« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
August 31, 2007
Ripper website hires noted exorcist to cast out demon Weasel of Oz
Volfango Tuttimiguarda
That's right, that's us. Bilegrip has obtained the services of Italian freelance exorcist Volfango Tuttimiguarda. His mission: remove the curse of John Howard from the minds and hearts of Australians still under the hobgoblin's evil spell.
Our exorcist first came to the world's attention upon his sacking from the Vatican for attempting to rid the infamous nation-state of its anti-Christian influence. His method of exorcism, that of wetting a large head of sacred kale (pictured) with holy Pellegrino water, then shaking it vigorously while hurling canonical epithets at the ruling body of outraged nun-cleavers and anti-abortionists, proved a futile gesture in the event.
"I'm afraid the love of Jesus Christ cannot penetrate that bastion of Satanic power," he said some weeks later, after his successful escape to Australia disguised as the Elect Whacker of the Exclusive Brethren franchise in Italy. Unwitting officials of the John Howard Party were on hand to meet the apparent fellow traveller at Tullamarine airport, along with clockwork representatives of the Australian franchise, only to lose sight of him when he again changed his disguise into that of a little old lady wearing a faded blue cardigan buttoned all the way up.
Tuttimiguarda's most recent success as an exorcist came shortly after his arrival, when he was forced to purge himself of a sinister, open-handed wobble-curse placed on him by American film director David Lynch owing to his suggestion that Lynch's quinoa recipe might be improved if kale were substituted for broccoli. Lynch also took issue with Tuttimiguarda's assertion that the bottle of sugared water the director referred to as "violet" (in his tale of the lone kiosk in the barrens of a dusty Yugoslavian night) was in fact heliotrope.
Accompanied by his assistant, Accursio da Stranacittà, whose uncredited work as Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni's favourite shoe stretcher is said to have caused the premature aging of French actor Alain Delon, Tuttimiguarda has rented a room in King's Cross from where he has already begun the long and complicated ritual which he believes will restore Australia's soul.
Let us pray.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 1:05 PM
August 29, 2007
The Grating Wall of Sydney
A mere 2.8 metres high, 5 kilometres long
Blow the Roman trumpets and bring on the dancing girls, for the visiting rulers of APEC are about to be treated to a Cecil B. DeMille frolic paid for by and protected from the wretched of the earth.
The host of the show is America's Viceroy to Australia, John W. Howard. Paralysed with fear that, in front of the assembled, he might suddenly blurt couplets of love to his old squeeze, the war chimp from Umeruhca, the Weasel of Oz is being coached day and night in restraint by his wife, unwitting instigator of the international Janette Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, we suspect that while the Great Ones are imbibing French Champagne as they view the street theatre well below them -- a vaudevillian panorama of police truncheoning protesters with entr'actes of bloodied bodies being cleansed by water cannons, Georgie and Johnny will steal away to the Loved One's digs at the Intercontinental for a passionate tryst. (Who said John Howard only had eyes for politics?) Forget the bar with its Hennessey cognac "too expensive for a price tag", the Leader of the Free World has brought a rare vintage bottle of Thunderbird wine, beloved yesteryear drop of Yankee winos and the intellectually challenged offspring of the rich.
Georgie has taught his manlet of steel the old wino greeting. "Go on, now, say it," prompts the Prez, excited as hell. Johnny hyperventilates a few times, so intent is he to please, "Wh-what's the word?" His voice breaks a tad, but he's done it. "Thunderbird!" booms the Leader of the Free World, "now, gimme another swig of thet thar TBird!" The Prime Mincer is beside himself. "Ha ha ha ha," he trills.
What happens next no one but David Lynch would want to know.
Links
• We test Bush's APEC lodgings
• Sydney's Great Wall of APEC
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 3:26 PM | Comments (2)
August 28, 2007
Andrews killing the field as stupidest Howard Minister
Is Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews going to "stand by" still more of his egregious untruths? As chair of the editorial board of a major university press, I can say definitively that you aren't a co-author of a book if your name isn't on the title page. And you aren't one merely by virtue of contributing a paper or chapter to an edited volume. -- William J. Mitchell, Cambridge Massachusetts, Letter to The Age.
First of all, click here to add your signature to the "Kevin Andrews must resign" web site.
"Gormless pillock" was an early appelation for Jeff Kennett, the former Premier of Victoria who paved the way for John Howard's storm trooper levelling of democracy in favour of the corporate fascism we have today. Kennett was neither gormless nor a pillock. But Kevin Andrews is. Macquarie Dictionary lists for "gormless": dull; stupid; senseless. The MD doesn't include "pillock". For this I went to the Urban dictionary: Noun for Idiot, fool. Originally a slang term for the penis. You want more synonyms? Urban lists these: twat, moron, dunce, fuckwit, pratt, blockhead, bonehead, etc. They all apply to Kevin Andrews.
And yet, the chucklehead (Bilegrip's synonym) insists he co-authored the books in question.
"I was one of the people who authored one of the chapters in each of the books. In common, everyday parlance, as one of the authors I presumed you called yourself a co-author - that's all I've simply done."
With the same mind-numbing ignorance he cruelled Mohamed Haneef. It beggars belief that he is unaware of the difference between a co-author of a book and a contributor.
The Federal seat of Menzies (Victoria), for which Kevin Andrews is the sitting member, needs its own Geoffrey Cousins, who today advertised in the Wentworth Courier, to show the people there how yet another Howard Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is being paid with taxpayer funds to subvert due process.
In a grand irony, Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke, is running against the Christian nutter Andrews in the upcoming election. Click here for a map of the Menzies electorate. If you live in any of these towns, you might want to start a mini-Cousins-like campaign of your own.
In the end, Andrews is one of the John Howard Party's best reasons for retaining the current legislation pertaining to unfair dismissal. Every workplace has an obnoxious incompetent like him, and they are almost impossible to get rid of. At present, any boss with half a brain, would not only sack this git, but escort him out the door with a firm boot up his backside.
Links:
• This article lists the three books he lied about
• Times of India
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 2:40 PM
August 26, 2007
The inexorable unmasking of John Howard
Courtesy Alan Moir and Sydney Morning Herald
The difficulty for Howard is that after 11 years as Prime Minister and 34 years in Parliament, he has compromised, sacrificed and dropped so much of what he once believed in that he has come to stand for virtually nothing except self-preservation. -- Jason Koutsoukis, Leaning to the light
What a shame that years ago Bilegrip (or someone else) didn't start a collection of the daily examples of Howard Government mean-spiritedness. By now, the file would be enormous. For not a day goes by that someone in this nasty government doesn't contravene the mythical "fair go".
Take today's Sunday Age. There on page two (PM rejects subsidy for cancer drug), we have the government refusing to place Alimta, the drug that helps asbestos disease sufferers, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule. Instead, Howard and Tony Abbott are blaming the states, saying in effect that it is up to them. In other words, the blame game continues. Yet, Leigh Hubbard (remember him?), executive director of the Asbestos Diseases Society says:
"The Government has acted unilaterally on other vaccines and drugs and we expect them to support people in need — victims who in some cases are cancelling treatment or whose doctor won't even suggest Alimta because they know they can't pay for it."
How this government loves to play with people's lives and well-being.
Then on page nine, an ostensibly Victorian state issue (Schools 'must act now' to curb racist attacks), can be found to have been exacerbated by John Howard Party policy.
Schools should be teaching students more about religious and racial tolerance to curb a recent worrying spike in racist attacks, Victorian MPs have told parliament.
One Liberal MP told The Sunday Age there should be a greater awareness of multiculturalism taught in schools, just eight months after Prime Minister John Howard dumped the term from his Government's ministerial portfolios.
The Liberals' multicultural affairs spokesman, Nick Kotsiras, said there had to be a greater focus on multicultural awareness in schools, despite Mr Howard having dispensed with the term in January when he introduced a new Department of Immigration and Citizenship to replace the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
James Merlino, the minister assisting Premier John Brumby on multicultural affairs, said the Liberal Party was divided on the importance of multiculturalism at the state and federal levels. "The Liberal Party constantly attacks multiculturalism and has abolished its use in the Federal Government," he said.
The truth is, John Howard has promoted racism with a vengeance. Like many conservatives, he is an assimilationist. Which is dogwhistling for racist.
But back to the Koutsoukis opinion piece listed at the beginning of this posting, in which he lists Howard's former convictions now flushed down the drain for self-preservation.
Howard once successfully identified himself with the classic doctrine of the "fair go". Yet thanks to his malevolent workplace relations laws, Howard has forsaken this ground and has come to stand for the bloke who took away people's weekends.
The list goes on and is worth your time in the reading.
Finally, among the many excellent articles in the current issue of Dissent (Spring 2007), is one that is on subject here.
Tim Moore explores the peculiar brand of Howard's political rhetoric in The Prime Minister's bad language. In particular the structure of so many of his utterances: reassuring words followed by a sting. Moore gives many examples, but here is the most infamous:
It's about this nation saying to the world 'we are a generous open-hearted people. We have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations' … But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
Dissent is one magazine worth subscribing to. Edited by Kenneth Davidson, it comes out only three times a year and sells for $7.70 on the newsstands. The annual subscription fee is a mere $22. Check it out here.
We should add that Harold Hark wrote for some of the early editions of Dissent, but had to bow out because of his inability to condense three months of outrage into one article.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 11:10 AM
August 25, 2007
Best cartoon of the 2007 federal election
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian
Not for the first time, members of the Church of the Assemblies of Bilegrip are prostrate before the Godlike humour and intelligence of Bill Leak. We thank thee O Bill and henceforth resolve to eschew our too often humourless outrage by emulating your ingenious ability to Take the Mickey. Hail to thee, Elect Vessel of Aussie Cartoonists.
Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:05 PM | Comments (3)
August 24, 2007
Howard and his ministers are making this a "Drover's Dog" election
With the publication of the transcript of Mohamed Haneef's second interview by the Australian Federal Police, Australian politics has entered an ever-darkening twilight zone of farcical incompetence. Here is someone who read the entire mess:
Having waded through the transcript of Mohamed Haneef’s second interview by Australian Federal Police officers, I fully understand the anger of the AFP and the federal Government at its release by Haneef’s lawyers ("Interview discredits claim by Andrews", 23/8).
The officers conducting this unproductive interview were totally out of their depth. It reads like a Monty Python script. They don’t know what Ramadan is. They think all Muslims identify with Sunni and Shiite traditions like one supports a football team. They don’t know the expression "locum" in relation to medical practice. They can’t spell. They mistake dates and times and they have no idea of English geography. Haneef has to tell them where Liverpool is in relation to London and that Cardiff is in Wales.
They have no idea about basic technology terms. The internet telephone system Skype is beyond their ken. Page 168 is hysterical: asked about his wife’s educational background, Haneef says, "She is an IT professional." After several questions and some clarification by Haneef, Det Sgt Adam Simms says, "So is that like computer?"
No wonder the AFP is angry that this twaddle, which kept an innocent man incarcerated, has been released to the public. And these guys are our frontline defence against Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida? Thank our lucky stars that James Bond and Maxwell Smart are on our side. -- David Langsam, Letter to The Australian.
Langsam compares the interview to Monty Python, while Sushi Dass, Andrews goes galumphing off after prey, invokes Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.
You might think there are no similarities between the Mohamed Haneef saga and Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poem Jabberwocky. But there are. Both are spectacularly absurd. [Dass cites several applicable verses.]
In the interview, Haneef is presented with a translation from Urdu to English of his online chat with his brother in India. Detective Sergeant Adam Simms reads the translation to Haneef in a "You say, then your brother says, and then you say" style. Sometimes this changes to "Then you go, and your brother then says".
It's hard enough following the conversation when your English is perfect. Haneef, whose English is fractured, must have had some difficulty following who was "saying" and who was "going". Nevertheless, several times Haneef tries to explain that the translation is flawed, but he is dismissed and told he can give his version of events later.
We learn from the chatroom conversation that Haneef and his brother were speaking Urdu, which, by the way, is rendered as Udo in the first police interview, and as Burdu in the second interview. Classy.
Regardless, we get the impression that Haneef and his brother either speak Urdu in a fractured, splintered, kind of way, or that the AFP translation is so appalling that what is presented to Haneef is as close to double Dutch as you can get. In fact, the translation is so poor the police officer is forced to offer a choice of translations.
Here's a quote from Simms: "Your brother then says 'Now did you take leave from your hospital' and you go 'hmm' and then you say 'don't know what happened' or 'do you know what happened' ".
Putting aside the poor translation from Urdu to English, or the fact that a spoken internet conversation is read out to Haneef in the most confusing manner or that Haneef disagrees with parts of it, what is most alarming of all is that this is the chatroom conversation that the Immigration Minister relied heavily on to defend the cancellation of Haneef's visa on the ground of bad character.
Despite the incompetence of the translation, which Kevin Andrews used to cancel Haneef's visa, the Minister for Blind Injustice continues to pursue him with a madman's zeal.
Wade through the entire transcript here.
Then we have John Howard, Peter Costello and Tony Abbott continuing to defend their meetings with the Exclusive Brethren -- a cruel religious sect that rates right up there with Jim Jones and the People's Temple of Jonestown. The Ex Brethren require the AFP's top priority for a full investigation. Yet the Government pretends to be ignorant of the insidious hold this sect has on its members. And if they do know, then their cynicism in the naked grab for votes and financial support is even worse than we have all come to believe. Here is someone who was there:
At last Kevin Rudd has had the ticker to call John Howard's bluff over his dealings with the Exclusive Brethren for the sake of funding dollars (The Age, 23/8).
Government ministers' attempts to portray this sect in palatable terms fill former members with outrage.
The heartbreak and tragedy caused to hundreds of families who have had the misfortune to cross swords with the Brethren is a result of its extremist cult practices. I was cut off from my family because of excommunication from the Brethren in the 1960s.
It is of paramount importance that the funding of Brethren schools is investigated. In pandering to this sect, the Government compounds the fact that thousands of innocent minds are kept in ignorance from cradle to grave. -- Joy Nason, Letter to The Age .
Finally, it is cheering to read that Malcolm Turnbull's thumbing of due process in fast-tracking the contentious pulp mill in Tasmania may cost him his seat in Wentworth: Swing could topple minister. Whether or not Geoffrey Cousins convinces the government to move the mill to a less sensitive site, Turnbull, and indeed all of the ministers to whom Howard has played the Pied Piper from Hell, should lose their seats. And by the widest margin.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:35 PM | Comments (3)
August 23, 2007
Bunglers in crime(s against humanity)
(with apologies to Victor and Hugo)
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian
Two indicators this week on the state of our nation: the black water-cannon truck with the words ``riot control’’ on the side on standby for the APEC leaders’ summit in Sydney next month, and an immigration minister who sees himself as being above the law. Where to from here? -- Greg Hamilton, Letter to The Australian
Just what NSW needs most in a time of drought _ a water-cannon truck. Nice one, Morris. -- Dave Robinson, Letter to The Australian
contemplating a secure state for fascist leaders
Courtesy Edukation Review
Water cannon for APEC. I never, no really, never thought I'd see the day when we had this kind of anti-democratic, anti-citizen, anti-humanity kind of weapon in this country. It just brings on a sense of immense sadness in me. We're down there with the old commo states, the 'stans, the fascist dictatorships that still dot the globe. No matter that it was a Labor government - in this game, they're all the same, protecting their own, the rich and powerful, from the human consequences of their decisions. Not that you'll actually get a decision out of an APEC meeting if history is any guide. -- phil: put down that weapon.
Courtesy Brendan Esposito, Sydney Morning Herald
From Wired:
It sounded a bit like a Dalek, but instead of "Exterminate, exterminate", the voice emanating from the truck said: "Warning, warning, if you do not disperse, the water cannon will be fired on you.
"Warning, warning, warning, water cannon will be fired. Commence, commence, commence."
The black truck with a fire hose on top made heavy work of it but eventually managed to knock over 120-kilogram pylons for the television cameras.
Yesterday, 18 months after Morris Iemma announced that the State Government would buy a $700,000 water cannon for the riot squad in what was widely depicted as a stunt in the wake of the Cronulla riots, the Premier unveiled it yesterday with a demonstration at Homebush Bay.
Authorities there also aren't soft-peddling the potential dangers of being hit by the water cannon:
The Premier admitted the cannon could cause "serious injury" and said he hoped people who were considering "riotous behaviour" took notice of this.
"I hope that we'll never have to use a piece of equipment like this … but if the situation arises, if there are going to be people who take the law into their own hands with riotous behaviour on our streets, then this is a good weapon to have to restore order and control," he said.
"It's part of a repertoire that could be used for APEC, [but] it's not APEC-specific."
That's a lot of hype for one weapon. Maybe they should check out Russia's hand-held water gun.
NB: Original Sydney Morning Herald article here.
Welcome to the world of early 30s Germany, of Stalin's newfound grip on power, of Mao's thrill at future decimations, of Pol Pot's weenie-gorging hatred of the intelligentsia, of John Howard's lip-quivering emulation of them all. Poor Morris Iemma and all the other faux Labor politicians. They could have stood for democracy, but instead they are all conservative cowards with weapons.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 10:29 AM | Comments (3)
August 22, 2007
Government of deranged conservatives
Costello backs Howard meeting with Exclusive Brethren
The obsessively secret, intolerant, right-wing, elitist, Christian fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren, the Satanic sect which attempts to influence elections while refusing to allow its followers to vote, has openly met with John Howard yet again.
The John Howard Party is quick to denounce lunatic Muslims, but openly courts lunatic Christians. And none are more lunatic than the Exclusive Brethren. A "rapture" sect whose leader, "Elect Vessel" Sydney accountant Bruce Hales, rules with a ruthlessness that would have courted Hitler's envy, treats interested outsiders with violence, and routinely and terminally forces the break up of families -- excommunicating family members who question its authority, and refusing to let the remaining family members see the excommunicates ever again.
And that is not even the half of it. Yet here we have the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello backing Howard's meeting with a group, were it Islamic, would have had the entire government foaming at the mouth.
So why the meeting? Election funding. Particularly in Bennelong, where the Ex Brethren contributed over $300,000 last election to the fighting fund of our Weasel of Oz.
Links:
• Four Corners programs on this dangerous sect.
• Go here for a list of articles on same.
Late breaking: Rudd won't meet 'extremist' Brethren:
"I believe that this is an extremist cult and sect," he said. "I also believe that it breaks up families. I also believe that there are real problems with the provision of modern education to kids under their system, where they are - for example - not given access to the full range of information technology systems."
Andrews should resign over Haneef, but a plush posting is a more likely reward
Kevin Andrews and Alexander "Little Lord" Downer are the Howard Government's Little Kings of Petulance. It's hard to decide which one is the more loathsome. Downer's petulance is the result of fine breeding, somewhat like those Black Iberico pigs from the Western Andalucia region of Spain who are let loose in pastures of beautiful old oak trees where they feed on up to 20 lbs of wild acorns per day before subsequent slaughter. But Andrews was probably born with a petulant look. He's the one who tattled on everyone in grade school, whose natural look of petulance always turned to terrified petulance when the kids yanked him behind the ball shed after school...
His handling of L'Affaire Haneef is more evidence of the inability of this government to tell right from wrong. To accept such inglorious incompetence would be inconceivable but for one reason: the JHP has spent over a decade working the greater part of its constituency -- racists and xenophobes -- into a lather of mindless hate. They approve of the government's unwarranted assault on Mohamed Haneef's reputation because he is not one of them. And now that he has been run out of the country, perhaps never to return, they are as happy as a Nazi collaborator peering over a pit of corpses.
Age reporters (The day a judge overruled a minister) point out:
… the judge said that Mr Andrews' definition [of the word "association"] was so wide it would include relationships that were "utterly remote" from the alleged criminality. This could include family relationships, professional associations, or even "the battered wife scenario" causing a person to fail the character test.
Justice Spender said Mr Andrews presented the public with selected highlights of confidential police evidence, but failing to give the court the same evidence.
"There is … a certain piquancy in the present case," he wrote. "The minister has chosen to give a selected part of what is said to be protected information to the public by way of press release, but has not sought to divulge to the court any part of the protected information."
When was the last time you lived in a country whose government treated the law with such selective disregard? I once lived in Syria under Hafiz al-Assad, where it happened all the time.
In a posting yesterday, The Maxwell Smart of national security, Hedley Thomas says:
Kevin Andrews is a political amateur, the Maxwell Smart of national security, whose rush to demonise Dr Mohamed Haneef should have resulted in the Immigration Minister being sacked a month ago.
Andrews has survived, despite some of the shabbiest decision-making since the Tampa scandal, because his leader, Prime Minister John Howard, is up to his neck in it.
Urged on by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, they saw political merit and votes in the smearing of a medical practitioner who was deemed guilty by association - he has second cousins linked to terror in the UK.
They saw merit in smearing the lawyers, particularly barrister Stephen Keim, SC, who did their best to lessen the damage from a gross miscarriage of justice by providing documents to The Australian.
Mr Andrews applied a “guilt by association” test so silly and illogical that anyone, from Mother Teresa to Mahatma Gandhi, would have failed it based on unavoidable, and completely innocent, contact with people suspected of criminal conduct.
When Mr Andrews pulled his stunt, The Dumb and Dumber-style errors of the Australian Federal Police and prosecutors had not yet been revealed.
But Mr Andrews seized on an urgent political need to grandstand, make disingenuous statements about national security, and provoke unnecessary fear in the lead-up to the Federal election.
So what should happen now? Should Mr Andrews resign? Should he apologise? Be sacked? Should he stand his ground?
Perhaps he’ll be rewarded with a comfy diplomatic post somewhere, similarly to the golden parachute given to former Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone after a trail of cock-ups.
In today's posting, Minister opts for easy path, Thomas has another take:
It looks, at first, like a defiant strategy infused with strength by a minister who refuses to countenance admitting he screwed up.
But the decision of Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews to instruct his legal team to seek an immediate stay of the orders of Jeffrey Spender in the Federal Court may in fact be the raising of a white flag.
See also:
• The Australian editorial: Another sorry bungle
• The Age editorial: Bringing Dr Haneef back into the fold of the law
In my casual questioning of people on the street and in the shopping centres, I have yet to encounter one person who has any idea of the crimes of conscience committed by the JHP during the last eleven and a half years. Not one.
I have become clinically alert and certifiably alarmed.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)
August 21, 2007
"Aspirational Nationalism" is the marriage of capitalism and fascism
… let’s discuss something meaty, like John Howard’s call for ``Aspirational Nationalism’’ which strikes me as a compelling election slogan once people work out what on Earth he’s on about. -- Matt Price, The more you clap, the more I'll forget
What's he on about? Wealth creation at the expense of anything or anyone who gets in its way, and greed as the highest good. But above all, power. The enshrinement of his lust for power by relentlessly attempting to eliminate from the Australian psyche every other ideal known to humanity.
George Orwell had this to say about nationalism:
By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
A few months ago, Paul Keating threw in his own two cents:
A patriot will not exclude a person from another race from the community where they have lived side-by-side and whom he has known for many years, but a nationalist will always remain suspicious of someone who does not seem to belong to his kind of people or, more likely, his kind of thinking. Shades there of John Howard's discomfort with Australia's multicultural community, and the distrust of its Islamic community.
Keating went on to suggest that Howard's "nationalism" was akin to Hitler's. But let us not forget that George W. Bush's favourite moniker for our psychopathic sycophant was "man of steel". And that translates into Russian as Stalin.
Anne Summers' description of Howard as a "predatory ideologue" has never rung more true. Not a day goes by without another desperate vote-buying intervention or incursion, or a gee-whiz chest-beating slogan. And now the smear campaign against Kevin Rudd has begun in earnest. I love Matt Price's conclusion to the article mentioned above:
Today’s Newspoll hints that most punters are unfussed by Rudd’s New York misadventure, although we won’t know for certain until the next survey is completed. Alexander Downer has helpfully volunteered to draft the key question: Do you think fraudulent Kevin Rudd was pathetically weak engaging in criminal behaviour with a bunch of nude floozies while spending taxpayers’ money representing the latte-sipping, pinko, anti-American, appeasing party on official overseas business?
Despite Labor's continuing lead in the polls, I have little faith that the majority of Australian's will overthrow the hobgoblin's obscene baiting of their lowest instincts come election day. He has at least three months to pull more and more toxic rabbits of stark-raving fear out of his bottomless arsenal.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 1:04 PM | Comments (3)
August 16, 2007
Up to one million deaths in Iraq?
The Real News Network reports:
One million killed in Iraq?
Independent group uses Lancet study to project Iraq death toll
2007-08-10
Last year, the medical journal The Lancet published an estimate of 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq based on a demographic study conducted by field workers questioning people in clusters throughout Iraq.
The group Just Foreign Policy has taken that number and projected it using Iraq Body Count, which tallies deaths reported by Western media sources. This leads to a rough estimate that one million Iraqis have now been killed in the conflict since the U.S.'s 2003 invasion and occupation.
When The Lancet published the 650,000 estimate, President George W. Bush said: "600,000 or whatever they guessed at is just, it's not credible."
We speak to Les Roberts, now at Columbia University, who is co-author of The Lancet piece "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey." Roberts has studied other conflicts, including in Congo, where his estimates have been widely accepted.
We also speak with Robert Naiman of the group Just Foreign Policy.
Why the disparity between the Iraq Body Count numbers and The Lancet study? Patrick Ball of the group Benetech has noted: "Methods such as media reports typically capture violence well when it is moderate, but when it really increases, they miss a great deal." (Ball is a co-author of the book State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996, and wrote the chapter "On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations" in the book Repression and Mobilization.)
George W. Bush doesn't believe this estimate, but who believes him? And we can be damn sure that John W. Howard and Alexander "There's so much puffy fat around my eyes I can't see anymore" Downer don't believe this estimate either, but who believes them?
Watch the video here
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 3:24 PM
August 15, 2007
This man is destabilising the destabiliser
Courtesy Alan Porritt and the AAP
What a bloody farce it all is. Do we really have to endure this jejune bullshit until November? Can there be any swinging voters left? The Larval Party's lineup of supporters, comprising the nation's feeble minded, are already in place. The rest of us intend to vote for the other guy. So let's get it over with, fer Chrissakes!
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 4:48 PM | Comments (1)
August 10, 2007
This man is destabilising Australia
Courtesy Gary Ramage and The Australian
In his megalomaniacal ambition to retain power at any cost (with the overwhelming support of his shameless parliamentary colleagues), the psychopathic Prime Minister of Australia is threatening to bring the nation's political, legal and social institutions into chaos.
Was he emulating Napoleon or Mussolini or Milosovic or all three when he invaded -- not another foreign country -- but his own country with the land grab of Aboriginal homelands of the Northern Territory? Of course Prime Minister Magoosolini's excuse for sending in the Army was to protect the children from sexual abuse -- that's what the Army's for, isn't it? -- but Jackboots Johnny's fodder in uniform will be ordered to look the other way when uranium and mining interests -- those for whom his protection is truly munificent --start moving in. Like Napoleon, Mussolini and Milosovic, our very own Lyin' King is a Leo who responds to inadequacy by showing everyone that he will stop at nothing to divide and conquer.
Witness his recent incursions into the affairs of Tasmania, Queensland and other states to come. What better examples of his sociopathic relish in pitting people one against the other for his own mean-spirited ends. Expect daily onslaughts of interference in democracy as he feverishly pursues his lust for dominance over Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party and every last person in the country.
Never has an Australian leader so sundered the fabric of the society he or she serves. In eleven and a half years, he has polarised Australia to the point where ignorance and intolerance, the basest instincts of people, are becoming the norm. And now, with his back to the wall, he is threatening to enshrine this rule of the lowest common denominator by taking the entire culture down with him.
Like a cunning pedophile stalking children, this Prime Minister's every utterance and every action is designed to deceive voters into believing that his relentless assault on their integrity and sense of fair play is for their own good. Yet, nothing this man has ever done is for the good of anyone but his own dark self.
He is clearly unfit to lead. Either his own party should remove him, or the military should intervene.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 1:38 PM | Comments (5)
August 5, 2007
Adoration of the real Australian Idol
Courtesy Matt Golding and The Age
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 4:17 PM