| A Squiz at Australia's | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | 30 April 1999 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 1 Number 11 |
Fasten your seat belts, we're about to enter the last eight months of the 1900's. And lo, the world is getting further from peace as the days dwindle down. Polarisation has increased to the point where we are becoming firmly divided between those who believe human rights are the ultimate end of a multitude of means based on rigorous applications of fairness, and those for whom the end is an ideological position of power using any means it takes to get there. The Pinochet extradition is an example. Astonishingly, the people of Chile are divided on whether General Pinochet is a saviour or a tyrant. His supporters believe that his coup of the democratically elected Allende government was justified. The bloody dictatorship which followed put the wealth back in their hands where it naturally belonged, and if he had to torture and murder thousands to achieve the end of Allende's dreaded Marxist redistribution of their wealth, so much the better. This polarisation extends to world figures as well. George Bush and Margaret Thatcher have queued up to give unabashed support to Pinochet, citing his revival of the economy as vastly more important than the lives of dissenters. Pope John Paul II, the arch foe of Liberation Theology, which teaches the poor to use the Bible as the basis for self-empowerment, has also pleaded for Pinochet's release to the green pastures of successfully retired oppressors. George Bush has been in the thick of US oppression in Central and Latin America for decades, while Margaret Thatcher's claim to fame has been the gutting of a society she believes does not exist. And the Pope weeps for tyrants while demanding the masses obediently remain on their knees. Polarisation is gripping an increasingly hysterical world. The Balkans have been destroyed by it. Militant Serbs have become a slaughtering horde behind Slobodan Milosevics' nationalist crusade for Serbian purity. India and Pakistan are testing nuclear bombs to show each other whose Almighty, Allah or Siva, has the biggest phallus. In our own backyard, integrationist paramilitary thugs are free to murder pro-independence East Timorese with the backing of Indonesia's military. Up to now, John Howard's inward looking, tax obsessed government has maintained a policy of dithering non-intervention. Alexander Downer can only be said to be doing a good job by comparison with his hapless past. John Howard is the one who must revive himself from the trembling vapours foreign affairs always seem to induce in him. At home, the ascendancy of the increasingly neo-fascist Liberal Party has driven the nation to a polarisation heretofore unheard of. Never before has an Australian government cared so little for its primary purpose of existence, that of serving the people. You may consider "neo-fascist" a hyperbolic term, but the Liberal Party's numero uno, Jeff Kennett, has expressed admiration for some of the methods adopted by Stalin and Mussolini. Worse, his reign as premier has put those methods into practice. Following in his footsteps, we see the Federal government dipping its toes in the same waters. The Waterfront debacle, instigated on behalf of a blind union-hating ideology, was nothing less than a first attempt at hard core fascism. Fin de Millénium polarisation has weakened civilisation's centre and unless something drastically positive happens, the centre is not going to hold. All of us are being thrown to the black and white edges of ideological interpretation. The battle is shaping up in no uncertain terms between the right and the left. When we see the likes of Thatcher championing a Pinochet, we can remain in no doubt that the Right is out of the closet as never before, with its antisocial rhetoric promoting a ruling elite as the one, true state of natural order. It might be a matter of degree as to final objectives, but the Right today includes the Pinochets, the Thatchers, the Milosevics, the Mahathirs, the Howards (and especially the Reiths), and the Kennetts. What they all have in common is a disdain for human rights. Whether they are using armies or legislation. it is a delusion to separate them on the basis of the lengths to which they are willing to go. 2001 may be the actual beginning of the new millennium, but 2000 is the year fixed in human anxiety. We have almost no time left to stop this shift to global authoritarianism, and few resources other than our voices of protest and if necessary our bodies in whatever front line is about to confront us. We do not choose guns and this is of great benefit to the ruling powers, for whom the manufacture of arms is a central economic foundation of rule. They may be few to our many but they have the artillery to wipe us out while contemptuously brushing specks of our suffering from their lapels as they sip cognac in their plutocratic bunkers. We will be extremely lucky if the Y2K bug is all we have to face on 1 January 2000. Then again, it may prove to be "drastically positive." HH WHERE'S ME TABLETS! Schoolgirls To Spread Their Legs "For All Of Us" Following the closure of 370 state (plebeian) schools in Victoria, we can see that Lord Jeffrey Kennett is intent on having his beloved girt-by-sea populated with none but the offspring of girls from the finest families and the best schools. Just imagine, a continent of Liberal Party tofflets going forth to rule; what more could a plutocrat desire? Principal Lesley Boston of MacRobertson Girls High School, where Our Lord verbally excited himself in front of 850 academic elites, felt rather disposed to the idea. "He was being rather amusing," she said, "but talking about the fact that obviously we do need to increase our population and I don't think he was necessarily charging the girls with that responsibility. They'll make their own decisions about what they do once they leave school." Ah, yes. After a year or two abroad, they can return to arranged marriages with up and coming executives, to be followed by a pleasant year in one of the many new taxpayer funded breeding enclaves, the building of which will provide hundreds of jobs for an adoring sub-proletariat. Whilst resident, they will be provided with the entertainments suitable to their class: Piped in Andrew Lloyd Webber music to stir their trembling emotions and soothe their noble wombs. Private pay TV channels offering reruns of "The Fountainhead" to strengthen their lip-curling disgust with Socialism, and, of course, "The Brady Bunch" for lessons in reality. Chauffeur-driven Beamers for lunch at the finest restos, along with occasional titter-fest shopping sprees in Proletown. Unfettered access to Swell's Casino for the odd naughty flutter, but especially for those enthralling evenings with embalmed entertainers from Las Vegas. All of which, in the natural order of things, will be payed for by their inferiors from the wretched realms. And when the new chosen ones are born, the little dahlings will be looked after by kindly, boopic-eyed nannies of the GWTW variety, to be placed, when the time comes, in private Kinders and the finest preparatory institutions until they too can enter the hallowed halls of destiny. There, if born girls, they will be instructed in good manners, how to handle servants, and the glory of breeding the very best sorts. The really chosen ones will, of course, be born boys. They will be instructed in essential character building sports such as the rowing of boats, and in the fine arts of bullying and corporate fraud, so that they may properly fulfil their destinies as corporate rulers. Indeed, who can deny that Lord Jeffrey governs for all of us. For isn't this what all of us want? (Ed note: Jeff's protestations over interpretations such as the above fail to justify his poor judgement at having brought up the subject at a girls school.) GS Kennett's Lousy Business Savvy Strikes Again... Yes, his government has spent $175,000 to build a police station, completed five months ago, in Dunolly, Victoria, only to leave it unmanned. In fact there has been no permanent officer in the town for the last 21 months. Steve Bracks, the new Opposition Labor leader, said it was like running a virtual police station, or a pub with no beer. It also plays like the government as spoilt rich kid with unlimited access to daddy's (the taxpayer's) wallet. GS ...But His Autocratic Instincts Are Unparalleld The Kennett Government has embarked on a mind-boggling drive to reduce police numbers and remove around 990 unfilled vacancies to avoid public perception that "the force is under-resourced." Worse, Jeff is planning to give Neil Comrie, Victoria's chief police commissioner, virtually unlimited powers to sack officers for any reason. You can bet critics and whistleblowers will be the first to go. As well, the Government is purported to be terminating the State's agreement to reimburse the Police Association's legal costs, bringing up once again the allegation of the Liberal Party's fanatical attempts at union busting, this time the Police Union. Add to this the recent proposal to form a new multi-purpose strike squad aimed at stopping crime before it happens, and you have the potential foundation of a police state in which petty crime (car theft, burglary, assaults) will be rampant, while political dissent will be very effectively crushed. GS |
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