When will they get it? Or do they get it and try to hide the truth about the Afghanistan photos before anyone notices they’ve got it?
First the disclaimer: To gloatingly photograph yourself with a slain enemy (whether self-slaughtered or not) is obscene, but then if the entire situation is obscene…
The American political-military establishment – not to mention the Australian and the European/NATO war departments – once again insists that “this is not us”, “this behavior does not reflect our values.”
“This is not who we are,” says Leon Panetta.
“[The Afghanistan photos] don’t in anyway represent the principles and values that are the basis for our mission in Afghanistan,” says Anders Fogh Rasmussen who also said this was “an isolated event.”
Yes, it’s the case of the bad apples.
The question is, how did these apples pop fully formed – armed and in uniform – into existence? Was it by a miracle of birth, more miraculous than immaculate conception because apparently they had neither father nor mother nor even country or past?
Of course not. These “bad apples” carry the social DNA of their apple tree: their country, their nation, their society, the situation they have been shoe-horned into by a military establishment that is more concerned with the politics of the game and the public perception of the state of the game than with the human realities of the way war inflicts itself on cannon-fodder.
And the Generals and diplomats¹ think they can sweep the results of their ugly game under the carpet by disclaiming all knowledge and responsibility – while, of course, those who carry the most obscenity and culpability, those who have most truly lost their moral compass, are the ones who initiate, or who endorse, or who neatly fold up their moral sensibility in a shroud and place it carefully out of sight and hearing in a hole in a dark and hidden corner of their mind.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.
What a difference in attitude by the American military/political conglomerate compared to its response to Julian Assange!
With Assange and Bradley Manning the biggest beef was that they had put Americans “in harm’s way”. But we know that they scrupulously had not. As far as we know not a single hair on an American head has been put out of place as a result of the Wikileaks release.
In contrast, the release of the photos by the LA Times is almost certain to cause yet more aggression against Americans and their allies, not just by the Taliban but by others worldwide.
Not that the LA Times should not have shared what it knew – that is in a way its sacred duty.
But that no-one in political/military circles in the US has sworn by hook or by crook to get LA Times staff for publishing the Afghanistan photos, offered their opinion that someone should kill them by contract or “accident”, which numerous high-profile Americans (and a Canadian…oh, and an Alaskan) did about Assange, well, the difference is stark and striking and, frankly, rank hypocrisy and jingoism.
Is Sir Roger the only one to notice this?
¹So plain the advantages of machination
It constitutes a moral obligation,
And honest wolves who think upon’t with loathing
Feel bound to don the sheep’s deceptive clothing.
So prospers still the diplomatic art,
And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.
– R.S.K.
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
– The Devil’s Dictionary
On this definition most of the press, radio and television – at least the “popular” versions – are very small indeed.
So are most of the politicians who spewed their vitriol over the last week, including especially Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and the country’s most boring politician since Barry Unsworth, Simon Crean. Tony Abbott has rarely if ever talked about anything but other people and what is wrong with them (unless he’s talking about B A Santamaria or George Pell).
Some recent politicians have talked about “things”, but it’s rare that those things are anything but “Jobs Jobs Jobs” or “Teh Economy”. Or Pink Bats.
Australia has had politicians great and small. And very, very average. The Great politicians Australia has been blessed with are few and far between. In fact there are only two in Sir Roger’s living memory. And of course you can’t guess. Under the above definition the only truly great Australian politicians in the last 50 years have been Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. And what is wrong with that? Well, people have hated them passionately. And the reason most people who dislike(d) them is that “most people” are small, or average at best if they are lucky, and couldn’t quite grasp the concept, or value, of talking about “ideas”.
Anyway, it’s just a definition and an idea someone made up.
Sir Roger has just received a request from Canberra saying that the National Library of Australia wished permission to include ValuesAustralia.com in the PANDORA Archive of Australian websites. So … Sir Roger … archived in perpetuity. That’s a kind of immortality. Fame of a sort, one supposes. It’s better than not being archived at least. Although, as Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Where has Sir Roger been? Why has he been absent from his adoring public?
Well, first and least, how could Sir Roger satirise Australian politics any more than Australia’s laughingstock politicians were doing by themselves? How could he point out the ridiculous any more clearly than the ridiculous politicians themselves? It is an unavoidable fact that Australian politics in 2012 are beyond absurd.
It is also an unavoidable fact that the Australian people do not deserve these appalling, self-serving, lying, cheating, machine room rabble.
There are various intelligences. Ordinary general intelligence is one of them. It may be necessary but it far from sufficient. More important are emotional, moral and social intelligence.
Sir Roger is also totally conflicted. He can’t stand Gillard or Rudd both of whom have above average general intelligence and both of whom lack emotional, moral and social intelligence. How can one vote for such awfulness and allow them to ionflict themselves any longer on Australia? But then Tony Abbott lacks all four modes of intelligence. He is terminally gullible and intellectually dishonest apart from being transparently dishonest. Abbott is impossible to vote for.
So who is left? The Greens? They’re certainly more honest and more intelligent in most ways but they can’t step up in their present state especially with the extremists hanging on.
So that’s one reason why Sir Roger has been silent. What could he say?
The big reason for Sir Roger’s silence is that he has been working on his weight loss book, Weightloss Without Willpower. Sir Roger hasn’t made much of it here but he has lost a lot of weight recently. Intentionally, of course. And he decided to share his system by writing a book. It will be available on Amazon and as a .pdf and probably on Kindle.
But for now it will be available for free download here. You can also download the coaching audio for free. Check it out!
The Government is pushing ahead with its demand that dozens of dentists repay $20 million claimed under Medicare for treating people with chronic diseases.
Here’s how it is: Few people can afford dental service, not even preventive.
Just to open your mouth for a dentist will set you back over $70. To have any work done will cost you a lot more.
People who have low-paying jobs or none at all, especially if they have, for example, parental responsibilities, simply can’t afford to go to a private dentist.
They can go to the Dental Hospital (if they happen to live in a capital city) and wait for two or three years in some cases to complete a series of consultations.
Meanwhile, people with missing teeth can lose jobs, miss promotions or, if unemployed, find it extremely difficult to find employment. This is especially serious for people whose work involves standing up in front of people, or managing them: trainers, coaches, teachers, actors, etc. etc. etc.
What can they do? Until some time ago if you had rotting or broken teeth you could go to your GP and make a case that your dental condition was life-threatening – which it can be because, for example, of gum disease which can be linked to heart disease. Your GP could create a Patient Management Plan which included dental work.
Dentist could, with this Plan, provide their services under Medicare. The problem was that they could claim only one item at a time. Therefore some dentists, if they had to do two extractions in a sitting, chose to space them over more than one date. They weren’t claiming or being paid for work they were not doing.
And even then, if a prosthesis was needed – false teeth – only the prosthetist’s services were covered. The false teeth themselves could cost $2000, which is a lot for an unemployed person.
Older (especially pre-fluoride), less-well-paid Australians have dreadful dentition. This scheme was the only possible way to stay in the employment game, not to mention to cling onto some sort of quality of life, self-esteem and respect.
It was, frankly a crappy scheme put together by the coalition years ago. It was, in conscience, the least they could do. And they did the very least they could.
Now the Labor Party thinks even that was too much and wants to junk it.
And on top of that they are punishing dentists with fines for making it possible for that scheme to work.
The most likely reason Health Minister Plibersek has taken this action is as part of a larger strategy to claw back outgoings so that Treasurer Swan can announce his surplus in 2012. This surplus is supposed to prove his economic management credentials (and to poke his tongue out at Fatty Joe Hockey who said Labor would “never deliver a surplus”). But that Labor might win the next election, surplus or not, is a vain hope.
For Sir Roger, this action is the last straw.
With this there is no policy area remaining in which Labor can claim moral or political superiority over the coalition.
On every important issue Labor is in a panicked race to the ethics-free bottom to appease narrow-minded, ignorant, cashed-up bogans who are already, not rusted-on, but welded-on to the coalition.
Gillard today announces a tax-benefit bribe to low-income families with teenage children.
Labor has been in power for three and a half years. They could have done this years ago. Why didn’t they?
They’re in panic.
Do you think immediately, as I did, of Gillard and Abbott (not to mention almost their entire front benches) when you read this from the final chapter of Kevin Dutton’s Flipnosis?
“If experience teaches us anything, it’s this: behind the façade of assiduous, fumbling accomplishment there shimmers a realm of despicably effortless incompetence. An imperishable array of faux-pas, cock-ups and howlers that clunks into mortal existence at the whim of the cognitively challenged.”
So who is left to vote for? Who is left with the moral authority to manage a country for the welfare of its people? Not the Coalition ptui! ptui! who lost their moral compass years ago – so who is left who might keep them both honest?
He walked away. He walked back. He could not look at her. He could not look away. He began to say something. He could not say anything. What could he say? Whatever he said must appal Elenora, perhaps disgust her. Certainly discomfort and embarrass her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain or discomfort or embarrassment. Certainly it would embarrass him. Nothing he could say about his love for Elenora could possibly be appropriate. And, though he longed to say something of his love, he said nothing.
This was the first of what were the very few wise decisions he made from this fateful day forward.
He did not know what to do. He could not sleep. Every evening he went home delirious with desire and aching with yearning. Each night he dreamt of Elenora. Each day he woke early with anticipation and hope in his heart at the thought merely of seeing her again, even if only fleetingly.
Until this day, this butter-fingered Cupid’s tragically clumsy day, Hamgar had been upright and self-possessed, knowing and capable, confident with his students and even a little proud, for there were things, so people said, for him to take pride in. How had he deserved this terrible punishment?
Today, just a day after the failure of industrial negotiations between itself and the Unions, and with people still furious only three weeks after CEO Joyce gave the finger to its entire customer base, the Prime Minister and Australia generally, the Qantas social media uber-geniuses began a twitter campaign with the hashtag #qantasluxury, asking tweeple to tweet “creative” ideas about – um – Qantasluxury, in order to win, honestly, a pair of Qantas pyjamas, and a “luxury amenity kit”.
What happened next was salutory. Derisory tweets were flying within minutes and hours later as Sir Roger now dips his quill it is still the No. 2 trending topic in Australia.
Within an hour, the hashtag was trending across the country, but the tweets were not quite what management expected.
@GrogsGamut tweeted: “#QantasLuxury- when the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.
ABC radio’s PM presenter Mark Colvin, @Colvinius said: “Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #qantasluxury”.
And @the-aaron-smith said: “#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”.
Social media expert James Griffin from SR7 said that, by about 1pm, Australians were sending out 51 tweets a minute on the hashtag. Most of these were tweets making fun of the idea of #qantasluxury.
But Sir Roger’s favourite response is not on twitter:
In less than a heartbeat it was done. The Cupid’s, Bertrand’s, tiny arrow was buried deep in his heart.
Cold as deep blue ice. Hot as white hot gold.
From this moment there was no hope of Cupid’s cruelly-barbed steel ever being removed without tearing his heart out with it.
And Hamgar looked up.
And there was Elenora.
And he loved her.
Suddenly.
Unexpectedly.
Astonishingly.
Unforeseeably.
Unasked-for.
Unrequitably.
Unrequitably, for he knew Elenora. She was a good woman, a private woman, with a love and a home and family of her own.
From his grey hair to his brown sandals Hamgar was shocked, ashamed and confused.
Hamgar was ashamed because he knew his hair was grey. While Elenora’s hair was shiny and black. She was young. She could not love him, he knew. Indeed she hardly noticed him.
He could not love her. It was impossible.
And yet he did. Suddenly and shockingly he loved her with his entire being.
Hamgar did not know what to do, where to look, what to say. It made no sense. Why Elenora? She was nice; she was friendly enough in her way; he had always liked her. Indeed, from the moment he first met her on the day she joined the workshop he had had that feeling you get, don’t you, when you feel you have known someone all your life, in a pleasant, comfortable sort of way. He had always thought Elenora was pretty, it’s true. And she was clever, it’s also true, with a quick and sometimes wicked wit. Yet these things are not on their own enough to lead to Love.
But the Elenora he now saw was beautiful and wonderful and he longed and ached for her, with his body and his mind; with his heart and his soul; with the parts of himself that we will not mention here.
In his daze he forgot where he was; he did not care where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He cared not at all what his life had been, what his life had meant before this moment. There was nothing else but the wondrous Elenora, standing in front of him, blissfully unaware of what felt to him like the volcanic eruption of his heart.
Desire and Doom tore him between them on their torturers’ rack.
There was no way forward. There was no way back. What was he to do?
Today as Hamgar was admiring Elenora’s miniatures, Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
His little wings began trembling with excitement.
His arrow slotted onto the string and with frowning concentration Bertrand began to draw it slowly back.
But his cute little pudgy fingers couldn’t hold the arrow and suddenly out twanged the arrow towards the ground. Through the nets and the draped hangings it flew. Straight into the breast of Hamgar, who looked up in astonishment to see before him the face of Elenora.
And so began the Tragedy that Hamgar’s life from that moment became.
– Aims at Unions’ Gooleys and Shoots Self In Heart
Alan Joyce, a person who appears not to properly grasp the iconic emotional attachment of Australians to the airline he “runs”, and fresh from his greedy, stupid, unearned ~70% pay increase to $5,000,000 a year, has lost no time in proving how little he deserves to be paid at all.
Anyone who has any true, properly developed people skills and understanding of ethical negotiation would have sorted this industrial dispute long ago. But he has apparently grown up with a belief in confrontation and win-lose styles and no ability to persuade, lead, inspire or any of the other qualities which many people on $50,000 a year have and that someone who is paid $5,000,000 a year should be required to have at the highest possible level.
Apparently he claims to be protecting the airline from having its brand trashed by the unions.
As Nick Xenophon says:
“Alan Joyce doesn’t need any help trashing Qantas’ brand.
“He’s done a pretty good job so far and this bizarre move appears to be the next phase in a plan to gut the flying kangaroo.”
As for his pay rise, Sir Roger heard a Qantas shareholder opining that Joyce had done a “pretty good job” and another saying he thought there was a chance Joyce would probably do all right in future.
Any senior executive of a public company will tell you that the CEO’s prime directive is to maximise the return to shareholders. And yet Joyce has been rewarded for presiding over:
and a massive loss of confidence in what was Qantas’s huge and statistically undefeatable advantage – its unrivalled reputation for safety.
Sir Roger recommends everyone try the Joyce Manoeuvre with their own boss.
Go to your boss and request a 70% pay rise on the basis that some people think you have done a “pretty good job” and that you think there’s a chance you will probably do all right in the future. Tell him/her that there’s a public precedent that’s been set by Alan Joyce.
And if it’s good enough for the Qantas board to reward him for that, it’s got to be good enough for your boss to reward you even better in advance for being at least competent.
In the aftermath of his very public News of the World disgrace¹, as Rupert displays the abject decency and compassion he so miraculously discovered, today he has gone even further.
Rupert Murdoch is determined to protect us from drivel, lies, bias, distortion and bullshit.
He has today selflessly erected a paywall around his “flagship” Australian newspaper’s online presence. The intention is to discourage ordinary, intelligent, clean-living Australians from subjection to the cesspool of The Australian‘s politically fanatical, right-wing-agenda-driven garbage of writers like Greg Sheridan.
If you want to be lied to online by Rupert’s nest of sycophantic fools, folks you’re going to have to pay for the privilege. And Rupert’s betting you won’t. That’s how he plans to save the planet from the horrors he unleashed on it and nurtured for so long. And it’s heartwarming – isn’t it? – to see some pretence of morality in the malignant old cunt?
And soon you’ll even have to pay to be lied to if you want to wallow online in the Murdoch sewage works – the Terror, the Fail and the Hun.
Who else wants to pay to eat Rupert’s warm vomit? He’s gambling that you will say, “NOTWorth any money”.
¹BREAKING NEWS:
News is just emerging of plans for a movie about Rupert’s harrowing ordeal in the News of the World fiasco. The movie, to be called The Great Disgrace, is slated to star Steve McQueen’s skeleton as Rupert, and with James Murdoch played by that Gestapo guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face melts like wax when confronted with the Holy Spirit.
Hamgar never really noticed the fat little Cherubs flying around, or sitting on the beams above him. For as long as he could remember, Cherubs had always been everywhere, so common that he no longer saw them, and if he had, well, they were nothing to do with him at this time in his life. The Cherubs, he would have thought, if he did think about them, which really he didn’t, were looking at the young ones, the pretty girls and the handsome boys, not interested in him at all.
And to tell you the truth, they weren’t.
Now Bertrand was a special kind of Cherub called a Cupid. And he was trying really hard to be a good Cupid and to remember all of the instructions he had been taught by his tutors and his mum. But the trouble was, you see, that being that special kind of Cherub called a Cupid he didn’t just have to remember how to fly around and sit in the rafters and on the top of columns. He had to manage a little bow and arrow as well. And he had to do that while he was flying.
You can imagine how difficult it would be for you, remembering to flap your little wings and watch where you were going all the while holding on to a tiny bow in one hand and your fistful of fiddly little arrows in the other. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone and it was all the more difficult because, being a Cupid, and very young, and very new to it all, and his fingers being a bit Cherub-cute and pudgy, holding his little bow and arrow with his fat little fingers was difficult. I mean, had the bow and the arrows been a little larger it might have been easier for a novice Cupid to manage them. But Bertrand wanted so much to get it right. Every chance he got, he’d sit and practise with his little bow and arrow. But it was so hard. He’d take an arrow out of his quiver and try to hold it in place on the bowstring. He’d even flutter his tiny wings as he tried to pull the arrow back a little. But almost always it just went “plop!” onto the floor.
So on this particular day, Bertrand was sitting in Hamgar’s workshop practising as usual and not getting very far as usual, his arrows plopping about into the nets and hangings that were suspended about the workshop. Down below him Hamgar was, as usual, working away, teaching his pupils and now and again chatting to his fellow artisans. It was just a normal day and Hamgar was quite unconscious of Bertrand’s presence above him. Had he looked down, Bertrand could not have seen very much of Hamgar but his grey hair and his shoulders.
Also in the workshop that day were many others as always. Among them Maria the seamstress was there this day, and Alad the painter, and Melina, his voluptuous artist’s model, and ElenoraTrulov, the sculptor of perfect Russian miniatures, and Kira the romantic poet, all busily pursuing their crafts.
When it happened, Hamgar was idly admiring the fine decorative brushstrokes of Elenora’s miniatures, as he often admiringly did. Above him, distracted and frustrated, Bertrand was struggling with his bow and arrow.
And today Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
If only, for Hamgar’s sake, that he hadn’t only almost got it
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
It was a long, long time ago, of course, back when there were cherubim and seraphim flitting about everywhere and the Great Masters could paint their portraits. I know they were real because I have seen photos of their pictures and I have seen ceilings in great palaces and grand cathedrals with their likenesses brushed into the plaster, the cherubs flying around while with saintly patience the great masters painted them from the life.
There was a little Cherub whose name was Bertrand. His cheeks were rosy and his little red mouth was pouty and his golden hair was curly and he had the cutest little wings fluttering on his back. But Bertrand was a disaster waiting to happen (and it did). It’s true he was cute but as cherubs go he wasn’t very good at cherubbing. The truth is he was a bit flustered most of the time. I don’t know why. Perhaps he hadn’t been properly trained. Perhaps he was a First Reserve Cherub, or a Probationary Cherub, or a Work Experience Cherub. Something like that, whatever they had in the olden days. Or perhaps he just hadn’t had breakfast yet.
Anyway Bertrand was a bit nervous and uncertain and clumsy. But he tried. He really did. “More haste less speed,” his mother might have said, if Cherubs have mothers. He tried really hard. Perhaps he tried too hard. Yes that could have been what it was. Perhaps that was the reason he made the terrible mistake.
So one day Bertrand was flying around in the rafters of the workshop where an older man, an artisan and teacher named Hamgar, worked.
Hamgar was a good man for the most part, as men, for the most part, go. He was no saint. He left that up to others who liked fun less than he.
But he was mostly kind and thoughtful and cared about the wellbeing of others, not just his own. He enjoyed using the special skills he brought to his craft and he enjoyed passing them on to others. He joked and people liked him, more or less.
Hamgar’s workshop was busy. Others were there, too, men and girls all busy with their own craft. Some had worked there for a long time, some were new and some, like Hamgar, had worked there for what seemed a long time but really was not so long after all in the scheme of things. If there is a scheme, which, frankly, is a bit doubtful, don’t you think? That’s certainly not how it turned out, anyway. Later on, after “it” happened, Hamgar would search desperately for such a scheme, some sort of meaning to things, however vague, some point to it all, all the pain, something that made the slightest sense whatever.
