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"The father of one of the Bali bombing victims, Brian Deegan, said yesterday he was considering standing against Mr Downer at the coming election. The Adelaide magistrate said he had conducted preliminary conversations with a couple of parties - understood to be Labor and the Democrats - but also might run as an independent."
Cynthia Banham and Freya Petersen, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March 2004

Brian Deegan is one of the indirect heroes of the Bali Bombing. He has been a vocal critic of John Howard's self-serving obeisance to the American Empire. Unlike Andrew Wilkie, whom the government has consistently rounded on, Deegan has emerged from his criticisms almost unscathed.

Who better then, to stand against that "rotten lousy disgrace," Alexander Downer.

Downer was nearly beaten in 1998 by ex-Redgum singer John Schumann, who took the Ponce to postal votes. Deegan should be able to bury him, fishnets, high heels, and all.

Please encourage Brian Deegan to run by emailing him at the following address: josh5244@hotmail.com.

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The Howard Government's chauvinistic and discriminatory anti-discrimination bill, giving scholarships to male teachers, is a typical response from a network of fat cat sexists.

There are two reasons why there aren't more men in the teaching profession, both of which have been conveniently overlooked by politicians.

1) OBVIOUS. Except for school principles, dominated by men because of higher pay and their beloved position of power over women teachers, the structure and pay of teaching is scandalous. Until teaching becomes a profession with respectable remuneration, men won't touch it. Women, who are the nurturing half of the species, who are forever being treated as second class citizens when it comes to pay, and who are rarely pedophiles, are the only ones available to instruct children. Unfortunately the pay is so low, most women require a husband whose occupation allows them to live above the poverty line.

2) LESS OBVIOUS. Roughly twenty years ago pedophilia reached hysterical proportions in the public eye. Every male was a suspect, male teachers especially. Men were forced to stop paying too much attention to other people's kids. They became paranoid that the slightest touch would be misconstrued. So they stopped. They put up a shield between themselves and their children's friends. Those who didn't risked being accused and turned over to the neutered genital police. Being a SNAG, they quickly realised, had its limitations, and was out of character anyway. By now, their distancing has become as natural as induced autism. Other people's kids might as well be aliens. And for men facing up to thirty students a day, the risk of appearing genuinely friendly is not worth it.

Pru Goward: Better pay would lure more men into schools
Margo Kingston: Howard's affirmative action for men

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Here are a few extracts from Peter Coleman's review of Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, by Andrew Roberts. Coleman's article was originally published under the title Degrees of Separation in The Weekend Australian of 10-11 May, 2003.

"What distinguishes a great leader from a spectacular demagogue, a Winston Churchill from an Adolf Hitler? English historian Andrew Roberts thinks it is the difference between inspiration (good) and charisma (bad).

"Inspiration is authentic. It draws on a people's deepest commitments. It touches the sources of honour, self-respect, decency. It moves even sceptics and critics. Churchill had it. Charisma draws on the dark or vicious side of human nature, on envy, resentment, self-pity, hatred. It instils awe and adulation. It mesmerises the anti-individual, the mass man. Hitler had charisma. Churchill did not.

"Hitler was indolent, whereas Churchill was a hard worker. Although not an academic, Churchill liked their company and many of them advised him in great detail when he was writing his splendid A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Hitler despised academics and there were no graduates in the Nazi elite.

"Churchill was also a magnificent hedonist whose appetite for food and drink was voracious. Hitler was a teetotaller, a vegetarian and a greenie who hated smoking. A victorious Third Reich would have created a Europe that was low-alcohol, low-cholesterol, smoke-free and Aryan.

"Both men tolerated and even encouraged companions who had what Roberts calls 'flaws in the weave' -- shady backgrounds, imperfect morals, heavy drinking. But where Churchill liked them because they were good company and never boring, Hitler encouraged them only because they were easy to blackmail.

"Churchill was prime minister of a country that was liberal and democratic, sceptical of its rulers, self-governing and self-respecting.

"Hitler was the leader of a country that was turning into a servile mass of anti-individuals who craved for a dictator to tell them what to do about their broken lives (the master race). They wanted a totalitarian society, and their Fuhrer, their sinister Wizard of Oz, gave them one."

Fortunately for us, our very own Weasel of Oz has no charisma. Nor is he a leader. He didn't even pass general mathematics at Canterbury Boys School. Great credentials for someone who has based his entire career on "sound economic management". Though in truth, there is no relation between the two: one is a science and the other little more than a divination of the morning's stool.

The reason he has lasted this long then, is because he has had a willing and "servile mass of anti-individuals" who prefer a totalitarian society to democracy.

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Click here for this article

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Terry Lane (The National Interest, 22 Feb 04) reports on one potential consequence of the Free Trade Agreement. It seems the American copyright to Banjo Patterson's "Waltzing Matilda" is owned by one, Carl Fischer. The FTA will extend copyright from 50 to 70 years after the life of the author. This means that Fischer will own the copyright until 2011. Lane says that the Australian Olympic Committee had to pay Fischer a royalty to sing Matilda during the closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics. Now the Australian copyright is owned by Allen's Music, and this will also extend to 2011. But with the ratification of the FTA whose copyright will have precedence? John Howard voted during the last referendum to have Matilda replace "Advance Australia Fair" as our national anthem. Presumably it would not trouble him if every public rendition of this quintessential Australian song required a royalty to be paid to an American. Entirely in keeping with his motto: Up the Aussie tush with George W. Bush.

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SCATT contributor Mary Dagmar Davies is convinced John Howard will be toast by March 15, none other than the foreboding day of the Ides. "Murdoch has turned and the right will follow obediently," says she. "I think a black hole is about to suck Howard into oblivion. Without the Dwarf Star, his satellites will spin off course, collide with one another and follow him into nothingness."

It's just possible. Suddenly the Littlest Con Artist can't take a trick. For eight years he's been hoodwinking half the population with fear, empty platitudes and hush money so they wouldn't notice his bald-faced lies. But Cool Hand Mark has him flummoxed. John Winston's desperation to find that knockout Golden Wedge to bring the new bloke undone is coming a cropper. What with party room and backbench revolts over sundry issues, not to mention inquiries into just about everything, John Howard's history of duplicity is coming home to sting the master fraudster.

The trouble for the Illiberal Party is that there is no one to replace him. Peter "The Smirking Jerk" Costello? Tony "Fang" Abbott? Alexander "Little Lord" Downer? Brendan "Please love me as I love myself" Nelson? Philip "The Nazi Cadaver" Ruddock? Amanda "The Hun" Vanstone? Jon "The Mindless Hick" Anderson? Hell, they might as well stick Wilson Tuckey in the Lodge until the next election and start looking for new careers with the Mafia's legal arm, the Corporate sector.

Labor has finally morphed into Australia's genuine party of the right, so who needs these extreme right wing nutters! In fact, the Illiberal's may well implode. Like the clueless Conservative Party in Canada, they might become a permanently spent force. And John Howard will have been the catalyst for their destruction!

Well Mary, to invoke the Illiberals opening incantation every time they meet: Let us prey!

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It's taken about six months of painstaking effort, but after setting up over 200 filters on Eudora for every thing from a blank subject line to the thousand and one spellings of Vi;agra, I have finally managed to eliminate every single email from entering my In Box. That's right, everything now goes straight into the Trash. Sound barmy? Believe me, it's easier this way.

Naturally, this was not my intention, but it has proved to be a boon.

I originally set up the filters to plop the offending emails in the Trash and then to get rid of them entirely upon closing Eudora. (It can also be done manually.) Now, when I open the program every blasted email is there in Trash; often around two hundred. I quickly scan up for who the email is from and then rescan down for relevant subject titles, transferring the ones I want to keep back to the In Box.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, this process takes hardly any time at all. It is certainly faster than taking the time to set up new filters, or finding the recent ones that are suddenly eliminating emails I don't want eliminated.

The trick is to then manually empty the Trash so that when checking later, only the new arrivals are there, making selections simple.

Voila. If you're using a free email program and it's not Eudora, you should think about switching. Of course it may take you six months to finally filter out every message you receive, but life wasn't made to be easy.

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Theresa Green writes: "Just had my son's insulin prescription filled. It cost us $47. The full cost would have been $260 without the PBS. And little Johnny wants us to come on board the FTA. He really is a little bastard to families isn't he!"

Sure enough, the "Family Values" Howard Government will be flattened like a pancake if it allows the Bush administration to mess with this humane scheme. The fine print of the Free Trade Agreement is still unavailable to the public, but will be long before the election.

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Annette Demers emails us from Umeruhca: 'Try entering "unelectable" or "miserable failure" into a Google search for a good laugh.' She also urged us to cut and paste the following links into Google for more hoots and lotsa snarls. None of these are on SCATT links as yet.

http://www.votebushout.biz/link.asp
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
http://www.bushorchimp.com/
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/
http://www.bushfordummies.com
http://www.ejectbush.com/
http://www.awolbush.com
http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com
http://www.bushoncrack.com
http://www.georgewbushisthedevil.com/
http://www.evilshrub.com
http://www.dancingbush.com/
http://www.invisibleamerica.com/index2.html
http://bushspeaks.com/home.asp?did=132
http://www.bushrecall.org
http://www.accuracy.org/bush/
http://www.impeach-bush-now.org
http://www.bushlies.com
http://www.thememoryhole.org

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"Americans defend their right to bare arms but not their breasts. What a shame it's not the other way around. I've never heard of anyone getting killed by a breast." So writes Ray Bruce to The Age.

Umeruhcans were right to avert their eyes from the baring of Janet Jackson's boob at the Super Bowl, but for the wrong reason. Instead of screaming blue murder at the body part they all lust after but for politically correct Christian fundamentalist reasons are required to fear, they should have run from their lounge rooms in horror the minute this grotesque female freak came on stage. Because when you see Janet you see brother Michael, who has long since joined the ranks of the tragically disfigured Elephant Man and Quasimodo.

* Original meaning: carnival performer who bites the heads off chickens

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As Barry Dickens recently noted, "tennis is as dull as a weekend in West Preston". He should have added: "on a Sunday afternoon." To understand what West Preston means, merely substitute the most prosaic part of the most boring suburb you know.

Nevertheless, in a fruitless attempt to avoid the inevitability of the coming political year, I found myself watching more than a few matches in the Australian Open. (Remember it? No? Like most sport it's meaninglessness comes and goes to fill in great gobs of time better spent using the brain. But never mind.) Despite my best intentions, there were few moments to jolt me out of the soporific state induced by the monotonous thwock of tennis balls being shot back and forth (a sound, in my unhumble opinion, nearly as irritating as that produced by our extremely weird brethren who tap dance).

These jolting moments are, of course, the occasionally dazzling returns that remind me of why the players are multimillionaires. Beyond that, I am sometimes awakened from my boopic-eyed trance by a temper tantrum, especially one resulting in a smashed racquet and/or a round of cursing in a language other than English. Even though most of the matches he played in were colossal bores, who can forget the heartfelt scheise! of Boris Becker?

Bringing the lounge room spectator to full alert however, are the inevitable wrong calls of linesmen and umpires. At the conclusion of just about every sporting contest ever played, one of the first judgements made is whether the umps or refs managed to ruin it. The fact that they almost invariably do is why yours truly has tried to resist the entertainment for years.

Thanks, then, go to John McEnroe for 1) criticising this injustice on air, thus breaking with a tradition of botlike acceptance that lurks at the foundation of all sport: obeisance to authority, and 2) relieving the lounge room spectator from going apoplectic by stating the obvious.

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