy and unwashed, waiting for the next single parent payment to come in, wishing that abortion had been an option when he and Mary Magdalene had that little slip-up. The slogan: "If it weren't for the twins I could have really amounted to something." Maybe this will do the trick.
Well, what are you waiting for? I'd do it if I knew how. Someone please take up Monica Dux' suggestion. Send a copy to me for instant publication, and a copy to her c/o The Age. I'm sure she'll know who to forward it to. Such a poster could -- and should -- become a banner for the pro-choice movement.
Here are some further excerpts from her column:
Those zealously opposed to legal terminations thrive on emotion. It is their most potent and compelling weapon and they use it with promiscuous pleasure. With all the subtlety of a Danish Muhammad cartoon, the pro-life lobby discard all nuance and drown all debate with the simple cry of "baby murder".
There's a ghoulish fascination in viewing the images of aborted foetuses that litter right-to-life websites. The Pro-Life Victoria site is particularly charming. There you'll find a page featuring two bald headings: "Alive Children" and "Dead Children; aborted". The first page delights with images of happy, healthy babies, smiling joyfully at the camera. On the second, one is bombarded with pictures of blackened and mutilated foetuses.
These gratuitous pictures have no context or explanation. But such manipulative tactics achieve the desired effect. Who cares about rational argument and subtle distinctions when you're confronted with an image of a dead baby?
Maybe it's time the pro-choice lobby adopted similar tactics? What about a website featuring "Happy Women and Children" and "Sad Women and Children"? Click on the former and you are treated to rosy scenes of women living full and meaningful lives, gaining an eduction, making employment decisions that ensure a financially stable future, enjoying a healthy relationship with a decent, loving partner, and finally having a child that is happy, healthy and wanted. On the other page we would see teary mothers and unwanted babies: wasted lives, lost opportunities, splintered families and neglected children
Be sure to read the whole article.
Posted by Willikers at 2:40 PM | Comments (1)
February 10, 2006
RU486? Absolutely!
Courtesy Courier-Mail
This photo appeared on the front page of The Australian newspaper today in a much larger size, but was not reproduced online. You really need to have seen it. It shows four strong women who know exactly what they are doing. I'm tempted to call them heroes, but they are more than that. (A hero is usually a man who has overcome the biological pack-mentality of his gender to act in the liberating interest of all of us.) These women are the future. A future in which no woman will be forced to yield to patriarchal stupidity.
From left to right: Fiona Nash (National Party), Judith Troeth (Liberal Party), Lyn Allison (Democrats) and Claire Moore (Labor). The photo was taken after yesterday's Senate vote removing Tony Abbott from his position as God's surrogate over what women can and can't do with their bodies. It is a stunning portrait and I'm still cheering.
The vote, on whether control of RU486 (the pill that would replace surgical abortion, also known as mifepristone) should be taken away from the Health Minister and given to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, passed easily, 45 votes to 28. Of the 28 who voted against it, 25 were men. 25 God-fearing yokels posing as ministers of the crown.
The weird, and in this case wonderful, Amanda Vanstone had some choice comments during the lengthy debate:
"I would like the pro-life people to get another name because, frankly, that describes everybody in this place. I do not know anybody who is against life.
"If you can come to a view that there can be a just war, why can there never be a just abortion?
Vanstone also "blasted conservatives who oppose the use of birth control in Third World countries, saying she wanted to make them go to the funerals of children who die in poverty or AIDs victims." (this quote from Misha Schubert's "House on the Hill," The Age.)
Democrat senator Lynn Allison said, "It is galling listening to the men -- and it is mostly men -- who have such contempt for women who terminate unwanted pregnancies."
What is it with right wing conservative Christian men and their hysteria over abortion? Listen to Barnaby Joyce, a certified nutter:
"Mankind comes unstuck when it fails to respect human life. Those deaths of those women that will happen must rest on those who decide tomorrow."
Matt Price quotes him as comparing championship for RU486 with support for fascism and slavery.
Bill Heffernan, Howard's bull-goose nutter, seconded Joyce's hysterics by saying, "Eventually euthanasia will be legalised in Australia … and guess what will happen? There will be (a) pill, and it will go to the TGA, not to knock over babies, but to knock over people."
Tony Abbott actually believes control should reside with him because the TGA is not accountable. Oh, and he is? Isn't he a member of the Howard Government where accountability means less than nothing? He may not have twigged, but the TGA might just have the expertise based on accountable evidence to better decide on the legality of RU486 than his expertise, which is based on really solid ground like the will of God.
John Howard, naturally, will vote with the nutters in the House next week.
These men represent just about everything that is wrong with the world. They act in a fog of ignorance, without the capacity to reflect on their beliefs. Perhaps that is their problem: they are believers. And their beliefs have imprisoned them. A belief stymies intellectual pursuit beyond the belief. (Talk to a born again Christian and you might as well be talking to a tape loop.) Their intellectual horizons are no wider than that of a fetus (a term they wilfully refuse to understand); no wonder they are so protective. Indeed, they squeal about the sanctity of life for the unborn, while condoning the slaughter of fully grown humans in Iraq and the psychological destruction of asylum seekers.
They are frightened of women who are not doormats. Look at any conservative wife and you see a meek, cardigan-wearing woman whose only use is to put meat and potatoes on the table. Or, even worse, a woman more vicious than Bill Heffernan. Nowhere in their patriarchal history have they shown the least respect for a woman's right to choose how to live her own life. This atavistic fear is conveniently channelled into the historical über-patriarchal religious view of women as nothing more than vessels to procreate more and more men.
These are men parading as responsible and accountable parliamentarians, but who in reality are only capable of parroting ideologies that are of no benefit to humanity. They are without qualifications, without character, without ethics, without dignity, without a conscience, and without a heart; in short, they are larvae.
Maureen Dowd is right to herald the coming disappearance of men and their unevolved Y chromosome. Too bad it will take millennia.
Links:
Matt Price: Women's victory on issue of choice
Jason Frenkel: Bitter words over abortion vote win
Michelle Grattan: RU486 could yet be a bitter pill for Abbott
Nassim Khadem: Senate backs contentious abortion bill
Stephanie Peatling: Yes, but abortion pill fight isn't over
Posted by Willikers at 3:10 PM | Comments (2)
February 7, 2006
Bill Heffernan takes sabbatical from gay-bashing to yell at women
The legendary Harold Hark (legendary, that is, in his own lunch bucket) used to refer to John Howard as Puny Nephew. The Prime Minister, in other words, was the "genetically weak offspring of Big Brother's idiot sibling."
Naturally, every mewling despot has to have a tough standover man to bring the sooks into line whenever they start to exhibit a conscience or question the party line on totalitarian policies.
Enter Bill Heffernan, the man who took over Max Moore-Wilton's job as Puny's chief gunsel.
Don't know what a gunsel is? Definitions are hard to come by, but the Free Dictionary and Answers.com define it thus: A hoodlum or other criminal, especially one who carries a gun.
Richard A. Spear's Dictionary of Slang and Euphemism, gives the following definition: A tramp's catamite. His second definition of "catamite" is: any male, regardless of age, who serves as a receiver in pederasty.
The definition I am using comes from the U.S. prison system, where a gunsel is a tough guy who is kept as a toy boy by an even tougher guy and who is forced to be the tougher guy's standover man.
By this definition, Bill Heffernan is not exactly a gunsel, since we all know John Howard was born without genitals. (Rumour has it his children were conceived by silver-spoon-fed sperm, the donor's identity not to be revealed for 100 years, by which time the PM is certain to have stepped aside for the ascension of Peter Costello's great grandson.)
Still, Heffernan's relentless homophobic attacks on High Court Justice Michael Kirby suggest that he is a closet queer, as are so many right wing homophobes the world over.
Awhile back, Heffernan rawjawed Barnaby Joyce into submission on the final sale of Telstra. Now he is telling National Party Senator Fiona Nash that she is "blowing it out her backside" because she has threatened to "never again put the government ahead of her party when voting in the Senate." The reason for her threats: Julian "The Pokies are paying for my Tango Lessons" McGauran, the National Party fop who ditched the rubes for taxpayer funded Krug champagne with the Born to Rule Party.
Barnaby "Who am I, anyway?" Joyce and Mark "to no a" Vaile are experiencing sweaty upper lips as they do passable renditions of Little Britain's Emily Howard: "That's no way to treat a lay-dy!" Labor's Kim Beazley is outraged as well, bringing up the "appalling disrespect" phrase and (pardon the chuckles) "there are rules against intimidating members of parliament" etc. etc.
Never mind all that. Years ago, John Howard, the gunsel's master, told Bill (and all his ministers) to forget all that civilised mumbo-jumbo and, for God's sake, forget about accountability. "Leave those quaint remnants of an ethical era to me," he said.
We have come to expect this kind of thuggery from Senator Heffernan. It makes the perfect counterpoint to John Howard's milquetoast good manners. John soothes the thumbsucking consumer/citizens with his sleepy twaddle while Psycho Eyes Bill kicks the shit out of anyone who gets out of line.
After ten years of government by blue-ribbon hoons, it's safe to say: 'Twas ever thus.
Link:
Heffernan in damage limitation mode
Posted by Willikers at 12:05 PM
February 6, 2006
Teenagers and Conservatives: Whatever was "God" thinking of?
This morning I did battle with my fourteen-nearly-fifteen-year-old daughter. In the last minute rush before departing for school in my sleek maroon Daewoo sedan, she forgot to bring her new Yellow Card CD, the band with which she is currently and hysterically enamoured. Of course, my CDs are disallowed. Were I to have foolishly switched off the engine the night before with one still in the tray, her index finger (that long finger of summary execution which unerringly hits the correct buttons to remove any trace of the pathetic musical interests of her hideously uncool father), would have, the following morning, allowed no more than two notes to play before contemptuously ejecting the vile disc.
So we listened to her radio stations. As luck would have it, no one was playing any music. The presenters were yakking it up with that medicated hilarity you hear on such stations the world over.
We were passing a primary school and I was just hitting the brakes to assure a glaring lollipop lady that I had no intention of doing 60 in the 40 zone when my daughter, with great vitriol, denounced a presenter who had been rabbiting on for several streets. She said: "Oh! He is so gay."
For the last few years she and her friends have been using this somewhat cuddly term, normally meant to describe our homosexual brethren, in a derogatory way. It's not a total put down, but you do not want to be thought of as gay these days unless you enjoy being out of it.
We've gone the full ten rounds on her use of this word many times. She's tried to tell me that she is pronouncing it differently, and for awhile she actually did. The word escaping her snarling lips was something like "geh". But over time, and especially this morning, the pronunciation has reverted to an all-out "gay".
By now I was furiously tailgating the car in front of me -- for some reason the driver took the speed limit of 40 kph to mean she could slow down to 30. Why do they do this? They all do this!
Before I could stop myself, I gave dear one a serve. "Some right wing homophobe started this twisting of the term. And it worked. Teenagers all over the world who have no problems with same-sex relationships, are nevertheless using the world's most common term to describe them in a denigrating way. You have been duped by homophobes."
She snorted with all the teenage derision she could muster. "What a load of rubbish; you and you're right wing conspiracies. Besides, you mean derogatory. I've never heard of the word "denigrating". There is no such word." Now I was foaming. "So, in your fourteen years of sheltered princess hood, the word "denigrating" doesn't exist because you've never heard of it. This is just the sort of blinkered ignorance the right wing thrives on. The Young Liberals will welcome you with open arms!"
That long finger of doom shot to the radio's off switch. She inserted the little white earphones of her iPod and stared menacingly out the window. I, in turn, stared menacingly at mother after mother driving SUV after SUV. I broke the silence, realising that to break through the cocoon of iPodian music I would have to bellow: "How long until their John Howard-supporting husbands start buying them Hummers, eh?" She produced one of her trademark flippant groans; a withering disgust filled the Daewoo. "You know," I continued, "Lleyton Hewitt owns one. He would, wouldn't he, the sporty little darling of the Conservative Undead. We'll see them sooner or later, petrol prices be damned. The upcoming status symbol of the Aspirational Shareholding Right: driving their children to school in assault vehicles."
We pulled into the school. Before she was able to extract her bag from the back seat I shoved a Frank Zappa CD into the slot. "Weasels ripped my flesh" accompanied her huffy departure. I beeped the horn. She turned around. We laughed. Our tiffs always end this way.
In truth, she will grow up to use her expanding vocabulary of derogatory denigrations to flay the Young Liberals far more successfully than I ever have. Simply because she will grow up. Conservatives have never grown up. They are arrested adolescents, with all the hubris associated with thinking you know everything when you know nothing.
Posted by Willikers at 3:34 PM | Comments (1)
February 5, 2006
The Weekly Gee (8)
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Posted by Willikers at 4:12 PM | Comments (1)
February 4, 2006
Wheat for bullets? The sheep don't care
When AWB executives returned, triumphant, to Australia, they told the Government that not only had they saved the old wheat deal, they had actually signed new contracts, at even higher prices. Even to the Government, it must have seemed a miracle. Except it wasn't.
Trade Minister Mark Vaile had a long meeting with AWB executives when they got home. He says he believed everything they told him, to wit: that Iraq's corrupt officials had happily signed a $300 million wheat deal with Australia - a country that was about to send troops to topple their Government - "out of respect for Australian farmers". Mr Howard says he believed it, too. -- Caroline Overington: Active choice to see no evil, The Australian, 4 February 2006
A businessman is to corruption as a pedophile is to children: In neither case can the culprit help himself. Much as we'd like to think it is possible, these poor saps cannot be rehabilitated.
That is why we are disgusted but not surprised over the AWB kickback scandal. Or over all the corruption scandals that have preceded it in the ten years of Honest John Howard's rule.
Nor are we surprised by the Howard Government's involvement. As the political wing of big business, the Liberal Party could hardly be expected to have the interests of Australian citizens as a priority. While it is true that all political parties are prey to corrupt influences, none has quite matched the subterranean brilliance of John Howard Pty Ltd.
All the righteous posturing all these years over the reasons for going to war in Iraq have been blown away by the real reason: it was good for business. It was good for Bush's corporate cronies, as well as Howard's. As Kevin Rudd says, "[The Government allowed] $300 million to flow through to Saddam; money which we now know was used to purchase guns, bombs and bullets which were then used against Australian troops."
The full implications of this are almost beyond comprehension. However, one dictionary definition of treason might apply: the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery. In this case not against the government, but by the government.
The moral degeneracy of the Howard Government is bad enough. Worse, though, is the unthinking support of such degeneracy by a disengaged electorate, an electorate for whom tax breaks matter more than their humanity. This is an electorate that would have been at home in Hitler's Germany: "What's this? The Jews are being herded into concentration camps for extermination? No worries mate, she'll be right, the interest rates are still low." It's like being the only sane person in a hospital for the stark raving mad. Sooner or later you have to revert to the foetal position … or escape.
Howard will probably survive the AWB. He's like one of those movie monsters who cannot be stopped. Or an undead zombie who just keeps coming. In the end he is merely a symptom of a worldwide failure of conscience. The momentum is gathering speed and it appears there will have to be a head-on crash before people wake up. Bush is in a corner and his puppet masters have no intention of giving up. The anti-Islam cartoons in the European newspapers -- a totally unnecessary provocation that has more to do with right wing aggression than free speech -- can only escalate religious hatred between the two fundamentalisms. The one, Islam, may have as its goal the destruction of Israel and America, but the other, Christianity, has as its goal the destruction of the whole world: Armageddon. The new president of Iran, like Bush, has God on his side, and quite conceivably could unleash nuclear retribution to satisfy both.
The eternally incarnated genetic garbage who dominate the world stage as "leaders" have never had it so good. Because no one cares enough to try to stop them.
The human species had better start evolving, or it's going to be lights out.
Links:
The Age Editorial: Evidence demands ministers explain themselves
The Australian Editorial: A crisis for Canberra
Posted by Willikers at 12:31 PM | Comments (2)