| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | Next Issue: Apr Fool's Day |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 4 Number 6 |
If you still support John Howard,
UN Report a Sham: Little Lord Downer Must Resign Paragraph after paragraph damning Australia's violation of international human rights conventions were deleted from the sanitised United Nations report on mandatory sentencing presented to Parliament by Australia's pooncy Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer. If he did not influence the UN into making these deletions, who did? Howard Government ministers have a habit of passing the transgressions buck to their staff, but it won't wash here. Besides, who is running the government, the Ministers or their unelected, faceless staff? Following are excerpts of the conclusions excised from the United Nations paper on mandatory sentencing, released on Monday, as printed in The Age (17 Mar 00). This information was not presented in their online edition, which would have resulted in a handy link to click on. We must therefore type it out for you: Detention/imprisonment as a last resort: The Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 37 (b)) states that the detention and imprisonment of juveniles should be a measure of "last resort". The Convention, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child encourage States to make use of "alternatives to detention/imprisonment". This does not appear to be the case here. Right to appeal sentences: The possibility for a sentence to be reviewed is internationally accepted in all but the most serious of cases, such as those involving murder. From the information provided it would seem that this right has not been respected. The exercise of juvenile justice in Australia would appear to be in violation of human rights standards prohibiting discrimination. Attention should nevertheless be given to noting whether the proportion of indigenous Australian children incarcerated nationwide (as quoted) is similar to the figures specific to these two States. Detention and imprisonment can be very harmful to some children. It should be used as a last resort as required under applicable international law. When used it should be done in consideration of the rehabilitative objectives of juvenile justice and in respect of the obligation to take into consideration the best interests of the child. The practice of mandatory sentencing is, in reality, a violation of the right to a fair trial by an independent and impartial court. In addition, mandatory sentencing for juveniles goes against the objectives of juvenile justice and the spirit of the best interests principle of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The use of mandatory sentencing in an environment where a very high proportion of one racial group, which is in addition both a minority population and economically marginalised, are likely to be incarcerated is, at a bare minimum, extremely inappropriate and probably in violation of numerous international human rights standards, as described above. Once again, the Howard Government has shamed this country. The final question we must ask ourselves is this: Should the Governor General now step in to dissolve this inept, traitorous government? Howard's End: The Dirty Little Coward Must Resign John Howard refuses to let his backbenchers exercise their right to a conscience vote (or "free" vote as he ironically calls it) over mandatory sentencing, claiming these situations only arise over items of grave national importance (to him). When it comes to wowser favourites like the abolition of abortion and euthanasia, he'll be there to encourage and support the introduction of private member bills. The jailing of children over biscuit theft amounting to $2.50, however, is not in this category. It is interesting to note two things before we go on: 1) White children are not going to jail over these insignificant transgressions; 2) The cost to taxpayers for per annum incarceration of one child is reported to be upwards of $25,000. Danna Vale, the Liberal with the pop star name, has courageously stood up to Howard's craven behaviour by threatening to cross the floor and support Bob Brown's initiative to quash the NT mandatory sentencing law. At the moment six other Liberal MP's plan to join her. Do they have the courage? You would hardly think so, as this is the party of mindless insects whose concept of service to the public is to stay in office long enough to collect those juicy superannuation payouts. Vale's impassioned story about her son, who was before the courts at the age of 14 and, she maintains, would have never become a "law-abiding citizen" if he'd lived in the Northern Territory, did not penetrate the paralytic irresolution of John Howard. Apart from an anally retentive fixation on tax regimes, this man has no moral centre from which to act upon the issues confronting him. Unable to lead, he is led by the whims of the lowest common denominator. What moves them moves him. Thus, we have a Prime Minister who holds crimes against property to be a greater wrong than crimes against children. Indeed, this dirty little coward, backed by the trash who support his timidly vicious regressivism, is forcing his colleagues to tow the line and support a law that puts children at the mercy of hardened criminals. For stealing cordial or biscuits, these children are now open to abuse of all kinds, not only from inmates, but also from jailers. There is a control issue here, and nothing delights fascists more than having control over children. Let's look at the supporters of mandatory sentencing and what they are really on about. They represent the feeble-minded human detritus who accepted extra rations of food to hunt out Jews and turn them over to the Gestapo; they are the people who betrayed their comrades in the French Resistance; they are the people who followed Mao's order to run their teachers and mentors to ground and either kill them outright or drive them to suicide; they are the people who volunteered to follow Pol Pot's genocidal regime, who took delight in the slaughter of their fellow citizens; they are the people who look at life from behind a white picket fence and the barrel of the white man's gun. Those who look different, who have different interests and, above all, who think differently are always kept in the sights of that gun. When those different people make the slightest transgression, they have automatically forfeited their rights to be treated justly. Aboriginals, homosexuals, artists, intellectuals and academics are all suspects, the ones who must be kept chained to the white picket fence of rigid Calvinism. How many steps will it take to go from mandatory sentencing to the kind of society presided over by Adolph Hitler? Not many. The lowest common denominator is ever ready to raise up a Hitler to comfort its frightened grip on a world it doesn't understand. And when it gets a population of transgressors at its mercy, it loves to treat them accordingly. Torture, rape, murder become the slavering order of the day. What we have in John Howard is a man who has deserted his post, who is laying the foundation for the emergence of right wing totalitarianism in this country. His moral weakness, his philosophical bankruptcy is pandering to a larval menace that threatens to erupt at any moment. His logical successor is not Peter Costello, but Peter Reith, a snarling thug who could so easily extend his single-minded hatred of unions to an all-encompassing misanthropy. It's time we faced it. John Howard not only appeals to the lowest common denominator, he IS the lowest common denominator. He is a contented bedmate of closet-sprung racists like Pauline Hanson and the NT chief Minister, Denis Burke, who soiled himself by calling Bob Brown a fool the other night on Lateline. Burke really wanted to call Brown a poofter and worse; you could just hear it in his silly choice of the epithet "fool". In the end, Howard is more Hanson than Hanson. He is so clearly on the side of redneck repression that it is time for editors and journalists to stand up and call for his resignation. Because of him, Australia is about to slip into civil disorder. Update: Vale buckled. Did we expect a member of the Australian Liberal Party to do otherwise? There is not a decent man or woman among them. Well, there you have it: the demise of The Zeitgeist Gazette. Seven months of bravely bagging the subs and duds that rule a hapless world is over for want of filthy lucre. Ironically that commodity is in abundant supply for the mean-spirited scum at the top, as it always has been and always will be. We held our breaths with crossed fingers (no easy task in a world still on the brink of biological violations) in hopes the Zeiters would meet their subscription goal of 1000 well-heeled souls. It may be, however, that there are not 1000 well-heeled souls with a social conscience left in Australia. Most of us are struggling to pay the ever-increasing bills; funny how, with every passing month, each one of them costs a few dollars more. The truth is, there is no money to be made on the Net outside of advertising and sheer hucksterism. Stephen Mayne at Crikey.com.au is offering a modest $50 subscription fee, but even that may not eventuate. The Net represents free access to the minds of the world. It is the last stand of democracy, the free exchange of ideas, unhindered by censorship. Of course, governments of all persuasions are trying their best to Stalinise the Net, and they may even succeed to some degree. But the fact that any home computer can become its own ISP will finish them in the end. Anyway, they needn't bother: they have the greater part of humanity on their side, for most people just don't give a damn. A further possible cause for Zeit's demise is the nature of the Internet itself. A medium that is too fast and vast, coupled with either not enough time or the perception of it, represents little more than an arcade game when it comes to digesting what's on the screen. Even with the greatest of disciplinary vows, the surfer is confronted with nothing less than an eight hour day for the rest of his or her life in the pursuit of first, the intended destinations, and then the links leading to further accumulations of information, leaving the end of each session with a menu of bursting bookmarks, 95 per cent of which will never be opened again. Unless, of course, he or she is fortunate enough to be felled by a life saving minor illness, giving them the necessary free moments to clean up the bloody mess. Surfing is an anxiety-ridden process, leaving most articles half-read, with promises to get back to them, and neat little apps downloaded to be forgotten forever. In order to take advantage of this medium, one must consciously exclude 99 per cent of it. Log on, reach target, log off. Or go mad. We are fortunate that the Gazette has left their archives online. There we have a gold mine of the finest political commentary, to be accessed at leisure. But how many will take advantage of it? How many people actually sat at their computers every day at 3 PM with that steaming cup of coffee provided by the Zeit's home page and read the content? We harbour a suspicion that no one reads much of anything on the Net; tell us we're wrong, please. There are a squillion e-zines and online newspapers out there, but is anyone reading them? Yes, we know the writers of letters to the editor are tuned in, but is anyone else? Is the Net still in its infancy? We were hoping it was at least at the toddler stage. Our generation still reads the newspaper, but our children may not. So what will they turn to for the news of the day? Perhaps nothing. The news will be fed to them via the likes of Channel 7 or 9 or CNN in such a way as to discourage interest. A bleak outlook? You bet. No doubt we're wrong. So, our heartfelt thanks to Richard Walsh, David Salter and their fellow (and fellowette) hard workers, who for seven months distinguished themselves by scarifying the scrawny bodies of so many naked little emperors. Vale! Managers & Shareholders: Humanity's Traitors It has become abundantly clear that the world is now at the mercy of managers and shareholders. The latter instruct the former to mount whatever search and destroy operations are deemed necessary to the relevant company and its workers for the sole purpose of fattening their dividends. The mangers get paid exorbitant sums for this antisocial task whether they've done it well or not, and the shareholders bask in joy of knowing that they all but control the political agendas of the countries they live in. The relationship between Managers and Shareholders and the rest of us is similar to a giant amoeba absorbing everything in its path. It is also like the band of Nazis and Fascist Black Shirts who formed the defiant Salo Republic in the dying days of World War II and the victims they plucked from the local population to be sacrificed in orgies of sex and gluttony until the end. Like Managers and Shareholders, the Black Shirts cared not a whit for their victims or for those who had died in the name of their folly during the war. Witness the breathtaking contempt for the intelligence of Australians this week, with the announcement that despite a six-month profit of $2 billion, Telstra says 10,000 plus jobs must go. Well and good that this is the age of the Internet boom and new technologies require restructuring which means fewer jobs. That still leaves 10,000 jobless human beings at a time when the government is promoting casual labour and conscripting people to work for the dole, another way of paying pittance for slave labour. Furthermore the Government, not more than a fortnight earlier, had promised that no more services would be lost to the bush. How many lies are Australians going to swallow? What is to become of the restructured and disentitled, the thousands upon thousands of them? How are these people going to make ends meet? Does the Government give a damn? There was a little event in France in 1789 which showed a similar government the error or its ways. Every year HH finds himself less interested in the footy season. It's a long haul, after all. The tiresome pre-season games take the edge off the excitement of the real thing, the daunting prospect of 22 rounds of footy tipping is enough to make him start gibbering, and then there's another season of Bruce McAvaney. But the main reason for this uncustomary disinterest is the corporatisation of sport in Australia. The Americans were hit with it decades ago, beginning with the Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles in the mid-fifties, perhaps one of the crimes of the century. The Yanks coped, of course, because sport is the opium of the masses; people will watch their favourite teams even if the games were to become virtual events played exclusively in cyberspace. Which is where it's all heading in Oz. The brutal closure of Waverley Park to make way for Even if they could afford it, footy fans are not interested in champers and pate in corporate boxes at an elite-sized stadium too far away. They want to see their teams out in the open come rain or shine, the teams they have been loyal to for generations. Well, that's not going to happen any more. There is no room for them at Maybe Aussies have more jam than the Yanks. Maybe they will switch off the TV in favour of radio. Maybe the ones lucky enough to queue early will withdraw their financial support and leave it to the drunks in the boxes. It's not too late to save Aussie rules from the neutering currently taking place. Then again, maybe it is. Violence vs Sex: No Contest for the Howard Government We've written before (SCATT Archives, Vol 2, due online in April) about the outrage from conservatives over the film "Lolita", while at the same time remaining mute on the graphic stabbing of a teenage girl in "Scream". Well, "Scream" is back in the news. A ten-year-old girl was admitted to a psychiatric ward with severe trauma after watching the video at children's party. Her mind had become "trapped inside" the horror film, according to doctors. On her release she was teased mercilessly at her school. "Are you the 'Scream' girl? Why don't you start screaming?'" The mother of the girl hosting the party said she had no idea the film was classified for mature audiences. She should have, but let's face it, the film was aimed at children the same way cigarettes and boozy icy poles are. She should also have been present at the party; she wasn't, nor was any other adult. That is negligence, pure and simple. The traumatised girl's parents have written to John Howard about video classifications. They told him, "the regulations that are supposed to protect young children from the effects of graphic violence and horror are an absolute farce." It is of vital interest to note the response of the two-faced Howard government to the parents' letter. "The primary responsibility for protecting children from harmful material rests with their parents or guardians." We heartily concur with this statement, issued by an adviser to the Prime Minister. Then what is the meaning of his Internet censorship? The two are contradictory in the extreme. The Government is not concerned with violence, as we always suspected. It is sex that frightens them. Mad Maggie and Pinché Pinochet In her dotage, MT has developed a crush on former dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Augusto and Maggie: it almost sounds cute, like something out of an old folks movie gone wrong, with early flashbacks to the days when he cut a dashing figure as Chile's ejecutado politico, and she as the executioner of Britain's infrastructure. Of course the dodderer is no longer able to root the rooter, or so says Britain's laughing stock of a medical establishment. No wonder she loves him; he was of invaluable help to her embarrassing little war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands. That ignoble conclusion to centuries of Britannia Rules has always been her excuse for idolising a man who was able to torture and murder his own, something she was never able to do. Thatcher, like Hitler, was elected to power. This gave her a respectability never afforded to Pinochet. It is the reason she is still tolerated or ever listened to. But there is little difference between the two. Both ravaged the heart and soul of their countries in the name of economic renewal, Pinochet with guns, Maggie with legislation. The irony is that, after all, the citizens of Chile might just be marginally better off. During the killer's 16-month detention in Britain, Mad Maggie never ceased to champion his rights as a citizen above suspicion, as a member of the world's misanthropic elite guaranteed immunity by virtue of coups and executions of democratically elected leaders. In her infamous claim that Britain was shamed by Pinochet's detention, she was joined by Jean-Marie Le Pen of France. Like all right wingers, Le Pen detests communism. "Pinochet saved Chile and South America from the communist revolution!" he trumpeted from his fascist headquarters in Provence. Just so, for right wingers will have not a bar of equal wealth distribution or the concept of a fair go for all. Lucky for them that Josef Stalin and Mao used their tactics to bury a decent world for decades, if not centuries. As the old General was wheelchaired to his awaiting flight to "freedom," Maggie had a lackey rush out to present him with a parting gift. She gave him an "armada plate" to celebrate his return to Chile and his Francis Drake-like victory over Spain's attempt to have him extradited to their possibly terminal clutches. And she probably cheered when, landing in Chile, he arose Skase-like from the wheelchair to walk tall and flip the bone at integrity. Margaret Thatcher, a traitor to her people like Pinochet, was tickled pink. Jack Straw could do little else in the end, but Blair's Britain, alone among developed nations, at least had the courage to arrest him in the first place. Bill Clinton and the Pope would have given him royal treatment. With Pinochet's release and return to a Chile divided over what should happen to him, the free world can now hope that other dictators had better think twice when travelling out of their homelands. Sadly, it may be a false hope. |
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