Disaster Capitalism

Disaster Capitalism

 

In other news…

Better the devil you know?

 

Howard’s appeal on 60 Minutes tonight fits right into the well-worn Disaster Strategy.

 

On the one hand:

you’ve never had it so good

but on the other:

“these are savage, uncertain and untamed times”.

In other words, you should feel disoriented and anxious and hang on to what you know.

“Love me or loathe me, people know where I stand and what I believe in.”

Quite so, John.

It’s just that we hate what you stand for and despise what you believe in and we don’t want any more of it.

…But We Weren’t

…But We Weren’t

Moe Keelty – yet again

 

Let’s not mince words about Indonesia. While most of its ordinary people, at least the ones we have met, are in the range from friendly to wonderful, it has seemed to us, looking at reasonably recent history, that for the most part Moe Keelty’s Indonesian friends, the police, and their friends  – politicians, military, police, judiciary – are corrupt, ignorant, stupid, racist, bigoted and brutal.

But, you know, we knew we could be wrong.

But we weren’t.

” JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Indonesia’s anti-terrorism chief was relaxed as he mingled with the guests on his lawn. Muslim hard-liners swapped tales of al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and the Philippines. Convicted Bali nightclub bombers feasted on kebabs. 

Indonesian law enforcement – Moe Keelty’s friends.

Three Stooges

Three Stooges

Howard’s 3 Stooges

 

Predictably enough, the rightwing’s stooges are being wheeled out to divert the taint of almost inevitable defeat away from John Howard.

Downer

Larry” Downer is a self-deluding fop and a dandy. He’s a joke. But as long as he is in the cabinet he’s a dangerous joke.

He tells Australia that he has sent “a firm message” to the Burmese military thugs to tell them to stop being naughty. I bet the certifiably deranged General Than Shwe is quaking in his jackboots and is preparing to call elections and hand over power to Aung San Suu Kyi on the basis of Larry Downer’s polite finger wagging. I bet he really cares what Downer thinks.

Meanwhile as Minister for Foreign Affairs Downer has been in charge of one of the most disgraceful – and furtive – exercises in complicity with corruption, by which Australia supports – with AFP personnel – a brutal police state which ruthlessly subjugates its people – all with the help of the joke who is the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.

 

Keelty

Yes, the man who has been running the AFP assistance to the Myanmar police thugs is our favourite Stooge, “my PM right or wrong, and how else can I subvert democracy for you today, John”, “Moe” Keelty.

Keelty, who has declared war on “teh climate” for christ’s sake, and presumably won’t be satisfied until the climate is totally destroyed. Keelty, who is in bed with Indonesia in the most obscene way and who, as AFP Commissioner, complaisantly condemned stupid Australian kids to possible/probable death by firing squad surely only to please the Indonesians instead of doing the right thing and arresting them back in Australia where they would face a real justice system with some integrity. Let’s not mince words about Indonesia. While most of its ordinary people, at least the ones we have met, are in the range from friendly to wonderful, it seems to us, looking at reasonably recent history, that for the most part Moe Keelty’s Indonesian friends – its politicians, military, police and judiciary – are corrupt, ignorant, stupid, racist, bigoted and brutal. But, you know, we could be wrong.

 

Andrews

And then there’s the other Stooge, “Curly” Andrews.

Now, people ought to stop taking his latest outburst about Sudanese refugees seriously.

It was not a considered or serious position. It was not about real policy. Don’t look for justification or evidence to support his assertions. It wasn’t intended for you. It was a dog-whistle intended only for the loony right, Pauline’s mob. You can see it was intended for her lot because:

” Speaking at a Gold Coast Media Club function today, Ms Hanson said she welcomed Mr Andrews’ move, adding, “It’s been recorded in Victoria that there is a 25 per cent increase in HIV.

“There is TB, and a case of leprosy which has been recorded in South Australia.”

Ms Hanson said the federal government had a responsibility to ensure the safety of Australians.

“You can’t bring people into the country who are incompatible with our way of life and culture,” she said.

“They get around in gangs and there is escalating crime that is happening.”

Score one to Kevin Andrews and John Howard. After all, they need to bolster all the support they can get, even if it is the crazies, the filth.

Strangely enough, these claims have been made before by other racists, too.

Jingoistic Tamworth Mayor, James Treloar, tried to keep Sudanese refugees out of Tamworth earlier this year, claiming that:

” They have been before the courts on numerous charges. Of the 12 Sudanese people who live in Tamworth, eight have been before the courts for everything from dangerous driving to rape.

In an earlier post, we noted

” an uncanny similarity between [Treloar’s] claim and a 2004 British editorial claiming that,

the papers have revelled this month in reporting on court cases against asylum seekers for everything from dangerous driving to rape.

Tamworth police, however, have denied any local Sudanese people have been charged over a matter of a sexual nature.

According to Acting Police Commander, Greig Stier

“They are a very small representation, in the two years of research that I can give you, in relation to being involved with police. And the times they are involved with police are minor traffic matters, are the majority of those offences.”

[Mayor Treloar] said that

“They come from countries where there are outbreaks of TB and polio. How can we trust the department to screen those things?”

Observers noted an uncanny similarity between [Treloar’s] health scare and a claim by … Pauline Hanson, that federal parliamentary secretary for immigration, Andrew Robb, had admitted on television that the Government was letting in many ‘black South Africans’ with health issues.

[He] indicated there was around about 37 per cent of black South Africans that were coming in with ongoing health issues … “There’s increasing numbers of TB (tuberculosis) and they have picked up … it could be almost one third that actually carries TB.”

Strangely enough, people like Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich claim that

” Illegal aliens have tuberculosis and leprosy.”
“Many of them are child molesters, they’re drunk drivers and rapists and robbers.”

Gosh! It’s almost as if there’s international collusion between all these racists!

Well, we know a number of Sudanese people. In our experience we have found those we have met to be universally charming, full of life and laughter, and keen to participate and make a life in Australia. Which is extraordinary considering the circumstances which brought them here. (Quite a contrast to the stooges, Hanson and the right generally, whom we find almost universally ignorant, bigoted, nasty, hateful, judgmental and life denying.)

Only a few more sleeps and perhaps we can wake up from this nightmare.

The Man of Mode

The Man of Mode

 

or Sir Fopling Flutter – “God Almighty’s Fool”

 

 Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown,

They seem’d not of heaven’s making, but their own.

Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass,

But there goes more to a substantial ass;

Something of man must be exposed to view,

That, gallants, they may more resemble you:

Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ,

The ladies would mistake him for a wit

And when he sings, talks loud, and cocks, would cry:

“I vow, methinks he’s pretty company”

So brisk, so gay, so travell’d, so refined,

As he took pains to graft upon his kind.

True fops help nature’s work, and go to school

To file and finish God Almighty’s fool.

from the Epilogue to The Man Of Mode by George Etherege (1676)

 

“Pwithee, when I am engaged upon my intwigues, bwayingly bewating a burmese genewal, par examplé, e’en the lewdest of them all, I would fain cawwy upon my person a big stick, adorn’d forsooth with wibbons upon’t, the which to wave most menacingly at the vile perpetwators. (A pox upon the vile debauchewers!) A faux joust upon the unjust foe! (Forgive me til’ I wipe the chortle from me lips!) Naturelementé it has not the slightest effect upon ’em and yet it maketh me, I own, t’ appear most fierce in Canbewwa…yet of a courteous-mannered qualité. Un noblé politesse. Ung Gena Saze Kwoy. Marry, it maketh one appear so much more…fashionably ineffectual.
“One ought not to offend the powerful, I trow.
To be fore’er obsequious is my vow.”

Hell, Pell

Hell, Pell

Cardinal Pell after Bacon

 

To Hell, Pell-Mell

 

C ardinal Pell has claimed on PM today that Global Warming is not happening.
He has “studied the science”, he says, and come to the rational conclusion that there is no evidence for global warming. In fact, he said, he was speaking to a “scientist” only the other day, and he said that the rise in CO2 follows warming rather than preceding it. Case closed.

He’s talking about the Milankovitch cycles which in fact do not debunk human causes for global warming. Skepticalscience covers this and pretty much all the other arguments against anthropogenic causes for global warming.

But hey, don’t put George down. It’s good that he’s a sceptic. That’s scientific, right?

He’s always totally rational and that’s why he should be trusted. He uses a special textbook called The Bible, which was written by his imaginary friend in the sky, so it must be true, right?

That’s why he believes:

  • that a virgin gave birth to a son after being visited by a winged humanoid from another dimension and then being impregnated by an immaterial spirit;
  • that a man actually walked on water;
  • that a man actually rose from the dead;
  • that a man actually floated bodily up into the sky and went to heaven.
  • that there really is a place called heaven where physical bodies go and are re-animated after they die;
  • that a woman was created from a man’s rib;
  • that a man actually divided two loaves of bread and five fishes such that there was sufficient to feed thousands of people with some left over;
  • that wine and bread become the real and actual blood and flesh of a man who lived—if he did live—two thousand years ago,
  • and who left the earthly realm altogether in the most dramatic and unequivocal way imaginable,
  • and that despite being actual blood and flesh the ex-wine and ex-bread still taste like wine and bread.

George Pell’s rationalist credentials are obviously unquestionable.

So let’s put the future of the planet in his hands. Okay?

Freedom of Speech and APEC

Freedom of Speech and APEC

Do Australians have freedom of speech?

Do Australians have freedom of speech? And, if so, was that freedom of speech illegally curtailed by the Howard government and the NSW government during APEC?

IANAL but it seems so.

Freedom of speech is not a stated right in the Constitution but laws restricting freedom to discuss, debate and publish communications concerning politics, political parties and individual politicians are disallowed in the Constitution, by implication, as inimical to the nature of the representative political system which was intended to be created by the Constitution.

In political matters there is “an area of immunity from legal control, particularly from legislative control.”

You might think that the APEC demonstration on Saturday 8 September was a political statement. You might think that the size and intended path of that demonstration was part of the statement itself. You might think that any legal action which attempted to curtail and restrict the size and place of that statement was improper and contrary to the Constitution (e.g. ss 7 and 24 and the related sections).

You might think that a state and federal police presence which by its size was intended to and/or in fact did intimidate people so that they might have feared fully to express [publish] their views, or which actually prevented people from communicating their views — either before or during the expression of those views — was in contravention of the Commonwealth Constitution.

You might even believe it arguable that a wall, erected pursuant to a legal process, which protected certain political leaders from receiving communications from electors, was in contravention of the Constitution.

You might even think that the Howard government does not particularly care for the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and that they act despite it and in contravention of it and, where necessary to their agenda, work around it.

We might think, and you might agree, that the letter which Values Australia received in March from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship

  • which held a variety of laws and acts to our head, and
  • which attempted to intimidate Values Australia by calling Values Australia “misleading and offensive”, and
  • claimed that it “may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas”, and
  • claimed that it “may also create confusion regarding the important business managed by the Department”

was acting illegally in this attempt to use the law to intimidate, and to restrict the expression of political opinion.

You might think that it is time the Howard government was removed from office.

You might think that the Iemma government in NSW is a total joke and that you wished there were a credible alternative.

The full text of a High Court case — Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation — which discussed the issue of freedom of speech is here:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1997/25.html

And here are some of the relevant excerpts:

” There is implied in the Commonwealth Constitution a freedom to publish material:

(a) discussing government and political matters;

(b) of and concerning members of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia which relates to the performance by such members of their duties as members of the Parliament or parliamentary committees;

(c) in relation to the suitability of persons for office as members of the Parliament.”

[ … ]

Freedom of communication

Freedom of communication on matters of government and politics is an indispensable incident of that system of representative government which the Constitution creates

[ … ]

Communications concerning political or government matters between the electors and the elected representatives, between the electors and the candidates for election and between the electors themselves were central to the system of representative government, as it was understood at federation[43]. While the system of representative government for which the Constitution provides does not expressly mention freedom of communication, it can hardly be doubted, given the history of representative government and the holding of elections under that system in Australia prior to federation, that the elections for which the Constitution provides were intended to be free elections in the sense explained by Birch. Furthermore, because the choice given by ss 7 and 24 must be a true choice with “an opportunity to gain an appreciation of the available alternatives”, as Dawson J pointed out in Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth[44], legislative power cannot support an absolute denial of access by the people to relevant information about the functioning of government in Australia and about the policies of political parties and candidates for election.

That being so, ss 7 and 24 and the related sections of the Constitution necessarily protect that freedom of communication between the people concerning political or government matters which enables the people to exercise a free and informed choice as electors. Those sections do not confer personal rights on individuals. Rather they preclude the curtailment of the protected freedom by the exercise of legislative or executive power. As Deane J said in Theophanous[45], they are “a limitation or confinement of laws and powers [which] gives rise to a pro tanto immunity on the part of the citizen from being adversely affected by those laws or by the exercise of those powers rather than to a ‘right’ in the strict sense”. In Cunliffe v The Commonwealth[46], Brennan J pointed out that the freedom confers no rights on individuals and, to the extent that the freedom rests upon implication, that implication defines the nature and extent of the freedom. His Honour said[47]:

“The implication is negative in nature: it invalidates laws and consequently creates an area of immunity from legal control, particularly from legislative control.”

 

[our emphases]

hat-tip to Club Troppo