Is a Coalition victory inevitable?
History has shown time and again how difficult it is to remove, by vote or assassination, politicians who are diametrically opposed to the best interests of the people they lead.
Elections often fail to install the better candidate because voters remain wilfully uninformed. They open their wallets to the liar with the biggest fistful of bribes, or tick the squares of the exploiter who best exemplifies their blinkered self-interests and prejudices.
The failure/success rate of assassinations, on the other hand, is puzzling. A few examples: the attempt on Hitler's life was a fizzer. Ronald Reagan sidestepped a bullet as if he were dancing a soft-shoe with Dick Powell. Margaret Thatcher not only survived a bomb attack on her hotel in Brighton, she strode from the wreckage unfazed and indestructible, like Gabriel Byrne as Satan in "End of Days".
Conversely, the list of politicians who contributed to the well being of their nations and who were felled by the assassin's bullet are many: Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Yitshak Rabin.
Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating assassination here, but simply pointing to a very weird phenomenon. Successful assassinations are almost invariably carried out by the right upon the left. As I've said elsewhere, the reason for this may lie in the goals of right and left. The right is preoccupied with only two goals: power and money. The left is concerned with everything else under the sun.
The inverse of the saying, "All things of value are defenceless" can be found in: "All things without worth are well defended."
But perhaps there is more to it.
In his book on the strange metaphysician G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky posits that politicians are incarnated for the sole purpose of awakening humanity to its responsibilities and obligations. In times of extreme wilful ignorance, the bad guys just keep hanging on. And they remain in place until populations finally, reluctantly, start to get it.
(No, wait! Before you Unsubscribe in all haste, let me assure you that I am not a nutter! What's this? SCATT is bookmarked in a folder titled Nutters?)
A fanciful idea, but one that lights the fire of wonder as to the longevity of kakistocracies, or governments formed by the very worst people.
It is obvious that if every person on the planet could shed their solipsism and occasionally slip into the shoes of their neighbour, the quality of their own lives would be enhanced. If they would make the slightest effort to distinguish the difference between policies that worsen or enhance, not just their lives but their neighbours lives, the inequities that lead to hatred and wars would dissolve.
Interestingly, the mechanism that would allow this broad view in human beings is, according to Gurdjieff, mysteriously switched off. Strengthening the view by some, that earth is a planet of spiritual criminals, of miscreants placed here under sentences of life for crimes committed in loftier realms. (Cripes, I've done it again!)
It is equally obvious that Australians are caught up in a period of Naziesque intolerance towards their fellows. John Howard is the ventriloquist's dummy put in place to whip up the intolerance until the folly is eventually exposed, hopefully putting it to rest once and for all. The ventriloquist, of course, is God. Or Rudy. Or Lloyd. Or Ace. Whatever you call Him depends on where you're from. (Oh, dear ... perhaps I am a nutter.)
Robert Manne (not a nutter) points out [Vote ALP, with a heavy heart] that a third term of the Coalition may be difficult to recover from. If they go now, he says, "the Howard years will eventually come to be seen like little more than a barren interlude where the nation got the GST. If Beazley is not elected, however, Howard's strangely frozen vision for Australia ... will be far more difficult to dislodge."
Indeed, it could take a generation. Or until each of us looks into our heart to find that beneath our skin we share the same hopes and desires, hurts and sorrows, frustrations and joys as every one of the billions who make up our species. To paraphrase Gurdjieff, if we could somehow fast forward to the moment of our death, we would not waste one more moment in idle ignorance.
Had the Labor Party steadfastly held to principle on the asylum seekers, this election would truly be a contest for the soul of Australia. But that soul may be still in its larval state. In the interests of our evolution as a nation, perhaps what we need is to have our noses rubbed in our moral cowardice for three more years.
Australia: Drowning in its own bile
In a draconian effort to prevent leaks, Australian Navy personnel have been banned from sending personal emails or taking digital photographs after they encounter suspected illegal vessels. Leaks that will put a human face on the asylum seekers John Howard so wants to remain the demonised tickets to his obscene re-election.
A new poll shows that despite the drowning deaths of 353 refugees last week, public opinion has hardened against them. The biggest rises are among women, the young and those over 50.
Meanwhile Heil Ruddock has been caught red-handed aiding an Illiberal Party candidate's father to jump the very queue we've come to believe was bestowed upon an orderly world by none other than Mr Meccano on High, the Good Lloyd, Esq. The Australian editorial of 31 October says it perfectly. Read it and weep:
Ruddock's rules reek of unfairness
PHILIP Ruddock loves a queue. Indeed, he has made a fetish out of the need for asylum-seekers, no matter how desperate, to wait in line rather than come to Australia first. Heaven help you if you try to jump the queue. That is unless you have solid Liberal connections. Now, after all the poll-driven attacks on so-called illegals from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries, the Immigration Minister has been forced to admit that, yes, his office intervened to grant a visa application to the Iraqi father of a Liberal candidate. Samuel Baba, father of NSW Liberal Bob Robertson, was granted a visitors' visa even though he intended to apply for permanent residency. This was after the department recommended the application be denied and Mr Baba apply from Iraq. He now has permanent residency. Mr Ruddock said he didn't take political considerations into account, but deals with the facts. He even claimed to have discovered compassion. Well, the facts are these. No compassion has been extended to boatloads of asylum-seekers in recent months. Not only have they been turned back or forced into detention camps across the Pacific but for blatant political purposes, they have been demonised by the Coalition as illegals, queue-jumpers, potential baby-killers and terrorists. After more than 350 boatpeople, drowned Mr Ruddock said they met their fate because they were breaking the law, and to relax the rules would only encourage them. Mr Ruddock's actions in relation to Mr Baba suggest the Government is playing favourites. There can't be one rule for most asylum-seekers and another for Liberals' relatives. Mr Ruddock intervenes in hundreds of cases a year - more than any other immigration minister. Yet by accepting his right to use a discretion that others have limited, he is making his own judgment an issue. He protests Liberal mates should not get less access. Yet it was Mr Ruddock who created the refugee category that ensures asylum-seekers who arrive on hived-off islands, or are sent there by our navy, get less access than the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants who enter through our airports. The Baba incident further undermines Mr Ruddock's credibility. He has never explained his denunciation of boatpeople who allegedly threw their children overboard. Peter Reith still refuses to release the video which will apparently prove it. This week Mr Ruddock said the "hijacking" by asylum-seekers of an Indonesian ship "does show that way in which these people at times operate". That was before the captain and Indonesian Navy admitted a crew member picked up at sea concocted the story. Mr Ruddock is prepared to treat so-called queue-jumping asylum-seekers indecently when it suits him, yet he gives special treatment to others who won't wait in line. If he believes in the tough approach he should at least apply it fairly.
How much worse can it get? What does the Illiberal Party have to do to convince voters that they are being taken for a terminal ride? The truth is that voters must be unaware of the sinister direction Australia is taking. Perhaps the reason can be summed up in their ignorance of history; either Australian history or that of the world. Robert Sieminski, VCE history teacher at Bayside Secondary College in the western suburbs, one of a handful of schools still teaching Australian history, sums it up: Studying history is a means of attaining "literacy in identity". (See Alan Attwood, "The Future of History", The Age, 22 September 2001.)
Ignorant of their own history, Australians have no identity. This must be the only nation on earth for whom a majority of its citizens could not name their first Prime Minister.
No wonder the majority of us are swallowing the Coalition's ruthless exploitation of half-truths and out and out lies. This is a nation in the infancy of a Nazi-style intolerance. That we are being led into this soul-shrinking cul-de-sac by a manlet whose every conviction changes with the last poll warrants our isolation as a pariah nation, despised even by those nations whose constitutional freedoms cannot match our own.
Magoosolini: The metamorphosis of Duffer John
Pregnant with bribes, 
John Howard sleep-talked his way through the Illiberal Campaign launch. Instead of sinking $1.2 billion into child care for everybody, he chose, as he always has, to reward the few. He's giving the dough, in the form of a rebate of between $500 and $2500 a year for five years, to non-means-tested mothers who give birth (to future Illiberal supporters, he hopes) after 1 July 2001.
Those who gave birth on 30 June or earlier may wish to vote for the other mob. The message, ultimately to some 900,000 mothers mostly in marginal electorates, is clear: Stay at home. The Illiberal Party likes women who stay at home.
As usual, the benefits are especially lucrative for high income earners. Further, to qualify, the mother must stay out of the work force for the entire five years, effectively removing them from any future job prospects. But wait, there's more. It turns out that for the year 2002-03 the slob rate of $500 is in reality only $347. As to why, Peter Costello offered an explanation not worth repeating here. The whole proposal was pulled out of the air, no doubt moments before the launch.
For the rest, it was the usual election rubbish from a tired old man. Laura Norder, every politician's dream succubus, was given $109 million for the Out of Touch on Drugs policy, and the old were promised 6000 nursing beds worth $200 million that Bronwyn Bishop can use for whatever it is she does with taxpayer's money.
There was, however, one rousing, very scary exception to his soporific, overlong speech: that line about boat people.
Here, Duffer John metamorphosed into Magoosolini:
"We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come."
The joint went wild, with all present rising as one to sing the Faccetta Nera. Visiting EinsatzgruppenFührer Heil Ruddock was lifted to the shoulders of his appointed bodyguard of black shirts and carried around the hall to wild cheers. A chant went up: Tutti i non-bianchi a Addis Ababa!
Il Dozy tapped the microphone a few times, restoring order. "No, you've got it all wrong," he mewled.
"Right!" yelled renowned vocalist Pietro "lo scatto" Costello, and the throng commenced again to chant: Tutti i non-bianchi a Nauru!
Once again, Il Dozy had to tap the mic. "I wish you would stop singing in Arabic," he wheedled. "We are Austrayans!"
"Oh, of course!" enthused Mr Top O' The Pops. And he led the gathered in a jubilant conga line to the extended club mix:
Sendin' 'em all to Nauru!
Will give us three more years-ooh!
For they all know that the past five and a half years of flubbin' the dub will be wiped out by Magoosolini's call to ethnic dispensing.
Cartoon by Peter Nicholson
Debate is raging over whether Jonathan Shier is a psychopath or whether he merely carries an advanced personality disorder. Whatever demons control the man, come 1 January 2002 the ABC will be free of him. If, in fact, it isn't already. The mad salesman was notably absent from the launch of Fly, the youth digital channel he claimed was his baby. For ABC staff it must have aroused feelings akin to the liberation of Paris to see Max Uechtritz and Sandra Levy up there without him.
There will be no more psychological tests presided over by a psychologically disturbed dictator. Staff will no longer be treated to manic, raving speeches from a podium more fitting to 1930's Germany. Female reporters and employees will no longer have to live in fear of being knocked over, felt up verbally, called a dog, or recalled from a foreign post because of "unsuitable" vocal chords. And viewers throughout Australia will no longer have to put up with their cherished ABC being run by an Illiberal Party hack.
In the meantime, the entire board and Chairman Donald McDonald should resign too. At the salaries they are pulling in, there is no excuse for not knowing that Jonathan Shier was a disaster. With a little luck, the Howard Government, at whose instigation this whole fiasco was begun, will also be consigned to a howling, bitter wilderness come 10 November.
As I could not find it online, here, typed on my trusty puter, iMaculata, is Amanda Meade's shorter take on Jonathan Shier's looney reign:
Alarm bells rang from early days
Amanda Meade
The Australian, 1 November 2001-11-01
When Jonathan Shier fronted ABC staff in his two now infamous addresses last year, there were clear signs of what was to be his undoing.
"I've got the gig," he kept saying as he frantically paced the floor and swerved from one topic to another. "Everything's up for grabs!"
Shier told stories about what an attractive young woman had said to him in a bar about the ABC, and another about a terrific program on Mongolian horses he had seen on ABC TV.
He suggested the program be sold internationally, as if no one at Foreign Correspondent had heard of international sales before.
But there were even earlier signs. Shier forced programming guru Hugh McGowan, a man who had presided over the ABC's best ratings years, to sit a personality test for his own job. McGowan failed the test and left the corporation humiliated and angry.
Then there were the comments about women, publicly and privately, that pointed to a pattern of behaviour that eventually became so distasteful that Donald McDonald had to act. "Who's that dog of a woman?" Shier asked one day about an ABC TV presenter.
It was obvious early on that Shier had very little understanding of public broadcasting or indeed what the ABC meant to Australians.
"I would like the level of respect for the ABC to be appreciably higher," he said, as if the ABC had little respect before he arrived. But personal style aside, Shier's restructure was chaotic and wasteful, and produced little of broadcasting quality and a historic slide in ratings.
When Shier emerged after his first 100 days in office last June, he said: "I am the plumber. I have to unblock the system."
Sadly, the ABC now needs the best plumber in the business to put the national broadcaster back in running order.
See also her Shier forced out of ABC, as well as the other great articles in links above.
USA: The meat in its own sandwich
Funny, my first thoughts as I watched the planes slice into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon was that they were commandeered by United States extremist groups, those genetic subs 'n' duds holed up in states like Montana. I held on to this conviction for several days, until the photos of Mohamed Atta and cohorts convinced me otherwise.
But now it appears the militiamen are responsible for the anthrax letters, a deadly blow for those who want to flatten Iraq. If this is true, the government will find itself fighting a war on two fronts, one of them from within. The FBI had better get hopping before it is too late. However, the uselessness of this organisation is proven yet again by virtue of the fact that they have been sent some 300,000 tips on anthrax and the terrorist attack and uncovered nothing.
If the militias are responsible for the anthrax scare, then perhaps there is a positive note to be sounded. Maybe that's it from them. You would have thought that by now they would have already gone in for the kill on a scale similar to Oklahoma. But being good little Christians, there is no incentive in the way Muslims can be goaded into suicidal missions with the promised afterlife of perennial whoop-de-do. For the militiamen, this life is it, Jack. No respecting Cletus out in the boonies believes for a minute that the blue-rinse heaven of the American Christian Dream is going to include saloons pouring free beer, country music without end and loose women with big tits. As for hell, that's the U.S. government. In the end, maybe they just spend their time drinking Jack Daniels, wanking to motor oil spattered girlie mags and plotting heinous adventures until they pass out on the bunk or the floor.
Then there is the other war, the one sapping the world of its reason and hope. Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that Usama bin Laden may never be found. [See Ray Cassin If war aim is gone, why are we at war?] If so, why are they continuing to bomb the bejesus out of Afghanistan? Sounds like policy on the run. Keep up the attacks until they can come up with an alternative. Meanwhile, Pakistan is about to go offside. President Pervez Musharraf must know that a civil war is just around the corner. True, up till now there has been a minority of Jihad fanatics, but there is nothing like an imperial force emptying its arsenal on your neighbouring kin for no apparent reason to bring out the "up-to-here" factor.
With the summary execution of Abdul Haq, it must be apparent that the Taliban cannot be bought off. Why aren't American policy makers aware of this? They may get a few deserters from young boys conscripted by force, but most of the Taliban are Muslim religious zealots who are prepared to die for their cause. Yet the CIA thought they had three turncoats lined up, three commanders who were willing to change sides and who supposedly lured Haq into Afghanistan with promises that they would take him to a mother lode of Taliban leaders. What a tragic end to this great fighter. Tortured and shot like a dog.
As in every foreign policy decision the Americans have made since God knows when, this one is based on ignorance, incompetence and self-interest. In the meantime, the world is in limbo. We await the ramifications of a "war" being waged by a clueless superpower with the collective maturity of a sixteen-year-old boy. Let's hope they're not leading us into the valley of the shadow of you know what.
Where's Me Tablets!
by Gort Slypesunder
•• KNOTT NOT A KNOB. Labor candidate Peter Knott sounds like the kind of Independent I'd vote for ... someone who speaks the bloody truth.
•• LIFE-AFFIRMING LABOR LAUNCH. Barring any last minute own goals, Kim Beazley should come through to win this election. His campaign launch couldn't have been better, and the cheers were for positive policies, rather than the cynical, racist huzzahs at the launch of the other mob. Sure, it may take ten years to get back a decent education system, but five year plans are all the rage in other countries. And Beazley may have struck a world first by asking us to approve two five year plans.
More importantly, if the Media doesn't sabotage him, the voters out there in stunned mulletland cannot help but notice the difference between the party of the living and the party of the dead. And it ought to mean something to them that Labor's launch included all past PM's, while the Illiberals treat their former leaders like dirt. Something about loyalty and respect, is it?
Perhaps it all comes down to whether voters hate foreigners more than they hate the GST. The hated tax may be part of the furniture, as Ross Gittens says, but furniture only lasts so long. There is no reason why it can't be thrown out and replaced by something more efficient and comfortable.
•• HOLLINGWORTH'S VOW OF SILENCE. Phillip Adams wonders why Archbishop-General Peter Hollingworth has been silent on the low immoral ground taken by the Coalition concerning asylum seekers [Enveloped in hatred]. Surely Saint Phillip remembers Hollingworth's press conference shortly after his selection, where he promised to be no things to no people? Adams says, "Bill Deane would have been speaking out on this issue for months." Alas that's not Peter Three. Someone wrote to the papers suggesting that Hollingworth is probably too busy counting the silverware.
•• BOOZE ADS CHARMED. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" has come to be my motto on Tuesday nights. There is no way I'm going to dislodge my daughter from the TV set when "Charmed" is on so I've given up and joined her. Where else am I going to eat that gigantic bowl of ice cream, my just dessert for a hard day at the puter? I used to fume and mutter in the kitchen during that interminable hour, but my good wife's counsel to embrace maturity by either doing something else or watching the show, brought me up short.
The reason I'm writing about this is that some three quarters of the way through I noticed a repeat advert for Jack Daniels. I also realised that during every break there were at least two ads for booze. The following week I sat down, armed with notepad and pen. For the record, during the five breaks there were two ads each for Bacardi Rum, Carlton Gold, something called Russki Orange, and one each for Baileys, something called Midori, Tooheys New and Kahlua. Everyone in the ads were having a great time and sex was uppermost in their minds. Although the most penetrating arse grab (of a man by a woman) was featured in a promo for The City Centre. Again everyone was living the high life.
Well, hey, I know this show is aimed at teenagers of 16 and above, and that's bad enough, but my daughter is only ten. Sure, the ads go over her head now ... but are they residing neatly in her unconscious, waiting to be unleashed in a few years for oodles of binge drinking fun? Half her classmates watch the show, not to mention all the grades up to teenagehood. What a marketing coup! I could put the foot down and forbid her to watch "Charmed," but all the other shows no doubt promote alcohol too.
Just thought I'd mention it.
•• ANDERSON CANNED? While on the subject of the media, I happened to tune in to Melbourne ABC during the five minute political slot before PM. It was John Anderson's turn to promote the National Party. His voice sounded strained, as if he were trying to shout in a normal voice. Then came some applause. Oh, I thought, he's giving a speech. But the next instances of applause clearly sounded recorded. This is not an accusation, but I'd like to know if this spot was what it sounded to me to be: A studio speech with canned applause.
•• AMERICA JOINS THE WORLD. Shortly after September 11, Flub-A-Dubbya said that the world had changed forever. Interviewed on Phillip Adams Late Night Live some weeks later, Akbar Ahmed, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Washington, said that the world had only changed for America. For Africa and the poor countries of the world things were pretty much the same. What had changed was that America had now joined them.
•• PEANUT BUTTER 'N' JAM 'R' US. Looked at differently it could be said that America was once again trying to join the world to itself. "What's good for us must be good for yew," kind of thing. How else to explain the food rations dropped on Afghanistan to bookend the bombs? Peanut butter and jam! That's right, and you can bet the peanut butter was the smooth variety. "Hey, it'll taste great on them funny lookin' flapjacks they use for bread." After centuries, the Afghans are enduring the final insult: invasion by a superpower of dweebs.