Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, September 20, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Here we go again! - Wellard For Gillard!
If you're reading this you may-or-may-not be familiar with my band for many years, which was Project Mayhem. Back in 2009, when hot ranga Julia Gillard was simply the Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy head honcho of the Labor Party, Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Social Inclusion and the federal division of Lalor - all simultaneously - we wrote this song...
Later there was a leadership spill and she replaced local walnut Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. She was of the centre-left, politically, so the Murdoch press relentlessly harassed her during her entire tenure.
The thinking, in the mind of the leather-skinned reptile, was that Australians were fucking stupid; that the inherent insecurity of the Australian male could be harnessed and manifested by the use of some good old-fashion sexism - and that the Australian female, not wanting to rock the boat too much, would probably allow the shit to stick.
That's what happened, plus Kevin Rudd was a cunt, so in June 2013 he caused a leadership spill and got his old job back. Then Australia went to the polls, and fulfilled Rupert Murdoch's wish of voting an absolute fucking lunatic into power who would do what was in everybody's worst interests socially while allowing big business to dig up the ground and sell it to China basically un-taxed.
And they all lived happily ever after. Especially us, because we can say we predicted the whole Julia-becoming-PM thing.
Check us on Facebook here.
Later there was a leadership spill and she replaced local walnut Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. She was of the centre-left, politically, so the Murdoch press relentlessly harassed her during her entire tenure.
The thinking, in the mind of the leather-skinned reptile, was that Australians were fucking stupid; that the inherent insecurity of the Australian male could be harnessed and manifested by the use of some good old-fashion sexism - and that the Australian female, not wanting to rock the boat too much, would probably allow the shit to stick.
That's what happened, plus Kevin Rudd was a cunt, so in June 2013 he caused a leadership spill and got his old job back. Then Australia went to the polls, and fulfilled Rupert Murdoch's wish of voting an absolute fucking lunatic into power who would do what was in everybody's worst interests socially while allowing big business to dig up the ground and sell it to China basically un-taxed.
And they all lived happily ever after. Especially us, because we can say we predicted the whole Julia-becoming-PM thing.
Check us on Facebook here.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Instead, I wrote "Mother Nature will have Her Revenge on Old Fatty"
I was actually pretty glad that the culmination of my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard coincided with the 2013 Western Australian State Election, because it meant I was able to volunteer to wear the Green shirt again, even if just for a few hours.
Over the past couple of years I've invested a lot of my time and mind into slamming this incumbent government, so it was good to be back for the fall-out--and besides, one of my buddies was running.
Anyway, the result was, from my perspective, a monstrous disaster. I make no qualms about that being my position. I was really bummed out when the news started coming through. I guess I still am.
As a student of postmodern thought, it straightaway struck me that perhaps in kicking against the pricks so hard, we've created another monster. We've made him stronger.
Another Howard, Nixon, Reagan, Menzies, Thatcher etc - come to life like those Simpsons billboards in that Halloween episode where Paul Anka saves the town from destruction.
 |
| Well... if it'll end horror... |
Here it is. It's slower than you might expect, I'll admit. But it's a savage response to a terrible result. The whole thing sucks. So I'm gonna walk away...
...but Mother Nature Will Have Her Revenge On Old Fatty.
Well, if that's what we get for focussing on The Monster
You'll excuse me while I put that Abbott out of my mind
It's not I don't care or I'm not petrified
Re: our country's Great Slide - our moral decline
But Barnett & Howard have proven that people are dumb
Watching TV they get filled with ideas that aren't real
Like the pastors of old laid down fire and brimstone with great zeal
And the Christians believe that their one Jewish god is just chock full of love
But he's a vengeful old sod - when it comes to the crunch
They're the ones that'll drown in the flood
And life will go on
Just as it always has before
And the tides will roll in
Just as they always have before
So, ga'arn, treat my country the way that she's never deserved
You can rape, you can pillage people and the natural world
In the face of Earth's doom, you can Wittenoom Broome
In the hope that you'll go to some afterlife soon
But you'll get the same hell wealthy Mayans would have faced as they fell…
You'll watch the jungle close in
Just as it always has before
And the waters will rise
Just as they always have before
Even if you succeed in replacing the forests with weeds
When the rivers are dead and your ego's been fed
Begging, poisoned, on your knees
When the Earth finally dies with no tears in her eyes
Just a hollowed-out hide - hey, but at least we tried!
Somewhere far off in space in a temperate place
Comets rain from the sky
And life will go on
Just as it always has before
And the rains will come down
Just as they always have
And you will be forgotten
That's for sure.
Music & lyrics ©2013 Benny Mayhem. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, February 8, 2013
On the matter of Abbott and the Big Business agenda.
In response to a NineMSN article entitled Abbott To Cut Australia In Half**
This is what they mean by dog-whistle politics, I think.
Dress it up as a "development plan" - whole reports, thousands of meaningless words in length - make it seem reasonable and always deny what is really going on: a well-orchestrated pillaging of the nation's resources by a lunatic big business minority (who consider themselves an aristocracy) at the expense of working people and the nation, not to mention the ongoing criminal theft from Aboriginal people of their lands and cultures.
Hunter Thompson talked about "...the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma" that allowed convicted felon Richard Nixon to "slither into" power and we would be fools par excellance to allow ourselves to ever fall into the same trap.
Never forget what's really going on: that Rinehart is a daughter following directly in the footsteps of a man who wanted to sterilise native peoples to extinguish their very existance, let alone native title.
That he - Lang Hancock - founded the asbestos mines at Whitenoom, in the Western Australian north.
That Julie Bishop defended the Whitenoom companies in court while mesothelioma victims literally died before justice could be brought.
And that Abbott - unscrupulous and drunk with power - is happily their mouthpiece. He is a dangerous lunatic and should never be allowed to creep his way into the Lodge on a protest vote.
No. Fracking. Way.
**since retitled Abbott backs away from 'move north' plan...
 |
| (image source) |
Dress it up as a "development plan" - whole reports, thousands of meaningless words in length - make it seem reasonable and always deny what is really going on: a well-orchestrated pillaging of the nation's resources by a lunatic big business minority (who consider themselves an aristocracy) at the expense of working people and the nation, not to mention the ongoing criminal theft from Aboriginal people of their lands and cultures.
Hunter Thompson talked about "...the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma" that allowed convicted felon Richard Nixon to "slither into" power and we would be fools par excellance to allow ourselves to ever fall into the same trap.
Never forget what's really going on: that Rinehart is a daughter following directly in the footsteps of a man who wanted to sterilise native peoples to extinguish their very existance, let alone native title.
That he - Lang Hancock - founded the asbestos mines at Whitenoom, in the Western Australian north.
That Julie Bishop defended the Whitenoom companies in court while mesothelioma victims literally died before justice could be brought.
And that Abbott - unscrupulous and drunk with power - is happily their mouthpiece. He is a dangerous lunatic and should never be allowed to creep his way into the Lodge on a protest vote.
No. Fracking. Way.
**since retitled Abbott backs away from 'move north' plan...
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Descending into a dark, dank, dystopian Wind In The Willows?
I wouldn't be the first person to notice a distinct similarity between the physical appearance of our state premier and that of the one high-grade Colombian export that has managed to make it as far as Western Australia in recent years.
Jury is out as to which one is doing more environmental damage.
(sources above)
Ah, yes. Ruddy of cheek - wearing his constant, relentless, flustered expression - Colin Barnett totally looks like A Big Puffed-Up Cane Toad. This is - as I say - a well recognised, gloriously apt similarity.
There have been a number of signs up at the gas hub protests in the Kimberley. I have seen pictures of the signs. One in particular stood out to me: it read STOP THE TOAD and had a giganto pic of the Prem's head. Ribbit.
And then there's this elderly hippy, whom I happened to stumble across just now via Google. This hippy has not only reached the same conclusion as myself and many others re: the Premier's Resemblance, he has used the same two photos that I did above. Wow. Cosmic rays, man, or super-obvious search engine algorithms. I do not know...
But none of this is fucking news. This is a very important blog and I do not wish to waste your time with trivialities. We need to take it to the next level. This analysis really needs to be the kind of thing that you would repeat on the weekend at a party. It needs to be an engaging idea.
And so, here is my thesis. My parable. My parallel, if you will....
Descending into the dark...
WESTERN AUSTRALIA HAS ENTERED A DYSTOPIAN WIND IN THE WILLOWS
As far as I am concerned, Colin has always been Toad of Toad Hall.
It is a natural characterisation even without extrapolation.
If he were working in a warehouse alongside ADHD dreamers of good working class stock, or if he were in the navy, or any other witty macho place of employment where good-natured men cruelly pull the piss out of each other with all the vigour of the disenfranchised, then Toad of Toad Hall is exactly the bollocks nickname that Colin Barnett would cop.
Especially considering that he is a total ponce.
It's also pretty obvious that if he were ever, by some genius trick of the universe, forced to actually have a job, he'd be the guy who talks shit with you over the course of the morning. He would encourage you to tell him bad-arsed stories of skulking off behind the pallets in the back warehouse.
You'd tell him about dragging surreptitiously on high-powered hydroponic jazz cigarettes that rendered you hungry, sleepy and self-conscious by mid-morning; and you'd spill about that one time you were asked to drive the forklift and it was pretty terrifying but you couldn't stop laughing - even though, of course, nothing actually went wrong.
Toad of Toad Hall would giggle along whimsically, but later you would discover that he was in the bosses' offices every lunch time, "networking" with them... and by "networking," I mean, he's relaying to them the very story you just told him!
And he's naming names, for godssake, to the boss who is keen on Jesus. He's doing it terribly, too; without any of the humour, or the irony, or the exaggeration, or any of the good-natured harmlessness of your original light-hearted anecdote.
Suddenly, because of him, you're fucked. That shark!!
It's a tough break, but then you, dear reader, are a Stoat from the Wild Wood, and word on the River is that Stoats from the Wild Wood cannot be trusted.
And he's naming names, for godssake, to the boss who is keen on Jesus. He's doing it terribly, too; without any of the humour, or the irony, or the exaggeration, or any of the good-natured harmlessness of your original light-hearted anecdote.
Suddenly, because of him, you're fucked. That shark!!
It's a tough break, but then you, dear reader, are a Stoat from the Wild Wood, and word on the River is that Stoats from the Wild Wood cannot be trusted.
In fact, you have just demonstrated quite clearly that this is indeed the case. Untrustworthy.
You should be ashamed... and more to the point, you are about to be arrested.
This is not to say that Toad of Toad Hall does not theoretically like you.
Indeed, he would very much enjoy it if you voted him into office again. It's just that... well, being a gentleman with a thirst for luxurious motor transport is very expensive indeed, and being a middle man for miners, property developers and transnational corporate interests is massively, massively profitable.
Everybody has their price. Poop! Poop!
So, once upon a time, if you'll remember with me now, the Rat and the Mole and the Badger helped the Toad to flush the Common Stoats from Toad Hall and sent them back into the Wild Wood.
But now, by forces far beyond his control, the Badger is long discredited. He lives in exile, as do his 'wet,' classically liberal, pipe-smoking argyll-socked gentlemen friends. Rats and Moles though they were, the old River Dwellers proved a total pushover.
With The Stoats in disarray, banished to the Woods, Toad rose like Steven Bradbury to become the Emperor For Hire. He is now a very busy man. He is employed most directly by the Pigs, who moved to the River in the 1980s and slandered and exiled the old River Dwellers - which is to say, the Badger and the Rat and the Mole.
The Pigs moved in from Far Away. They saw the opportunity for unadulterated profit. They saw the opportunity to seize this profit. They built factories along the River - huge gas processing plants, coal mines. They imported impoverished Sheep from broken homes and civil war and squalor Far Away.
They filled the new factories with these Sheep. The Sheep were very happy.
The Pigs then seized and sold all the Stoats' farms to rich people that they knew had been rich for a very long time in other lands Far Away. They planted strange, highly profitable weeds that were no good to eat and filled the soil with poison. They made it so the Stoats could not keep any of the seeds to grow their own fresh food as they had done for generations.
Instead they had to buy poison food from the Pigs. It made them sick. They started spontaneously aborting their own children. It was disgusting. But they could not afford the expensive imported Pig or Sheep or Toad food.
After this, the Pigs had the Toad put all of the things that the River community owned up for sale. The Pigs all bought the things that everybody owned. More Pig friends from Far Away bought in, too, and they wanted healthy returns on their investments - not in four or six years, but quarterly. Immediately.
So Toad sold more and more. The water, the heating, the communications and the transport and even the healing centre and the prison cell - all were purchased by the Pigs, who became very plump in time.
The Stoats soon found that they could not afford to go to the healing centre and were often sick and had to hit up the Sheep for tuppences all the time, and they started smoking namari all the time as well, because it made things easier somehow. (Just to put this in perspective, the Pigs owned all the Far Away namari production factories too.)
Enter Lisa Scaffidi with a bit o' the old Blame The Victim mentality!
Anyway, The Sheep disliked the Stoats always asking them for tuppences and namari, and so the Pigs again spoke to the Toad (who now commanded $25,000 per consultation) and the Toad introduced the Dogs to deal with the disobedient Stoats.
The Toad and the Pigs created an industry they called Law & Order. They made a lot of money out of Law & Order. They fined the Stoats for everything they could, and they used the newly-imported Dogs to round them up. The gaol cell was made into a gigantic gulag. Together they filled the prisons!
And then the Toad had to do the Budget, which he was not very good at, so he sold the prisons to some Pigs from Far Away in order to pay for his lavish lifestyle.
The Pigs and the Sheep were very happy. The Toad was very relieved. The Stoats were very unhappy, and ill, and couldn't afford namari even, but nobody cared what the Stoats thought, because they were just Stoats and the word on the River was that Stoats could not be trusted.
By and by, The Toad rewarded the Pigs handsomely. The Pigs were given free reign to seize the assets of the arrested Stoats: their farms, their businesses, their high-performance sports cars - everything. And the hydrogen cell buses that the Rat and Mole had introduced were written out of history.
And the solar panel rebate established by the Badger was dismantled and discredited and destroyed. And the Pigs sold coal instead and they would throw luncheons for the Toad and they would all throw large wads of cash around Toad Hall in a playful, exuberant manner.
In the 21st Century, the Wild Wood has made way for the Pre-Fabricated Gyprock Abodes, populated almost entirely by the Sheep. The Sheep are happy: they work on the dystopian 21st Century River for a tuppence a day.
They are Sheep, after all, and they are told every single day by the Pigs that Sheep are the best kinds of animals in the world, and they have just enough tuppences to survive, and there is no room for anybody else. If the Sheep find that they do not have enough tuppences to survive, they have found it rewarding to channel their frustration violently.
Not towards themselves, of course. The violence must be directed at the Goats, the scape-Goats who live around and among the Sheep and look a little bit like the Sheep but are not accepted by Sheep and are much less numerous in number.
The Pigs heartily encourage this violence towards the Goats by the Sheep. They will often suggest that the Goats are similar-but-different to the Sheep, and this is the major threat to Sheep Society, and that Sheep should be indignantly aware of their own superiority and the threat to their tuppences that they face every day because of the Goats.
"Bloody poofters!"
In 2012, the Toad is secure in his mansion. He doesn't have to do much, other than to ensure that the system described above operates as fluidly as possible. It is not as easy as it sounds.
Occasionally a Sheep will remember the River, from back in the old days of the Badger or the Rat, before they left, and for a time after... before the River boiled with leaking gas and dripped with sump oil, before the water became toxic and inedible Monsanto weeds towered above.
They sometimes remember the way the River used to provide all the animals with food. For free. You could just eat and drink whatever you wanted, when the Sheep first moved away from their broken homes Far Away and into the River and the Wild Wood (back when there was still a Wild Wood.)
These thoughts are frowned upon by the majority of Sheep, who generally feel quite comfortable with their tuppences, and besides, there are rumours that Stoats and Goats are posing an imminent threat to members of the Sheep's immediate families... especially Young Sheep, and especially Old Sheep, and especially Ewes, and especially School-Aged Rams who attend churches.
They must all be kept inside the Pre-Fabricated Gyprock Abodes!
That worry is normally enough to quash the memory of the healthy River and the Wild Wood back when it was a Wood and not a Gated Estate full of Gyprock Abodes.
However, if the unwise Sheep should continue to push the subject, and it begins to threaten the profitability of the legitimate commerce of the Pigs, Toad of Toad Hall has a solution - one he has already used very effectively upon the heathen bodies of the Stoats: the Dogs.
In the 21st Century River & Wild Wood Precinct, the Dogs are the only people allowed to carry guns. They do so for your protection.
They also carry special high-tech devices, sealed about their collars, that will electrocute rogue Sheep, and the Goats, and especially the Stoats. The Dogs very much enjoy electrocuting the Stoats. More so than even the Goats with all their deviances.
Word on the River is that Stoats cannot be trusted, so sometimes the Dogs electrocute the Stoats just for something to do, and to warn them and teach them a lesson for being Stoats. (And also to make the Dogs feel better about themselves.)
It is very risky to be a Stoat. Many have died. Nobody is really sure where the Stoats are supposed to live, but the Pigs won't employ them, so they could not afford a Pre-Fabricated Gyprock Abode on the land where they used to live, where the Wild Wood used to be, even if the Sheep and the Goats would have them there.
In fact, the Stoats are the only people left who can really, clearly remember what the River and the Woods were like prior to the departure of the Badger and the wet liberal gentlemen, those River Dwellers, the Rat and Mole.
Back then the Stoats had hated them so, but they have a bigger problem now - much bigger. And the very strange thing about all of this is that the Toad, when he is running for election, actually refers to himself as a River Dweller. But he has never lived by the River at all.
(They have to describe him as a "big R" River Dweller to differentiate.)
But pity not the Toad.
Sure, if in his current position he were accepted as a Pig he would be the lowest-ranked Pig in the sty.
But he is the Toad, and he still has Toad Hall, and he does as he is told, and he ensures the Dogs are primed and the Pigs are fed and that the Sheep are pacified and that all blame for any errors is passed to either the Goats or the Stoats, depending on which excuse sounds more plausible at the time.
And he has maintained Law & Order, and created wealth for the Pigs.
These last two things are the most important two things of all.
THE END
Friday, March 16, 2012
The Real Douchebag: Why we shouldn't humour Bob Katter
He's been around for wayyy longer than many people realise, his head is too large for his body, his hat is essential to daily life, and it doesn't take a genius to work out that he must drink enough liquor every night to knock out an eight-metre saltwater crocodile.
Now that he's managed to wedge himself a disproportionately influential slot in Federal Parliament, Bob Katter seems to be sniffing around on the periphery of just about everything.
Last week, for example, he decided to weigh in on the Queensland State Election by running a smear campaign against conservative candidate Campbell Newman, accusing him of the heinous crime of supporting gay marriage.
Hot topic right now, of course, mainly because the majority of Australians support it. But, much to the chagrin of the entire nation, the whole thing has resulted in Bob Katter being fucking everywhere again... and his seat isn't even up for grabs.
To be clear though, the Federal MP's new novelty political party does actually have candidates running in the Queensland election, so it wasn't totally out of line that he be involved; but Australia could surely have done without the nauseating effort Katter puts into avoiding the shit out of every single bloody interview question he's asked, and the affected indecipherable lunacy that accompanies it.
It's also frustrating because it seems such a no-brainer - and that Katter is simply being a pain in the arse. Again. But like far too many conservative politicians, it's more serious. He is an opportunistic religious hypocrite who has built a career out of the fears of others. He's not quite Pauline Hanson, but at least she was upfront about what she was doing and didn't keep dodging the fucking question.
Bob Katter's rise to national influence - from a belligerent backwater irrelevance to a sought-after Federal chess piece - has revealed his archaic social conservative agenda to the nation. And naturally it's totally out of touch with the nuances of urban life. That's a fact he will happily admit.
The rest of us could probably do without it, but apparently shit flows only one way, and Bob Katter keeps turning up for work regardless.
Son of another bloody politician who had the same name as him and also appears to have also been keen on Rome's Jesus, Bob "The Mad Hatter" Katter has spent his life-long political career operating in the middle of Queensland's Gulf Country. His electorate is nearly 600,000 km² big with ~0.15 voters per km².
In other words: almost no other cunts live there, and those that do are hardly likely to be authorities on matters of social intercourse. It's a distant land that, even today, remains frontier country.
Katter and his party are having a sook because they reckon that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
The rest of the Western world have totally agreed to do that, and of that 'rest', the majority of us are all like 'hey dudes, we should let gay dudes and lesbians etc marry as well cause, if that's what they want to do, who gives a fuck anyway!?'
As has been pointed out a million times by the entire fucking Internet, marriage equality offers only opportunities for people - no disadvantages.
With the whole equality thing, NO ONE IS OPPRESSED AT ALL and nobody would take anything away from anybody else. Not rights, not money, not any of the things people care about.
Unless they're a bigot with too much pride and zero empathy.
On this issue, Bob Katter is being a total fucking bigot, seemingly just for the sake of it, and he is happy to publicly fall out with his own brother over it, but still have "family values" as a core policy and justification for his opinion. Right.
It is almost certain that the more Katter acts like a total wanker, the more votes his novelty party will get from the other socially-retarded bigots on the electoral roll in Queensland. Ultimately they pay his salary. The system works!
And indeed, history has proven the sheer number of redneck voters available and ready to go to the polls in that state to be nothing short of astounding. There is a booming market for baffling idiocy in Queensland.
It's all a bit of a drag, really, especially for those of us left-leaning legends who were initially piqued by some of Bob Katter's other policies in the wake of last year's election - in particular, his economic outlook almost seemed progressive. What the fuck?
Initially there were suggestions that it might be amusing, even handy, to have a boorish good-ol'-uncle from the Gulf Country in the headlines, diggin' out old socialist economic ideas that nobody had the balls to talk about lest Rupert Murdoch's vicious reactionary machinery launched a relentless McCarthiest assault in their general direction. (It wouldn't be the first time!)
It is, for example, increasingly becoming apparent that the Australian community would have done better to hold onto particular sovereign assets, rather than relinquishing them all willy-nilly in a full-pelt rush to compete on global markets.
Katter's old school. He is all for standing up to privatisation, he wants a moratorium on coal seam gas (but hates the 'greenies' of course), and he's a fan of collective bargaining. He seemed to be a baffling mix of economic justice [protectionism actually] and social disruption. With a big fucking hat.
Sadly though, the novelty of Bob Katter: Flamboyant Über Hick evaporated pretty quickly once the cold reality of the man's old school settler colonist outlook became clear. It's all the wrong kinds of Jesus - and it's easy to forget that the early Australian Labor Party, with whom both Katter and his old man had links - could certainly devolve into a pack of racist cunts when they wanted to.
With this in mind, it's entirely possible to suggest that Bob Katter's seemingly 'progressive' return to community-based economic policy is in fact not a 'return' at all. He has all the hallmarks of a massively conservative Stubborn Fuck mentality whose ideas haven't changed since the 1940s.
Perhaps the banks, while they were swindling the rest of the world with neoliberalism, just didn't really bother going all the way out to Cloncurry to argue with people who hung out all day in 50°C heat with nothing but their cattle, their guns and their seemingly infinite hectares of infertile soil.
Or... maybe they figured they could just go out there a couple of decades later and start extracting natural gas from right underneath the farmers' noses, on their own lands, without even having to ask their freakin' permission.
But look, if we're being honest with ourselves, the economy, in whatever form, is nothing without quality of life - and that is what Katter is vigorously striving to deny others through his relentless opposition to marriage equality.
And, of course, Bob is more than happy to bandy around his electorate's truly epic suicide problems as his pet local sob-story whenever it suits him.
So yeah, despite all his rhetoric about the importance of marriage and family stability, he seems oblivious to the idea that happiness and security in relationships is in fact a... oh, dare I say it - 'pro-life' stance.
By which I mean, 'pro-' the actual meanings of life. Like being happy and fulfilled and all that.
Take that shit away and the desire to live decreases. It's a fucking no-brainer. These 19th Century social mores that Katter is spruiking are inherently intolerant, therefore they decrease the value of life all round.
And, really, who gives a fuck about the economy, or anything else, if you're not gonna be happy either way?
ANYWAY folks reward yourself with this:
PS: just in case you missed it at the beginning.... BOB KATTER EGGED THE FUCKING BEATLES. And he brags about it. What a douche.
He's also been part of the music scene on at least two non-consecutive occasions.
(source)
But there the similarities between cosmopolitan music industry personality Molly Meldrum and socially-backward Federal MP Bob Katter end.
But there the similarities between cosmopolitan music industry personality Molly Meldrum and socially-backward Federal MP Bob Katter end.
Now that he's managed to wedge himself a disproportionately influential slot in Federal Parliament, Bob Katter seems to be sniffing around on the periphery of just about everything.
Last week, for example, he decided to weigh in on the Queensland State Election by running a smear campaign against conservative candidate Campbell Newman, accusing him of the heinous crime of supporting gay marriage.
Hot topic right now, of course, mainly because the majority of Australians support it. But, much to the chagrin of the entire nation, the whole thing has resulted in Bob Katter being fucking everywhere again... and his seat isn't even up for grabs.
To be clear though, the Federal MP's new novelty political party does actually have candidates running in the Queensland election, so it wasn't totally out of line that he be involved; but Australia could surely have done without the nauseating effort Katter puts into avoiding the shit out of every single bloody interview question he's asked, and the affected indecipherable lunacy that accompanies it.
Bob Katter's rise to national influence - from a belligerent backwater irrelevance to a sought-after Federal chess piece - has revealed his archaic social conservative agenda to the nation. And naturally it's totally out of touch with the nuances of urban life. That's a fact he will happily admit.
The rest of us could probably do without it, but apparently shit flows only one way, and Bob Katter keeps turning up for work regardless.
Son of another bloody politician who had the same name as him and also appears to have also been keen on Rome's Jesus, Bob "The Mad Hatter" Katter has spent his life-long political career operating in the middle of Queensland's Gulf Country. His electorate is nearly 600,000 km² big with ~0.15 voters per km².
Hanging out with his other constituents
(source)
In other words: almost no other cunts live there, and those that do are hardly likely to be authorities on matters of social intercourse. It's a distant land that, even today, remains frontier country.
The rest of the Western world have totally agreed to do that, and of that 'rest', the majority of us are all like 'hey dudes, we should let gay dudes and lesbians etc marry as well cause, if that's what they want to do, who gives a fuck anyway!?'
As has been pointed out a million times by the entire fucking Internet, marriage equality offers only opportunities for people - no disadvantages.
With the whole equality thing, NO ONE IS OPPRESSED AT ALL and nobody would take anything away from anybody else. Not rights, not money, not any of the things people care about.
Unless they're a bigot with too much pride and zero empathy.
On this issue, Bob Katter is being a total fucking bigot, seemingly just for the sake of it, and he is happy to publicly fall out with his own brother over it, but still have "family values" as a core policy and justification for his opinion. Right.
It is almost certain that the more Katter acts like a total wanker, the more votes his novelty party will get from the other socially-retarded bigots on the electoral roll in Queensland. Ultimately they pay his salary. The system works!
And indeed, history has proven the sheer number of redneck voters available and ready to go to the polls in that state to be nothing short of astounding. There is a booming market for baffling idiocy in Queensland.
Irony: Do you speak it?!
(source)
It's all a bit of a drag, really, especially for those of us left-leaning legends who were initially piqued by some of Bob Katter's other policies in the wake of last year's election - in particular, his economic outlook almost seemed progressive. What the fuck?
Initially there were suggestions that it might be amusing, even handy, to have a boorish good-ol'-uncle from the Gulf Country in the headlines, diggin' out old socialist economic ideas that nobody had the balls to talk about lest Rupert Murdoch's vicious reactionary machinery launched a relentless McCarthiest assault in their general direction. (It wouldn't be the first time!)
It is, for example, increasingly becoming apparent that the Australian community would have done better to hold onto particular sovereign assets, rather than relinquishing them all willy-nilly in a full-pelt rush to compete on global markets.
Katter's old school. He is all for standing up to privatisation, he wants a moratorium on coal seam gas (but hates the 'greenies' of course), and he's a fan of collective bargaining. He seemed to be a baffling mix of economic justice [protectionism actually] and social disruption. With a big fucking hat.
Sadly though, the novelty of Bob Katter: Flamboyant Über Hick evaporated pretty quickly once the cold reality of the man's old school settler colonist outlook became clear. It's all the wrong kinds of Jesus - and it's easy to forget that the early Australian Labor Party, with whom both Katter and his old man had links - could certainly devolve into a pack of racist cunts when they wanted to.
It's a little-known fact that the whole 'bourgeois' thing was actually an international conspiracy orchestrated from Peking by a small group of interstellar reptiles, cunningly disguised as 19th Century Chinese smack fiends
(source)
(source)
With this in mind, it's entirely possible to suggest that Bob Katter's seemingly 'progressive' return to community-based economic policy is in fact not a 'return' at all. He has all the hallmarks of a massively conservative Stubborn Fuck mentality whose ideas haven't changed since the 1940s.
Perhaps the banks, while they were swindling the rest of the world with neoliberalism, just didn't really bother going all the way out to Cloncurry to argue with people who hung out all day in 50°C heat with nothing but their cattle, their guns and their seemingly infinite hectares of infertile soil.
Or... maybe they figured they could just go out there a couple of decades later and start extracting natural gas from right underneath the farmers' noses, on their own lands, without even having to ask their freakin' permission.
But look, if we're being honest with ourselves, the economy, in whatever form, is nothing without quality of life - and that is what Katter is vigorously striving to deny others through his relentless opposition to marriage equality.
And, of course, Bob is more than happy to bandy around his electorate's truly epic suicide problems as his pet local sob-story whenever it suits him.
By which I mean, 'pro-' the actual meanings of life. Like being happy and fulfilled and all that.
Take that shit away and the desire to live decreases. It's a fucking no-brainer. These 19th Century social mores that Katter is spruiking are inherently intolerant, therefore they decrease the value of life all round.
And, really, who gives a fuck about the economy, or anything else, if you're not gonna be happy either way?
ANYWAY folks reward yourself with this:
PS: just in case you missed it at the beginning.... BOB KATTER EGGED THE FUCKING BEATLES. And he brags about it. What a douche.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
LIBRARIES 'STEALING', SAYS RIGHT-WING LOON
By A VACUOUS NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD JOURNALISM GRAD, SYDNEY
IN borrowing books without charge, library members worldwide are stealing money from hard-working multinational publishing houses, a right-wing lunatic said today.
The lunatic, who has recently been totally legitimised by our relentless uncritical coverage of his specious but egoistically appealing claptrap, claims book borrowing practices endemic in Australia are undermining an equitable freemarket system, somehow causing NAB and Westpac to raise their interest rates - but only for loans, not deposits.
Such results have, he stresses, absolutely fuck-all to do with said banks - or their CEOs, who dine regularly with our editorial staff - and whose employees are all harmless smiling tellers who are responsible members of your local community and could easily be donning their maroon blazers right now in the house next door to you. They could even be your wife, or husband, or someone else related to you! Do you love them or not?!
Anyway - over the forthcoming two fiscal quarters, if this newspaper hypothetically agreed with the lunatic's theory, then we would definitely recommend that you - the reader - do the following:
IN borrowing books without charge, library members worldwide are stealing money from hard-working multinational publishing houses, a right-wing lunatic said today.
"our primary objective is to reduce the intelligence quotient of the planet to that of a pre-industrial Down Syndrome bonobo menagerie... BUT TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE WE ARE DOING THEM A FAVOUR"
The lunatic, who has recently been totally legitimised by our relentless uncritical coverage of his specious but egoistically appealing claptrap, claims book borrowing practices endemic in Australia are undermining an equitable freemarket system, somehow causing NAB and Westpac to raise their interest rates - but only for loans, not deposits.
Such results have, he stresses, absolutely fuck-all to do with said banks - or their CEOs, who dine regularly with our editorial staff - and whose employees are all harmless smiling tellers who are responsible members of your local community and could easily be donning their maroon blazers right now in the house next door to you. They could even be your wife, or husband, or someone else related to you! Do you love them or not?!
Anyway - over the forthcoming two fiscal quarters, if this newspaper hypothetically agreed with the lunatic's theory, then we would definitely recommend that you - the reader - do the following:
- cease all borrowing of library books immediately;
- commence homo-baiting of all library members, librarians and people who clean libraries - call them totes poofters;
- use your facebook to label all library-frequenters 'fucking bludgers' - really ride the guilt trip home by quoting AM radio shock-jocks verbatim;
- if you work on site or in a warehouse, fear not, we have skin-mags avail w/ articles about the awesomeness of guns, necrotoxins and, incidentally, the homosexuality of libraries - remember, we're currently positioning gay dudes as evil, not zany-cool, that's next week's edition;
- FOUR WORDS: THEY TOOK OUR JOBS; and...
- we'll do the rest ;) - by which we mean, hypothetically we would do the rest if we agreed with this but as objective journalists we are simply prioritising the lunatic's opinion, not quoting his detractors unless we can present them as being insane, and framing headlines in such a way that the fact that the opinion is the lunatic's rather than ours is incidental to the impact upon the reader's consciousness... look, just back off, Jonathan Holmes, you trapesium-faced communist - your job is next
EDITED - OK FOR PRESS - GINA xxx
Saturday, October 29, 2011
It was Kronic stupidity.
The reprehensible censorship employed by the Barnett government in response to The Bakery's planned Kronic Blowout show back in June will no doubt be remembered well by those reading this a few months later. For those who aren't familiar with the story, have a gander at my previous post on the topic here.
As I was cleaning out my inbox tonight I came across this press release... whether it ever made it to the actual press, I don't know, but here it is for posterity.
I never did find out who Kron Voyage was, but they disappeared off Facebook pretty quickly, as did later attempts to encourage people to Dress Homeless For CHOGM...
Vicious colonial scumbucket Rob Johnson: In charge of W.A. State violence
(source)
(source)
As I was cleaning out my inbox tonight I came across this press release... whether it ever made it to the actual press, I don't know, but here it is for posterity.
Kron VoyageIs the government out of control in the West???IMMEDIATE RELEASEKronic Blowout cancelled by WA State GovernmentIs the government out of control in the West???The WA State Government banned Kronic (synthetic weed) in Western Australia on Monday but couldn’t introduce the ban officially/legally until Friday at which time it becomes an illegal substance in Western Australia.Headliners Perth based reggae/dub band SUNSHINE BROTHERS and nu-soul act COSMO GETS decided to have a laugh about it and accepted my offer to perform at a Kronic Blowout to welcome in the prohibition, have a laugh and make a point.The irony is that the bulk of the demand for Kronic was generated in the first place by sensationalist and ever more meaningless mainstream media reports and the pursuant bumbling press releases from the Government agencies.The media & government PROMOTED it to the people in a frenzy nearly matching the unbelievably tawdry planking episode.The result of this totally legal party being advertised was a MASSIVE over-reaction by media, numerous ministers & government agencies and finally this afternoon the police with support of the director of liquor licensing stepped in to ban the event under very, very shaky application of the law.Early this afternoon the police visited the venue and requested that they shut down for 24 hours under section 114 of the liquor actLIQUOR CONTROL ACT 1988 - SECT 114114 . Closure of licensed premises by police(1) Where a member of the Police Force for the time being on duty at any place has reasonable grounds for believing that at or in the vicinity of that place —(a) civil disorder, a breach of the peace or a threat to public safety is occurring or is likely to occur; and(b) in the interests of maintaining the peace or ensuring public safety it is or may be desirable that licensed premises be closed,that person may require the licensee, or an employee or agent of the licensee, to close the licensed premises or a part of those premises, or to cease the sale, supply or consumption of liquor (including the sale of packaged liquor) on or from the premises or a part of the premises, for a specified period or until further notice, and a person who, without reasonable cause, contravenes a requirement so made commits an offence.This is a completely legal show making a valid social and political comment.If they are arguing that Kronic – a currently legal substance itself by their own bumbling laws – risks public safety does that mean that all liquor licenses selling alcohol or permitting smoking which is also legal should be shut immediately?There was no indication of any kind that any kind of trouble would eventuate from this show and no real grounds to stop it in this way.The decision implies that intelligent adults who got the joke and were keen for a night out are in some way violent or below the law or sub-standard is completely horrendous.Sometime [sic] you feel like you are free to comment in this country or to engage in mild satire but you clearly are not when it comes to the WA Government.You think before saying or doing ANYTHING that our government would be smart enough to read very balanced and SCIENTIFIC Global Commission Report on Drugs prepared by global leaders, health experts etc so they are fully informed about the bigger picture and the shortfalls in policy rather than focussing on the minutia of Kronic and a single night concert making a point and having a laugh at a government with no real concept of what needs to be done.Do they actually think Kronic is a preferred drug or just something that people who like and want to smoke natural, real weed who don’t want to get busted use to get a little high every now and then.Read the major report on drugs – it pretty much comes up with the opposite conclusion to our government policyDownloadable [here]
I never did find out who Kron Voyage was, but they disappeared off Facebook pretty quickly, as did later attempts to encourage people to Dress Homeless For CHOGM...
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Q&A WA: Don't mention the war!
This one's an opinion piece...
In November 2010, the ABC's Q&A programme came to Perth.
As I have, in recent times, been reasonably interested in What Goes On, I was particularly keen to become involved.
Eventually, after a near-miss in which I was not selected, a friend of mine came to the party with a guest pass.
It probably goes without saying that this event was intense.
On the panel was my most loathed of jerks: the enviro vandal and Protector of Big Business, the Right Honourable Cockroach, Mr Colin Barnett.
This man has an utterly infuriating position on everything.
Early in the programme he made the blanket announcement that if Australia became a republic then WA would effectively secede:
I tried repeatedly, in vain, to question this man regarding the loathed Stop & Search bill; which was still on the table at the time.
But it seems the show was focused on more nationally-important (I suppose) issues: the relationship between the mining industry and Aboriginal people, asylum seeker policy, and the like.
The intensity on the ground floor was insane and bizarre. It's something I won't forget in a hurry.
The weirdest part was the audience dynamic.
Now, it seems that most people are generally good people; and most of the rest are at least well-intentioned.
It doesn't take half a heart to realise that, even though I'm sure most people would probably prefer that the issue would just go away, what's going on with asylum seekers in this country is pretty fucked.
So generally, and this is just an example issue, most people in the crowd were pretty appalled by the Premier's attitude toward the issue and the vague lip service paid by the ALP's representative Stephen Smith.
Only the Greens' Rachel Siewert was willing to show some balls.
Unfortunately she is a sensible and informed, quietly spoken woman who can't really hold a candle to sensationalist questions such as this one from Gerrit Van Der Sluys:
These infuriating ideologues have to be in the highest category of 'jerk' known to man.
As I quickly learned by squabbling with them on Twitter later in the evening, they hold belligerent and dismissive attitudes towards every idea that's not based on neo-liberal post-colonialism.
They probably represented about a third, or maybe a quarter, of the audience on this particular evening. That's pretty high odds. There were heaps of them.
One of them (LYLSWA Treasurer Anthony Spagnolo) was even referred to by name by Barnett.
It's actually to the ABC's credit that these people were given a chance to speak--and they spoke a fair bit.
But it's an example of their boisterous ingratitude that they were on Twitter throughout the proceedings claiming that the "communist ABC" was censoring them and swinging the debate in the leftist direction.
If anything, these douche-bags were over-represented.
It would be disingenuous for me to claim that there isn't a place for conservative politics within the Grand Plethora. Of course there is, so long as all other angles of discourse get a look-in.
But if this is the future of the conservative party in this country then we are completely and utterly fucked.
Between Barnett--with his monarchist, protectionist, neo-liberal agenda--the steely-eyed lost cause Julie Bishop, and these kids in the audience, there wasn't one among them who came out not looking like a complete fuck head.
The only conservative who came out looking like he actually had a soul was mining industry fucko Andrew Forrest.
His attempts to give Aboriginal people large-scale employment in the mining industry are admirable, but, of course, they fail to take into account the fact that not everybody views life the same way he does.
Thank christ, then, that Marianne Mackay had managed to land herself a spot in the front row.
This relentless woman, who I'd not encountered before but have seen talk a couple of times since, pointed out fiercely that the traditional Aboriginal worldview of Country is anathema to large-scale industrial mining, and asked what the point was of employing Aboriginal people to do the one thing they didn't want to do:
(It's important to note that the one Aboriginal member of the panel, Tony Wiltshire, is a successful businessman and is clearly down with the capitalist paradigm as a way forward for equality.)
But the thing I'll remember most about this whole ordeal--and it was indeed an ordeal--was the man who slipped me a piece of paper imploring me to ask his question.
He'd evidently sussed me out and desperately wanted his question answered.
"I can't ask this," he told me urgently.
"I work in mining. If I ask it, I'll lose my job."
Shit, I'll try! I thought, but I was unsuccessful in this regard.
Peering down at the neatly typed and folded piece of paper he had given me I saw the following words... written repeatedly.
Somebody needed to ask this question, because it's one of the most fundamental ones that Western Australian society is facing.
There's no question we're getting fat off digging up shit and selling it, but what (on Earth) are we going to do afterward?
We in WA don't exactly have the best track record of pulling off these kinds of large-scale stunts without screwing ourselves long-term... one look at the Wheatbelt should remind us of this.
As Andrew Forrest said in his final speech, to the baffled consternation of many people both in the studio and on Twitter:
The question I was handed by an anonymous source
from within the mining industry.
Source: scanned.
from within the mining industry.
Source: scanned.
In November 2010, the ABC's Q&A programme came to Perth.
As I have, in recent times, been reasonably interested in What Goes On, I was particularly keen to become involved.
Eventually, after a near-miss in which I was not selected, a friend of mine came to the party with a guest pass.
It probably goes without saying that this event was intense.
On the panel was my most loathed of jerks: the enviro vandal and Protector of Big Business, the Right Honourable Cockroach, Mr Colin Barnett.
This man has an utterly infuriating position on everything.
Early in the programme he made the blanket announcement that if Australia became a republic then WA would effectively secede:
That is a distinct possibility. [see transcript]Later, he dismissed the issue of Aboriginal incarceration in the WA prison system; going on to explain:
You know, many of the young Aboriginal people in prison are there for traffic offences, for driving without a licence in Aboriginal communities. Well, that's clearly a ridiculous situation. [see transcript](To be fair, he did briefly mention that leglisation would be introduced to try and combat this. Whether it ever happens is another matter.)
I tried repeatedly, in vain, to question this man regarding the loathed Stop & Search bill; which was still on the table at the time.
But it seems the show was focused on more nationally-important (I suppose) issues: the relationship between the mining industry and Aboriginal people, asylum seeker policy, and the like.
The intensity on the ground floor was insane and bizarre. It's something I won't forget in a hurry.
The weirdest part was the audience dynamic.
Now, it seems that most people are generally good people; and most of the rest are at least well-intentioned.
It doesn't take half a heart to realise that, even though I'm sure most people would probably prefer that the issue would just go away, what's going on with asylum seekers in this country is pretty fucked.
So generally, and this is just an example issue, most people in the crowd were pretty appalled by the Premier's attitude toward the issue and the vague lip service paid by the ALP's representative Stephen Smith.
Only the Greens' Rachel Siewert was willing to show some balls.
Unfortunately she is a sensible and informed, quietly spoken woman who can't really hold a candle to sensationalist questions such as this one from Gerrit Van Der Sluys:
...here in WA we are increasingly used as a perceived dumping ground for possible asylum seekers ... why is it that these people are being given more help and better treatment then homeless and impoverished Australian citizens? [see transcript]Enter the Young Liberals.
These infuriating ideologues have to be in the highest category of 'jerk' known to man.
As I quickly learned by squabbling with them on Twitter later in the evening, they hold belligerent and dismissive attitudes towards every idea that's not based on neo-liberal post-colonialism.
They probably represented about a third, or maybe a quarter, of the audience on this particular evening. That's pretty high odds. There were heaps of them.
One of them (LYLSWA Treasurer Anthony Spagnolo) was even referred to by name by Barnett.
It's actually to the ABC's credit that these people were given a chance to speak--and they spoke a fair bit.
But it's an example of their boisterous ingratitude that they were on Twitter throughout the proceedings claiming that the "communist ABC" was censoring them and swinging the debate in the leftist direction.
If anything, these douche-bags were over-represented.
It would be disingenuous for me to claim that there isn't a place for conservative politics within the Grand Plethora. Of course there is, so long as all other angles of discourse get a look-in.
But if this is the future of the conservative party in this country then we are completely and utterly fucked.
Between Barnett--with his monarchist, protectionist, neo-liberal agenda--the steely-eyed lost cause Julie Bishop, and these kids in the audience, there wasn't one among them who came out not looking like a complete fuck head.
The only conservative who came out looking like he actually had a soul was mining industry fucko Andrew Forrest.
His attempts to give Aboriginal people large-scale employment in the mining industry are admirable, but, of course, they fail to take into account the fact that not everybody views life the same way he does.
Thank christ, then, that Marianne Mackay had managed to land herself a spot in the front row.
This relentless woman, who I'd not encountered before but have seen talk a couple of times since, pointed out fiercely that the traditional Aboriginal worldview of Country is anathema to large-scale industrial mining, and asked what the point was of employing Aboriginal people to do the one thing they didn't want to do:
If people want to help Aboriginal people get employment, don't help our people kill our land. You know, save our environment. Get on environmental protection. [see transcript]I'm white, of course, but I'm also an environmentalist and I wish this point had been discussed further.
(It's important to note that the one Aboriginal member of the panel, Tony Wiltshire, is a successful businessman and is clearly down with the capitalist paradigm as a way forward for equality.)
But the thing I'll remember most about this whole ordeal--and it was indeed an ordeal--was the man who slipped me a piece of paper imploring me to ask his question.
He'd evidently sussed me out and desperately wanted his question answered.
"I can't ask this," he told me urgently.
"I work in mining. If I ask it, I'll lose my job."
Shit, I'll try! I thought, but I was unsuccessful in this regard.
Peering down at the neatly typed and folded piece of paper he had given me I saw the following words... written repeatedly.
Mr Premier, would you let us know whether your government has any public policies or strategies to maintain at least the current prosperity and living standards of all Western Australians, after you have send [sic] the last shipment of WA's non-renewable resources overseas? [see image above]It shits me greatly that I wasn't quicker on the uptake.
Somebody needed to ask this question, because it's one of the most fundamental ones that Western Australian society is facing.
There's no question we're getting fat off digging up shit and selling it, but what (on Earth) are we going to do afterward?
We in WA don't exactly have the best track record of pulling off these kinds of large-scale stunts without screwing ourselves long-term... one look at the Wheatbelt should remind us of this.
As Andrew Forrest said in his final speech, to the baffled consternation of many people both in the studio and on Twitter:
I've got a number of incredibly rich friends and I can assure you they're no happier than anyone in this audience. [56:10]Well, if money doesn't make you happy, what does? And where are our priorities? And what legacy are we leaving behind?
I do hope Q&A returns at some point, because all I was left with after this one was dozens of questions, mild confusion and a battered psyche.
NB: All unattributed quotes in this article are the author's own interpretation based on ground floor experience. It's not possible, to my knowledge, to link to old #qanda quotes on Twitter, but if it is please let me know and I'll attribute them more thoroughly. The specific Q&A episode can be streamed, and the transcript accessed, here.
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