| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | Final Issue: 3 Aug 2001 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 5 Number 13 |
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Satan's precious little haters Don't tell me those frothing, bible-thumping wackos who stand robotlike in front of East Melbourne's abortion clinic every day aren't secretly gloating over the murder of the security guard. In the depths of their larval little hearts they wish he could have massacred everyone inside. The uni-neuronic Margaret Tighe, head of Australia's Unborn or Die campaign, said she wasn't surprised it happened. Interviewed on Melbourne radio, there wasn't a hint of compassion in her voice, despite the obligatory words condemning the action. In league with mentally challenged religious fundamentalists promoting hate all over the world, these people stand around like extras from Tod Browning's Freaks, offering the best evidence yet for abortion, if not euthanasia. It is a sickening irony that their strident hatred of those who "murder the unborn" so often results in one of them stepping from the shadows to terminate the living. This is worse than madness. It is pure evil masquerading as the word of God. If polled, each and every one of them would voice their support for a right wing political party whose preferences in Australia would go to John Howard. Aston: 39,000 swine fill their troughs with shame On the Monday after the Aston by-election, when the Illiberals were ahead by 48 votes with 10,000 postals and pre-polls yet to be counted, John Howard and his cabinet members hit the airwaves one by one to chortle over the humiliation of the Labor party for having it's primary vote decline. Decline? Labor's primary vote had at that time declined by 1.43 per cent while the Illiberal primary vote declined by 8.54 per cent! While these figures have changed (-1.56 and -7.76 respectively) to the Illiberals benefit, the swing (3.67 per cent to Labor) is more than enough to put Labor well over the line at the election. The Libs have pulled this one out of the fire, winning by around 900 votes. Some 39,000 Astonites have endorsed the policies of a government that puts the desperate in concentration camps, that shows blatant favouritism to the well off, that treats equality as a socialist evil. They would have done the same in Nazi Germany. Expect the Coalition to conduct a campaign of lies, bribes and backflips from here on in. Chief among those lies will be a campaign of McCarthyesque vilification against everything Labor stands for. (Richard Alston has already told Laurie Oakes that "Communism is obviously close at hand if Australians vote Labor.") In view of what the Coalition stands for, that will include just about every positive aspiration of human decency. They will also trot out the Labor-has-no-policies mantra on a daily basis, regardless of how many policy proposals Labor offers. Their own policies will have nothing to do with nation building. Instead, there will be bribes directed at the lowest common denominator to bolster their own chances at the election. Besides weekly rollbacks of the heinous GST, they will have nothing to offer beyond more penalties for the majority of people doing it hard. As for vision, the word is unknown to them. 39,000 Astonites have endorsed this shame. Despair is the operative word here. We have up to five months of this lame duck government attempting to bribe taxpayers with their own money while wasting even more taxpayer funds for its PR lies. Five months out of the nation's life for nothing. Labor will win the election, so it might as well be called as soon as possible. That it won't belies John Howard's utter lack of integrity in holding on to his "job" while the nation sinks ever lower in the quicksand of polarisation. Tony Abbott 1: Mascot of the ruling class Fang Abbott best exemplifies the Howard Government's Thatcherite belief that there is no such thing as society. Instead, the world is populated by self-reliant individuals, each of whom is only looking after number one. This allows governments to withdraw funding for the needy -- believing them to fail the chief criterion for self-reliance, that of a grasping business mentality at the expense of their humanity -- while at the same time reaping tax benefits from their pathetic attempts to escape the unrewarding daily grind through smoking, drinking and gambling. He also shares with fundamentalists the world over the view that demon alcohol, substance abuse (tobacco, drugs) and gambling are the source of poverty, and that they combine to lower or remove altogether individual responsibility. The problem with Woolly Abbott's thinking is that the wealthy smoke, drink and gamble too, but can afford to do so. Some by their bootstraps, some by virtue of parental wealth. The only difference is that the wealthy can routinely afford Cuban cigars, expensive booze and System 10's, while those in poverty -- if they smoke, drink or gamble at all -- can only afford rollies, rotgut and quick picks. But the main problem with Tony Abbott's view of life is that it exists under a rock in a barren place. Along with scurrying, colourless insects at the dawn of their evolution, it thrives on the survival of the fittest. It does not take into account either the rock which smothers it, or the endless possibilities beyond the rock, extending to the edges of the universe. In short, it represents humanity in its darkest, most ignorant origins. That's how it is with the genetic garbage who make up the bulk of conservatives around the world, of which Tony Abbott is Australia's leading exponent. And here he thought the poor were the genetic garbage. How he and his ilk love to blame the victim. I suspect the real reason is the plutocrat's upper class disdain of the rabble, the wretched of earth, the great unwashed, the salt of the earth, the beloved of Christ ... in short, 95 per cent of the population. Of course, the real reason for poverty is unemployment (whose real statistics are constantly fudged) and the casually employed, who have no benefits or security. It used to be that just about any job allowed single people to own a car -- an old car admittedly -- rent a flat and have a life. Now these luxuries are gone. The young are forced to live with their parents in order to buy that old car and binge-drink on the weekends. Older working poor often live in those old cars, as they have been doing for fifteen years in cities like Toronto, Canada, where affordable housing is practically non-existent. The working poor with families who manage to find housing, live from pay cheque to pay cheque without a cent left over for even the minimal pleasures the likes of Tony Abbott take for granted. And these people often do not smoke or drink or have a flutter. Under more generous regimes, the less well off generally have enough to get by with some amount of dignity. But the Howard Government is hell-bent on making them suffer by keeping wages low, by implementing regressive taxation schemes, and by promoting intolerance and exclusion at every move. This government may not be guilty of crimes against humanity, but it is guilty of crimes against the soul of humanity. Here are a few of Fang's comments on the Four Corners program, "Going Backwards": "Total income inequality is not increasing. The NATSEM (National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling) stats indicate: • Most Australians increased their wealthy by at least 8.5 per cent every year from 1986-1998. A further deflating aspect of these statistics is that a hefty percentage of all voters who reside in the bottom 50 per cent of citizens who divvy up just 10 per cent of the nation's wealth inevitably vote for political parties who keep them there. In other words, selfish, mean and unthinking people do not exclusively belong to the ruling class. Tony Abbott 2: Corrupted floppy replaces brain The Australian's Glenn Milne is always a great read, but he wastes a lot of column inches trying to find credibility in Coalition politicians. For instance, in response to Fang Abbott's recent and most untimely "blurtings about his ambition to serve as deputy to Peter Costello when Costello eventually succeeds John Howard," Milne had this to say: "Costello was on leave. Faxed the story at home by staff, the Treasurer reacted with disbelief. He and the rest of the Liberal Party, too. No one could fathom Abbott's ineptitude. Think? Fang doesn't think, he assembles cut 'n' paste forgeries of thought, gleaned from a pre-formatted floppy (no hard disk for him) of conservative-speak installed in his right brain. That's why, when the left brain attempts to speak, the crossover results in logorrheaic jargon. He's clever though. He doesn't confuse issues, like talking about mutual obligation from the government's perspective. And when confronted with statistics about the working poor and the growing gap between rich and poor, he never confuses reality with ideology. After all, that little old floppy is only big enough to contain 1.4 MB, or the entire life experience of the average conservative. By the way, it surely is noteworthy that every time Peter Costello leaves the country or takes a week off, someone just happens to fire a bazooka at his credibility. China gets the 2008 Olympic games and Juanito's glove puppet, Jacques Rogge, gets the presidency. We read one glowing endorsement after another about Rogge, but what does he truly stand for? And why did Juanito change his mind in the last days and opt to back Rogge when he initially pledged to stay out of the process? All the other contenders have spat the dummy and boycotted the ceremony and/or resigned their positions. Rogge may surprise us, but expect nothing more than the replacement of Fascist Samaranch with the man they call Mr Clean. As for China, this would have to be the best choice, if only to enhance the hand rubbing of cynics on the sidelines. Will Tibet and Taiwan be invited? Apparently China wants to run the torch through Taiwan, but the torch will be delivered there with an escort of jet fighters. Yes, it's going to be fun -- for the schadenfreudians at least. At best, Beijing will continue the tradition of previous winners by bulldozing the poor from their park benches, erecting single-usage stadia, and causing hardship for citizens as they higher taxes are sought to pay off the insane debt. At worst, the hundreds of thousands of objectionable types who will be swept away to insure Beijing's squeaky clean presentation may not be looking forward to many more years on the planet. Before the decision, Australia's bull goose Olympic official, Kevan Gosper, whose aspirations for Juanito's job were dashed during the Sydney Olympics by his penchant for poor judgement, called on delegates to give the 2008 games to Beijing: "Our role is to promote the most important sporting event in the world. We are not an advocate in other political areas. People understand that this is a decision about sport. That's not to deny the human rights issue ... " That's right, Kevan. "Business is business" and no trifling issues like human rights should ever get in the way. Yet sports personalities are the number one role models for the world. Unfortunately, they have become tools of big business and as such are seen by many as hollow men and women. Instead of taking positions against the wrongs in the world, they are merely figureheads with talented bodies who sell products. Great sportsmen could rally millions of people against injustice, but their contracts obviously preclude them saying anything but platitudes. It is for this reason that many people regard sport as the new opium of the people, as a time filler between bouts of consumption. Where's Me Tablets! • Overgrown toddler Jonathan Shier has soiled his pants as well as those of the Coalition by pulling the Four Corners report on Liberal muckraking. The show will now go ahead, with a much larger audience. Rather than waste valuable space on the subject, you are referred to Peter Manning's A man out of his depth. • Stewart Fist's Crossroads column (The Australian IT, 26/6/01) features this choice quote from Richard Alston in reference to the privatisation of the remaining 51 per cent of Telstra (as interviewed by Laurie Oakes on Business Sunday): "Now the Labor Party's approach to all that is to say, 'We will require Telstra to adopt a nation-building role'. This is a recipe for disaster; I mean, if you want to see a share price in freefall, put that [nation-building requirement] in place." Just about sums up the Coalition as a government for shareholders, eh? Fist's comment: "Good God! What can I say? Fancy an alternative government requiring Telstra to adopt a nation-building role. What's the world coming to? If this idea isn't killed off smartly, people will want tax money and income spent on national infrastructure, hospitals and education as well as telephone services." Alston also said this to Oakes: "Communism is obviously close at hand if Australians vote Labor." • At last advertisers and commercial television have struck a formula to increase their profits radically. No more expenditures on creative talent -- actors, scriptwriters, etc, -- just plop a bunch of dozeys in a house and let whole populations revel in fascism by voting on their right to exist. Cheap, efficient and profitable. The popularity of Survivor and Big Brother is testimony to the triumph of the television industry's long fought war to reduce mankind to what Kate Fitzpatrick (The Sunday Age, 15/7/01) describes as "a mindless, sedentary, almost catatonic, very easily amused mob of peeping-tom simpletons." • Who's the mother of all rogue states? Umeruhca, of course. The country that requires an alcohol swab before administering lethal injections opposes: • UN plans to curb arms trade ("Washington defends its citizens rights to carry mortars"). To name just a few. The scary thing is that there is plenty of clever dialogue to support these positions. See the film, "American History X" (1998) for the dinner table conversation in which the case for racism is compelling. In the end, one's humanity overcomes the sophistry of hate, or it doesn't. Broadband breeds boredom in Boganville Ah, Launceston, a town with lots of names: L-Ville, Launnie, Boganville. Well, it does have some of the best pubs, and indeed the best football ground in the state -- ask the inhabitants, they'll tell you. It is also home to the best brewery in the world -- J Boag and Sons -- and a really shithouse newspaper, the Examiner. Not so sure, though, about it's qualifications as the inaugural burg for the Coalition's five year trial to assess the interest of Australians in high-speed broadband connection. Telstra claims that the money for this deal came from the second issue of Telstra shares, which means it was part of Brian Harridine's deal with Howard to get the partial privatisation legislation through. The offer to Launceston customers is the standard Telstra ADSL deal (about $90/month) with a $40 subsidy, making it attractive to net surfers, but still apparently expensive to newbies. As we know, DSL broadband access requires both a certain quality of existing phone line and a reasonable proximity to the telephone exchange. Launnie has a relatively new copper cable phone network and is geographically concentrated, so in terms of existing layout, it makes some sense to go there first. But apparently, uptake of the Launceston Broadband Project has been woeful. They expected 2500 households to take up the option, and at this stage have only got about 200 subscribers. I guess choosing an economically depressed country town full of retired people and dimwits wasn't such a good idea. Actually, that's a bit harsh, but the fact is that Launnie has an extremely elderly population, and is typical of regional Australia in that most people are not wealthy. So, this isn't exactly the tech-savvy population who are going to be jumping on the net, eh? All in all, Launnie doesn't seem to have been the best place to start the trial, especially when centres around the country where broadband is desperately needed are going begging. Unless of course the government has no idea what they are doing, or even worse, wants it to fail. But perhaps there is a simple explanation, after all. In 1998, Labor's Michelle O'Byrne won the seat of Bass in northern Tasmania from the Liberals by 78 votes. I reckon they think they have a chance to win it back. Can anyone spell "pork barrel"? |
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