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October 31, 2007
Amen, Catherine Deveny, election porn it is
Catherine Deveny, a dinky-di bleeding heart with balls, writes blistering columns for The Age, invariably enraging the cardigan-clutchers whom she slices, dices and minces with gusto.
Today's offering relates to the hair-tearing, teeth-clenching derangement felt by people so sick of this year-long election campaign they could commit mayhem.
What will we do after the election? What will they print in the paper? I can't remember life before the election campaign. Were there trees? Did we wear shoes?
[Instead,] we're chasing election porn. Just one more article. Just one last poll. I'll go to bed after Lateline and I promise I'll read something unrelated to politics
Yet, no matter how we try, that political freak John Howard is everywhere. He's on the radio, AM and FM, he's on television, he's on the front page and every other page of all our newspapers, and for many, he's in their nightmares.
Australia is in the grip of John Howard's political obsessive-compulsive disorder. We have been made to endure a year-long election campaign to feed his one-dimensional mania. This is a man who has no other interest than politics. Nothing else matters. His ego is so immense that it is swallowing up every man, woman and child and spitting them out as identical clones. Another term and we will all look like John Howard.
Rather than being re-elected, this lunatic should be scooped up by the men in white coats and put in rehab for the rest of his unnatural life.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 2:03 PM | Comments (4)
October 30, 2007
Polls, betting, astrology: all predict Rudd or Howard to win
The polls are clearly random, geared solely to jerk us up and down like yo-yos. Last week Howard lost ground when he should have gained; this week he gains ground when he should have lost. Or maybe it's the opposite.
The betting folk are responding like stock exchange maniacs: poll goes up for Howard, betting goes down for Rudd. Or the reverse.
What about that third cog of entrail-reading, astrology. What do astrologers say? Damned if I know. According to Google, they don't seem very interested. Googling only came up with one prediction, by a bloke who said he wasn't sure what he was doing. He tentatively predicted Howard will win in a close one, but there will be major dissent in the streets thereafter.
Yahoo produced another prediction favourable to Howard; however the lack of Kevin Rudd's actual birth data makes it another maybe.
I also found a prediction for the 2007 election in Nigeria. Surprisingly neither Rudd nor Howard were given a chance.
I truly believe I could have predicted the winner from this morning's transmogrification of last night's Albondigas soup, chock full as it was of chipotle and jalapeño peppers. But I didn't have the guts to look into the toilet. Mainly because that's where my guts were.
Seriously, folks, I had an epiphany at the local shopping centre this morning. It blew into my consciousness with the force of the woman of my dreams having the orgasm of hers, and it began just as I took the first sip of one of those caffe latte's you find at shopping centres. You know the kind: the machine not properly cleaned the night before so that the dreck in your glass is coffeedom's aromatic equivalent of the smell in a bar opening its doors in the late afternoon after years of previous nights of spilled beer and boilermakers. Worse, the ersatz latte had been pressed through grounds already used once or twice.
But that's what I get for drinking coffee at shopping centres. Or living in a suburb whose by-laws forbid the employment of baristas in favour of bored teenagers. I shouldn't complain. I'm told that in suburbs further east, people who bitch about coffee tasting of industrial strength robusta beans are arrested on the spot and hustled on to V/Line cattle trains, destination unknown.
But I digress. My epiphany was this: Whoever wins the election, I'm getting the fuck out of Australia. I'm going to join Harold Hark, who hasn't been heard from for over a year, but who I'm sure is alive somewhere in France. I am convinced he is living in the mountains there, perhaps the Pyrénées, perhaps the Massif Central, and like Carlos Castaneda finding Don Juan as if he were a needle in a haystack, I know I will find him. And together, we shall leap from boulder to boulder like gazelles, smoke hashish overlooking paradisaical valleys, frolic with thin-wristed shepherdesses on high plateaux, eat haute cuisine in the villages while drinking Grands Crus and cognac, and generally allow to pass from our tortured minds the stupendously asinine wastage of life we have given over -- he earlier, me now -- to the political b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t surrounding the rise and fall of that maggot on the face of eternity, John Howard.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 12:46 PM | Comments (1)
October 28, 2007
Religious wackos line up behind Howard
Photo Ken Irwin and The Age
You have to wonder how Petro Georgiou can stand being a member of the Liberal Party anymore. Petro is no angel, as his record with the Kennett Government's smear campaigns of the past show, but compared with the likes of Pastor Peter Curtis, the Liberal candidate for Julia Gillard's seat of Lalor, he is a giant of respectability. Maybe Petro's hanging in there to become a future leader, once Howard's aberrations, like all Liberal Party aberrations, are purged from the party's history.
Anyhoo, here is what Peter Curtis stands for (Homosexuality a perversion, says Lib candidate):
"As a Christian, I do not agree with the idea of homosexuality. That's the reality. I can't put it any other way," Mr Curtis told The Sunday Age yesterday. "I certainly could never change my views that homosexuality is a perversion, because it is a perversion."
In 2003, Mr Curtis said a decision by the Uniting Church to allow for the ordination of homosexual ministers was a slap in the face for Christ "and a blow to those people struggling to escape from the miserable and unhappy lifestyle of someone engaged in homosexual practice".
Back from the toilet, yet? No? I'll wait. Hope you didn't lose yr lunch.
OK. Here's more.
He said that, if elected, he would be urging the Liberal Party to introduce intelligent design to state school science classes. Intelligent design is an assertion that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by natural selection.
"I would be very much in favour of intelligent design being taught in public schools," Mr Curtis said. "Just as the theory of evolution is taught as well — in my view regrettably taught in science classes, because I think it's a theory and not a science."
Enough to gag a maggot, eh?
Curtis goes on to say that even though gay men were many more times likely to die from disease than heterosexuals, as reported by the Bible, "I would love to represent them, I would love to represent anybody." Ah, following in the footsteps of his master, John "For all of us (with certain exclusions)" Howard, is he?
Like so many of his ilk, Curtis is the one slapping Christ in the face. Poor old Jesus. He may have been the Son of God, but Pere et Fils must have hired the wrong pollsters. As a species, the human race is clearly beyond saving.
Curtis is within the Illiberal Party, whereas most religious wackos are separate entities. Other seriously disturbed organizations backing John Howard and Peter Costello are:
The Exclusive Brethren: noted for their extreme cruelty to dissenting family members, their hatred of education, and refusal to allow members to vote while at the same time funding smear campaigns against Howard's opponents.
Catch The Fire: whose Pastor Danny Naillah got a phone call from God who told him, Danny, that John Howard would not only win the election but he, Danny, should set up a meeting with Howard and Costello to advise them to do whatever they felt necessary as a means of helping God to set up Howard's Thousand Year Reich. (Or was that Satan, pinch-hitting for God?)
Hillsong: the folks who love to swing and sway with one brain and many bodies. Credited with stacking Australian Idol, thus bringing it to a blessed end, they are the market driven Christians chosen by God (theirs, not the Brethren's or the Fire Catcher's) to drive their SUV's into the Armageddon religions like theirs so long for.
I'm sure there are more, but I'm in danger of losing my own lunch.
Addendum: And of course there are. joe2 reminds us of:
Family First: the holier than thou Christian fundamentalist party whose key concern is to crack down on internet porn has been forced to disendorse one of its candidates for posing nude and shock, horror, surfing the net for pornography. Read all about it here.
Along with their fundamentalist brethren in Islam and Judaism, these clinically insane larvals live their lives in a hallucinatory, ideological straitjacket. Inevitably their repressed shadow breaks free to spoil the party. But still they keep trying to force their repressive dogma on the rest of humanity. Their present champion is John Howard.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 1:07 PM | Comments (4)
October 27, 2007
Hey, Kevin Andrews, what about the Neo-Nazis in Melbourne?
Courtesy John Spooner and The Age
As the government resorts to hysterical denunciations of Labor and the unions, principally today from Joe "Dum-dum bullets" Hockey, the momentum is picking up with the electorate as it awakens with bulging eyeballs to the government's history of traitorous mendacity. Howard and Costello and the other henchmen are going to have to manufacture a major catastrophe to offset the groundswell of contempt and plain old hatred being hurled its way.
Kevin Andrews, the Henchman for Aryan Immigration and Australia's third most hypocritical Catholic after George Pell and Tony Abbott, has been silent of late, no doubt told to put a sock in it by Master John. Thus we can expect not a word from him on this: Neo-Nazis split Croat community:
Melbourne's Croatian community is under fire for hosting a rock concert for neo-Nazi skinheads, publishing anti-Semitic material on the internet and naming a building after fascist Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic.
What's that, Minister? If they're white and Christian, what does it matter? Just young folk letting off steam, is it?
The concert at the Knights' North Sunshine complex was headlined by US neo-Nazi band Final War. The band describes itself as "defenders of the Reich", and its songs boast: "We fight Jews".
Australian skinhead band Fortress also played. Its song, Parasites, urges repatriation of immigrants: "If they don't f..king like it, it'll be in body bags".
The concert was organised by the Australian chapters of neo-Nazi skinhead groups Blood and Honour and Southern Cross Hammer Skins. Group members in the US and Europe have been convicted of assaults, bombings and murder.
I understand, Minister. You're defending your own Reich, the John Howard Reich. Reich's of a feather, flock together, sorta thing.
Alas, from your past incompetencies it is clear that your low IQ, while a boon to your government, is a serious drawback in terms of civilised behaviour, and so we shouldn't expect any condemnation, even a mumbled one, from you on these lads. After all, they will be placing their "X's" for your party come election day.
Please do enjoy tomorrow morning's mass at church. Especially the part where everyone pauses to shake their neighbour's hand as they affirm, "Peace be upon you."
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 4:01 PM
October 26, 2007
Old guard stands up for unions
Copyright © 2007, Maurie Gee
Mr Howard's attack on the unions was "the most disastrously unfair and baseless accusation and propaganda that has ever been used by any leader in the history of Australian politics. I say that deliberately, that's not exaggeration. Every single Australian is indebted to the Australian trade union movement. How dare this man attack the trade union movement. There is no institution in Australia which has done more to flesh out the concept of a fair go, to give it reality, than the Australian trade union movement." -- Bob Hawke, Hawke queries record of man who 'buggered' the economy.
"[I want] to redress the wilful, despicable, reduction of trade unionists and trade unionism by the Government in the eyes of the Australian people. In some respects this is what this election is becoming all about, what the Government is trying to make it about, running as if trade unionists were some sort of economic wreckers. I can think of no more noble thing to do than to serve working people. We have a lot to thank the trade unions for. The ideological pleasure the current prime minister takes in demonizing them is an offence given daily to two million people. -- Paul Keating, Greg Combet launch
Democracy can not function without trade unions, which is why the Corporate-owned Illiberal Party hates them. Before Howard the elimination of democracy was something Illiberals mostly just had wet dreams about. But with the establishment of the John Howard Reich, democracy has been shown the door in almost every respect with a spit-shined jackboot.
While Kevin Rudd sings "Don't wedge me in," as he deflects the Coalition's cunning attempts to force him to accept their hatred of the fair go, it's good to see Hawke and Keating verbally shepherding the bastards to give Kev a free run.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:34 AM | Comments (6)
October 25, 2007
Downer's conniptions over routine corruption
So John "Deputy Dubya" Howard got Dick Cheney to politically interfere in the Hicks case. If only we could believe he genuinely believed the Hicks case had gone on too long. But we know our PM, don't we? He just wanted the Australian public to get off his back. Where he would probably have enjoyed Hicks languishing at Guantanamo for the twenty or so years Hicks' prosecutor Mo Davis was after, his intervention resulted in a vastly reduced term. Oh, well, you can't win 'em all.
Or can you? The AFP evidently wants to issue a control order on Hicks, requiring him to report to the police three times a week for an entire year after his release in a few months. That'll teach him to get off lightly when the Government wanted his arse incarcerated for eternity.
Enter our Very Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, who is simply scandalised by allegations of political interference. Goodness gracious him, simply how could anyone impugn the integrity of this government, unbesmirched for over eleven years, in the case of David Hicks!
Listen to Dear Alex getting beside himself as he does a Rumpelstiltskin while shrieking at Virginia trioli: "You're just blackening our names. That's all you want to do!" (NB: Go to The World Today, scroll down to "Downer denies political interference allegation in Hicks case" and click on one of the media players. The transcript is also available.)
In other news of Howard Government corruption, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty -- he who was subsequently gagged by Integrity John when stating the bleeding obvious about increased terrorism owing to the Iraq war -- has suddenly backflipped on the Mohamed Haneef case.
"I was as surprised as anybody when the DPP advised that Haneef could be charged. Because I didn't think the evidence was strong enough," Mr Keelty told The Bulletin, to be published today. Asked if he had told the DPP of his concerns, Mr Keelty replied: "Oh, yes."
But wait, says Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo: "I'm absolutely shocked. This is the first time that I've heard such a thing be said. Keelty, up until this point, has always been saying exactly the opposite."
Keelty also lays into The Greatest Exponent of Democracy The World Has Ever Known, one, Kevin Andrews, the Minister for Aryan Immigration:
"If you want to marginalise every Sudanese person that's come to the country, then the easy way to do it is to label them all as criminals," Mr Keelty said. "If you want to marginalise the Islamic community, label them all terrorists. I mean, what we've got to do is just be guarded in our language and don't marginalise or isolate people through the language we use." Asked if Mr Andrews should have been more circumspect in his language, Mr Keelty replied: "That's a matter for Kevin Andrews."
At least we can be thankful that Non-core Never-ever Johnny has come out with an ironclad assurance that Australia will not be supporting any strikes against Iran by his squeeze George Dubya and the Vice Squeeze, Dick Cheney.
Then again, there is always the last week of the campaign. If the polls don't change, Major Magoo might call in another favour from Washington's Boys from Brazil. Surely the commencement of World War III is not too much to ask to ensure his re-election?
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:43 AM | Comments (2)
October 24, 2007
Lest we forget: Kev's a conservative Christian not a hero
Courtesy John Spooner and The Age
In general, conservatism equals cowardice. It holds that the future is frightening, that we must get as much as we can now to be relaxed and comfortable, and that we must not allow anything or anyone to interfere with the getting. Conservatism is the refusal to countenance death. G.I. Gurdjieff said that there is mechanism that is turned off in the human species: the ability to understand and embrace the inevitability of death. If this were functioning, not one minute would be wasted in hatred of The Other. We would simply comprehend that we are all in this life together.
Sadly the human race is mostly conservative. In other words, cowardly.
In our haste to get rid of John Howard, leave us not forget that Kevin Rudd, the bloke who will take his place, is a conservative Christian. This means, among other things, that he believes that marriage is only possible between a man and a woman. After all, the Bible tells him so.
Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, held the same belief. We're not equating Rudd with Höss, but wouldn't it be refreshing to encounter a "leader" who wasn't confined to a belief system based on the later misinterpretations of a frightened patriarchy? Jesus Christ preached love and tolerance as the path to enlightenment. He could not possibly have advocated something as municipal-minded as a ban on gay marriage. Jesus did not discriminate.
Rudd is politician, not a hero. Like Howard, he voted against the stem cell research bill passed by Parliament a while back. Wedged relentlessly by Howard, Rudd has de-boned most policies sacred to Labor. We like to think that he will change once elected, but as Ross Gittens (The Rudd Identity) suggests, he's gone too far: a Rudd Government will be 90 per cent the same as the Illiberal Party and 10 per cent Labor.
But here's the thing: So many Australians are sickened by the Howard Government's amoral opportunism and immoral trashing of the fair go that a 10 per cent improvement will be cause for celebrations the equal of Collingwood winning a premiership. In Australian parlance, that's saying something.
Links:
• Kyle Sandilands, Kevin Rudd argue gay marriage
• Rudd raises eyebrows with gay marriage
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 10:48 AM | Comments (4)
October 23, 2007
Peter Costello: All Hyde and no Jekyll
Here's what former Treasury secretary and Coalition senator John Stone had to say: "If ... Costello were running a major Australian company the way he is handling the country's finances, and presenting false accounts qualified by its auditors and the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the way he has done with income from the GST, he would risk being charged in the civil courts by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for deceitful and misleading conduct. But Mr Costello seems to feel that he can do as he likes and that he is above the accepted community standards of truthful behaviour." -- Ross Fitzgerald, Heard the one about honest politicians?
Yesterday, we saw Peter "The Jerk" Costello (part of the Howard-Costello team, but only when it suits Howard) at his sneering, venomous worst. During a joint press conference with John Howard, who cleverly made Costello's name disappear from letters sent to voters in Bennelong, Costello thrust his big, weird face into the camera and leeringly announced that there was an error in Kevin Rudd's tax policy of such terminal magnitude that a major asteroid hit would be mild in comparison. That's right, he repeated, certain annihilation would be sweeter than coping with the all the money they would lose because, as Josh Gordon reports, "Kevin Rudd and his union mates can't add up and it's going to cost middle Australia hundreds of dollars extra a year in tax."
Gordon, tongue poking cheek, and George Megalomenis, ditto, both explain why. Megalogenis puts into perspective thusly:
The Treasurer is correct: Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan did make a boo-boo last Friday. They forgot to continue indexing the most politically sensitive tax threshold of this election campaign - the upper limit for the 15 per cent taxrate. But in his effort to expose Labor's miscalculation, Costello also confirmed a deeper flaw in his own scales. His election tax package neglects to index the threshold for the 30 per cent marginal tax rate. Oops!
Both articles are a hoot.
Today's Newspoll puts Labor surging ahead of the Coalition by some 16 points. More astounding is Labor's primary vote, standing at 51 per cent.
Why does Labor keep winning the polls? Tony "What, Me Worry?" Abbott thinks the polls are bullshit:
"This poll is radically at odds with the experience we have had in the streets as government members over the last couple of weeks," Mr Abbott told ABC Radio. Mr Abbott said private political polling delivers a more accurate representation of public opinion. "The private polling is somewhat better than the published polls of a week or so back," he said. "It would be an unusual Australian electorate that would take a big risk with its future on polling day."
Abbott says "unusual" but he means stupid. How simply could a bribed, frightened and comatose electorate suddenly wake up to eleven years of being taken for mugs? Of course they can't. As Abbott intimates, they're too stupid.
Thus, Abbott could be right about the polls. Only those whose brains have not been sucked out by the John Howard Party are able to respond. As we have suggested before, when JHP supporters are asked about the election they barely manage a sotto voce grunt. Not much there for pollsters. The knuckle-scraping Silent Majority is notorious for its disengagement with everything but its own self-interest, best exhibited by its suspicion and hatred of The Other. Yet they must be considered among the living. You will see them streaming into voting booths on 24 November to mark their X for the candidate best suited to their larval position on the evolutionary scale.
Howard's still in with a chance.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:30 AM
October 22, 2007
Rudd pops the Weasel - but Aussies weren't watching
Courtesy The Age
This morning's Horrible Horck/Bilegrip poll, taken at the local shopping centre, provides the following results for the question, "Did you watch last night's debate?".
Yes: 0
No: 6
A bit: 2
What, you don't consider this a comprehensive poll? Betcha it is.
As we know, Howard always loses debates (because the majority is too disengaged to bother watching) but wins the elections (because the majority is easily bribed or made afraid).
In a similar vein, we often hear commentators saying that voters were waiting with baseball bats for Paul Keating in 1996, but no one actually hates John Howard after eleven years. In a nation where the intellect was even remotely regarded as essential for informed decisions, the opposite should be the case. Since both Keating and Howard are arrogant pricks, the baseball bats meant for Paul were because he was regarded as an intellectual, or at least a man with a vision.
That some commentators have called last night's debate close is cause for despair. Rudd won it in a canter. From Little Johnny you got a pathetic, testy old man whose idea of the future amounts to a restoration of reading, writing and 'rithmetic standards and a return to technical schools, and whose arms seemed to flail about independent of his mind, like the startle reflex of the newborn.
For the first time in this blog/website's thirteen year history, we have a good word for Channel Nine. Bravo for giving us the worm. Even though the ABC and the National Press Club, bowing to the dictates of the incumbent government, pulled their feed after twenty minutes. Of course John "I know Nothing" Howard denied the Liberal Party's responsibility.
As Michelle Grattan intimated, how dare the Howard Government contravene Australia's democracy by insisting the debate be conducted on its terms only. Grattan also gives the best comment on the debate.
I found the debate riveting, and so did Nick Economu, Monash University Politics Lecturer:
A high-quality debate -- two good performers with interesting things to say in front of a big live audience. The hour and a half zipped by -- the best debate I've seen by far and a pity there won't be more.
Even Dennis Shanahan said it was the best debate since 1993.
It could have been even better. Last May, a third of the French population watched Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal battle it out for more than two hours, seated at a table facing each other. As David R. Bell of the New Republic said, "George Bush wouldn't have lasted 60 seconds." And neither would John Howard.
Royal was considered to have barely won the debate. We know what happened to her. And that was in a country which still values the intellect. Good luck, Kev.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:34 AM | Comments (2)
October 20, 2007
Who says you can't speak ill of the dead?
(Our thanks to Maurie Gee for this stunning YouTube representation of John Howard's evil soul.)
John Howard has chastised The Chaser boys for their Eulogy Song, claiming, among other things, that they shouldn't speak ill of the dead because the dead can't defend themselves.
What are the origins of this exhortation? We've heard it all our lives. It must come from the Bible, or perhaps even earlier. Some kind of superstition that the souls of the dead would come back to haunt the vilifiers.
Is the logical extension then, that those we were were terrified of in life should continue to terrify us after their demise? Give us a break.
Who speaks ill of a good person? Then again, the definition of a good person is in the interpretation of the beholder. A quarter of Germans believe Hitler's rule had some (positive aspects). And what might those "positive aspects" be?
The elimination of unemployment.
The low criminality rate.
The encouragement of the family.
Why, golly gee whiz, those are the same positive aspects beloved of the John Howard Party and its supporters. Only trouble is, Adolph didn't exactly govern "for all of us" like John Howard claimed he would when first elected. Hang on, that was one of Little Johnny's first non-core promises.
Using Peter Costello's twisted false dilemma logic, we should be able to say:
The governments of Adolph Hitler and John Howard contain similar positive aspects.
Therefore, the leadership of both men can be considered positive for those who supported them.
And the ones who didn't and don't? Dead in the former, disenfranchised in the latter.
No comparison is possible, of course, but both men belong in the same continuum, that of Right Wing Conservative Oppression. Adolph's was at the extreme right end of the continuum while Little Johnny floppily resides somewhere in the middle.
There is another continuum, the one where Jesus Christ is at the extreme left. This continuum contains such people as Nelson Mandela and Weary Dunlop.
I would find it impossible to speak ill of these men and others like them. But of Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and Mao and Pinochet and on and on, it is everyone's duty to speak out.
There is another old saw you always hear, the one about dancing on someone's grave. I expect there will be a lot of folks jitterbugging on the Toxic Dwarf's grave when the time comes.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 2:52 PM | Comments (1)
October 19, 2007
Peter Costello's pinko past
Original found here.Thanks to Oz.
That's Peter on the left. What a handsome young socialist he was!
Here is the uncut version of a letter to The Age from Larvatus Prodeo. It puts some meat on the picture:
Having misspent my early adulthood in student unions during roughly the same period as Peter Costello and Julia Gillard, I would suggest that he is the last person to make an issue of her political allegiances at that time.
It is a matter of record that in the period 1976-1980 Mr. Costello was a supporter of the Labor Party, compulsory student unionism, and student income support grants set at 120 per cent of the poverty line. He is on record as saying his faction in national student politics was “the democratic Left”, expressed left-wing views on many issues when interviewed by student newspapers, and frequently attended self-described “Social Democrat” training programs along with many people who have since gone on to become trade union officials.
Furthermore, during 1979 Mr. Costello and his faction were allied, firstly with the pro-Chinese communists to campaign for disaffiliation from the Australian Union of Students, and then with the Communist Party of Australia to push through structural changes to AUS at a Special Council of the organisation. At the same Special Council Mr. Costello stated his strong support for the AUS Women’s Department, whose platform stated that it was “part of a continuing revolutionary process, the purpose of which is to attack patriarchy, racism, capitalism and the nature of society as a whole”.
Is this the sort of person conservative voters want to become Prime Minister of Australia within the next three years if the Coalition is re-elected?
We should also note that Mr. Costello was a rabid advocate of direct election of AUS office-bearers during this period, which raises some questions about his current ultra-minimalist republicanism and his belief (reported by his brother Tim at a Griffith University conference in 2002) that a republic with a directly elected head of state would be a fate worse than death.
Check out the excellent comments to this posting, one of which is from Christian:
The problem with this is that it makes Peter more appealing to the many people who see leftism as a phase. If he reclaims his past he can claim the moral high ground. It frightens me to see anything that might make the Minister for Hillsong closer to holding the top job.
"Minister for Hillsong". Sublime!
BTW: If you missed the Chaser's "Eulogy Song", a home run that went way over the top of left field, and which has had Cardigan-clutchers everywhere horrified, check it out here.
I especially loved this response from John Howard, the nation's number one boneless chicken:
"Why don't they stick to decent, dirt-free humour that we can all enjoy?"
I'm sure we all look forward to Howard's entry into the immortal Eulogy Song.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:37 AM
October 18, 2007
Julia's no commie, but Peter is a fascist
Anyone still supporting John Howard is either shameless or stupid. Probably both.
First off, Bilegrip is shattered to belatedly hear that Matt Price has been diagnosed with brain tumours. Australia's most interesting and hilarious columnist is presently undergoing exploratory surgery. Why is it that the good guys always suffer while the truly evil get through unscathed?
What would Matt make of Costello's latest Goebbels-inspired propaganda linking Julia Gillard's days as a radical student activist for the Socialist Forum with Communism. Especially when Costello himself was a Labor activist at Monash University. Not to mention Tony Abbott's membership of the Labor Party when he was a student. Surely their past would link them to communism as well.
Communism, for crying out loud! We haven't heard about commies under the bed or anywhere else since the bygone era of Malcolm Fraser.
Meanwhile, today, Costello, Abbott, Kevin Andrews and John Howard himself continue maintain a cozy relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, surely the most insane fundamentalist Christian sect since the days of Jim Jones.
I'll take someone with a socialist background over someone who supports the misanthropic Brethren any day.
Here is some background on mommy's boy John Howard's puffed up and embarrassing attempt to be a man yesterday by telling Kevin Rudd to "grow up" and stop trying to elevate the election to policy statements instead of joining Howard in the Coalition's idea of the manly cesspool of slander.
Tony Wright, A man among the men, wrote:
Sweat-stained honest welders of heavy haulage equipment, the men of Haulmark Trailers were mugged by the Prime Minister's campaign caravan for a grab-bag of compelling reasons.
More importantly, perhaps, Haulmark is a company booming in John Howard's prosperous, militarised Australia: a busy medium-sized business with 150-odd employees about to grow and prosper thanks to a $400 million contract from the Defence Department for giant, tough trailers.
Every ingredient, in short, was there to cook up a perfect backdrop for a Prime Minister on the make. Hard-muscled Queensland working men in metal-capped boots and overalls building stuff for soldiers. Just add cameras, which, of course, were bussed in with the travelling media party.
"G'day, how long have you been working here?" Howard cried as he plunged across the factory floor, hand outstretched to any calloused paw that might be there to meet it.
"Forty-one years," responded one Evan Bugslag. The PM expressed the sort of surprise he might have radiated had Mr Bugslag told him he had just dropped in from Mars. Howard is big on loud, delighted astonishment about the relatively pedestrian when he is on the election stump.
It may have been all that blue-collar manhood, but Howard took no more than a few minutes to muscle up.
Asked about Rudd's claim that the Government was playing dirty in its early advertising campaigns, he all but called his Labor adversary a wimp. Here, said the PM, was a bloke in a contest for the hearts and minds of Australians who was saying that he should be handed the ball and the game should be played only on his half of the field. "Can I say to Mr Rudd — grow up."
Finally, he was asked about "party drugs" — the sort that have got Ben Cousins into so much strife. It was a gift to the PM, by now in full testosterone mode. We had to stop glamorising these "damned drugs" by calling them party drugs or recreational drugs, he thundered. Why, they deserved the sort of stigma now attached to tobacco, something he reminded us all he used to smoke, just like — though he didn't say it — the tough, cool guys of his generation.
So why not criminalise tobacco, The Age inquired? "I'm not criminalising tobacco and I'm not planning to," he responded, veering dangerously into the irrational.
Matt Price couldn't have said it better.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:23 AM | Comments (3)
October 17, 2007
Don't do it, Kev!
Copyright © 2007, Maurie Gee
Let the arrogant little weasel front up to his 200 hired supporters by himself. On Pay TV to boot, without the "worm," which previously gave us Howard-haters graphic evidence and thigh-slapping guffaws when the weasel flubbed it.
So much for getting his message across to the "mob".
It would be interesting (or boring as hell) to see him try to fill one and a half hours with the occasional question from embarrassed Sky News moderator, David Speers. Budding psychologists could use the transcript for PhD theses on what happens to power-mad leaders when faced with repudiation from their prey.
What a debacle. Here, perhaps for the first time in history, is an incumbent challenging his opposition to a debate. Sounds great until you realise that Howard is just trying to get the whole thing out of the way early, hoping the mugs forget all about having watched his irritating little throat clearances when asked to defend the indefensible, his darting eyes when stating bald lies, the hunching of his back when grasping for straws, and his shifting from foot to foot when trying to sound authentic.
No sirree, no three debates for him, as Kevin Rudd has asked for.
And here is Tony "Yes, I've gone completely insane" Abbott with a trademark Illiberal Party false dilemma:
Kevin Rudd refuses to acquiesce to the Prime Minister's cunning rules for debate.
Therefore, Kevin Rudd is scared and politically immature.
Peter Costello came up with a doozy last week, referring to Opposition Foreign Affairs Spokesman Robert McClelland's view on capital punishment concerning the death penalties for both the Bali Nine and the Bali Bombers:
Labor believes there should be no death penalty for anyone under any circumstances.
Therefore, Labor supports the Bali Bombers and terrorism.
While I'm on the subject of Howard humiliation, here are some choice exerpts from Raymond Gill's PM's dip into YouTube fails to deliver:
Yesterday's latest YouTube appearance by the PM proved once again that when it comes to this newfangled technology, his attempt to connect with the youngsters is like watching an old geezer in a tracksuit stumbling on his new iPod headset and into a rave party when out on his early morning constitutional.
"Hello there!" Johnny creaks on the Liberal Party's YouTube channel, his self-conscious grin seguing into a long, long one minute and 34 seconds of him standing stock-still in shirt sleeves and tie selling his election routine, before signing off with: "I look forward to talking to you all on YouTube over the weeks ahead. Thanks for watching!"
The PM's cheerio brings back memories of Nancy Cato bidding ta-ta to the kiddies through a looking glass on The Magic Circle Club, or Johnny Young signing off on Young Talent Time by breaking into a treacly All My Loving.
While yesterday's appearance was much better than the PM's YouTube debut in July with the silly greeting "Good Morning!", it was only marginally less buttock-clenchingly embarrassing than Sunday's Liberal Party website post. Here Howard, in a fevered attempt to look relaxed, is seen tossing about what appears to be either a Nerf ball or a very fat frankfurt as he chats policy, again in a funky, unplugged, shirt-sleeve look.
Some drama teacher with the abilities of Mr G has obviously told the PM to "punch" key words, so when he sells his message that 70 per cent of an ALP front bench "will be former union officials", he recoils and repeats "70 per cent" with faux-John Bell intensity and a look of concerted incredulity.
Gill also had some colourful comments on Kevin '07. Check it out.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:26 AM | Comments (6)
October 16, 2007
Howard still backs Exclusive Brethren
Copyright © 2007, Maurie Gee
In Brethren 'lied' on cash for ads, Michael Bachelard reports that Dr Dean Drayton, former president of the Uniting Church, tried on some four occasions to arrange meetings with the PM both as president of his church, and representative of the National Council of Churches, which represents 4 million people. The subjects he wished to discuss, among others, were asylum seekers and WorkChoices. But "there was no real response from the Prime Minister's department".
Contrast this with the numerous meetings between Exclusive Brethren members and John "governing for all of us" Howard, as reported in last night's Four Corners.
Howard said on 22 August 2007, "I do not deny for a moment I've met representatives of the Exclusive Brethren, and why not? They're Australian citizens, it's a lawful organisation, and as Prime Minister I have met an enormous number of organisations - it's my job."
But it's not his job to meet a representive of the National Council of Churches.
The reason is simple. The Exclusive Brethren, the fundamentalist Christian sect which, among other prohibitions, refuses to allow its members to vote, have poured thousands of dollars into various Coalition election campaigns.
They don't need to vote, since they have campaigned successfully for special treatment from the Howard Government.
From the Four Corners report:
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In recent years Brethren leaders have met Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, the then Justice Minister Chris Ellison, Health Minister Tony Abbott, Treasurer Peter Costello and Prime Minister John Howard.
Former Minister Danna Vale supported the accreditation of political campaigner Warwick John as a Parliamentary lobbyist.
In 2004, the Brethren won a temporary exemption from testing their children for computer literacy, from then Education Minister Brendan Nelson.
In New South Wales and South Australia, the Brethren have won exemptions from union inspections in their workplaces, and this is mirrored in recent federal legislation.
SENATOR BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: Notably, they have been able to influence John Howard's WorkChoices legislation with a special exemption for Exclusive Brethren workplaces from union presences, and without the authority of their employees because they're given no say, the Exclusive Brethren is able to ban unions from coming into any of their work places.
Why does Howard continue to support the Ex Brethren? A letter to The Age today sums it up:
This newly contrite Prime Minister would claim responsibility for invading Poland, the bubonic plague and the Spice Girls if he thought there was a vote in it. -- John Ogge
Read the transcript (link above) or see a repeat of the show tonight at 11:35 PM on ABC Television.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
October 15, 2007
Six weeks of gritting the teeth
Courtesy Ron Tandberg and The Age
Sorry for the scan, couldn't find online.
This morning I was all set to down two or three caffe lattes whilst perusing The Age, The Australian, and the Herald Sun. Rarely buy all three, so was amazed to find the total cost was $5.10. Thank His Satanic Nibs for the internet is all I can say. After one latte, I threw out the business and sports sections and split.
Too many words, too much to take in. Further, now that the election has been called, I find myself speechless. It's a matter of gritting the teeth for the next six weeks until the electorate can wave bye-bye to John Howard with a hearty Adios Motherfucker!
A couple of things caught my ear and eye this morning:
Jon Faine mentioned that November 24 falls during schoolies week. Which explains why Howard chose the date. This means a significant number of Rudd voters will be too busy getting pissed to give a damn. Anyone with these teenagers in the family should get them to fill out a postal vote pronto.
The other is an article by Michael Bachelard, Two MPs sponsor Brethren lobbyists. Of course they are John Howard Party MPs. Dippy Danna Vale and Michael Ferguson, the member for Bass in Tassie.
Bachelard reports that Vale and Ferguson have vouched for Exclusive Brethren elders Stephen Hales and Warwick John, allowing them to be issued lobbyists' passes and permanent access to Federal Parliament.
The Ex Brethren have also retained Illiberal-connected public relations firm Jackson Wells Morris to provide them with political advice and deal with "hostile media".
Enough to gag a maggot, eh? At least Me Too, Mark 2, Kevin Rudd, has repudiated this evil sect. Me Too Mark 1, John Howard (who gets the number one honours for all those years in George Bush's used hankie pocket), just loves 'em.
Bachelard also notes that tonight's Four Corners will be delving further into the Exclusive Brethren. Don't miss it.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:47 AM | Comments (1)
October 14, 2007
November 24, 2007: Australia's day of liberation from evil
Found this tattered and yellowed Leunig, from many election moons ago. A fitting day to post it.
Courtesy Michael Leunig and The Age
The Wicked Weasel of Oz sounded decidedly shaky as he once again invoked his famous old lie of "governing for all Australians". Nerves? Or did he have a look at this morning's Sunday Age/Taverner poll? The poll has Labor 18 points ahead.
What horrors does Puny Nephew have in store for us between now and the 24th of November? Perhaps the only weapon left is to organise the white trash Sudanese bashers into taxpayer funded death squads. A series of Kristallnacts in marginal seats and the assassination of popular Labor figures (if there are any) might just do the trick.
We haven't heard much out of Philip Ruddock these days. Does this mean he's been too busy in conferences with ASIO and the AFP to determine how best to set off a terrorist attack for the sole purpose of re-electing Herr Howard?
It's hard to believe that John Howard will go down without taking Australia with him.
Note: In a mindless moment I wrote "Senegalese" above instead of Sudanese. Now corrected.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 2:28 PM | Comments (1)
October 13, 2007
Howard's values statement: Australia, you're standing in it
Who cares what the fork-tongued homunculus says about "values". If he ever had any, they died behind razor wire years ago.
For today's posting we let the cartoonists have their say, with interspersed excerpts from Tracee Hutchison's Aborigines are not an Area, Mr Howard.
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian
This. Whole. Area. I've been struggling with these three words since the Prime Minister used them in a speech at the Sydney Institute on Thursday night. "I'm the first to admit that This Whole Area is one I have struggled with during the entire time that I have been Prime Minister," the PM said.
Well, yes. Though I suspect there'd be a few people who'd claim to have beaten you to that conclusion, Mr Howard, but if you'd like to think this pre-election epiphany signals a "first" of sorts — particularly given how achingly overdue it is — then I'm prepared to contemplate that you might be genuine.
Courtesy Peter Nicholson and The Australian
But that's one of the greatest difficulties I'm having with it. That somehow a light has only just gone off in your head and you've suddenly seen the awfulness of your Government's decade-long neglect and disdain of this country's aspirations to do better by our indigenous peoples. Just now. Really?
This is not an epiphany, it's a masterstroke of politics. Which is what you do best, of course. And one that wedges everyone — the Labor Party, indigenous leaders, church groups, the welfare and community sector — the very people who have been your loudest critics. What a triumph.
Courtesy John Spooner and The Age
So your big impact sentence and your big impact speech about reconciliation and a referendum about rewording the preamble of the constitution to acknowledge there were people living here 40,000 years before the first boat people arrived will be universally embraced, out of sheer desperation and the overwhelming belief so many of us cling to in the name of sanity that we are better than you have allowed us to be.
Courtesy Matt Golding and Sydney Morning Herald
This. Whole. Area. It might well have been a life-long struggle of yours to admit that people of colour are your equals, Mr Howard, but the struggle I'm having is trying to imagine what it must feel like as a person — and a people — to be referred to by the nation's elected leader as an Area. Aboriginal people are not an Area, Mr Howard. That's why I don't think you really meant much of what you said at the Sydney Institute on Thursday night.
Courtesy Alston and West Australian
I think you know that things are so dire for you right now that you will try everything and anything to stay in power. And talking about what you'll do for indigenous people in your 12th year — if you get it — makes you think that we'll forget about that time you called those of us who walked — united in body, soul and spirit — across bridges and parks and walkways back in 2000, a mob. You called us a mob, Mr Howard. Do you remember that? I remember that. I remember that I was so angry I wept tears of frustrated fury and despair. We were not — and are not — a mob, Mr Howard.
Courtesy Ron Tandberg and The Age
But now you're expecting us to believe that you've only just realised that we can't move forward as a country until we make peace with our past and our present. And you're even sheeting the blame to the era in which you grew up, suggesting you are merely a product — or an artefact as you so delightfully referred to yourself — of the time. Well, my dad is about the same age as you, Mr Howard, and I can tell you it didn't take him until Thursday night to work out that we haven't done our indigenous brothers and sisters too well in this country.
Which is not to say that it's never too late to change. And that's why what you have done is so clever. Because we have no choice but to believe you mean it. But that doesn't mean we will also forget. Or forgive you.
So. His Heinous will either call the election today or tomorrow or continue to enjoy the power he wields over every man, woman, child and their dogs and cats in this pathetic joke of a country by forcing parliament to sit for another insanely costly week.
We exist at John Howard's pleasure and he loves it.
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 1:53 PM | Comments (1)
October 12, 2007
What's next? Rescinding WorkChoices? Troops out of Iraq?
That most people are even remotely taking seriously John Howard's last minute "commitment to reconciliation" (minus that apology) shows how blind they are to the political opportunism that has defined his entire life in politics.
That political commentators (other than those in the ideological camp of the government) are attempting to treat it with anything other than derision reveals them as journalistic eunuchs.
It appears that only The Age editorial (Sorry, Mr Howard: too little, too late) has had the guts to call it like it is:
The governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating worked towards it, making up ground but with the destination still out of reach. Then, from March 1996 to late yesterday afternoon, came stalemate: a time of non-apology for the traumas of those of the stolen generation; a time when the Prime Minister did little or nothing to correct the injustices of the past or give indigenous people encouragement that they, too, were part of "one great tribe".
Yesterday, in his speech to the Sydney Institute, Mr Howard allowed himself to declare "a moment in time which should be seized": an epiphany that, however heartfelt and self-critical it may be, must be seen as an audacious attempt to turn around his public standing in the face of an election the polls say he is destined to lose. True confessions and promises to attempt true reconciliation, however welcome they might be, lose their lustre under the light of political opportunism, particularly when they stop short of a national apology for past injustices. Playing the indigenous card at five minutes to midnight is little compensation for years of despair and hardship.
Gerard Henderson, executive director of the Sydney Institute, the Right Wing Thought-control Tank where Howard gave the speech, said on ABC radio this morning:
"That was the real John Howard last night."
But Gerard, there is no "real John Howard". The quintessential emperor with no clothes, Howard is so inauthentic that he can't even walk properly, stumbling everywhere when not falling over. His mind and heart are atrophied by his fear of not being loved, his realisation that no one really does, and the seething corollary: a lust for power over anyone who has found him out.
Inauthentic and credibility-free, he continues to treat his supporters like fools. And they, grasping at any straw to assuage their unconscious guilt at having believed his lies and his treacherous dismantling of democracy for so long, can now breathe a sigh of relief that he suddenly has the best interests of the Aboriginal community at heart. "Better late than never," they say, refusing to admit that with an election around the corner in which he faces annihilation, the "late" has extended "from March 1996 to … yesterday afternoon".
Even Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson appears to be duped when he says, "Australians have no need to doubt the sincerity of the Prime Minister's move towards reconciliation."
The chilling truth is that John Howard actually believes that he is being sincere. So he wasn't sincere for eleven years when he treated Aboriginals like scum? When is he sincere and not sincere? Like a criminal who becomes born-again to fool his jailers, Howard's "sincerity," his "humility" is false, meant for one thing only: to fool people into re-electing him.
After all these years, there is really only one definition of John Howard that applies: he will do or say anything to stay in power.
It remains to be seen whether there are more "fools" in Australia than people who refuse to suffer them.
Addendum: Here is a comment sent to Bilegrip for yesterday's (posting):
A cynic might argue that Howard's Damascene conversion to "symbolic reconciliation" with Indigenous Australians is simply an attempt to mask the odour of racism associated with Andrews and the new African refugee policy.
I'm not saying that, mind you, but a cynic might. ;) -- from AV.
Link:
• Last minute change of heart in the face of annihiliation
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 11:37 AM
October 11, 2007
John Howard's government of the racists, by the racists, for the racists
Not all Australian Liberals are racist, but all racists are John Howard Party supporters.
Picture: Angela Wylie and The Age
Sudanese Liep Gony was murdered by white trash racists two weeks ago, prompting Kevin Andrews, John Howard's attack Chihuahua, to utter his racist Howard-backed government denunciation of Africans as being unable to integrate into the Aryan Australian community.
Last night Sudanese teenager Ajang Gor was attacked by white trash racists as he bicycled home from his job at a fast-food outlet. After bashing him, they stole his wallet and mobile phone, later using it to send racist taunts to his brother, cousins and friends. Here is what they said:
Wats up u black dogs ya mate jst got knocked da f__ out we jst jackd him welcome 2 australia u jigaboo f___s melton blood gang we from melton u peices of shit.
When asked today by reporters if he would apologise to the Sudanese community for his outburst after the Gony killing, and if he felt responsible for the Gor attack, Kevin Andrews refused to retract one word in his obfuscating answers. BUT he was happy to brand as un-Australian the attack last night by Sudanese youths on a police officer in the same suburb of Liep Gony's murder.
Here's some of what Jane Holroyd reports in Attack on officer is un-Australian: Andrews [italics mine]:
[Andrews] condemned the attack on the officers, saying it was not part of the Australian way of life.
"Any matter which involves violence in the community is something which we abhor, regardless of who is the perpetrator or the victim of the violence.
"Violence is not a part of the peacefulness and the tolerance which has been very much a value of the Australian way of life."
Mr Andrews would not be drawn on whether the assault validated his comments - made after the bashing death of Sudanese teenager Liep Gony in Noble Park - that some African migrants had failed to integrate into the community.
He also said he would not be apologising for the comments, as Sudanese community leaders had demanded at Mr Gony's funeral yesterday.
"We've got an issue and we've got challenges ... I'm not proposing to apologise for saying what people are concerned about.
"It's no good denying there are challenges in parts of the community." Asked if he had fuelled tension in the Sudanese community, he replied by saying that he was not alone in saying there was a problem.
"I'm recognising the problem. Many people have recognised the problem," Mr Andrews said.
"We help the situation by recognising that we've got challenges .... [by] investigating the problem, putting more money into it, providing more services and making sure that those who arrive get the best possible opportunity to settle in Australia and not add to those problems at the present time."
Note: "I'm not proposing to apologise for saying what people are concerned about." Shades of John Howard's speech years ago when he released the dark side of human nature by labelling "political correctness" -- i.e., generosity of spirit and tolerance of difference -- the province of chardonnay and latte sipping intellectuals and other sissies.
Kevin Andrews is merely continuing this onerous tradition.
Links
• Kevin Andrews must resign
• Andrews denies fuelling racial violence in Melbourne
• Community's anger spills over
• Minister blamed for attack on African teen
• In time of strain, minister failing test of leadership
• Youths bash detectives in Noble Park
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 2:24 PM | Comments (1)
October 10, 2007
Rudd paralysed by wedges as Costello mistakes his arsehole for his mouth
Please, er, welcome Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls, who will be posting for Bilegrip until the election. I've had it. (For more info on Horck, see About the Bilegrip mob. -- Bilegrip Admin
Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Robert McClelland has received a fan load of shit for stating the humanitarian view of capital punishment: no death penalty for anyone under any circumstances. Then Chairman Kev, whose fear of the Government's incessant wedges are turning him into a mindless paralytic, reprimands McClelland for stating what in fact is Labor Party policy on the subject, thus allowing Alexander Downer to make that point ad nauseam. Then Peter Costello ups the ante to pure hysteria by claiming that if McClelland believes the Bali Bombers' lives should be spared then it follows that Labor supports them. In other words, Labor supports terrorism.
Said Peter the Jerk:
"I think it was a very strange time for the Labor Party, to come in support of the Bali bombers," he said.
"Let's not forget, the Bali bombers killed 88 of our fellow Australians.
Let's have some sympathy for the 88 dead and their families, rather than sympathy for those who cruelly and cold bloodedly decided to kill them for no reason, other than they were Australians."
Sympathy? Given Labor's policy, it's just common sense, you dumb shit. The Howard Government likes to play Dr Mengele with capital punishment -- all Aussies should be spared; all others can snuff it -- which is yet another reason why they are unfit to govern.
Neither the Bali Nine -- who were only dope mules, for Satan's sake (as opposed to God, who took a hike chileads of chileads ago and left the planetary rulership to His Satanic Nibs) -- nor the Bali Bombers should be put to death. Especially the latter, who are praying for martyrdom, a martyrdom that will only boost recruits to their cause. Just as the insane invasion of Iraq has done.
Personally, I feel like a lot of people about capital punishment. I would love to see John Howard swinging in the breeze after being convicted for crimes against humanity, but I would settle for life imprisonment.
-- Horrible Horck
Posted by Horrible Horck - The Bleeding Heart With Balls at 3:28 PM | Comments (2)
October 6, 2007
Bligh calls a spade an Andrews
Courtesy Bill Leak and The Australian
Premier Anna Bligh has launched a scathing attack on Federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, describing his comments about the Sudanese community as "racist" and as coming from the "deep south of America in the 1950s".
"I think frankly Australians will see Kevin Andrews' comments for what they are," Ms Bligh told a media conference in Brisbane this morning.
"It has been a long time since I have heard such a pure form of racism out of the mouth of any Australian politician. For it to come to come from the Immigration Minister is particularly disturbing.
"I think we are in for a desperate and ugly federal election campaign and I would suggest that people like Kevin Andrews need to think long and hard about the long-term traumatic effects he will have on the lives of refugee children and their families before he opens his mouth again." -- Andrews a racist: Bligh
Lately, I've been looking again at the Holocaust, transferring old videos originally aired on the pre-Howard-years SBS to DVD, and the similarity in terms of intent between the Nazis and the John Howard Party. Obviously, a comparison can only go so far: the JHP has no intention of murdering six million people, including women and children, whom they despise; they have been content to put a handful, including women and children, behind razor wire in the desert without fixed sentences.
One of these documentaries, The Nazis: A Warning From History, Part five: The Road to Treblinka, made clear what had been suspected for decades, that Adolph Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution. Previously, there had been no direct evidence (in the same way there has never been any direct evidence that Howard knew anything about his own government's crimes against humanity), but the doco shows a note from Heinrich Himmler's diary, in which he and Hitler had discussed the construction of the extermination camps in Poland.
In other words, Hitler was to Himmler as Howard is to Andrews. And Ruddock. And Heffernan. And Abbott. And Downer. Out of their mouths come John Howard's hatred of culture, his racism, his misanthropy. Andrews is simply one of the more malleable of his stooges. Like Philip Ruddock's Amnesty International badge, Andrews is a Catholic in name only.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Links:
• Playing out a black farce
• Templestowe reaction to Andrews comments
• Pauline Hanson: the Liberal Party's secret weapon
• Exploiting misfortune to win an election
• Hurting African refugees a second time
• Stop blaming the victims, minister
• Andrews under fire, but Hanson approves
• Race card won't fool everybody
• Ganging up on Africans
• Migrant quota cut plays on community's distrust
• Africans find sanctuary in the marginals
• World takes cynical view of Africa ban
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:43 PM | Comments (5)
October 5, 2007
Right Wing Media and JHP: distortions and disinformation
Media Watch, anyone?
Courtesy Jay Town and The Herald Sun
This is the cropped internet version of the photo. The Herald Sun street edition
also included the lower half, where she is pushing a walker.
Beverley Hargreaves is too scared to leave home after dark, fearing she might get caught up in Noble Park's gang violence. The 75-year-old widow, a local for 52 years, said the area used to be "lovely". "Now, it's just not safe. -- Chris Crawford, Widow feels trapped.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to meet an elderly woman or man requiring a walker to get around who would even think of leaving home after dark. If they do, someone is there to pick them up in a car.
What Chris Crawford has written leads us to believe that if there were no Sudanese or other non-Aryans in the Widow Hargreaves' neighbourhood, she would be happy to push the walker out her front door and go for a stroll anytime during the night, including the middle of it.
Now, if this woman were afraid of going out during the day … but clearly from the photo, this is not the case.
Joe Hockey: Goose-stepping half-wit couldn't run out of sight on a dark night
Get a load of this! [italics mine]
When I rang the office of Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey on Monday night for his comments on a new survey by academics on WorkChoices, the response was, unfortunately, predictable.
After a brief discussion about the facts of the survey, Hockey's media adviser asked who had written it. I spelled out the name of the lead researcher, Dr Brigid van Wanrooy. Twenty minutes later, the minister emailed an official response.
"This report is not credible. It is the same old flawed research from the same old union accedemics (sic). It contradicts far more reliable findings from the ABS. It has (sic) hardly surprising that acdemics (sic) such as John Buchanan and Brigid van Wanrooy, who has previously authored ACTU research, would come up with such a flawed report."
Hockey was at it again on radio first thing next morning, but he upgraded Van Wanrooy and Buchanan, her boss, from union academics to "former trade union officials who are parading as academics". -- Michael Bachelard, Attack is no substitute for argument.
You and I might let the odd misspelling slip in our emails, but this is inexcusable from a senior Federal Minister. Or his PA. Never mind the mind-bending untruth of it all.
Not only is the government being run by ignorant frauds, but their supporters are stupid entry-level humans.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 3:51 PM | Comments (3)
October 4, 2007
International Bloggers' Day for Burma
See also:
John Howard Aiding Burma's Dictators
AFP outlines Burma training role
Howard Government looking to Burma for solutions?
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)
October 3, 2007
John Howard Party's last hand plays the racist card
If Australia welcomed refugees as the "Christian" nation the Government likes to claim it is, there would be little or no problem with their "settling into the Australian way of life".
Instead, the John Howard Party touts its "Christian Family Values" while covertly inciting racism in its supporters.
The Government's Chief Christian Racist, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, has announced a cutback from 70 per cent to 30 per cent of refugees from Africa, ostensibly because of their blackness, which makes them even less Aryan looking than Asians.
No one on earth is as black as a Sudanese, but the many Sudanese families in my suburb appear to be dealing with their resettlement as well as can be expected, considering the upheaval they have experienced. And, with the exception of racist John Howard Party supporters, who have never experienced upheaval in any shape or form, people seem to be accepting them.
The recent murder of a Sudanese man in Noble Park has the stench of racism. I was advised to wait to see if it wasn't an inter-Sudanese gang slaying before beginning a rant on this blog, but it turns out that two men and a girl have been charged and the names of the men are most definitely not Sudanese.
As Tommy Pendejo said about John Howard and his supporters on these pages back in June (Conservatives wouldn't know a value from a price tag), "Perhaps in the late stages of this endless phoney election campaign, he can whip them up against Muslims."
And anyone else not resembling the white trash who love him.
With the polls remaining constant for Labor, the Government's desperate attempts to slander Kevin Rudd over anything and everything have become hysterical. Worse, their pathetic policies-on-the-run, announced daily to derision and cat-calls have ostensibly left them with only one out: either an AFP/ASIO manufactured terrorist "event" or the racist card.
Whipping up the already seething hatred of those dogwhistled over the last decade into having their pitchforks and cudgels at the ready is by far the easier method.
Expect to be dogwhistled into singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" any day now. The battle hymn of racism.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:01 PM
October 2, 2007
Illiberal Party in it for themselves, not Australia
A marathon election campaign aimed at destroying Labor leader Kevin Rudd's credibility is being backed by senior Liberal strategists. Senior Liberals believe a long campaign is still the best chance of denting Mr Rudd's apparently runaway lead in the polls.
How long has the election campaign been going on? Since Kevin Rudd took over the ALP leadership. Close to a year. And, from what I heard on Jon Faine this morning (Libby Price sitting in), the election is going to be called for December the First. (Or November 24, as Peter Costello intimated at the weekend.)
Why the delay?
Sources said that Mr Howard was likely to delay going to the polls as long as possible. A campaign of six weeks had been discussed by the Liberal hierarchy.
"The longer the better," a senior Liberal said.
The strategy would be to expose Mr Rudd to maximum scrutiny in the hope that he "falls over".
Can you believe this? What grown person with two neurons to rub together to fire a third believes this kind of skulduggery is in the nation's best interest? These Illiberal party hacks are seriously deluded, if not downright psychopathic. At best they are a shameless blight on the reputation of Australia.
Stuff the nation, sez Tony Abbott, we'll take as long as we please to do the dirty on Kevin Rudd. And this is a man who has been a member of government for eleven years? What did sane, civilised people do to deserve him?
If ever a party deserved political oblivion it is the John Howard-hijacked Liberal Party.
So, we have to wait until the end of November, beginning of December. Let's hope the JHP are digging their own graves with this vilification campaign. And let's hope a whopping majority of Australians take the bloody blinkers off. Enough, for Christ's sake, is enough.
Quotes above from Liberals back marathon election campaign.
-- Bilegrip Admin
Posted by Bilegrip Admin at 12:48 PM | Comments (1)