Fanatics in the autocratic oligarchy of the John Howard Party (formerly the Australian Liberal Party, the party of decentralised small government) hardly ever take a breather in their obsession to turn Australiastan into an authoritarian branch of the neo-con empire.
Just the other day book-banning advocate and Attorney General for Crimes Against Humanity, Philip "Heil" Ruddock, was blithely stating that sleep deprivation was not torture. Oh, yeah? Then how come I go bananas when events conspire to deprive me of sleep over a period of days? Sleep deprivation is at the black heart of psychological torture, often making the physical tortures of fingernail pulling and genital electrocution unnecessary. Unless, that is, the torturer just needs an orgasm.
One wonders what other forms of torture Ruddock might consider to be merely coercion, and will he write the rule book on what is and what isn't. No doubt those in the profession of extracting confessions through torture, posing these days as the guardians of democratic freedom, will heed it's every word.
A couple of days later Our Glorious Leader came over all stroppy with his condemnation of everything to the left of Genghis Khan.
Today, Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is pushing for Howard Party control of education, claiming that left-wing ideologues in state governments have hijacked what is being taught in schools. "Some of the themes emerging in school curriculum (sic) are straight from Chairman Mao -- we are talking serious ideology here," said she.
I think we can all agree that educational standards in Australia and elsewhere are stuffed, but that devolution has been in progress for some forty years. As with every pronouncement made by Howard Party stooges, this is simply a grab for centralised control to further its right-wing ideology.
Poor Julie Bishop. Like all the other Ministers and backbenchers under Howard's malign tutelage, she has lost whatever integrity she once had. I wonder if any of them realise how completely Howard has sucked them dry of their humanity. Only Petro Georgiou remains miraculously unharmed.
It's amazing how often the Howard, Bush and Blair governments use Stalinist and Maoist totalitarian regimes as examples to fulminate against the left, when in actual fact they are modelling themselves on those very regimes.
It's hard to believe they are unaware of this. But then, maybe it's a simple case of projection. That is, the attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt. Yep, it's always unconscious.
As for their antisocial and undemocratic policies, their is nothing unconscious in their demonic urge to straiten and punish.
-- Olney Garkle
