| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | SCATT Archives Vol 3 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | ¡ NO PASARAN ! |
Echelon: The Right Wing plays God Psychopathic voyeurs in high places with unlimited funds are wanking as they read your e-mails, your telephone calls and your faxes; in short, any time you use telecommunications. And they are doing it with the complicity of the Australian Government. A year before George Orwell published 1984 (and therefore while he was writing it), Harry Truman created the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor activities in the Soviet Union. With the end of the cold war, the Agency has continued to justify its existence through the fight against terrorism. That's what it says officially, but evidence is before us that what is mostly happening is the surveillance of all citizens everywhere. Under an agreement called UKUSA (easily pronounced Yu-Ku-Za!) and signed by the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the system called Echelon was formed. This allows each country to spy on each other's citizens and businesses (thus overriding legislation preventing each country to spy on its own citizens) and trade the information. Using Cray Supercomputers, it is rumored that Echelon has the capability of scanning every e-mail that leaves the US for foreign shores! Wild conspiracy theory rubbish? Read on. To sift through this enormous quantity of personal data, Echelon has devised key words to be on the alert for. Some of these keywords are as follows (quoted from ECHELON ONLINE SURVEILLANCE, whose link is listed at the end of this article): "…government, law, captain, privacy, Kenya, SAFE, Blenheim, Waihopai, FBI, garbage, archives, bet, White House, Secure Internet Connections, enigma, real, spies, contacts, watchers, eavesdropping, debugging, Exon, Shell, executive, explicit - and yes, there's even Scully and Mulder plus surprisingly, Bugs Bunny. Then there's - CRA, TWA, NATIA, DT, OTP, SBI, BROMURE, TRD OC3, ISSAA SURSAT, ASIS, ISA, SATCOMA, MI6, SIS,, ELF, RFX, SETA, TSCM, BBE. Of course, we would expect to see explosives, guns, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, ambush, motorcade, charcoal, body, armour, cordite, teflon bullets, assault team, nitrocellulose, fuses, picric acid, silver nitrate, presidential motorcade, boobytraps, detcord, pmk40, Air Force One, platter charge, ddnp, lead styphante, munitions, weapons, hostages, main charge, AK-47, hrt, resistance, c4, amatol, nitrostarch, thermite - the list goes on and on." What are they doing with all this data? Here is an excerpt from a speech by United States Senator, Frank Church (quoted from THE ECHELON SYSTEM, whose link is also listed below): Echelon "could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology... I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." My comments here are sparce, because there is an enormous amount of information on the Internet, the last bastion of democracy in the world. And we know how every government is doing its worst to stifle the freedom each of us has to express ourselves through this medium. I conclude this first commentary on Echelon with an article that appeared here in Melbourne in The Age, 23 May 1999. Following this article are several links (in no particular order) to sites with enough information on Echelon to leave you gasping for air. CAREFUL, THEY MIGHT HEAR YOU Australia has become the first country openly to admit that it takes part in a global electronic surveillance system that intercepts the private and commercial international communications of citizens and companies from its own and other countries. The disclosure is made today in Channel 9's Sunday program by Martin Brady, director of the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra. Mr Brady's decision to break ranks and officially admit the existence of a hitherto unacknowledged spying organisation called UKUSA is likely to irritate his British and American counterparts, who have spent the past 50 years trying to prevent their own citizens from learning anything about them or their business of "signals intelligence" - "sigint" for short. In his letter to Channel 9 published today, Mr Brady states that the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) "does cooperate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship". In other statements which have now been made publicly available on the Internet (www.dsd.gov.au), he also says that DSD's purpose "is to support Australian Government decision-makers and the Australian Defence Force with high-quality foreign signals intelligence products and services. DSD (provides) important information that is not available from open sources". Together with the giant American National Security Agency (NSA) and its Canadian, British, and New Zealand counterparts, DSD operates a network of giant, highly automated tracking stations that illicitly pick up commercial satellite communications and examine every fax, telex, e-mail, phone call, or computer data message that the satellites carry. The five signals intelligence agencies form the UKUSA pact. They are bound together by a secret agreement signed in 1947 or 1948. Although its precise terms have never been revealed, the UKUSA agreement provides for sharing facilities, staff, methods, tasks and product between the participating governments. Now, due to a fast-growing UKUSA system called Echelon, millions ofmessages are automatically intercepted every hour, and checked according to criteria supplied by intelligence agencies and governments in all five UKUSAcountries. The intercepted signals are passed through a computer system called the Dictionary, which checks each new message or call against thousands of"collection" requirements. The Dictionaries then send the messages into the spy agencies' equivalent of the Internet, making them accessible all over the world. Australia's main contribution to this system is an ultra-modern intelligence base at Kojarena, near Geraldton in Western Australia. The station was built in the early 1990s. At Kojarena, four satellite tracking dishes intercept Indian and Pacific Ocean communications satellites. The exact target of each dish is concealed by placing them inside golfball like "radomes". About 80 per cent of the messages intercepted at Kojarena are sent automatically from its Dictionary computer to the CIA or the NSA, without ever being seen or read in Australia. Although it is under Australian command, the station - like its controversial counterpart at Pine Gap - employs American and British staff in key posts. Among the "collection requirements" that the Kojarena Dictionary is told to look for are North Korean economic, diplomatic and military messages and data, Japanese trade ministry plans, and Pakistani developments in nuclear weapons technology and testing. In return, Australia can ask for information collected at other Echelon stations to be sent to Canberra. A second and larger, although not so technologically sophisticated DSD satellite station, has been built at Shoal Bay, Northern Territory. At Shoal Bay, nine satellite tracking dishes are locked into regional communications satellites, including systems covering Indonesia and south-west Asia. International and governmental concern about the UKUSA Echelon system has grown dramatically since 1996, when New Zealand writer Nicky Hager revealed intimate details of how it operated. New Zealand runs an Echelon satellite interception site at Waihopai, near Blenheim, South Island. Codenamed"Flintlock", the Waihopai station is half the size of Kojarena and its sister NSA base at Yakima, Washington, which also covers Pacific rim states. Waihopai'stask is to monitor two Pacific communications satellites, and intercept allcommunications from and between the South Pacific islands. Like other Echelon stations, the Waihopai installation is protected by electrified fences, intruder detectors and infra-red cameras. A year after publishing his book, Hager and New Zealand TV reporter John Campbell mounted a daring raid on Waihopai, carrying a TV camera and a stepladder. From open, high windows, they then filmed into and inside its operations centre. They were astonished to see that it operated completely automatically. Although Australia's DSD does not use the term "Echelon", Government sources have confirmed to Channel 9 that Hager's description of the system is correct, and that the Australia's Dictionary computer at Kojarena works in the same way as the one in New Zealand. Until this year, the US Government has tried to ignore the row over Echelon by refusing to admit its existence. The Australian disclosures today make this position untenable. US intelligence writer Dr Jeff Richelson has also obtained documents under the US Freedom of Information Act, showing that a USNavy-run satellite receiving station at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, is an Echelon site, and that it collects intelligence from civilian satellites. The station, south-west of Washington, lies in a remote area of the Shenandoah Mountains. According to the released US documents, the station's job is "to maintain and operate an Echelon site". Other Echelon stations are at Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico, Leitrim, Canada and at Morwenstow and London in Britain. Information is also fed into the Echelon system from taps on the Internet, and by means of monitoring pods which are placed on undersea cables. Since 1971, the US has used specially converted nuclear submarines to attach tapping pods to deep underwater cables around the world. The Australian Government's decision to be open about the UKUSA pact and the Echelon spy system has been motivated partly by the need to respond to the growing international concern about economic intelligence gathering, and partly by DSD's desire to reassure Australians that its domestic spying activity is strictly limited and tightly supervised. According to DSD director Martin Brady, "to ensure that (our) activities do not impinge on the privacy of Australians, DSD operates under a detailed classified directive approved by Cabinet and known as the Rules on Sigint and Australian Persons". Compliance with this Cabinet directive is monitored by the inspector-general of security and intelligence, Mr Bill Blick. He says that "Australian citizens can complain to my office about the actions of DSD. And if they do so then I have the right to conduct an inquiry." But the Cabinet has ruled that Australians' international calls, faxes or e-mails can be monitored by NSA or DSD in specified circumstances. These include "the commission of a serious criminal offence; a threat to the life or safety of an Australian; or where an Australian is acting as the agent of a foreign power". Mr Brady says that he must be given specific approval in every case. But deliberate interception of domestic calls in Australia should be left to the police or ASIO. Mr Brady claims that other UKUSA nations have to follow Australia's lead, and not record their communications unless Australia has decided that this is required. "Both DSD and its counterparts operate internal procedures to satisfy themselves that their national interests and policies are respected by the others," he says. So if NSA happens to intercept a message from an Australian citizen or company whom DSD has decided to leave alone, they are supposed to strike out the name and insert "Australian national" or "Australian corporation" instead. Or they must destroy the intercept. That's the theory, but specialists differ. According to Mr Hager, junior members of UKUSA just can't say "no". "... When you're a junior ally like Australia or New Zealand, you never refuse what they ask for." There are also worries about what allies might get up to with information that Australia gives them. When Britain was trying to see through its highly controversial deal to sell Hawk fighters and other arms to Indonesia, staff at the Office of National Assessments feared that the British would pass DSD intelligence on East Timor to President Soeharto in order to win the lucrative contract. The Australian Government does not deny that DSD and its UKUSA partners are told to collect economic and commercial intelligence. Australia, like the US, thinks this is especially justified if other countries or their exporters are perceived to be behaving unfairly. Britain recognises no restraint on economic intelligence gathering. Neither does France. According to the former Canadian agent Mike Frost, it would be "nave" for Australians to think that the Americans were not exploiting stations like Kojarena for economic intelligence purposes. "They have been doing it for years," he says. "Now that the Cold War is over, the focus is towards economic intelligence. Never ever over-exaggerate the power that these organisations have to abuse a system such as Echelon. Don't think it can't happen in Australia. It does." LINKS: For a detailed and complex analysis of the latest mysterious destruction of a commercial airliner off America's east coast, SCATT refers the reader to The REAL Mystery of Egypt Air Flight 990. It's getting weirder and weirder. But then, what do you expect from UmErUhca? "Stamps for E-mail?" is a hoax!…so let's keep it that way Adhering to our policy here at Political Prisoners of the Future headquarters of shooting first and asking questions later, The Squiz printed the article below, "Stamps for Email?" yesterday. Upon a subsequent Net investigation we feel safe in saying that the whole thing is, indeed was (it's several months old), a hoax. No less than the United States Postal Service and Canada Post issued press releases stating that neither Bill 602P, nor Congressman Tony Schnell exist. The Washingtonian (mentioned in the email) issued a denial saying that they never published an edition on 6 March 1999. SCATT has also determined that the attorneys at law listed at the bottom of the email do not exist in Vienna, VA, nor, probably, anywhere else. For further information, visit KylGrafX. Well, that's all a relief. It should be said in passing, that whoever wrote the hoax may have done the future of the Internet a service by nipping in the bud what must be in minds of many in power the world over. Here in Australia, David Kemp, the Minister of Education for the Rich (see Bark's Archives), is still trying to promote all or part of his infamous bill to allow universities to set their own fees and introduce a loans scheme that could see students repaying more than $100,000 for a degree. These political equivalents to raptors never give in. And while we're at it, the idea of charging for emails passed through the university system at least five years ago. Vigilance, mes amis, is required. HH The Squiz received the following email today. Take note and shiver. The forces of right wing evil hate the Internet because it threatens to impose democracy on them. Leave us not underestimate their power. Please read the following carefully if you intend tostay on-line and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation the US. Postal Service will be attempting to bilk email users out of "alternate postage fees". Bill 602P will permit theFederal Govt. to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Washington D.C. lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law. The U.S. Postal Service is claiming that lost revenue due to theproliferation of email is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign "There is nothing like a letter". Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents per day, or over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal Service for a service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy and noninterference. If the federal government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a surcharge to email, who knows where it will end. You are already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureaucratic inefficiency. If the U.S. Postal Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the "free" Internet in the United States. One congressman, Tony Schnell has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on all Internet service" above and beyond the government's proposed email charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of email surcharge "a useful concept whose time has come" (March 6, 1999 Editorial). Don't sit by and watch your freedom erode away! Send this email to all Americans on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say "No!" to Bill 602P. Kate Turner, Assistant to Richard Stepp The above address was included in the email, but the email was not issued from it. The Squiz will attempt to get an email address for you as soon as possible. Alternatively, email us and we will send you the email for forwarding. HH Steve Bracks: The cool change is here No one can accuse Steve Bracks' Labor Government in Victoria of sitting idly by or upholding the status quo since coming to power last month. Like Melbourne's legendary cool change, which comes after too many days of sweltering heat, they have reinstated democracy after the long years of Jeff Kennett's stifling rule. One by one, the Bracks Government is dismantling Kennett's authoritarian reforms. Fat cat public servants, taxpayer funded government credit cards without limit, a nobbled Auditor General, the corporatisation of state schools, the financial waste of the health networks, the gagging of teachers and health professionals, the bleeding of the hospital systems…all are going or being reversed. Now individual contracts, perhaps Kennett's shabbiest attempt to remove the rights of workers, are to be abolished. Michelle Bachelard, The Age 11/11, reports: "The new directive requires all employee relations managers in all departments and agencies to terminate Australian Workplace Agreements for non-executive employees on their expiry dates. New employees would be engaged on common law contracts providing over-award conditions until new collective agreements could be negotiated." Enter Peter Reith, the heart of darkness behind the Australian Workplace Agreement. Here's what he says in today's Age: "For narrow ideological reasons the Victorian Government, at the behest of its union allies, is depriving individuals of their freedom of choice; their right to exercise how they wish to be employed." Here is what he meant: "For narrow ideological reasons, the Liberal Party, at the behest of business and through the Australian Workplace Agreement, has deprived individuals of their freedom of choice by inflicting on them individual contracts which they must sign or be sacked. Their right notto exercise how they wish to be employed is being rescinded under this directive." The battle for democracy is on once again in Australia. You can bet the Liberal Party, long ago hijacked by plutocrats hankering after the feudal old days, will be fighting to keep it chained to the requirements of big business. But the fight may be going out of them. The feeling of relief at the reinstatement of an egalitarian government in Victoria is about to wash over the entire country. If anyone can reverse the trend of distrust towards politicians like Peter Reith, it is the Bracks government. Three cheers! HH The Right Wing's Dream: An ethics-free Australia You have to keep pinching yourself these days. Moustachio-twirling sleazebags in high places are falling over one another to see who gets the dishonour of being the most corrupt.The Monarchists, a grab bag of antediluvians and right wing dullards, have lied their way into the Hall of Shame on the international stage, but nationally, the contenders are legion. Jeff Kennett, long the champion of those who contemptuously thumb their noses at probity and democracy, has suddenly left the stage. So suddenly, in fact, that many of us will remain eternally gobsmacked. But, as they say, for every Jeff Kennett who exits, there are many to take his place. As the nation's leader, John Howard's fundamentally unethical character has opened a Pandora's Box of criminal or quasi-criminal behaviour in Australia's higher echelons. He has been a "role model" for the overt collapse of ethics in Australian political and commercial life. They are all out of the closet now. "Honest" John's ministers and backbenchers triggered the ethical vacuum that is sucking the vitality of Australia dry. One after another they were caught rorting with abandon. One after another they stood before the nation as children, unable to comprehend their wrong doing. In the end, their schoolmaster gave up punishing them altogether. Like them, John Howard has never really understood the crime. SOCOG's deception has terminally tarnished the Games. Were it not for the fact that sport is the opiate of the people, the people would stay away in droves. But regardless of attendance figures, this will forever be known as the Major Event that shamed Australia. The John Laws case is even more worrying. We all despise the elite cynicism of SOCOG, but "Lawsy" still has fans, despite his disregard for their intelligence. More than anyone (now that Kennett is gone), he represents the evil pied piper who takes his fawning followers down the garden path. Of course you don't want to look too closely at those followers: the gaggle of breakfast alcoholics whose love fantasies are firmly pinned on the Silver Tongued Cadaver may well do themselves a favour by dropping off the edge of the world where the garden path ends. Perhaps the most sickening entrant to Australia's current flouting of ethical behaviour is "Professor" David Flint, the oily, unctuous chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority. Long held in contempt by his peers, this virtual caricature of a member of Britain's House of Lords has appeared twice on John Laws radio show, even though he is the "judge" overlooking the inquiry into Laws' Cash-for Comment scandal. It is obvious that Australia has descended to the status of a third world country ruled by corruption when such a blatant conflict of interest can be rubbed in everyone's face, not once, but twice. The situation is so serious it is almost risible. Flint's removal should be demanded by anyone who has a voice. The media--on its front pages and on its television newscasts-- should hound this man out of his position, both as chairman of the ABA and as the presiding judge in the Laws inquiry. At the very foundation of these dreadful events, at the corner stone, at the first shoveling of dirt to announce the commencement of this descent, is John Howard. He, more than anyone, is responsible for Australia's having become a corrupt nation. Kim Beazley calls him backward looking. I call him a traitor, the Maréchal Petain of Australia, a man whose lack of character leaves him helpless to govern as the nation crumbles. HH The Referendum is Australia's latest shame Gort Slypesunder has aired his views on the upcoming Referendum on the Republic (See A Republic? Of Course!. I can't entirely agree with his position. Gort sounds like so many of us under John Howard: sapped of vitality over vital issues. Just look at the Aboriginal community. Since Aden Ridgeway's naive capitulation over the Preamble, the momentum for reconciliation has been sapped of vitality. It will return, of course, but when people on your side in any way collaborate with the enemy--and the Howard Government is the enemy of reconciliation--the wind goes out of you. For awhile. The Republic Referendum is much the same. What should have been a plebiscite over a yes or no on becoming a Republic, followed by debate on what form it should take, has turned into a chaotic farce. And the chaos is just what Little Johnny wanted. His obfuscated mind has obfuscated the nation. Seventy-five per cent of Australians want a republic, but they are divided on the model. The Monarchists are clearly outnumbered, yet with those republicans favouring a direct-election model will probably take the no vote to a deflating victory. That history will nominate John Howard as the spoiler is certain. That we are all going to vote on something that has not been thought through with the wishes of the people in mind will be recorded as well. It is a sinister shame that we cannot go forth with conviction to either vote for the Monarchy or a Republic. As the vote now stands, to be firmly in the yes camp or the no camp is delusion. Yes, Gort, Australia needs to grow up, but that is impossible under these conditions. Maturity cannot emerge from willful befuddlement. The whole fiasco is depressing. HH Tickets for Toffs: The ugly face of Capitalism is rotting The timing of last night's episode of Dog's Head Bay was perfect. (Well, someone has to watch it; for the Hark family it's become a test of endurance.) David Williamson scored several bullseyes with his portrayal of Stan Fairweather and the condescending attitudes and excesses of developers and their ilk. In real life we are subjected to the Fairweather character ad nauseam. The SOCOG board is bursting with his type. Just look at them: Michael Knight, John Coates, Kevin Gosper, Graham Richardson, the Four Board Members of the Olympics Collapse, sneering and unapologetic over gross deceptions which favoured the rich over we, the rabble in the outer. For them, the Olympics are nothing more than a bloody good earner. The "tickets for toffs" scandal is just another example of their ignoble deeds over the last few years. (See "The Mainstreaming of Corruption" in The Best of SCATT.) The Olympics have become a national disgrace instead of an event of national pride. Time and time again they have shown that the unchecked excesses of capitalism and it's current chart topper, economic rationalism, are a bloodless excuse to feather the Fairweathers at the expense of that amorphous mass of wallet carrying bipeds who constitute all the other Australians. Their excuse? Michael Knight has admitted that SOCOG resorted to secrecy because it was "scared" of not reaching its $600.9 million revenue target after the IOC bribery scandal saw investors dropping out in droves. But the extent of deception has more to do with outright corruption than fright over meeting the budget. They have rarified the Games to benefit the rich, and implemented a blatant policy of exclusion. Tickets for ordinary Australians in this, the "people's Games," constitute a percentage inversely proportional to those of the well off. Once again, the few get the most, while the many get bloody little. That Graham Richardson, the purulent icon of expediency over probity, can actually say, "I don't think we have been dishonest," is proof that the bad name of business is only getting worse. Meanwhile SOCOG chief executive Sandy Holloway, the man responsible, was hiding out at a five-star resort on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. At least, SOCOG's commercial general manger Paul Reading, he of the nearly million ticket cache saved for folks on his rich list, was able to say, "I am the ugly face of capitalism." But in saying so, he implied that that face was acceptable. The lessons of Jeff Kennett's political execution in Victoria will take awhile to sink in. Already John Howard is worried that voters will turn away from his similar antisocial agenda. The Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, is making moves to rein in the government's snarling EconoRats. For SOCOG, however, there is no going back. To prevent the Olympics from being a financial disaster they have misled and deceived. And in so doing they have insured that it will be a cultural disaster. We can only hope that this will be the very last Olympics. The Games should be abandoned until such time as they are run by the people for the people. As that is highly unlikely, they should be scrapped or at least boycotted. HH (The tyrant is gone! Long Live Democracy!) There were no dancers in the streets yesterday because, like their alter egos in Serbia, nearly fifty percent of Victorians think the *!#@!*% tyrant should still rule. But for those of us who know right from wrong, Jeff Kennett's bitter farewell was pure liberation. "Not since World War II have I felt like this!" said the local fruiterer. (The local developer would have had a different take: "How am I gonna pay for those Mercs now, Rob? Rob?") Who cares if Jeff's gone out kicking and screaming? No surprise there. Who care's if he hasn't had the grace to directly congratulate Steve Bracks. No surprise there. Who cares if he'll never comprehend his wrong doings? We've said elsewhere that right wing politicians, pedophiles and dogs that bark all night cannot be rehabilitated. Kennett is gone, and with him a swag of highly competent rotters not seen since Hitler and his henchmen. If you think I'm wrong about the magnitude of the occasion, then take a squiz at the following changes Labor intends to make: Our developer may well be whistling in the wind, as councils will once again be included in deciding what goes up and down. Height controls will be reintroduced and foreshore high-rise developments banned, while a Good Neighborhood Guide will replace the dreaded Good Design Guide. In short, ministerial powers of intervention will be limited. Who but Rob Maclellan and a few snout-dripping developers could possibly be upset by this? Electricity companies will be none too pleased as Labor seeks to reintroduce price caps after January 2001, the date they were to be removed. Companies will not be allowed to charge any price market forces care to manipulate for them, after all. Common law rights of seriously injured workers to sue negligent employers, abolished in 1997, will be rescued from Boss Jeff's heap of democracidal refuse. The City Link ripoff, while here to stay, will be eased by more flexible day passes and reduced tolls for country drivers. Plans to sell off the Austin Hospital will be scrapped, along with the six hated hospital networks whose bureaucratic heads earn up to $500,000 a year. Class sizes for preps to grade two will be capped at 21. 650 teachers will be hired over the next four years, and the hated LAP tests, so beloved of competition fanatics, will be scrapped. Perhaps best of all, the self-governing Schools of the Distant Past will be scrapped, leaving 51 campuses in limbo. Several new police stations will be built and 800 police will be added over the next four years to compensate for Kennett's baffling reduction of the force. Best of all, privatisations of prisons will be halted. Interestingly, Head Kicker Neil Comrie will stay on. Metcard will be reviewed and 100 tram conductors returned. Construction of a rail link between the city and airport to be kick-started. A watchdog set up to oversee the state's five private train and tram companies. Federation Square will go ahead, but it should be renamed Liberation Square, as a reader of the Herald Sun, Ian Macdonald, suggested. Control of Docklands will revert to Melbourne City Council. Waverley Park, the football park of the people, may be rescued. This alone would insure a Labor victory at the next election. Gambling will be wound back in Victoria with caps and/or bans on the proliferation of pokies. Water industry privatisation will be scrapped. Power and gas companies that fail guarantees of services and supply will be fined. Taxpayer-funded credit cards for ministers and senior staff will be axed. These are just a few of my favorite things about this new government. This is what liberation from tyranny is all about. HH I must admit that winning Tattslotto would be more satisfying than the current, highly invigorating demise of one, Jeffrey Gibb Kennett. But that is the selfish me speaking, the "me" Jeff Kennett has always tried to speak to. I've been in a state of near-gibbering outrage since the night the tyrant was elected in 1992. It was that night, as I've often repeated, and which apparently no one else has ever cared to take up, that Premier Kennett referred to Victorians as "victims". It was apparent then that he was referring to the rabble who did not vote for him, to that ill-bred demographic which every good "Liberal" Party supporter knows is incapable of appreciating the finer aspects of getting what you want at the expense of those who don't matter. He went on to appeal to the worst in his supporters, especially the young, who were impressed by his "can-do" style. He won them over in droves, for, in the seven years of his reign, young men and women, who hitherto had exhibited a reasonable awareness of The Other, promptly turned their backs on the less fortunate with gusto. The poor slobs among us, for whom the philistine values of economic rationalism mean nothing if not hardship, were looked upon with the kind of contempt that only flourishes during reigns of right wing exclusionism. We suddenly felt, many for the first time (but not all, for this is, after all, a multicultural country), what it must have been like to live under a Ceaucescu or a Milosevich. Many of our neigbours, our relatives, suddenly became advocates of the Thatcherist doctrine that societies don't exist, that individual advancement was more important than the impoverishment of others. The rights of people to be heard and to advance grievances were removed, while the whims of big business were slavishly adhered to. Taxes were used for pomp and profligacy. Men and women who contributed nothing to enriching the lives of citizens were, in fact, paid vast sums to make those lives a living hell. Democracy was treated, as it is by all right wing regimes, with utter disdain. Now, as Kennett exits, his supporters are regarding us, not with the usual disdain or flippant dismissal, but with venomous indignation. They cannot believe the gravy train and/or the march to totalitarianism is finished. The rabble has risen up and they are outraged by it. We are still looked upon as little more than peasants, as an unkempt mass of expendables who have somehow dared to interfere with the divine rule of the Master Class. Tragically, the stability of Victorian governance remains in their hands. Many in the "Liberal" Party have promised to make life hell for Steve Bracks and his band of merry men and women. The Legislative Council will want to block almost every bill associated with returning Victoria to a democracy. And they will do it with the backing of many in the media. And they will do it with the sneering enthusiasm so brilliantly exemplified by Arch "Liberal," Peter Reith. "You dared to throw us out? We'll show you what a paralyzed, ungrateful state is like!" And they think the rest of us will somehow agree with them. They have learned nothing from this election. And therein lies an awful realisation. The vast majority of supporters of the Australian "Liberal" Party are unaware of their humanity. They stride towards mean-spirited goals with breathtaking tunnel vision. Their intellects occupy a miserable fraction of the vast demands life places on all of us. They are like adolescents whose awareness is confined to the limits of their skin. Worse, they are adolescents with power, completely unaware that their inexperience of life often leads to disaster. Before Kennett, the polarisation between the socially conscious and the socially contemptuous existed only marginally (this partition of human nature is ever with us). Since Kennett, however, we have become a divided society. He alone has been responsible for the mobilisation of selfishness and contempt for due process in Victoria. He has gone beyond Gordon Gecko's mantra that "Greed is Good" by continually courting corruption and then refusing all attempts at investigation. This is what dictators do, and Jeff Kennett has been a dictator. Worst of all, he has impressed upon our young people that being a bully is cool. This, perhaps, is his greatest crime. Like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and John Howard, he will go down in history as a perpetrator of evil upon the people he was elected to serve. HH Kennett supporters as arrogant as he is At Saturday night gatherings throughout Victoria, the Kennett supporters in attendance airily dismissed the results of the Frankston East supplementary election as just another protest against Jeff Kennett. Having twice elected the man many of them still describe as a "benevolent dictator," (the word "benevolent" escaping their lips as little more than a meaningless attachment to the "dictator" bit), they seem unable to comprehend the average person's revulsion of that model of leadership. When pressed, they usually feel uncomfortable discussing the subject of Kennett's "reforms" because they know you are going to bring up the D word. For them democracy is as meaningless as "benevolent." At best, it is an irritant, a concept to be lauded with words, perhaps, but shunned in deed.They are also made uncomfortable because they know, deep down, that they have been backing the bad guy. The evil cattle baron in old Westerns, who by night sent his henchmen to rustle the cattle of law-abiding citizens, was someone they jeered when they were children. When you finally corner them for a discussion, their initial response is to give you a dismissive grunt. Implicit in this grunt is a disdainful born-to-rule accusation that you are a left-wing weak sister of a fool who understands nothing of economies, efficiencies or anything else about business. When you remind them that governments are about maintaining the well being of people, not the profits of business, they try to change the subject. Depending on the social status of the gathering, they will bring up football, the stock market, the latest offering from Andrew Lloyd Weber, the price of Jaguar parts, etc. If that fails, they then want you to tell them just how anything is now going to get done in Victoria, as if you, and not Jeff Kennett himself, were responsible for his election debacle or the mess the state is in. And if you start detailing the Great Helmsman's crimes against democracy, they simply turn away. The truth is they have not been paying attention, and worse, they don't care. They elected Jeff Kennett to implement their larval, fundamentally misanthropic views of life and they have left him to it. For them meaningless circuses amount to progress, and bullying amounts to leadership. ("Jeff's got balls," say the Young Fogey's who have tragically turned to the "Liberal" Party for guidance.) They have steadfastly refused to hear of the devastating effect Kennett's "reforms" have had on the lives of a significant number of Victorians. If they are not affected, why should they worry? They are the supporters of a worldview enacted daily by the "Liberal" Party at the state and federal levels, a worldview that insidiously aims to reintroduce a Master/Servant state. They like it that way, even when they are stuck being the Servants, and dismissively refuse to understand why others do not. Theirs is an arrogance born of ignorance, the nadir of a humanity that only remains civilised when its aspirations are born of compassion and tolerance. It would appear, regardless of who forms government in Victoria, that they are about to be returned to the grunt-hole where they belong. HH Howard's Half-Wits: David "Duhbrain" Kemp sets out to remove education from the clutches of the poor There is one difference in the lack of intelligence behind Senator Richard Alston's Internet Censorship bill and the feudal ideology behind Senator Kemp's attempt to legislate the poor out of education. That difference is this: Alston's bill can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen when a responsible government comes to power. Kemp's shameful vision, should it become come law, will be there forever, or until another Whitlam comes along. And let's face it, in a globalised world there will be no more Whitlams. Ask yourself this question: "Where would you be today if you had grown up under Kemp's Universities of the Future?" The answer: "You couldn't have afforded to obtain the position you now have. You would be doing something else. Something lesser. And your children would be doing even less." Education belongs to social policy; it is a necessity, not a luxury. Anyone who was educated in Australia during the last 25 years should be very worried about every aspect of the direction the Howard Government is taking Australia. David Kemp's regressive deforms will turn millions away from education. There will be no more choice. Is it Liberal Policy to eventually dissuade people from believing that education is desirable? As generations come and go without the slightest hope of higher education, the desire for it may even be bred out of them. Is this what the Liberals want? Is this what YOU want? Remember, an ignorant population always keeps totalitarian governments in office. Yet many who were able to take advantage of Whitlam's free education, or even HECS-based education, are still supporting the Liberal Party, who, it is now clear, has every intention of making the affordable education of their children an impossibility. Labor governments after Whitlam may have started Australia on the road to paid education, but even Senator John Dawkins did not intend this kind of class division. The funding of universities in a world conquered by economic rationalism and its market forces may steadily be heading towards the antisocial ideal of "user pays," but this will be to the detriment of any country's future. The present trend could be reversed, and eventually it will. This is a planet of human beings, not consumers. The rise of Australia from a sleepy backwater known only for its white supremacy policy and the willingness of its young men to fight any and everybody's wars, to a nation of intellectual and cultural strength can almost solely be attributable to the generous education policies begun under Gough Whitlam. John Howard and his half-wits, in just a few years, have reversed the noble direction of this "golden age." Howard's direction is for Australia to become the only third world country among developed nations. HH Howard's Half-Wits: Richard "Frankenstein" Alston rises from the prep table to terrorize free speech Senator Alston's unworkable, foolish and downright ignorant Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill (1999), due to take effect on Y2K day, will indeed make Australia the "global village idiot," as American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen has said. Besides draining the country of IT talent, ruining the prospects of Australian E-commerce, and insulting the intelligence of anyone whose head is not firmly planted up the anus of "Liberal" Party ideology, this bill stands ignobly beside just about every other endeavour undertaken by John Howard's fuddy duddy, wowser government. The truth is, no one wants this bill passed except mean, frightened conservatives. Dumb-dumb Alston is a powerful man who, in the past, has brought the national broadcaster, the ABC, to its knees for refusing to toe the Party line. When it comes to perverting the cause of free speech, Alston is your man. Here is the kind of language he uses when confronting opposition to his bill. "The problem is that there are these maniacs, these electronic frontiers outfits, running around stirring up trouble, using quaint expressions and feeding lines to that woman." Of course he is referring to Electronics Frontiers Australia, the cyber-rights group he steadfastly refuses to meet, and "that woman" is the above-mentioned Nadine Strossen. Makes you proud to be Australian, doesn't he? Instead of correctly placing the burden on users to bloody well police themselves and their children over what or what not to bookmark, this bill intends to implement laborious and costly measures to set up the Australian Broadcasting Authority to monitor and act upon all complaints of pornography, political dissent, and in the end everything not condoned by the pinchfaces in power. This is exactly what an updated Stalinist regime would be doing. It would be hiring the kind of people who love to turn in their neighbours for suspected crimes against the state. These are the lowlifes who reported people for harbouring Jews in WW II, who call the police if they think their neighbour is growing marijuana. These are the people John Howard's Coalition is pandering to. In the end, Alston's censorship it will punish Australia in the eyes of the world. We must seem like a nation of simpletons. In truth, we are at the mercy of a government which stubbornly refuses to allow democracy to flourish. It's "Liberal" Party policy these days: censor, remove, inhibit. And above all disenfranchise the poor. HH Slobodan Kennett makes it official - he's not fit to govern Victoria's disgraced caretaker Premier has resorted to blackmailing the Independents over their Charter of Good Government. "Support me and I'll look into each of your demands. Support Labor and I'll scuttle the lot," is what he is saying. In order to retain government, the man with the principles and credibility of Serbian dictator Jeff Milosevic, Slobodan Kennett has opportunistically agreed to each of the Independents' demands, save the one about changing the Legislative Council to proportional representation. Under the current system, the Coalition will never lose control of the upper house. After seven years as the architect of democracide in Victoria, the Premier has been forced to accept the reversal of each of his crimes against democracy listed below (compiled by Sandra McKay, The Age, 14/10/99):
When this dark period is well and truly over, the above reversals will be seen as the tip of the iceberg. The depths of corruption to which Kennett's "Liberal" Party has taken Victoria will take years to uncover. HH The Independents must not support the Coalition SCATT has previously stated its glee over the dilemma in which Kennett finds himself. We were going to be happy no matter the outcome. But like others, we felt the ALP would be in a stronger position come the next election if Kennett were allowed to resume power now. We supported a minority Kennett Government because we wanted to see him squirm as he repeatedly lost his cool under the relentless pressure of consultation and negotiation. A minority Bracks government, we felt, would see an Opposition lead by the Kennett of old: contemptuously ordering his trembling minions to block every bill. However, revenge is no longer in the interests of stability. Since the election, Jeff Kennett has shown over and over again that he is unstable, that he is mentally unfit to run this state. His outburts of venom, which inevitably follow insincere regrets for past deeds, show that he is incapable of comprehending his government's neglect of Victoria's well being. And he hates us for reminding him. He can barely contain his hatred for Susan Davies, the one MP who has stood up to him in spades; and as far as the rural sector is concerned, he is always just one breath short of calling them whingers. Steve Bracks and his Labor team may be green, even unprepared, but they must rise to the occasion. Victoria will be nationally embarrassed if Kennett is returned. The people of Victoria cannot, in all conscience, stand for another term of the mad, corrupt whims of Jeff Kennett. Like Susan Davies, we feel like puking at the prospect of this bully retaining power. HH Forward to the past with Rio Tinto In his assiduous drive to rid the Wretched of Australia of their well-being, Australia's nasty little Prime Minister, John Howard, has hailed the decision by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to opt out of any future disputes between employers and employees. Peter "The Gunsel" Reith, the architect of Howard's 19th century Workplace Relations Act, which effectively puts all balls in the court of the Lords of Industry, is currently on holiday. No doubt he raised a glass of taxpayer-funded Krug to celebrate the victory. The three-year industrial campaign by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) against mining giant Rio Tinto was torpedoed when the AIRC determined that "All is fair in love and war" between Masters and Servants, or, as the commission cynically described it, "the battle of titans." Large corporations can now use their muscle to force employees on to individual contracts regardless of union demands. Recourse to the commission as arbiter to correct the imbalance between bosses and workers is now a relic of the time when Australia was a viable democracy. In John Howard's cowardly old world any employer with resources can simply starve its workforce into submission. This is, of course, what happened in Thatcher's England, where workers were treated like animals, and where everything worth a few bob was privatised. (The latest example of the great con that is privatisation is the horrifying train accident at Paddington Station, London. Privatisation is defined by cutting costs at the expense of the expendable.) The great tragedy of this legislation and it's ramifications for Australia's stability in the workplace is that it has been implemented by a government that won less than 50% of the popular vote. When responsible government returns to this polarised nation, the burden will be enormous. We have seen the destruction wrought in Victoria by seven years of elitist rule by Jeff Kennett; on the federal level, John Howard's government is socially engineering us back to the pre-industrial age. If Howard's feudal reforms remain unchecked, the consequences for Australia will be disastrous. HH SCATT's foreign correspondent, Jerzy Wiçiçiwiç, has just sent this communique from the land of the free. "America," he says, "along with Great Britain and Australia (and perhaps all of Europe) have a sophisticated new system up and running to monitor all cell phone calls, e mails, and any other wireless transmissions. Using super computers, they intend to pull out certain communications that contain any suspicious word or words from a secret list they have devised. This, of course, is being done to help fight terrorism. Personal privacy? Not in the national interest. This illegal system was discussed for a week on America's cable network Fox News. They promised to get to the bottom of it. Then silence. The subject has not been brought up again. What gives?" Scatt will be looking into this. Jeff's Karmuppance: The long, slow demise of an arsehole Jeff Kennett, the man who many would like to tar and feather, is politically bleeding to death. Victorians are watching with fascination--"Liberal" supporters indignantly, Labor supporters gleefully, and the rest of us with relief--as the days dwindle down to the Frankston East supplementary election and the end of one of the most infamous chapters of Australian political history. Kennett will lose that election, but he may still form government. Regardless of the outcome, nothing can now impede the slow, tortuous end of his ignoble career. Indeed, Scum at the Top hopes he makes it across the line. We're not ready to see the end of Jeff Kennett. Revenge may be less than noble, but when the bully is not able to be rehabilitated--and that's our Jeff--it is sometimes necessary to inflict maximum suffering for what has been maximum hubris. We want Jeff Kennett up close and visible, at least until the next election (rumored to be as early as next February). As Brian Costar said, it will be to Labor's advantage to remain in opposition while Kennett roasts on the spit of his own making. As minority government leader, Kennett's agony will be palpable. If he loses Frankston East, he'll need at least two of the three Independents, and one of them will have to be Russell Savage. If Savage decides to give the Coalition the benefit of the doubt, he will be in a position (and thousands of Victorians will be right behind him) to be the man who is ever poised with that sharp, glistening prod of accountability meant to remind the arsehole who called him a fuckwit that the halcyon days of autocratic rule are over. Win or lose, Jeff Kennett is a humiliated, defeated man. A bully deserted by his spineless toadies, he stands alone on the windswept schoolyard of his petty, philistine dreams, about to become the last image before THE END appears on the screen of the B movie he made us endure for seven years. HH The Moloch is gone! Long Live Democracy! More than fifty percent of Victorians are basking in a euphoric and stunned disbelief this Monday morning, still coming to terms with Saturday's poll. I say more than fifty percent, because many who voted for Kennett did so realising they were voting for a tyrant. Every one I've spoken to had to admit he should have been eliminated. It's just that they couldn't vote for Labor even if Jesus Christ was the candidate. Driving to the house of friends early Saturday night, my wife and I listened to the ABC as it relayed the early returns indicating a slight Labor lead. "That happens every election," said my wife. "One dares not hope," I concurred. By ten-thirty the champagne had truly gone to our heads as we gasped, cheered, and finally cursed the tyrant as he spoke at the Hotel Sofitel. Amidst the hullabaloo, our attention was drawn to a couple who sat in the corner quietly weeping. They were unknown to most of us, but as our host ran over to embrace them, his wife (who, along with her husband, is a Hungarian Jew) told us they had immigrated from Ceaucescu's Rumania several years ago. "Nicolai is dead again!" someone said, lamely trying to read their thoughts. "But no, " said the man. "our country is slowly on the mend. We are weeping for the East Timorese who have fought so long for what Kennett has tried to take away." In the euphoria we had, for a moment, forgotten that Australia and the region were on the precipice of war. What a weekend, indeed. "There must be a conjunction of planets, or some kind of celestial confluence," said our host. "We get rid of a headache only to face losing our head." But the Victorian election gripped us that night, and grips us still. What is in store for Victoria, now that Jeff Kennett has been unmasked? No longer is he seen as the state's Great Saviour, doing battle astride his white charger, Reform, (stolen from the stables of common decency) against a power-thwarting democracy. Instead he is seen for what he has always been, a slick-moustachioed saloon keeper, plotting with his gang of Jack Elam-types to set himself up as the Emperor of the Land. Whether he forms government or not, his day is over. And so are the glory days of power brokers Ron Walker and Lloyd Williams. Victorians have finally removed the hook of self-interest from their mouths. Letters to the newspapers have one common theme: pride in being a human being after all. So many of us despaired that our neighbours were unable to see that the Liberal party considered them as less than mugs. We thought they were mugs too, for being blind to the real agenda of the Svengali who was appealing to their baser instincts. These feelings must be similar to those felt by the French after storming the Bastille or the Americans when the revolution of 1776 was finally won. For seven long years, we have endured a criminal government led by a schoolyard bully, an arrogant philistine whose cheap vision was reserved for the few at the expense of the many, an autocrat who found substance in gambling and car races, but never the bedrock social services that provide well being to all. Indeed, his big-spender projects looked back decades, if not centuries, to an era where people were mere fodder for the comfort of the elite. If Kennett is returned, he will finally have to "answer questions," as Antony Green says. He will have to CONSULT. For those of us who have held the rage for these seven years, the spectacle of Jeff being forced to listen and negotiate will be sweet revenge, indeed. In fact, many of us who fervently wish for his utter humiliation and disgrace, hope he does form government. In any case, we can not wait for the knives, long held in check by his Liberal minions, to start flashing! More soberly, Ken Davidson writes that, with the cupboard stripped bare from sell-offs and downsizing, the future of Victoria is uncertain. It would be a cruel irony for Labor to have to step in to fill the gaping maw of Kennett's irresponsible government by having to increase taxes or debt in order to make Victoria livable again. Won't the Liberal spoilers get on their horns then! The difference, however, will be that taxpayer's wallets will no longer be there to pay for their lies. Davidson goes on to suggest "that the Kennett Government was the worst Victorian government since the Munro Government" of the 1890's. How right he is, and how similar to that epoch is the Liberal way. Feudalism and fiefdoms are their examples of government. Well, it's over. Enter Steve Bracks, who, on election night, voiced what has kept the human race on its gradual spiral of evolution for millennium after millennium. He said, "This is a victory for honor and compassion!" Two qualities utterly unknown to Jeff Kennett and the toadies who followed his orders and put paid to the well being of an entire state. Congratulations Steve Bracks. Congratulations Victoria. HH East Timor exposes a helpless humanity led by weasels TOOTHLESS TWERPS TIPPLE AS TIMOR BURNS Taking Serbia's lead, Indonesia is the latest nation to initiate systematic genocide with impunity. World powers are reacting as expected, by suiting up their bureaucratic quislings for emergency meetings where the most important issue is, as usual, the quality of the caterer. And what will Indonesia's nearest neighbour, the politically fain»ant Australia, with its twerp military capabilities, do? Not enough and not in time, as if it ever could. Thousands will die while Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander "Little Lord" Downer, dons his choicest Hugo Boss to join the Krug-clinkers for discussions resolving to set up yet further discussions concerning a peacekeeping force that will, as always, arrive too late and toothless. HOME OF THE KNAVE The United Nations, riddled by influential cults far weirder than those running Australia's Coalition Government, would have done the world a service by disbanding the moment Doc Evatt left the podium back in '48. Paralysed by a failure of will approaching catatonia, the UN and its self-interested nation members have lost complete contact with a suffering humanity. The values which underpin its reason for existence have been lost in an almost senile dithering based on compromising vested interests. This is a body which has no credibility and commands no respect, and the nations belonging to it are fixated like headlit bunnies on a free market that cares nothing for democracy or those who are dying for it. THE RETURN OF THE HUNS As the world prepares for the end of the twentieth century as if it were the beginning, the "ethics" of war have retreated to the middle ages. The Geneva Convention has been ruthlessly cast aside since Reagan's psychopathic Contra's laid waste to Central America. More recently, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and now East Timor have seen right wing death squads filling the vacuum of the GC's demise by slaughtering any and everyone, including nuns, priests, pregnant women, children, babies, and now Red Cross workers, traditionally the care givers to both sides. The Geneva Convention was a reminder in times of madness that human beings were slaying human beings. That is now a thing of the past in a world in true fin de mill»nium mode. SOLUTIONS? WHAA ... Commentaries have been coming from all corners since East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence. The blind eye of successive Australian governments towards the plight of the East Timorese, first Labor and now the Coalition, has been well established. Compounding the problem for Australia is that, as a white anomaly in the Asia Pacific region, it stands completely isolated. Any suggestion of direct intervention in East Timor without Indonesia's consent would constitute a declaration of war. In such an event, Australia would be overrun in less time than it took Hitler to secure Poland. While war is an almost inconceivable outcome in an era where economic interests normally preclude the murder of the consumer, Australia is dealing with a nation who has just sustained the heaviest GDP blowout in modern times. Indonesia is presently capable of running amok on a much grander scale than East Timor. SIMBA BE COMIN' TO GET YOU BWANA ... Any half-hearted big-noting on Australia's part risks having several million non-whites from several countries turn squarely against it. Founded as a penal colony for white criminals by a white empire, Australia has for two centuries looked upon Asia with the Bwana Syndrome inherited from the Mother Country. Asians must sense that Australia's historical cringe before the might of bully England has led to Australia's attempt to turn the cringe around by adopting a superior attitude towards Asia. Simply by being white, Australia has concluded that it both knew more and knew best. But, as so often happens, natives are made leaner and stronger through the careless indolence of supremacy. AUSTRALIA'S TENACIOUS SLEEP-WALKER It is a national disgrace that Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was utterly incapable of reading the events leading to the East Timorese ballot. Instead of preparing for trouble by consulting with the US about peacekeeping forces well before the event, he simply wished it would all go away. Furthermore, it is a national tragedy that he has been utterly incapable of reading the feelings of outrage by Australians. Regardless of the very real limitations he faces in terms of acting on Indonesia's murderous intransigence, the last thing Australians wanted to hear was that the continued training of Indonesian military on Australian soil was "neither here nor there." Only a one-dimensional man for whom tax is the only imaginable exotic could be that breathtakingly dense. Where leadership was been required, John Howard instead looked as if he was nodding off to sleep. His middle name may be "Winston," but he is no Churchill. Yet it appears that his peculiar form of sleep-walking tenacity is paying off with a peacekeeping force that will eventually make it to East Timor. It remains to be seen whether this force is of his doing or merely because Bill Clinton decided to wake up himself and put pressure on Jakarta. Sadly, it is a sign of Howard's weak leadership that he has been unable to take Australians with him. Instead of pride, we are deeply ashamed. |
SCUM AT THE TOP is not copyrighted and may be used in whole or in part for any purpose the reader chooses.
Published and distributed by the Political Prisoners of the Future.