Archives 19-25 July 2004
Friday, 23 July 2004
Come on Alexander, stop using the boring "cut and run" phrase to describe the saving of a Filipino father of eight. You know you want to call the PM of The Philippines a Manila folder.
Doug Steley, Letter to The Australian, 23 July 2004 |
From the ABC's AM ANDREW BARTLETT: What the Democrats say should change as a result of not just Flood but I think plenty of other information in the public arena, is the Government, that's what got to change. Because we have a Prime Minister who said, even with everything that we now know, even with all the flaws that are now in the public arena, that he would do exactly the same thing again. Not only did he commit the mistake that he made with all the deception attached to it, but he would make the mistake again. And if you're not going to learn from your mistakes, then frankly I think that says more than anything. I don't think we should trust the Prime Minister to have the power any more to send Australian men and women to risk their lives overseas.
• Flood report: a potent election tool |
War Chimp Becomes Peace Pimp in
"War is Peace" Campaign In his bid to unseat himself as Umeruhca's war president, George W. Bush has announced that he is now the peace president. Most of his fellow Umeruhcans, with the attention span of a lobotomised gnat, will never notice the change. "We're a peaceful nation," they will respond when asked on street corners and in shopping malls by authorised embedded reporters. "And Mr Bush is the man to deliver peace. Why, land-o-Goshen, everything the man has done has been in the interests of peace throughout our land. Eyerack? What the hell's that?"
LINKS:
• Molly Irvins: Iraq never happened
• One Thousand Reasons
• Hi Pakistan
• SMH |
Pious Peter Preens Pret-a-porter Python to Preach Providence to Profligate Preterites If Peter Costello becomes PM will he model himself after Elmer Gantry, Jim Bakker, the Rev Jerry Falwell, or some other televangelist, and will he then turn us Aussies into a flock of cardigan wearing Stepford's who worship at the altar of the Corporate Christ?
It appears Jesus entered The Smirk's heart (by way of the upcoming election) at a recent Hillsong festival in Sydney, where 20,000 shiny faced Stepford's swung and swayed to the beat of Christian rock music. Instead of traditional lyrics like "Baby, let me bang your box," Peter and the squeaky clean folk sang along to the likes of "He's got the whole world in his wallet", "Jesus is God's number one shareholder and I'm gonna be one too."
Empowered by the word of the Good Lloyd, Costello is now sporting a python around his neck (reputed to be a descendent of the Edenic original) and brandishing his very own Duraplex™ impact modified tablet of the Ten Commandments. When questioned why his government has, time and time again, seen fit to desert these axioms for peace on earth, good will toward men, he replied that an election was on, or was the questioner too stupid to notice.
Both video evidence of the gathering and of Costello's subsequent behaviour following his conversion on the road to the Lodge, are being studied by psychoanalysts and forensic investigators of alien phenomena. Of early note, they say, is the absence of irony in any of the footage or comments. "This is a telltale sign of psychopaths, sociopaths, dictators, and other religious adherents through the ages," said Doctor Blimey Q. Flabbergasted. "It's a worry."
LINKS:
• Costello's faith call hits home
• God and politics mix at Hillsong
• Politicians eye religious powerhouse
And for something completely different:
• How one Christian found Jesus
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Born To Be Obedient Menzies loved the Queen, Holt loved LBJ, Howard loves Bush.
What is it with Australian Liberal Party leaders and their need to smear what looks like Shinola--but isn't--all over their obsequious gobs?
The answer, of course, is that they're just little bloke conservatives who, by nature, were born to serve bullies and other authority figures.
Kenneth Davidson, in comparing Holt and Howard, gives the gong to Our Weasel for his Marshall Pétain-like handover of Australia to the Americans.
While so doing, he notes Alexander "Little Lord Fatuous" Downer's recent white paper on terrorism, which seeks to take up Osama Bin Laden's slack in preparing us for subservience through fear:'It seems we Westerners will learn the hard way that the threat of global terrorism is a monster...of our own making.
'And yet the root causes are trivialised. Bush claims "they hate our freedoms". He is echoed by Alexander Downer, who said when introducing the Government's white paper on "transnational terrorism" last week: "They regard democracy as an abomination and pluralistic societies as doubly decadent . . . It misconceives the problem to think there are 'root causes' like poverty, disadvantage or hopelessly entrenched political impasses . . . They are not the well-spring of terrorist motivation, and fixing them will not fix anything else."
'It is fair to say this drivel is a reasonable reflection of the white paper.
'You would think it would be impossible to maintain the fiction that one of the reasons for the invasion of Iraq is that it was part of the global war on terrorism, and to ignore the fact that terrorism inside Iraq has emerged only since the occupation. But the white paper tries to do that.' LINKS:
• Kenneth Davidson: Howard's obsequiousness to America exceeds even Holt's |
Thursday, 22 July 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11: The World's First Direct Action Doco
With its vice-like grip on the minds of some fifty per cent of the world's childlike population, the corporate Moloch--comprised of capitalism in its most inhumane incarnation, an extreme right wing coalition of Christian fundamentalists who have declared a Crusade against everything Jesus H. Christ stood for, and the Medusa-like Murdoch media--is leading us straight into 1984, by way of 1933.
George W. Bush's Reichstag was exploding while he sat, dumbfounded, in a primary classroom in Florida.
One of the most horrifying images in Michael Moore's bid to unseat the incumbent imbecile is of Bush staring blankly during the reading of "My Pet Goat". He knew a plane had hit the towers before he entered the room. And when he was told that the second plane had hit, he just sat there, inanimate.
Watching his excruciating paralysis, I was reminded of the final scene in the Simpsons episode, "One fish, two fish, blowfish, blue fish", where Homer sits for nearly a minute quietly munching pork rinds while staring at the TV. But Homer was in a state of bliss, having just survived a near-death experience from eating improperly prepared blowfish sushi.
George Dubya, on the other hand, is confronted by a situation completely beyond his capability; the exception to the rule of a man rising to the occasion. You see the blankness in his beady eyes. No part of his brain is animating them; they see nothing. Moore segues back and forth between this scene and the events of the moment. The original footage lasts seven minutes and has rarely been seen except for short, two or three second grabs. Moore gives us what seems like all seven chilling minutes.
Another unsettling sequence in the film is of Paul Wolfowitz placing a comb in his mouth for moisture and then, with an almost girlish concern for his image, combing his hair. Most people sprinkle water from a tap to ease out those bad hair moments or, if they can't find a tap, forget it. But not Wolfowitz. The look on his face matches the peculiar, almost poignant moment. He seems to dwindle in stature, as if he were a destitute peasant in a village about to be overtaken by invaders. Then again, knowing what this man is responsible for in Iraq, you can easily juxtapose this scene into grainy, black and white footage of him as a concentration camp Kapo attempting to relax as he is about to be paid with a further slice of black bread by the Obersturmführer for services rendered against his own.
Moore goes for the jugular in this op-ed documentary. Unlike the censored networks CNN and Fox News and all their commercial subsidiaries, he does not spare us the images of corpses dangling in the breeze, and the blown away flesh, exposing the bones of Iraqi children.
And he lays waste to the history of the man who is desperately trying to lay waste to the world.
Note especially Moore's voice-over quote from George Orwell's 1984 at the end.
Someone out there needs to make a similar documentary on Tony Blair and our own inimitable pathological liar, John Howard.
I know everyone who reads this will be seeing the film, but go a step further and spring for a ticket for a right wing friend or two. If you think they will refuse, lie to them in the best tradition of the politicians they adore. Say you're taking them to a sneak preview of the new digitalised, director's cut of The Sound of Music. They're sure to go weak at the knees. Then, when you pick them up, gird your loins as you display a rictus of rapture while playing the soundtrack on the car CD. They'll be putty in your hands by the time you arrive. But just in case they're not, don't let them join you in the ticket queue, and when the usher takes your tickets and tells you which theatre the film is playing in, be sure to cough loudly when he says Fahrenheit 9/11. If, when it begins, they leap from their seat in outrage, at least they'll have the balls John Howard wishes he had. And if they make it to the end, chances are the little git won't get their vote.
LINKS:
• Is Michael Moore telling the truth?
• Roger Ebert: Film Review
• Movie Review Query Engine: Many more reviews |
Wednesday, 21 July 2004
Glorious Arroyo not just a pretty face In the first instance of national heroics since the Spaniards ousted Aznar the pinch-faced bootlicker, Gloria Arroyo, president of the Philippines, chose the life of a humble Filipino over subservience to Umeruhcan hegemony.
"I made a decision to bring our troops home a few days early in order to spare the life of Angelo (de la Cruz). I do not regret that decision."
It must gall the lifeless politicians who have routinely contributed to the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis without the slightest remorse to have their callousness thrown in their face like this.
Trouble is, they don't see it this way, damning Arroyo's move as a craven capitulation which will only encourage the terrorists to drive Bush's Crusaders (and the puppet thugs now doing their bidding) from Iraq.
But a letter to The Age, 20/7/04, sums it up for anyone who knows what it is to be human:Since the downfall of the Marcos dictatorship, "people power" has profoundly changed the Filipino psyche. Filipinos will not hesitate to force their government out of office when faced with a common cause.
President Gloria Arroyo knew exactly what she had to do in the present crisis: the whole nation wanted to save the life of an overseas worker with eight children. The 6 million overseas Filipino workers are officially considered heroes of the nation; they bring in $A11 billion a year and keep the debt-ridden economy afloat.
No Filipino wants to see their hapless compatriots made into political targets in a war that was not of their own making, a war their Government was talked into supporting for utterly wrong reasons.
No Filipino should have to die to save face for George Bush.
Melba Marginson, Centre for Philippine Concerns Australia (Victoria), Maidstone LINKS:
• Filipino hostage freed as troops quit
• Arroyo cheers as hostage free |
Linda Ronstadt spoils wonderful evening
for Vegas fascists Did the darling of hip country and western fans forgot where she was the other night? Singing before 4,500 drunken cardboard cutouts at Aladdin's Casino in Las Vegas, Ms Ronstadt infuriated them by dedicating the song Desperado to Mike Moore, "a great American patriot," and director of Fahrenheit 9/11.
Maybe Linda was pissed herself and didn't care, but she was given the bum's rush by management for her efforts. Let's face it, folks who frequent casinos don't take kindly to having a social conscience, opting instead to squander the family well being on simpleton pleasures. When the rent/mortgage is due and there's nothing left in the kitty, all they have to do is tell the wife and kids: "Jesus'll take care of us. Georgie told me so."
LINKS:
• Political praise polarizes Linda Ronstadt's fans at Humphrey's
• Desperadoes
• Linda Ronstadt ejected from casino for praising Michael Moore
• Linda Ronstadt: I don't like singing for Christians |
The worst PM in history revealed as calculating robot "Increasingly, Howard seems not so much dogged as remorseless; not so much calculating as robotic.
"One wonders, too, whether in this steely discipline we find part of the explanation for the disjunction between a PM who can be so intuitive about the aspirations of "middle Australia", yet so abjectly lacking in empathy when it comes to those outside that imagined community. Howard compartmentalises, his sympathy antennae tuned to a low frequency."
Paul Strangio: Howard, a PM with no regrets |
FTA: The Howard Government should have just said no "How could any Australian government agree to such a lopsided deal? We are proud to be a nation that walks tall, treats others as equals, and demands the same of them. Could you imagine Sir John McEwen, Bob Hawke or Paul Keating accepting this cringing, second-rate outcome? It is a humiliating sell-out."
• Tim Colebatch: Why Latham should reject the FTA
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