| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | SCATT Archives Vol 3 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | ¡ NO PASARAN ! |
WHERE'S ME TABLETS! by Gort Slypesunder
| The Pura Milk Cup? Get outta here! You wonder when it's all going to stop, and then you realize it's not. Not until Y2K or another dinosaur-snuffing comet returns us to the heyday of paramecia. What is the profile of a person or persons [Send me your ideas] who would take the beloved, sacred and most certainly hallowed Sheffield Shield, the genteel Cricket championships pitting State against State for over a hundred years, and turn it into the…the…well, I said it once, but I don't think I can say it again. Let's forget that it was done in secret with nary a "Yeah, but!" from the public. Clandestine deals, which benefit the few at the expense of the many, are the way of business. Let's also put aside the realisation that without this deal, the Shield may have quietly disappeared. But you know the nadir of nadirs is just around the corner when this kind of repulsive thing happens. The point, I guess, is plain old sense and sensibility. Calling it The Pura Milk Sheffield Shield would have caused a few murmurs, but we've accepted the Foster's Melbourne Cup for a long time now. But this new monicker is simply born of a valueless philistinism at it's low down worst. It's enough to make you chuck, even in these days, when every other noble endeavour is drowned in the puke of corporate greed. Personally, I'm no fan of Cricket. Especially when it takes over the ABC--as if it were the most important thing on Earth--and wipes out "The World Today". But I do understand it's special place in the hearts and, especially, the nervous systems of its fans. A Test Match is like no other event on this planet. Four or five days of langorous strategy interrupted on occasion by a wildly exciting LBW has no doubt increased the lifespans of all its admirers. And I understand its place in the national psyche. That is a hallowed place. Or was. We'll still have the matches, oh yes. But in an increasingly barren Australia run by slavering, cold-hearted shareholders and those obscenely paid, remote members of our species for whom tradition amounts to less than an unseen ash falling from an expensive Cuban cigar. Bugger Pura Milk. Inward-looking, fearful xenophobes all, the Howard Government is now peddling the fear of being overrun by swarthy overtheres, this time Iraqi Arabs and Afghans. Philip Ruddock, the Minister for The Grudging Induction of Inferiors Into White Picket Land, says we're about to be swamped by 10,000 refugees arriving via Indonesia. And here they come. Packed in rusted, leaking boats helmed by non-white entrepreneurs and laden with such B Movie cargo as cocaine and heroin, canisters of biological germ warfare, unceremoniously removed organs packed in melting ice, underage prostitutes ordered by rich Olympics ticket holders, blood-caked ebony tusks from Africa, viscera-stained tiger skins from India, Hugo Boss suits from the sweatshops of remote provinces in China, a container of canned accents from America and FJ Holden parts from Mars, the gabardine-suited well-offs from Baghdad and Kabul await their encounter with Australia, a land known to them only through brochures of bullshit. What? There are only a few hundred, maybe a thousand? And they're only escaping Saddam Hussein's murderous regime? Or Afghanistan's wowser-driven repression? "Hold on," says an advisor to Ruddock, who, along with his Liberal Party mates, can thank their ancestors for bypassing the Renaissance, "maybe Afghanistan's got something, there. If Cousin Pauline can come up with an Taliban-type in her ranks, we might just go them one better." "Forget it!" barks Ruddock, one or two neurons working to remind him that for at least half the population in Oz, the Renaissance was a bonza good time, "and get Naval SWAT on the line. Lawsy's brekky boozers still run the country." A jolly good time for the Chaps Holidaying On Government Money. "To a really great man, John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia," Nelson Mandela intoned at the CHOGM windup yesterday. In an act of good-natured senility (or was it sharp-witted mickey removal?), Nelson Mandela was returning John Howard's spontaneous toast to himself, "to the health of a great man." Sources report Our Johnny had to stand on one of those steps especially imported by Toys r Us to make the toast and bequeath Mandela with an honorary Order of Australia for services to Oz-SA relations. Services made in spite of Weasel John's refusal to back sanctions during all those horrible years. SOCOG guilty of duping us dopes. Whether Bill Clinton's "drug czar," General Barry McCaffrey, is genuine or not, we have to agree with his suspicion that John Coates--and Kevan Gosper, for that matter--will defend the IOC's World Anti-Doping Agency to the grave in order to become the new Samaranch. As with all aspects of the Sydney Olympics, no one is to be believed. Samaranch himself was a fascist collaborator with Franco, and our above mentioned SOCOG fellows show every sign of enjoying fascist methods. Either would be Juan Antonio's logical replacement. Hey, Freedom Lovers, get a load of this! We know that the only thing that turns on John "I wish I wasn't dead" Howard is tax reform, but his wireless offsider, Richard "Frankenstein" Alston is even kinkier. Richard's rod can only rise by banning porn. Hey, that's weird, but what the hell, he's a Liberal isn't he? Here's the ABA's latest zealous attempt to please Kinky Dicky and his Internet Censorship Bill, as reported on page 42 of the Computers section of 9 November's Australian newspaper. The reporter is Simon Hayes. "Developers of Web porn have had their first taste of the new Internet censorship regime with the release of Australian Broadcasting Authority control rules to block access by minors [especially future Young Liberal types-GS]. The interim rules, effective from [Y2K day] require users to apply for a password before being able to access a porn site. The user will be required to submit name, address, date of birth and e-mail address, along with a declaration that their personal details are correct. The user will also have to submit a credit card number, or use a digital signature, to authenticate the information. Postal applicants will be required to submit a certified copy of their passport, birth certificate, drivers' license, student or seniors card." Well, folks, there's more to the article, but, whew! that's enough for now. Doesn't it make you feel proud to be an Australian under the Howard Government, the wowsers who legislate "for all of us"? Once upon a time the Political Prisoners of the Future were divided on the issue of the referendum on the Republic. While we all agreed that it was time to chuck the Windsors, we were worried about the model proposed. One of us (was it me?) proposed a no vote (see Best of SCATT). I was afraid that Jeff Kennett would get in there and usurp all power for himself. Who knows, he still might. I was also worried that John Howard, the man who stands for nothing, had sullied the entire process, and that Australia should await a responsible government before the subject could be sensibly debated. It remains a national tragedy that John Howard is Prime Minister during this momentous time. But hey, it's a flawed world, and there may not even be a "best" model. The important points are these: 1) it is time for Australia to grow up. 2) we have to trust ourselves enough to elect politicians we can trust. Let's face it, someone's got to enjoy the perks of political power. Perhaps this referendum is even better than national elections in determining who are larvae and who are adults. Those lining up on the "no" side are indeed a sorry lot of entry-level humans. A Ms Kroger has been approached… O lucky inhabitants of Burwood, in the state of Victoria, shall you ever be in safe hands. For Your Masters on High in the Liberal Party have designated a successor to his Eminence, the former Emperor Jeffrey Von Kennett, should he resign from state politics, This tragic eventuality has prompted the Liberal Party to search the grand avenues of Toorak for a suitable replacement. You will, each of you, want to frame the noble photograph of Ms Helen Kroger, appearing on the front page of The Age of 28 October, and place it alongside that of the Queen on your altar of worship. My, doesn't she look regal! Doesn't she just exude calm and capability and celestial good taste, the very requisites you require in the relinquishment of your rights as routinely demanded by her Party. Of course, she has no political background, other than being a member of the Party's administrative committee and the former wife of Merchant Banker and former State Liberal Party president, Michael Kroger. But she is a Liberal, and of course she does have the look of a woman long used to the very best of everything. What more could you ask for? Now, dahlings, all you have to do is vote for her. We assume the Victorian Liberal Party's unscrupulous PR Commissar, Peter Poggioli, is behind the latest radio ads in Frankston East. Theads portray the ALP's hopeful Premier, Steve Bracks, as a pilot about to crash the plane of state because -- you guessed it -- he was a member of the ALP during the so-called"disastrous" Cain-Kirner years. For the purposes of the supplementary election, poor old Steve has been elevated to being Joan Kirner's co-pilot. The Joe-McCarthy-worshipping Liberal Party loves a good smear and they've swatted this one all over the psyches of Victorians for generations to come. You can bet Labor Party candidates towards the year 3000 will be the Liberal Party's target for "being the grandson or granddaughter of a member of that Satan-led, Communist-riddled party of incompetents that ruined thousands of lives way back in the last century." We've often wondered how much worse the mess would have been had the Liberal Party been in power in the '80's. Judging by the subsequent seven years under Jeff Kennett, there could have been mass suicides. Meanwhile, the actual Labor Party candidate in Frankston East, Matt Viney, is reminding the electorate about the "cuts to police numbers and the closure of 30 beds at Frankston Hospital." He's counting on their intelligence, while the Liberal Party treats them as mugs. Move over Mussolini, here comes another swinger. As Jeff Kennett loses his grip on the state that used to be his, those of us who actually give a shit are still in a state of ecstacy. What a sight: Jeff shredding evidence one minute, apologising from the hollow of his heart the next, lashing out with threats of legislative blockage if he doesn't form government after that, and then off to Frankston East for the kind of obvious pork barrelling that even makes Alan Woods sick. He's suddenly found $40 million for a hospital he previously let rot. The gents at Frankston's Seaford Pub spoke for all of us, and it was a gala treat to behold. Kennett actually sounded shaken as the pubsters let him have it about the shortage of police and hosptal beds. "You're candidate won't convince this electorate," was the consensus of opinion. Post-Colonial Johnny Gets His Gun. Warming to his role as saviour of the white race through the sacrifice of its lower classes, John Howard is stepping up the rhetoric over East Timor. Using his rare talent of putting everyone offside no matter what the issue, The Squidgereen has come up with a Doctrine ex-Liberal Pauline Hanson would be proud of. The man who never should have been Prime Minister wants to terminate the idea of special relationships with our Asian neighbours by volunteering Australia to act as Uncle Bill's Regional Deputy Sheriff. Just because Australia is the only white country in South-East Asia, it doesn't follow we should try to adapt to the region. What? Bwana adapt to the ways of Simba? Ho ho ho, cut me a new cigar and stop with the funny business. For the man who still lives in "the fifties," when Bwana's rule over a globe full of darkies was the natural order of things, it only makes sense for all of South-East Asia to look to Australia for guidance. The worry is that Misguided John will now infuriate the hordes his Tory inclinations so despise. The man who is turning his own country into one of masters and servants, is now inviting South-East Asia to rip into those of us for whom equality has always been a given. Come to think of it, most wars--the one's the rest of us have to fight--have been caused by Master Race Tories. Gone: The Alice Band from hell. Ann Henderson appears to have finally lost her seat of Geelong. Yet, like those persistent ghouls from such Tory inspired films as "The Howling" (and its sequels: one for each term in office), she may yet resurrect tomorrow after the final recount. (You may have noticed how often we liken the Tories to the undead in horror films. At the risk of overdoing it, we ask your indulgence as we develop this theme. It's just that the image fits so well.) Within their bare cupboard of policies (one or two covering all possible ways to insure elite rule), can be found the twin body matrices from which all Liberal/Tory animates are produced. The canister labelled Tory: Male, produces uniform lumpen, cold blooded bodies with sneering faces. The canister marked Tory: Female, produces a Toorak-Palm Beach blend with Alice bands clamping expensive bouffants which frame globe-tanned faces as expressive as Martian rocks. Ann Henderson is your classic hellhag of the Toorak Alice band variety. After failing everyone in her constituency (save the developers), the Housing Minister, like her mentor, Jeff Kennett (who appears to be skewering over the hot fires of oblivion), cannot understand why they have cast her out. And by only 16 votes! In the end, the human race has been saved time and time again by such slim majorities. We wish Ann well, as she returns to the platinum-coated idleness that suits her. Is one-dimensional Jeff about to enter meltdown? the equivalent of a film monster being doused with the elixir of truth? You know, where the voice keeps running through the programmed changes between innocence and basso satanico, where the eyes roll, the head revolves, smoke escapes all orifices and the skin begins to melt. That kind of monster. Saturday night he verbally spanked Victorians for bad behavior in giving him, their savior, such a fright. Sunday, he was going to ride off on his white charger and, by implication, take every thing that was good for Victoria with him. Next day he was going to stay on to help the wounded party. The day after that he and his band of hellhounds were shredding the evidence of seven years of democracide. Now he's apologising to all those Un-Victorians out there. He actually said the word "sorry" four times in his garden speech. No one believes him, of course. There are certain flawed characteristics that, short of the best lobotomy money can buy, cannot be altered. Paedophiles, lawyers, dogs that bark all night and tyrants are not rehabilitable. Maybe Victorians should chip in to buy Jeff a frontal lobe renovation (we've bought him everything else). Until then we can count on the same old Jeff: Ugly, Mean and Nasty. Nats and Labor sitting in a tree. And why not? The National Party has long been comprised of solid citizens. Just because some of them are bumpkins who are often be swayed by the genetic garbage of the lunar right doesn't mean they can't put two and two together to form a fair go. One thing is sure, National Party supporters have more humanity in their splayed thumbnails than the cynical, Machiavellian scum representing the Liberals. Another thing that is sure, the National Party of today has more in common with the Labor Party of today. Labor has a chance, under Steve Bracks, to become a true party of the people, one without the old polarizing ideologies. Let us pray they don't blow it. (They probably will.) Time to say goodbye to Peter Poggioli, the Victorian Liberal Party Minister of Propaganda. The man who no one has ever seen blink has certainly had a blinkered approach to managing Jeff's big sell. We're not sure, but he may have actually said that good leadership requires arrogance. He couldn't have, could he? Where did Jeff find him? Even Petrou "Victorians are Ingrates" Georgiou had more smarts when it came to running a campaign. Petrou arranged for the lies and abuse of the '92 and '96 campaigns to be rammed down our throats with the aplomb of a Mafia Don whose pronouncements cannot be questioned. Popeye, on the other hand, went in for the kill like a Tijuana matador, all burrito and no brain. Jeff must have thought we were as dumb as Popeye. See the Scum of Darkness and his whey-faced idioticon working overtime to shred truckloads of office documents. Sensing Nuremburg Trials in the offing, they adopt Hollywood style German accents in hushed tones, perhaps of the Otto Preminger variety, as they shred assiduously to rid Victoria of the proof of their vile deeds. One, the former Minister of Corporate Education, dons the monocle he's always wanted to wear, while another, the former Attorney-General, rasps in a desiccated voice of despair about all the liberticide she was unable to commit. A big red headed guy, not actually in government, but almost as powerful as the F-----g Fuehrer, spits out his disdain for the dummkopf electorate who didn't appreciate the tyranny he and those in his pocket had worked so hard to achieve. Still believing Victorians are as one dimensional as he is, Der Jeff calms his sweating kakistocrats by assuring them that the rabble will take no notice of this destruction of evidence. Yes, he still thinks voters love him, and he'll take that delusion with him to political oblivion. Have we seen the truth of the Swell's Casino and Intergraph scandals disappear into thin strips of excelsior and eventual relief in, say, Argentina? Who knows? One thing is certain, no one believes Oberst Jeff when he says "they are our working documents, they're not government files." It's a pity Steve Bracks can't sent the coppers in to make the event a worthy finish to a B-grade thriller. Terry McCrann, perhaps the only human face among Australia's economic journalists--he has actually stood up for due process from time to time--still doesn't get the fundamentals of what makes the human race civilised. It's a system of government called Democracy. Inherent in this quirky but ultimately fair system is uncertainty and sometimes the mirage of instability. The instability (of potential minority governments) never really eventuates, unless the opposition decides to push destabilisation. Democracy is a hard pill to swallow for can-do folks of the "business is business" ilk. There is ultimately no such thing in corporate affairs as balance of power between levels of jurisdiction. There is a profit line and little else. Losers are shunned. To bring these corporate, cutthroat tactics into government is to invite tyranny and the eventual backlash from those who are not beneficiaries. Terry McCrann, both in the Herald Sun and on Melbourne radio 3LO with Terry Laidler, has shown that democracy means nothing to him. Or that he doesn't understand it. Or worse, that he condones its demise at the hand of business. Laidler tried to make McCrann understand that it is always better for initiatives to be considered at length, rather than pushed through quickly without benefit of rigorous debate. Recent Coalition governments are notorious for pushing anti-social legislation through parliaments without allowing informed discussion on the ramifications of their implementation. For McCrann, effective government is synonymous with autocracy, regardless of the philosophical bent of the government of the day. Unfortunately history has shown over and over again, that this kind of "blank cheque" rule has led to the world's most infamous tyrannies. Slow, awkward Democracy inevitably works for the good of the many. McCrann's model, which belongs to business, works for the good of the few. |
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