Kevin Andrews: Farewell

Kevin Andrews: Farewell

& Good Riddance

So, great news this week in Australian politics!

 

At least and at last some of the scum has begun oozing out under the parliamentary doors. Important slime in this case.

But why is it that the “Father Of the House” is always the worst of the worst?

Before, it was Ruddock, the Nazgul, the nastiest, slimiest bastard who ever pissed and farted his way into the House pretending to be the friend of the People, as long as the “people” were white and/or wealthy. Oh, and straight. And didn’t arrive by boat. He was an abusive “Father” of the House as a Minister. He was malevolent and merciless as the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, particularly for his heartless treatment of desperate refugees escaping from wars that Australia’s arsonist “Liberal”/Nationalist politicians had gleefully and enthusiastically (and frankly cock-suckingly) helped to ignite. As Attorney General in 2003 he “introduced the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill to prevent any possible court rulings allowing same-sex marriages or civil unions.” Nice guy—other crusading decisions on same-sex marriage suggest he was channeling god’s hatred of homos. Worst of all perhaps was his hypocritical wearing of the Amnesty International badge at the same time he was systematically and brutally denying aid to the very people Amnesty International was fighting to support.

But that was before.

The current Father of the House is not long for this political world, and in contrast to the abusive “Father” of the House Ruddock, this one has been a “Deadbeat Dad“; a useless, stupid—and therefore dangerous—piece of shit. They love him in the House because he’s perfect for the Libs—a Useful Idiot; a biddable dickhead; Australia’s version of America’s Lindsey Graham, or the UK’s Chris Grayling.

 

What happened?

 

Well . . . ‘Howard-era stalwart’ Kevin Andrews was (what they call in the US) primaried for the seat of Menzies by the barrister and former soldier Keith Wolahan. Everything is right about this, if more than a decade late. Values Australia has been calling for Andrews’ dishonorable discharge since 2007. He has lost the ultra-right seat honouring the crumbling horror that was Menzies.

Not only that, but he was vigorously supported in his reselection by the top conservative powerbrokers:

  • Health Minister Greer Kunt 
  • Education Minister Ellen Bludge
  • Assistant Treasurer Michail Sucks
  • Treasurer Jess Friedeggburger 
  • Scum from Marketing
  • and, best of all, John Hunt the Coward  

A really delectable and comprehensive FAIL.
 

Why did Values Australia call for Kevin Andrews’ removal/ departure/resignation/whatever it takes?

 

Because he was/(is) incompetent, inhumane in the way only self-righteous christians can be, and—because unintelligent, weak and biddable—dangerous as a loose cannon.

In a post on 2 November 2007 we reported on the ongoing Haneef scandal:

“They were ripping up the doctrine of the separation of powers,” Mr Barns said.

“What you are seeing here is the politicisation of an investigation …”

“It shows there was a pre-judgment by Minister Andrews and the Government, prior to the magistrate’s decision being taken, and this decision was politically stage-managed rather than being done according to law.”

Andrews was at the time Minister for Immigration under the soon to be unceremoniously jettisoned John Howard.

As Sir Roger said at the time, Andrews was “now reduced to being the bumboy for a frail, doomed old man.” 

He dog-whistled racist bullshit about Sudanese refugees to Pauline’s base in the run-up to the election. Unsuccessfully. 

But mostly he should have resigned 13 years ago (or earlier if possible) because for party political advantage, for religious and ideological reasons, contrary to the impartiality of the law, contrary to the interests of the country, you might think well and truly contrary to his oath, and solely in the interests of re-election (oops), he politicised a criminal investigation, prejudged a defendant, preempted a magistrate’s finding and in the process nearly destroyed and sacrificed an innocent man’s life to the racist, morally corrupt Liberal Party.

Sir Roger couldn’t be happier to see the last of Andrews and to see the power of the Power Elite of the government tumbling, crumbling, collapsing, decaying, decomposing, degenerating, deteriorating, disintegrating, dissolving, fragmenting, perishing, putrefying, going to pieces

 

 

Here are some of the Values Australia historical blog posts that are more or less relevant to Andrews:

 

Australian Value #1

Australian Value #1

Values Australia’s Aussie Values T-Shirt on display and immortalised in Museums Victoria

Ellen Sludge Breaks the Cardinal Law

Many moons ago, Sir Roger wrote the First Law of Australian Values

Australian Value #1:

 

Politicians do NOT own Australian Values

 

The fact that John Hunt, the Coward, and “Slim” Beazley had engaged in a battle to hijack Australian Values was the reason that Sir Roger had himself taken up arms against this anti-social piracy and became a global celebrity. 

The least qualified human beings to be aware of, to understand, or to protect Australian Values are, of course, bloody politicians. Politicians have continually attempted to kidnap our values and debauch them into the authoritarian beliefs of the alt-right, the international catholic paedophilia ring and the born-again theocratists. 

Values are not created by fiat, by law, by act, charter, legislation or decree.

Real values are organic, historic, and always evolving. Values are created by the mass of free, individual humans. (Unless they’re members of the Hillsaralive Church of the Sound of Music, in which case they’re just the brainwashed living dead.)  

This said, Sir Roger was delighted to see a delightful piece of work by the Grauniad’s Frant which asked all the right questions and provided some excellent answers:

So the latest dickhead in charge of controlling Australian Citizens and what they are required to believe is Ellen Smudge, Acting Mincer for Denizens, Immitation, Migraine Surfaces and Multicuntural Affairs, including responsibility for O’Pears.   

What are Ellen’s qualifications for nurturing Australian Values? Well, mostly fudging: 

“In June 2017  Smudge, and Liberal Party colleagues Greer Kunt and Michelle Sucker, faced the possibility of being prosecuted for contempt of court after they made public statements criticising the sentencing decisions of two senior judges while the government was awaiting their ruling on a related appeal. They avoided prosecution by, eventually, making an unconditional apology to the Victorious Court of Appeal. Conviction could have resulted in their expulsion from the parliament under Constitution s 44(ii) and, as a result, the government losing its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. 

 And of course more recently there was this: 

“In March 2020, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ordered that an Afghan asylum seeker who had previously been a part of the Afghan National Army be granted a temporary protection visa. Smudge, who was Acting Immitation Minister at the time, instantly appealed the judgement of the AAT to federal court, which failed. However during the 6-day appeal process, the asylum seeker had been kept in the detention centre. Six months later, the Federal Court found that Grudge, “engaged in conduct which can only be described as criminal,” and that Drudge had deprived the asylum seeker of his liberty, which has prompted calls for his resignation. 

As you will be unsurprised to learn, Ms Nudge (full name Nudge-Nudge-Wink-Wink-Saynomore)  is an old hand at dog whistling and, as Joe Biden said of the Trump, “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn.” She doesn’t really like anyone who is not a white christian who speaks English. The Western Suburbs love it.  

Miss Judge wants it to be very clear that her government deeply believes in and supports Australians’ Freedom of Speech.  This is presumably why there is no actual statement in the Australian Constitution permitting or mandating Freedom of Speech, and why no government has ever proposed any referendum to establish this right, and why freedom of speech is a thinly technical presumption devised by a few narrow majorities of High Court Judges, and only with respect to political speech. You might say that all speech is in a sense political and you would be right but you might not wish to be the one to fork out the cash to run a case in the matter in the High Court. All citizens are equal under the law and have equal rights of access to justice as long as they have the funds to afford a decent lawyer.  

The Australian government’s tolerance and its attitude to free speech are demonstrated by its amendments to Wikipedia, and its action to kindly inform Values Australia in March 2007 that if it didn’t pull the site down it would send it to gaol on the basis of a variety of laws. This was in addition to its actually closing down a parody site of the Prime Minister. So aspirational immigrants need to understand that by “free speech” the government means you can say anything you like, anything at all, that agrees with the government and does not hurt its feelings.

Mateship of course is the value most often and most fiercely promoted as the essence of being Australian . . . because no other country has such a value. Australia is so mateship-oriented that we even celebrate it as a black grease called VEGEMATE.

You might think that Mateship is just a kind of friendship and other countries have friendship so what’s so special. But no. Mateship is something far more deep and complex.

Here’s what Sir Roger says about Mateship:

1) Mateship is the one and the only Central Pillar of Australian values;

2) Only men are permitted to have mates;

3) Women are banned from having mates because women have actual meaningful interpersonal relationships with actual friends. which is against the Rules of Mateship.

4) Mateship is not the same as Shipmate, which suggests a different kind of relationship.

5) Mates do not touch each other.

5a) unless they are pissed, when a mate might use the term “Matey” and profess an unseemly level of affection. This transgression is only tolerated because the mates are so pissed they won’t remember it in the morning. This is the evolutionary function of the hangover. 

So what is mateship?

Mateship is pretending to be friends with someone who doesn’t want your job.

A mate is someone who won’t sleep with your mistress without asking you first.

A great mate is a rugby league footballer who invites you to a gang bang with the other members of his team.

 

Ruby Murdocraci will be your TRUE Mate if you are a biddable politician and you stroke him just the way he likes it, at least for as long as you are useful.

A mate is what men have who are incapable of attracting actual friends (see “Politician”), or of forming any kind of vaguely intimate relationships, particularly in their own families (ibid).

As Sir Roger says, the only strange thing about mateship is that the people who have promoted this value most loudly over the last several decades—and now, as we see, Minister Bludge—have never had a real mate in their lives because they are such dorks and bogans. (Minister Sludge is a certified Bogan, being from rural Victorious.) The people who call them mates only do it because they have useful stuff they can give them, like TV stations, or Australia (they gave that away to their “mate” Ruby Murdocraci). 

TAKE THE VALUES AUSTRALIA MATESHIP TEST

Values Australia has prepared a special alternative Mateship Test which we guarantee no Australian politician or fat-arsed bureaucrat would pass, particularly the Minister for DIC and his silly pen-pushers.

Take it yourself. Use it for trivia nights. 

There is more about Australian Values here.

 

Lynton Crosby Outed

Lynton Crosby Outed

 

. . . as Dutton’s Mews Muse (probably)

 

Sir Roger has it on authority from multiple sources that the Dead Cat on the Table ploy, most recently fed to and trotted out by Peter Dutton, is the signature work of one Lynton Crosby. Goebbels was also a master propagandist.

What?

Sir Roger is in no way suggesting that Crosby is comparable to or correlated with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, just as Barnaby did with the boats and the beef, Sir Roger just mentioned two things side by side. How dare you suggest that Barnie was throwing a long-dead and rancid cat on the table, or that Lynton Crosby is just as putrid! How very dare you!

ICYMI, what is a “dead cat”?

According to The Spectator :

“ When,  Crosby says,  you are in a hole or faced with the tricky task of diverting attention away from some unwanted piece of news you should throw a dead cat onto the table. Hey presto! No-one is talking about the bad news; everyone is talking about the dead cat on the table.

Lynton Crosby – sorry, SIR Lynton Crosby (knighted for confusing the British electorate into voting for the wrong set of poncing fools last year) – it is said SIR Lynton Crosby has, as his favourite method of tricking the voting public into voting for the wrong team, the above-mentioned Dead Cat Ploy.

The function of this skullduggery is to cause everyone — including especially the media — to talk about the one thing the party has going for it. The media of course lap it up and blow it up and smear it over everything they own because there are now too few journalists, they are overworked and overwhelmed and they are desperate for an easy story  (“what are they saying on twitter?”). And so it becomes the Big Story of the Day, or the week, it reinforces the one issue that does well in the party’s focus groups and turns the media gaze away from issues where the other side polls better.

It is also used to divert attention (and conversation) away from damaging embarrassments.

And what would they not want people talking about?

Well, almost everything. The budget, last year’s budget, the one before that. Malcolm Mansion’s incompetent mismanagement of the NBN, health, education, pensions, unemployment, the economy, growth, unemployment. The “Innovative Society” needed to be hidden after the NBN raid because that just reinforces that if Malcolm is so incompetent that he can’t make the cheap and nasty version cost heaps less than the expensive shiny one then he’s got no chance of pulling off an innovation of any kind.

Then there’s:

  • superannuation
  • tax cuts (except for the rich)
  • tax increases
  • the climate
  • the environment
  • fracking
  • burning rivers
  • subsidies to polluters
  • orphan industries
  • new coal mines
  • the Great Barrier Reef and coral bleaching

. . . to name just a few.

The list of topics they’d rather we didn’t have a close look at includes just about everything – oh, except the Tony Abbott obsession with keeping the brown-skinned people away from our pristine White Australia.

Lynty-baby certainly has his work cut out.

Anyway, Sir Roger hopes that Sir Crosby will be as effective in this election as he was in the recent Canadian election, where his client collapsed in a landslide.

The problem is that the Dead Cat ploy is not a surprise anymore.

The media are onto it like a shark smelling blood at a dog show and are beginning to cover the campaigner and not the issues. More and more people are talking about the sliminess of the liberal party’s campaign strategy and campaign strategist and despising them for trying to play them for fools, or more importantly, trusting them even less than before if that is possible.

The propagandist is in the spotlight when he’s supposed to be invisible, and the ‘valiant hero of the East’, or at least the Eastern Suburbs, is the one who’s supposed to be bathed in the limelight.

 

 

Oliver Sacks and “Soul Murder”

Oliver Sacks and “Soul Murder”

 After:  Oliver Sacks  by Luigi Novi  9.13.09

. . . the arms that long for love

  Sir Roger was listening to the ABC Science Show today. It was Robyn Williams’ homage to Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, The Man Who Thought His Wife Was a Hat, Seeing Voices, Uncle Tungsten etc. etc. etc.) and was jolly-well enjoying it immensely. The sun was shining into the conservatory, the hounds had been exercised, the ice was clinking cheerfully in the Glenfiddich, all was right with the world … when suddenly his Lordship was shaken by these words:

 Listen to the complete ABC Science Show feature on Oliver Sacks

In the show, Sacks recalled his early (wartime) childhood experience after being evacuated to the country from London during the blitz.

He called it “soul murder”.

Sir Roger’s glass slid from his hand and he watched it slowly fall, like an overcranked silent film, to be dashed on the Italian tiles of the conservatory floor.

The idea of murdering a child’s soul – what would that mean? To thrust a knife into the heart of the spirit of playfulness and enthusiasm and joy, to cut off the hands that grasp so eagerly for learning, to amputate the arms that long for love, to sever the legs that long to walk tall, to blind the imagination and every dream, and to gut the body of hope.

To replace it all with what — an interminable desert of dust and ash and despair, and the nightmare of blank nothingness.

Repairing to the Library Sir Roger blew the dust off an article about “soul murder” by Leonard Shengold who said:

“ Soul murder is the term I have used for the apparently willful abuse and neglect of children by adults that are of sufficient intensity and frequency to be traumatic. By that I mean that the children’s subsequent emotional development has been profoundly and predominantly negatively affected.”

The mind of the master of Migently Estate flashed into flame, like ancient nitrocellulose film in a poorly maintained projector on a hot day, with the thought that the treatment of asylum seekers by successive Australian governments, and particularly their Prime Ministers and Ministers, their bureaucracies and bureaucrats, and their profit-driven corporate contractors, matches the description of “soul murder”.

Especially — though not only — when it is perpetrated against children for whom as a society we are collectively responsible. And more damningly, as a Culture — which we so pridefully contrast with others we call barbaric, backward, primitive, knuckle-dragging, inhumane – we are deeply shamed.

And so Sir Roger slumped into the rattan and pondered to whom, on Shengold’s definition, the term “soul murderer” might be applied. Who had publicly and wilfully perpetrated, advertised and perhaps boasted of abuse against children who are, after all, in the broad sense in Australia’s care (you know, to discourage people from getting on boats and to break the people smugglers’ “business model”)?

And, he mused, those would include Dutton, Morrison, Turnbull, Abbott, Rudd, Gillard, Howard, Keating, Evans, Bowen, Ruddock, Vanstone.

Who else?

All those who voted in parliament for them and their policies.

All those facilitators, such as bureaucrats and others, who were ‘just doing their jobs’. Heartlessly. 

And all those who are complicit because they voted to put those people in parliament.

And he shouted to the cat, “You can say ‘not in my name‘ as much and as loudly as you bloody well like, but actually it is in your name and you are not absolved unless you do something about it. It is in your name if you vote for either of the major parties party.”

“And that’s all right, puss,” he said quietly, “as long as you are clear and okay with yourself that that is who you are: someone who is okay with the murder of children’s souls.”

Scott Morrison’s Ghastly Apparition

Scott Morrison’s Ghastly Apparition

 

Auschwitz in the morning

  

Sir Roger is having a short break from the hard work of watching his serfs tiling the fields, shaving the sheep and milking the bulls or whatever they do.

He has tried to fit in some self-improving rest and recreation activities (see photograph above) and has had some time to read.

He read this by George Steiner (1967):

“ We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.

And Sir Roger had a sudden moment of déjà vu.

A ghastly vision of Scott Morrison swirled ethereally into view – happily going to church to improve the odds (which are Ø) of his personal salvation; on his knees humbly praying for forgiveness from someone he couldn’t possibly — and obviously doesn’t — comprehend; jovially supporting his football team while children in his care cut themselves from despair; and then back to the serious business of bastardry, sitting behind the big desk of his own Auschwitz coldly making the lives of innocent others a misery.

For the Party.

Oh, and his career.

 

 

 

What is Arpa Narpa Narp?

What is Arpa Narpa Narp?

A guide to Federal Electioneering

 

 

Q: What is “Arpa Narpa Narp“?

 

A:Where everyone’s bills are going, according to folksy, down with the biddies, Tony Abbott today.  
Strangely enough Sir Roger don’t recall his bills ever going anywhere else over all his long years. Except at Col’s, where they’re going Darndarn (Proiza Sadarn). Or not.

So why did Abbott, sitting among the cooing old ladies, make such an obvious claim?

He said it because the biddies (and the viewers) would find, oddly enough, that they agreed with him. And they would nod, and frown at the awful bills (Goa Narp).

And people watching on teevee would not only agree but see that Abbott was someone other people agreed with.

“It seems it is all right to agree with Abbott,” they might think, “and what he said makes sense, doesn’t it?”

The problem, of course, is that Arpa Narpa Narp is where bills always go. And despite suggesting otherwise, and despite his royal telephone, or the dimwitted cardinal, there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. And he knows it.

If you think about it you can work that out.

Average incomes have doubled in less than a decade. Inflation isn’t going below zero, nor are interest rates.

Abbott and/or his advisers knew exactly what he was doing. (Actually on balance, probably just his advisers…)

The technique is to make a statement which provokes an instant, automatic response in what Daniel Kahneman calls “System 1” thinking.

System 1 is fast, impulsive, automatic, uses stereotypes, is often inaccurate and can only make good judgments on simple tasks. System 1 thinking doesn’t take much energy at all.

Bread and . . . . . . . . . . . . ?

2 + 2 = . . . . . ?

Quickly: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much is the ball?
Quick! What’s your immediate answer?      $ . . . . . . . .

17 x 13 =  . . . . . . . . . ?

So politicians (and their advisers) attempt to speak directly to System 1, to manipulate a desired response and not to give people time to rouse “System 2”  into action.

System 2 is the thinking that works things out and considers complex problems.

System 2 takes attention. Filling out forms, deciding which phone or soap powder represents the best value, working out what to say to that girl or boy, writing your thesis.

System 2 is much better at working things out but it gets tired really quickly because it uses so much energy.

That’s why politicians and the Murdoch tabloids don’t like to give people a chance to actually think too hard. They might work out the scam.

So Sir Roger recommends not letting them get away with it. Listen to their simplistic nonsense so that you know when they’re lying — (as Stuart Wagstaff used to say, “and isn’t that…all the time?”).

Tell your friends.

  

  

By the way, in our quick test did you get that the ball was 10c?

Sadly, no. If the ball is 10c, then the bat, costing a dollar more than the ball, would be $1.10 and the total for bat and ball would be $1.20, not $1.10 as stated.

The ball is actually 5c.

Oh, and 17 x 13 is obviously a System 2 exercise … can you do it in your head? Well done! 

17 x 13 = 221

And now you feel like taking a nap.

Daniel Kahneman’s book is called Thinking, Fast and Slow. Sir Roger HIGHLY recommends it. Available on Kindle, too.