In early September, the Melbourne visual arts community gathered at the Hotel Sofitel to celebrate the achievements of 73-year-old artist John Olsen. After Olsen and New South Wales Art Gallery director Edmund Capon stirred the 300-strong audience with speeches, John Howard stepped to the podium. Corrie Perkin, in her article titled "A leader for our time?" reported in The Age :
"The PM's body language was ... stiff and detached, which was a shame because John Olsen was so completely the opposite. Uncharacteristically referring to notes, Howard spoke about 'a nation that seeks to be a fulfilled and great nation in the proper sense of those two words ... and a nation that honors its achievers.'
" ... As this great artist [Olsen] was overcome with emotion at the end of the speech, a packed room willed the PM to move forward, take the old man's arm, offer support, hold him -- anything! Alas, a warm gesture and a great photo opportunity were lost forever.
"As I watched the PM stand apart from Olsen, I felt a sadness I couldn't explain. Perhaps it was as Donald Horne told Phillip Adams on Radio National earlier in the week. 'One of the things a leader should do is allow us to find a quality within ourselves." John Howard offered me no opportunity to engage, to explore, to ask questions of myself and my country -- even to feel good about being part of the Aussie collective. All I wanted was Edmund Capon back on stage, and another glass of red."
It is quite possible that John Howard is unaware that he is using the asylum seekers and the terrorist attacks in New York for re-election. That's because he is inflicted with an absence of character which easily allows him to believe his own lies. Without the facility for sound judgement based on even a flawed character it is also easy for him to divide his world into core and non-core promises and decisions, and to juggle the two back and forth as if no one were noticing. John Howard may have started out as a lawyer but he soon turned to politics as the armour necessary to cover the moral and ethical vacuum he inhabits.
Like a cunning sociopath, John Howard intuitively understands the base nature of humanity -- after all it is his own. Five and a half years of rubbing people's faces in his contempt for their well being has paid off. Those of his supporters not in the elite group for which he governs now believe their humiliation was worth while. Why? Because watery-eyed Uncle John has made them feel good about their deep down racism. They can stand tall now and hate anyone they want to, especially foreigners. As Robert Manne says, "The government's decision to repel all future asylum seekers by military means brought on it the anger of the left-liberal intelligentsia and unleashed, in a substantial part of the population, the ugliest anti-multicultural, anti-Muslim and anti-refugee explosion Australia has ever seen." Who knows, with another three years in the offing they might be encouraged to turn on you and me.
Certainly there is nothing else on offer from the Coalition. They are going into this election trumpeting war and leadership based on mean-spirited racism and hoping everyone will forget everything else. Especially that bit about leadership. If his supporters weren't so busy popping their pods and slither-slurping forth as aliens of hate they might recall that just a few months ago John Howard was a laughing stock in the leadership department.
As for Labor and Kim Beazley ... well, he will no doubt come up with policies which the Coalition will brush aside with pledges of allegiance to America and slogans appealing to the 18 to 24-year-old male in all of us.
At the moment it looks like the man without character is heading for victory. Yet, who could support him? It's like a fissure in the species. Or perhaps his supporters really are aliens: people who look the same but are not the same. John Howard has been incapable of nurturing the larval humanity in these people. Instead he has brought out their intolerance and fear of difference. In this he is the equivalent of a child molester. He has abused the best in these childlike people. Collectively we are now a people immeasurably reduced by his shallowness.
Driving to the local pizza shop the night CHOGM went down, I switched on the ABC to Peter Clarke's Evening Show. He was taking calls on voter prefs for the next election. A bloke calling in said he was a single father with three sons, one in secondary college [his term] and two in tertiary. "I'm going to vote for Howard because he has put more money into education than any one else in the last five years."
Yep, that's what he said.
Of course it's fair to assume his kids are in private institutions. We rabble who put our kids in state schools never call them "colleges". For us it can equally be said that Howard has taken more money from education than any one else in the last five years.
Blinkered, self-serving, smug, complacent, gullible, stupid. This man, and now a majority of Australians, the very same people who live on your street, people you see on a regular basis are suddenly revealed in all their pre-cognitive ugliness. As you go out to check your mail this morning, pretend you are a Muslim in Bosnia some ten years ago. Know that 77 per cent of your neighbours will one day stop smiling or nodding and many will start shooting.
This is John Howard's greatest contribution to his country.
Clarke's talkback caller, and now a majority of Australians, have bought John Howard's cookie jar lies lock stock and barrel. I say "cookie jar lies" because he has never developed the cunning and deceit of the mature liar. Perhaps the secret to his "popularity" (what a ghastly thought: that the man with the skull structure of a water rat and the persona of a corpse could be thought of as popular) lies in the limitation of experience common to all pre-adolescents. When they steel cookies and deny having done so we treat them with gentle admonitions and a good deal of forbearance. With children who are repeat offenders, we tend to throw up our hands and hope they will eventually grow up to realise that honesty is the best policy. Those children who don't grow out of this phase eventually come to understand that elders "have eyes in the back of their head". Unable to stop their antisocial behaviour, these children try then to convince their elders that they will never do it again, while having every intention of raiding the cookie jar at every opportunity. Thus begins a life of core and non-core promises.
Hugh Mackay has divided leadership between loving and lustful.
"At its best leadership is a loving act. It is about inspiring others ... with the idea that you and they, together, could make this a better world. This kind of leadership brings out the best in us.
"At its worst ... leadership is mere power-lust. The lustful politician, seeking self-gratification and self-aggrandisement, calculatedly exploits voters' fears, prejudices or naked self-interest.
"In fact, strong leadership is about strength of purpose rather than "getting tough".
"A loving leader will try to unite us in a commitment to goals consistent with a civil society. A lustful leader will divide us by exploiting our insecurities and harnessing such malevolent urges as competitiveness, xenophobia, intolerance and hatred. Lustful leaders may attract short-term popularity but are ultimately despised for the very cynicism that propelled them, however fleetingly, into our hearts."
It's hard to see John Howard in the context of lust. I mean, it could cause serious physical damage: falling off your chair in a fit of laughter could send you to hospital.
Even though the June Allyson of the Illiberal Party, Jackie Kelly, has said of the strength of the Howard marriage: "You won't see this couple fall apart like Paul and Annita Keating or Bob and Hazel Hawke," you just know there has never been any lust involved. There is even a rumour that the requisite bodily fluids to make those frightening children were served up on a spoon.
But the fleshless, empty vessel known across this wide brown land as John Howard is poised to win the unwinnable election. Not only because of his jejune ability to lie appealingly, but because a majority of the electorate are just plain stupid.
And this goes for commentators too. Padraic McGuinness, who would have flourished as a mouthpiece for the Nazi party has this to say (See Scott Burchill):
"The irrationality of the amorphous groups who take part in protests against events like CHOGM is not so far in kind, though as yet, thank goodness, very far in practice, from the motivations of the destroyers of the World Trade Centre"
This stupidity, of course, is a worldwide phenomenon. It's just that we didn't believe it could happen here. We didn't believe that good old fair dinkum Aussies, for so long card carrying members of the fair go society could be so easily hoodwinked by a band of such obvious liars and cheaters.
Five years of political fraud have been wiped out by the lustful call to racist hatred.
I think we can kiss "Advance Australia Fair" goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future.
Not just because of the Coalition's united racist front to get re-elected, nor of the further anti-immigrant xenophobia running amuck because of the terrorist attacks on America, but because Kim Beazley's Labor party has turned its back on principles.
Ever watched a hovercraft land? As it glides from the water to its asphalt dock, the big black polythene skirt dispenses its air in a comical, softly blurting manner, much like blowing out air through one's fluttering lips. This image also invites a comparison with death's final exhalation. It should have applied to John Howard's political demise. (It may yet.) But the flabby exhalation of extremely stale, moribund, lukewarm air now applies to Kim Beazley.
The Melbourne Herald Sun's loaded question on page one of Monday, October 8 read: Should boat people who throw children into the sea be accepted into Australia as refugees? (the results, naturally were: 97 per cent NO, 2.8 per cent Yes) clearly show that the game is up. A few diehard optimists are hoping that the polls will somehow reverse or even up by the time of the election, but they have got to be considered daft.
With Beazley's spineless betrayal of principle, there is no longer anyone to vote for.
Jill Singer (Herald Sun 28/9/01 writes:
"Businesses are dropping like flies, tens of thousands of Australians are being frog-marched to the dole queue.
"Self-funded retirees and other investors are watching their share portfolios shrink like a starlet's waistline. And Prime Minister John Howard has never been more popular.
"Go figure.
"The only possible explanation is that in times of dire trouble we embrace any passable facsimile of strong leadership.
"That, and the sorry realisation that Opposition leader Kim Beazley appears as useless as teats on a bull."
What is particularly depressing about Beazley's capitulation is the thought that he has been barren of principles all along. This is almost inconceivable, yet it has to be addressed. I believe it was Margo Kingston who said that, in her opinion, Beazley is every bit as conservative as John Howard. In normal times (whatever they were), this could easily be coped with. Conservative left is always preferable to conservative right. But it would appear that Beazley's "conservatism" is one of spirit rather than ideals. The possibility that he threw in the towel because of a failure of nerve, resolve, or humanitarian ideals means that we have been supporting a fake all along.
And then you have to wonder from whom Beazley is getting his advice. Would he throw away his career because of the New South Wales Right? Apparently so. This band of saboteurs should pack up their bags and move to the Illiberal party where they belong. A conspiracy theory nut would believe that their primary goal is to unseat Beazley or to keep Labor out of office until they get their own leader. They do not represent Labor voters, yet they control the party. Or so rumour has it.
Once Beazley is removed, the New South Wales Right will trounce. Jenny Macklin hasn't got a chance. Mark Latham will rise from his hissy fit in the back benches to take over, with policies every bit as hard right as the Coalition, and this country will be stuck with two extreme right parties fighting it out for the spoils of a population made up of the meek and the hateful.
There are now millions of left-leaning voters without a voice. Some will vote Labor because they have to. Many will simply refuse. If the party with the heart cannot deliver, then all Australians will have to deal with the barren harvest of a contemptuous government.
Tin God Toad makes Oz a target to get re-elected
Like Ronald Reagan, another "leader" who walked among us without once casting a shadow, John Howard loves the idea of Armageddon ... as long as he can be a three-term PM before it happens. But while Reagan taunted the Soviets often, secretly hoping that by doing so they would put an end to his failure as a man (and only incidentally the lives of millions of others), John Howard knows his place. As Georgie Bush's pet toady. And a volunteer toady at that. If Georgie goes to APEC, John will surely follow. If Georgie stays home, John will stay home too.
And while he's at home, John can't resist drawing the world's attention to Australia as a target. "We are potential targets, warns PM" headlines The Age on its front page of 9/10/01. The subject comes up almost every day, as if John were saying, "Hey, don't forget us, you awful terrorists out there. If you do something bad to my country, think how important I'll be then!"
As the Islamic Defenders Front readies itself to create havoc in Indonesia if Megawati doesn't sever relations with the US, what will Little Johnny do if they happen to off the Australian Ambassador while they're at it? Will he declare war on Indonesia's 200 million Muslims? And what will he do when they come at us in anything but rickety boats? The little opportunist will hide or run away leaving Australians to deal with his foolishness.
This is America's war. I for one resent being made a target because the little prig at Kirribilli wants to get into the record books. The attacks on New York and Washington are a direct result of America's post-war policies in the Middle East and all over the world. Right wing commentators (including the Left Wing Fascist Christopher Hitchens) can try to deny this until there is not a living soul left on the planet, but the fact remains. Osama Bin Laden rhetoric has always been directed at America, but of course, now that Tony Blair and John Howard are volunteering their citizens for reprisals, the Muslim Maniac might as well broaden his Jihad.
The wilfully ignorant populations of the world (or at least the males) are being whipped up by opposing rhetorics of Bush: "Yr either with us or ag'in us" and Bin Laden: "the side of the believers and the side of the infidels."
When Bin Laden says, " ... neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, peace be upon him," he is not joking. Fundamentalist Muslims are going to stand up the world over and before they sit down again hell will have been paid in full.
In case you're thinking I agree in any way with the bombing of New York and Washington, let me assure you I do not. I do, however, wish that America could understand WHY. I wish they could have embarked on a method of finding the source of these bombings (instead of repeating their Gulf War computer games), arrest the culprits and bring them to justice. But WHILE THEY ARE SEARCHING, they should be calling together world leaders to find a way to end poverty, to "fight against all the economic imbalances and social problems rather than using violence to respond to violence," as Xanana Gusmao says.
But they are not going to do that. It's not in their interests. It's not the capitalist way, nor the way of power. Instead, America is going to put billions of lives at risk because for once the shit hit their fan and not the fan of someone else whose exact location in the World Atlas they are unsure of. The same shit, might I add, that was manufactured by them and sold for a profit and the express purpose of causing misery. Once again the arms manufacturers are having a heyday.
In all this, we have the world's most repulsive homunculus, a little dot of a man hopping up and down on his postage stamp to make sure the boys he looks up to know he's looking up to them, and just in case they don't just yet, then he wants their enemies to make sure he's there in case they need a few million crash test dummies.
Where's Me Tablets!
by Gort Slypesunder
• Pauline Hanson represents the face of Australian ignorance while John Howard represents it's walnut brain. Together they are paving the way for a pariah state perhaps unparalleled in modern times.
Pauline exhibited herself on SBS television's Insight, claiming to be accepting of multiculturalism for all races, while refuting One Nation candidate Graeme Campbell's "racial discrimination". In the same breath she refused to disendorse him. As usual she is trying to have it both ways. As usual she thinks know one knows.
Meanwhile, John Howard is making fools of a majority of Aussies by lying about the 14 refugees and their children who went overboard. That a leader of this country could use frightened, traumatised refugees as pawns in his cynical re-election plans amounts to a national tragedy. As Arnold Zable says in The Age (12/10/01): "It is extraordinary to think that John Howard's hypocrisy and his willingness to play politics with the lives of desperate people may well be awarded with an election win."
• The following brief note in The Sunday Age (7/10/01) is noteworthy for the reference to transportation, a word that, in this context, brings up Nazi Germany:
"The Australian Council for Overseas Aid yesterday called for an immediate end to the 'disgraceful and expensive' transportation of asylum seekers to Nauru. The council warned Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley they should not use the campaign to play on fears and misconceptions about asylum seekers. Instead, it urged the government to launch an education campaign to explain the plight of those who were forced to flee their own countries."
How simple it could have been.
• The Australian newspaper's Business section of 24/9/01 sported this paragraph by Glenda Price and Eric Ellis: "A stark week faces global stock markets -- already shaken by the worst five days of trading since 1933 -- with analysts seeing the start of US military action as the only event which can halt the freefall." That'd be right.
• The best that can be said about P.P. McGuinness, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt as journalists is that they would not have feared assassination on the streets of Slobodan Milosevic's Belgrade.
• Not long after the horrific events of September 11, I had to switch off CNN in favour of BBC World. Reason (aside from superficial reporting)? The nightmares of that plane slicing into the World Trade Center were being replaced by Paula Zahn's teeth. What is it with CNN's pop-eyed monster-chopper brigade? I'd only recently gotten over the crossed eyes of legendary Bobbie Batista.
• You realise just what a handicap the ABC suffers being the national broadcaster, ie, funded by the public and controlled by a carnivorous government. Compared to the chump stations, every time someone talks to John Faine about something potentially explosive, he cuts them off. He was quick to give the chop to a woman who complained that the umpiring during the first quarter of the Hawks-Bombers Preliminary final amounted to match fixing. Had she talked to any of the shock jocks on the chumps they would have run with it.
Once again the question must be asked: Where are the left wing shock jocks? Sadly there are very good reasons why there are none.
1) They tend to get hounded or even killed (it happened in Umeruhca) by right wing listeners, the kind who tune in to John Laws and Alan Jones.
2) Being commercial, the chump stations are there to make money selling products to the chumps. As Business is the highest expression of the right, they aren't having any lefties urging people to wake up.
• A neat example of justice: During the minute of silence preceding the Port Power-Hawthorn Elimination Final, some one yelled out: "Port Power!". The same thing happened during the Richmond-Carlton game when a Richmond supporter shamed himself. And during the Essendon-Hawthorn Preliminary Final, umpire Darren Goldspink gave Essendon three match-winning goals in the first quarter. In the end, Port, Richmond, and Essendon were disgraced. The Grand Final rightly went to Brisbane, but the Hawks should have been the other team.