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Spot
the
John Howard
Supporter

• Hark's Barks
  • HH Needs Your Help
  • The Prince and The Gunsel
  • Safe Injecting Rooms: Not with this All-American PM
  • Howard Just Loves Those Conservative Whiteys
  • Censoring the Net: Malaysia and Turkey Look to Oz

HH Needs Your Help

Confession: the Political Prisoners of the Future exist within the woolly mind of the highly unthought of, well-unknown Harold Hark. SCATT therefore suffers from the singular viewpoint of the same person week in and week out, resulting in a creative drain. Hark's numerous selves are beating at his brainpan for release. One wants to resume writing unpublishable novels. Another wants to start watching the over 400 films in the video collection. Still another wants to get in the car and drive to Port Douglas and to hell with responsibilities and the future of Australia. At the moment Barking Political Hark is still in command, believing that the situation in Australia is so bad it needs all the help it can get.

But Political Hark desperately needs fresh input from others: journalists, university students, retired Web surfers and kids playing hooky...anyone who might be at their wit's end over the criminally inept regime in Canberra.

Some of you must surely have articles too hot to print in the newspapers you work for: somewhat inebriated midnight cries for justice you have written after an infuriating dinner party with philistines, and then consigned to the "Yeah, Sure!" directory or folder; potential Walkley winners you know your editor will like but won't print; articles that have wasted your time because they exhorted the people to wake up and do something about the Howard Government's shameless descent into infamy.

Send them to SCATT Use any name you want, or like Malaysians under Mahathir, write anonymously. HH is looking for content not identity. He doesn't even want to know who you are: the point of all this is a return to decent government in Australia. And if you do tell him who you are, he will suffer the tortures of Reith and still not divulge your true identities. There is nothing in it for HH but relief when this government is finally routed from office.

Send him an e-mail with a made up name or write to the snail mail address at the bottom of this page under any name you choose. Ask for his telephone number to set up a clandestine meeting (with capes and folded newspapers for identification). Above all, he understands that your job must be protected.

Write soon, because Movie Hark is already setting up a Fellini festival and the smell of popcorn is driving the other Harks wild.

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The Prince and The Gunsel

We mentioned Peter Reith's sub-Machiavellian manual in Bronwyn Bishop: I Didn't Do It and it's finally hitting the fan. "Dispute Management," the little handbook he had commissioned to encourage deception in dealing with the enemy (which includes all industrial relations and anything to do with you and me) is finally getting a go in the newspapers.

Senator John Faulkner wondered in February if it wasn't in breach of public service regulations. The question is are there any regulations left? Anyway, Workplace Partners, who just happen to be consultants working for Reith's Workplace Relations department, wrote the handbook. Typical of Howard Government Two-heads (PR head denies what policy head is doing), Peter Reith says the manual has nothing to do with him. And well he should. Yet, when the fan really starts splattering the fallout from this disgusting exercise in doublespeak totalitarianism, Reith will be the first to blame his staff--again typical of Howard Government stooges.

From Brad Norrington, The Age 26/4/00: "A Federal Government blueprint about dealing with its own employees tells heads of the Commonwealth public service how to lie, confuse, discredit and provide misleading information as negotiating tactics."

According to Norrington the manual says, "'When you have many demands, introduce a few false issues. This disguises your serious interests and allows you to make concessions thus giving the other party a sense of gain.'

"It also outlines how to stall for time or do nothing, to walk out when you pretend to have withdrawn but are really still available' and to issue take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums.

"Among the most controversial is the advice to discredit negotiators on the other side by associating them with 'some unsavoury connection' and to support a case by providing biased misinformation."

Reith is trying to get out of his connection to this document, but it is abundantly clear that he has been working from it for his entire time in office. Like almost every other member of John Howard's diabolical rogue cabinet, he should resign.

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Safe Injecting Rooms: Not while John Howard is our All-American PM

That Australian blight on the human race, the Liberal Party, is nothing if not consistent. Whatever can keep this country in the dark ages must be supported. As for evolution, forget it.

The Bracks government of Victoria could save lives by installing heroin-injecting houses in selected suburbs of Melbourne. Yet the Liberals (on the orders of rigid Pastor John, who disallows conscience votes because he has no conscience), the Nationals, and Independents Russell Savage and Craig Ingram oppose it. It makes you want to scream.

All the evidence in the world cannot sway these frightened little bunnies. Typical of political parties who relentlessly bleat the wonders of "family values" they act in opposition to every family's well being. You catch yourself wishing each and every one of them were to find their sons and daughters overdosed in some back alley. But then, you are not like them and the thought is quickly retrieved.

The truth is that these people, in their burnt out heart of hearts, want to see drug users dead and buried (excluding folks, like them, who use alcohol and tobacco). HH has long held the view that most conservatives are misanthropic entry-level humans whose final solution to society's ills is to dig a vast pit and bury all the dole bludgers, single mothers, homosexuals, drug users, intellectuals, artists, alternative thinkers...in short, anyone who does not subscribe to the Dick and Jane White Picket Fence model of life.

Come back Jesus, if indeed you were ever here in the first place, and throw these three-piece low life's out of the temple once again.

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Howard Just Loves Those Conservative Whiteys

You'll recall that John Howard was brought into the Kosovar refugee crisis kicking and screaming. Through his "Immigration for Well-heeled Whites, Emigration for Others" Minister, Philip Ruddock, Australia made it clear that Kosovars would not be welcome. Weeks later, under protest (ours and, let there be no doubt, Howard's), the nasty little PM was at the docks for a photo opportunity with the first traumatised arrivals.

As we all know, and to our shame as Australians, the same Dastardly Duo engineered the callous repatriation of those Kosovars against their will and the will of all civilised people in this country. They were dropped back home to a country in ruins and on the verge of civil war, with no support and a wad of worthless Australian dollars. But, small mercies, at least they weren't parachuted in to save a few more worthless coins.

Yet now the same Traitorous Two are telling white Zimbabwean farmers: "Y'all come." And they weren't even asked! That's right, Ruddock is literally panting with joy at the chance to bolster conservative ranks in Australia by placing us at the head of the list for international support of the beleaguered farmers. A grand gesture to be sure, and one that all humanitarians would agree with.

However, the Howard Government is once again showing its blatant favouritism of one group over another. It can't quite be called racism as such, but perhaps a term such as "economic racism" isn't far off the mark. Or "cultural preference," perhaps. No, "culture" is a word foreign to conservatives belonging in the Howard bin. In the end, the farmers from Zimbabwe will fit in perfectly with the redneck scum who inhabit West Australia and the Northern Territory. They can compare notes on effective methods of handling black fauna.

Let's face it, the farmer's forebears took the land from the blacks because they were white bwanas above the law. The fact that Simba is now taking revenge is no excuse to turn our backs on those who have tilled the land since, but sometimes it takes generations to right a wrong.

Personally, HH would rather live next to a Muslim Kosovar than a pot-bellied Christian racist.

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Censoring the Net: Malaysia and Turkey look to Oz for Guidance

MALAYSIA'S PM MAHATHIR MOHAMAD was once hailed as Asia's "cyber-visionary." Back in 1993 he contacted IT giants Bill Gates (Microsoft), Scott McNeally (Sun), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Masayoshi Son (Softbank) about his Multimedia Super Corridor, a $20 billion concept to centralise IT investment for all of Asia. Gates and others liked the idea and even sat on the initial MSC advisory board. Mahathir understood at the time that an essential condition for IT investment was freedom from government interference.

But that was before the Anwar Ibrahim debacle. Since then, dissent-loathing Mahathir has censored everything and is now itching to censor the Net. Trouble is, if he does, all that money will pull out. As newspapers suffer from direct or self-censorship, independent Web sites have sprung up all over the country. Many are claiming anonymity, and for very good reasons.

"Many observers suspect that if the Net newsmakers do come under official attack it will be from the flank rather than front-on, quite possibly from defamation actions launched by the Government or its friends. Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah has openly suggested defamation will be the first line of action against troublemakers."

Typical of men who have become blind from being in power too long, Mahathir thinks that every one, including Gates & co, will buy his unsubtle censorship manoeuvres. He has to choose: Power over a closed Malaysia or Malaysia as the IT hub of Asia. (Based on "Mahathir can't silence his cyber critics," by Peter Alford, The Australian Media magazine 30/3/00.)

"TURKEY PLANS TO PATROL CYBERSPACE for threats to its security, using a powerful watchdog that includes senior military and intelligence officials," writes Elif Unal, in The Australian IT, 25/4/00.

Once again, there is a fatal choice to be made. In Turkey's case, it is admission to the European Union, or totalitarian isolation. Under the guise of clamping down on the Kurdish Independence Movement and militant Islamic activism, the government has proposed a draft bill called The National Information Security Organisation And Its Duties, which if passed, will mete punishments of from one to five years in jail. To earn this draconian detention, journalists and others who cite "Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) statements or comments" will be prosecuted.

"The draft bill obliges locally registered Internet corporations, public and private, to take any measures the watchdog body may request 'at any level of secrecy'. This, experts say, could involve passing on private e-mail and other information submitted to the Web.

"A French diplomat based in Ankara says, 'It seems public order is more important than the freedom of communications.'

"To be submitted for cabinet approval as soon as possible, the law is drawn up so vaguely the board's powers could develop into a form of censorship. It could cerate a new level of cyberspace prosecutions to augment Turkey's already overbearing judicial controls.

"Filtration systems to screen out undesirable Web pages are already used in some countries."

Make that "country".

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