Keelty

May 10, 2009 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, Values

Keelty

 

Gone at long last

 

How much time should one spend on this slug?
We don’t even feel like woo-hoo. Just “at last” and “good riddance” and “what took you so long”.

One of the things we really dislike about (not exclusively-) Australian culture is the way we rail against awful people and the moment they die or resign we politely say ever such nice things about them. It’s hypocritical and weak and cowardly. We think. We have no such qualms. Keelty in our view was a bad man, morally weak, a disastrous Commissioner who willingly ran over the basics of human rights and legal traditions like habeas corpus in order to pursue a flawed and misguided agenda.

He was a willing and irretrievably politicised Liberal Party stooge, and concerned more with appearance than with the truth.


His most egregious failures are well-known – the obscene treatment of young Australians in the Bali Nine affair, Haneef, the onanistic display of muscle at APEC, and the Ul-Haque farce.

Speaking of Ul-Haque we once asked,

“ Justice Adams said ASIO officers ‘committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping.’ When do they go to prison? Have they been arrested and charged yet? Where are they being detained? Are they being pursued and prosecuted by the AFP with the same vigour and determination that it showed against…oh, I don’t know…Mohamed Haneef, say?”

Good question still.

Elsewhere we said:

“ It’s time for Mick Keelty to resign. Or be sacked. Keelty has to go because of how he thinks about the law. He has to go because everything points to his being utterly politicised and his making decisions on political, not legal, grounds as directed by his [then] masters, the Howard ministry. Keelty made, cleverly he probably thought, a Faustian pact with the Devil of Realpolitik. Now he’s been caught out yet again and so we say, yet again:

Do the decent thing at long last, Mick.

And we said this:

“ Sack [him] for misfeasance. Malfeasance. Non-feasance. Abuse of power by a public official. Criminal stupidity. Any of those will do.
Federal Police yesterday released a statement saying the former Gold Coast doctor [Haneef] is no longer a person of interest to them, and they have found there are no grounds to proceed against him. [SBS News]

Well fuck me dead – I’m Foreskin Fred! Yes, after all this time. After all the waste. After all the harm. After all the stupidity and incompetence. After Scotland Yard laughed at the AFP; months after the Queensland Police Service and ASIO both said there were no grounds. After all the subversion of democracy, the courts and the rule of law.

Sack them.

Everything about the carriage of the Haneef affair by the AFP and the government suggests that it never was about public safety; that it always was a political stunt; that it was in fact a considered and calculated decision by the AFP to use the Haneef matter for political ends. As we know from another case, the AFP sought every possible opportunity to test the envelope of the terrorism laws. Keelty, in particular, clearly operates a political agenda, having capitulated under pressure from John Howard years ago. He learned his lesson well and in the Haneef case hung his hat on the re-election of the Howard government. This means that he has lost sight of his actual role, his constitutional – and certainly his moral – obligation to the people of Australia and the democracy they own.

Nothing has happened to cause us to resile from these opinions. Keelty appalls us because he respects neither democracy nor the rule of law, the law being not a tool for repression and control but a safeguard of a vibrant civil society.

Keelty cheerfully acquiesced in the subversion of such safeguards.

  

Sacrifice?

Mar 17, 2009 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values, War

Sacrifice?

Can we just say to all the politicians who pompously intone the word “sacrifice” over the freshly dead bodies of Australian soldiers:

 

BULLSHIT!
WEASEL!
UNSPEAK!

 

Rudd

“ His sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

Turnbull:

“ All Australians are indebted for this, the greatest of sacrifices in our name.”

Let’s be really clear.

They didn’t “SACRIFICE”.

Sacrifice requires an intention. Death wasn’t their intention. Their intention was to stay alive.

To sacrifice is, roughly literally, to perform a sacred rite.

There was nothing ritual about the Australian soldier being killed in Afghanistan yesterday. Nor was there anything ‘sacred’.

Soldiers don’t “sacrifice”.

They get killed,

blasted,

blown to pieces,

in an obscenity we call war.

Blood splatters everywhere.

Pieces of shattered bone, skull, leg, liver, brain fly around.

Soldiers scream and groan in agony before they lose consciousness and leave their families without a husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, or friend.

To glorify and sanitise this as “sacrifice” is a willful, disingenuous and deliberate misrepresentation of the truth and an abomination in the language.

It is an attempt to make death in war acceptable or even good, somehow holy and blessed instead of admitting the horror, the awful, the dreadful, truth that people who have actually been there almost invariably describe — if they have words they can even bring themselves to speak.

Instead of being honest, the politicians go on to stitch the poor dead soldier onto the false myths of the faded, fraying, Anzac fabric.

“ He was a fine and courageous soldier in the great Anzac tradition,” Mr Rudd said.

And when they show images on television, they show PR footage of the Aussies dashing around with their rifles and hi-tech helmets being macho.

They never show pictures of their guts being sprayed everywhere.

Then there is the other nonsense.

At a time like this thoughts, prayers, condolences and sympathies are thick in the air like a flock of pigeons on crystal meth.

Rudd:

“ On behalf of the Australian government I extend my condolences to the family of this soldier, his friends and to his loved ones.” The thoughts and prayers of the entire nation were with the soldier’s family at this most difficult time, he said. “I would like to convey my deepest sympathy to his loved ones,” he said.

Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull have extended sympathies to the soldier’s family.

Turnbull:

“ The thoughts and prayers of all Australians are with the soldier’s family.”

Air Chief Marshal Houston:

“ On behalf of our nation and the Australian Defence Force, I convey our deepest sympathies to his loved one.”

Our question is:

when the PM sends, conveys, or “extends” his thoughts, prayers, sympathies and condolences to us, how exactly do they get here?

How can we tell they have arrived?

What do they look like?

Should we keep the wrapping paper?

How big are they – will they all fit in my sock drawer?

If they are “deepest” sympathies, do I need a bigger drawer?

When someone’s “heart goes out” to us, do we have to have a special jar to keep it in?

What actually are these things?

What do they mean?

What actual value are they to us?

How much did they cost?

The answer to the last four questions are:

nothing,

nothing,

fuckall

fucking nothing.

Talk is cheap and mealy-mouthed words and pompous forms of words are empty and meaningless.

So, for a politician, the price is right.

They serve the speaker, not the supposed recipient who gets precisely nothing in fact. But at least the PM looks and sounds good and solemn and, who knows, might be a slightly better chance for re-election one day.

And by the way, how can Houston speak on behalf of “Our Nation”? The answer is, he can’t. The nation is not defined by the military. Neither his authority nor his remit extend beyond the military. He is unelected and cannot speak for anyone except his constituency, much as he might feel moved to by the occasion.

 

 

SECOND THOUGHTS

This cynical, political treatment of real human sadness is, we think, an example of what we like to call “Flashcard Politics”. The masters of this technique are Obama’s media team (greek columns, Lincoln monument, cheap emotional triggers etc. covering up the same old same old).

Rudd and his writers do it without shame

 

Kev’s Massive Package

Feb 6, 2009 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

Kev’s Massive Package

 

It takes Balls to Punish the Jobless

 

The thing about the unemployed is that, well, they’re powerless; or rather, they’re disempowered, particularly by the feeling of being unemployed in a culture in which what you do, not to mention how much you make, pretty much defines who you are and what you’re worth.

On top of that they’re disempowered by the restrictions of poverty – the limitations on food (especially healthy food) and travel.

Unemployed people in Australia are placed by government and its proxies, the Job Networks and ancillary services, under stricter control orders and behavioural requirements than the most oppressed employed people.

What has to be understood is that unemployment in Australia is not so much a political, nor an economic, issue as it is a moral issue.

Unemployed people are suffering.

> Suffering is punishment.

> Punishment is retribution for sin.

> Therefore:    > The unemployed have only themselves to blame.

As my (thankfully ex)-father-in-law would have said, “If they want a job why don’t they just bloodywell get off their arse and go out and get one?”

The unemployed are not just lazy; they’re devious in their determination to avoid work.

Because unemployment is a moral issue and the jobless are immoral (obviously) the attitude towards them and treatment of them by the employment service industry is justified.

The patronising and sometimes almost bullying attitudes of (some , not all)  “case managers” towards the trapped victims — off whose misfortune they feed — is justified by their demonstrated inferiority.

And so it was easy for Rudd and the rest of the increasingly hideously Howard-like government to “overlook” the unemployed in their gladhanding stimulation. They’ve got no power, no comeback and no voice.

If anyone needs a boost, it’s the unemployed.

Those who participate in work for the dole activities receive a fortnightly income boost of … $20.80. This is supposed to compensate them for the additional transport costs required by their attendance up to four days a week and any additional costs associated with travelling to interviews up to 90 minutes away. At a maximum of $1.30 each way for a full-time work for the dole participant, you can see how very generous this feels for people who are struggling to both pay rent and eat food in the same week.

If Rudd wants a bit of instant stimulation, if he wants the money he provides to go immediately into the ‘economy’ rather than being saved and hoarded, then if he gives it to the unemployed it won’t even touch the sides.

Kevin is aware of the problem (the electoral problem, anyway) with the punishment of the jobless his massive package means.

“ The Prime Minister said yesterday the next COAG meeting would develop a plan to deal with 300,000 more people who would be out of work by 2010, in a dramatic upward revision of the unemployment figures that means an extra 100,000 people jobless by June.

“At the top of our agenda we’ll be dealing with the whole question of the problem of unemployment, the problem of labour market programs, the proper co-ordination of commonwealth and state labour market programs … in the most seamless and sophisticated way possible,” Mr Rudd said yesterday.

As the Government tries to create 90,000 jobs in labour-intensive industries across the nation – building schools and homes to slow the expected rise in unemployment – the latest economic and fiscal outlook predicts joblessness will surge to 7 per cent in 2009-10, up from 4.5 per cent at present.

So far the Government has provided no additional assistance for those without jobs, promising it will have more to say on labour market programs in coming weeks. Welfare groups are angry that the unemployed received none of the handouts in Tuesday’s stimulus package, and the dole was kept at its current level. Mr Rudd said he and Employment Minister Julia Gillard had been looking at options to help the unemployed but had not made a final decision.

“We’re going through a whole range of options, dealing with kids just coming out of the school system who are going to find it difficult entering the labour market, dealing with the challenge of people who are in jobs who may lose their jobs, the geographical concentration of that, the adequacy of the information flow, and the adequacy of supporting labour market programs for all the above, and the existing social security network as well,” the Prime Minister said.

Yes, Rudd is going to do what he has always done. Develop a plan, have more to say later, look at options, assess information flow, manage programs, make a ‘final decision’ in the fullness of time.

Sounds a lot like Peter Garrett, doesn’t it.

The jobless don’t really care how shiny the solution is. They don’t really care whether or not it’s bureaucratically-acceptably seamless, shiny and ‘sophisticated’. The Rudd government — like many before it, it’s true — is hopelessly out of touch with the reality of human experience. But then, you can’t expect more from a Sirhumphreybot MkII.

The trouble for Uncle Kev is that giving money to the supposedly profligate, the wasteful, the idle, the smelly, the drug-raddled, the diseased, the incompetent, the incontinent – the, you know, unemployed – is not electorally attractive and they won’t suffer too much backlash from the good voters – the, you know, employed. Not until there are so many unemployed and pissed-off voters that they might look like losing an election.

The sleaze of the government, the proof that it is politicking all around this, was shown in the interview, with Albanese we think, where the subject of the disenfranchising of the unemployed from the Big Splurge was brought up. The Minister claimed that the unemployed had not been left out. They would benefit, he said, from the job creation efforts that would flow from increased infrastructure spending. This on a day when unemployment is supposed to be about four and a half percent and is expected to grow to over seven per cent over the next year.

Explain again to us how the unemployed are going to benefit from job creation schemes which will at best only slightly slow the increase in unemployment.

If you imagine that the Turnbull Costello party would be any better, you haven’t been around much, have you.

They are unremittingly awful.

Just awful.

The only thing still in Kevin Rudd’s favour is that he is not them.

Not quite.

Not yet.

The coalition’s only role, as they say, may be to serve as a warning to others.

Heather Ridout wants the unemployed to be trained up in readiness for the boom times that will follow the recession [SORRY – REALLY VERY SORRY. SORRY.]

The unemployed ALREADY get trained all the time. All sorts of programs; for example: how to write an application letter that looks exactly like all the others (and tells exactly the same lies and is full of precisely the same bullshit) to an employer who is considering two hundred other identical applications, and is totally over it. For instance.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians are already being trained for jobs that simply don’t exist and won’t for a long time.

In fact, the boom industry for the next few years is going to be … TRAINING!

Wait!

That’s the magical solution!

An endless loop of the unemployed employed to train each other to train each other.

Get your Cert IV now!

 

 

Why Turnbull is Wrong

Feb 5, 2009 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Democracy, Economic Values, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

Why Turnbull is Wrong

 

Isslikadreemcumtroo

 

Turnbull is wrong because it is foolhardy to stand between 20 million people and a shitload of money. (Thanks Paul)

Turnbull is wrong because he thinks that there is any debate to be won about whether the pile of money should be shovelled out or not.

Turnbull is wrong because he doesn’t realise that at least 10 million of those Australians have already spent that money in their heads.

He doesn’t understand that they can already see and smell and taste the things they will buy; can already feel the relief from the financial burden they’ve been carrying. They’ve already made their decisions. They’re just waiting for delivery.

Telling them they can’t have it is like brutally waking you from a beautiful dream in which you’ve been expertly stimulated by gorgeous 18-year-old twins who, miraculously, can’t keep their hands and tongues off you.¹ “Isslikadreemcumtroo,” as the Olympians say.

And along comes bloody Turnbull and tips a bucket of ice and water over you and tells you you’re late for work.

He’s not “courageous”; he’s just bloody stupid.

So is Julie Bishop who told Fran this morning that rather than spend all this money right now we should “wait and see” how it pans out.

From what the economic witchdoctors are telling us, that’s like being in a rubber ducky rushing towards a waterfall and saying,

“Yes, I know it looks like foam spray and it does sound like billions of gallons of water thundering over a huge precipice but I think we should save our energy and not start rowing until we are close enough to look over and confirm that it is a waterfall.”

One of the opposition’s own made the most cogent point so far, early this morning, when he pointed out that it may be that Rudd has engineered the elements of the stimulus package to mask the signs of a recession. It will look like a recession, waddle like a recession, and quack like a recession but it won’t BE a recession. Statistically.

(Meanwhile, apparently Peter Costello has decided that he would like another go at not becoming Prime Minister.)

 

¹No personal offence intended. We just picked on some fantasy we saw on TV last night which seemed to be a Work for the Dole project for some of the more photogenic unemployed Hollywood starlets. Please adjust to suit your personal preferences.

 

‘I’m Sir Roger and I’m Fucked’

Oct 5, 2008 | Arts, Australian Values, Border Security, Capital Punishment, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Global Warming, Humour, Immigration, Indigenous, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, PedoPriests, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Terrorism, Uncategorized, USPol, Values, War

‘I’m Sir Roger and I’m Fucked’

 

This is not for you

 

Really. We just want to acknowledge ourselves privately but publicly (it makes sense to us, anyway). It’s not meant to be onanistically self-congratulatory, except in the sense that we have achieved some things and we want to record them.
So this is a stocktake for posterity, if you like, that marks a moment, a milestone.

Yes, ValuesAustralia is two years old. This is our 712th post. Singlehanded, eh, Clubtroppo, Larvatus Prodeo, RoadtoSurfdom etc. etc.? That’s almost one a day. (There used to be a billboard for One A Day vitamin pills at the corner of Victoria Rd and Rowntree Street at Blackwattle Bay in Sydney. There was a picture of a man and a woman. The woman was saying, “I’m Jenny and I give John One A Day.” Soon a graffiti artist had added, “I’m John and I’m fucked!”)

And, yes, we’re just about fucked, ourselves. We’ve got a rotator cuff from all the typing and mouse clicking, especially during October and November last year.

(We went to the radiologist. “What seems to be the problem?” “I’ve got a sore shoulder.” “Hmm…we’ll do an ultrasound and an x-ray…… Hmm…. Hmmmmmm, our expert analysis of the ultrasound and x-ray indicates you have a sore shoulder. You’ll have to stop using it for a while.” “Thanks….What?)

We’ve never paid for any advertising. We’ve never submitted ValuesAustralia to any search engine. Nevertheless, we got ourselves listed on Google within 24 hours of launching the site. We tried to register the site with dmoz.org (The Open Source Directory) – as you do – but it wasn’t taking orders, and by the time it came back on line months later, ValuesAustralia was already magically listed!

We’ve been #1 for “Australian Values” on Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask most of the time for more than a year and a half. We’re #12 for “values” on Google worldwide, out of 314,000,000 results and on google.com.au we’re #2 for “values” out of 307,000,000. We’re #1 on google worldwide and Australia for “Australian political values” out of about 400,000 results.

Our Google Page Rank is 4 (used to be 5 but they changed the algorithm) which is respectable but we’d prefer a 5 or a 6.

We’ve had over 300,000 aggregate visitors and more than 75,000 spam messages (thank you, Akismet).

Earlier this year we were consistently getting more than 1000 visitors a day – over 30,000 a month, which is okay, although nothing like the big guys.

We’ve made friends all over the world and especially in Australia. We are in the top 1% of websites worldwide. We are popular in Saudi Arabia – amongst the top 42,000 favourite sites for Saudis. (That worries us just a bit…Say hullo to Al for us…) We appreciate our readers and those who choose to comment from time to time. We thought a scarcity of comments was a Bad Thing, a Failure, but we noticed that one of the most popular, most entertaining bloggers we know of, Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, doesn’t get heaps, either – a few, but not tens like Possum or hundreds and thousands like William the PollBludger.

In May 2007 ValuesAustralia was picked up by the “Stay In Touch” column at the Sydney Morning Herald, accusing us of “rhetoric”.

One of Sir Roger’s posts was selected by ClubTroppo and On Line Opinion in January 2008 as one of the top 40 posts in Australia for 2007. We’re very proud of that.

But it’s a post we made early in 2007 that we are still most proud of. Ken Parish at ClubTroppo called it

“quite possibly the best piece of passionate, angry polemic I’ve ever read, certainly on a blog. ‘Roger Migently’ is roused to extraordinary heights of eloquence… ”

Yes, Troppo has been good to us and we mourn the passing of Missing Link and Ken’s prolonged work-induced(?) absence. We were also congratulated by Richard Neville (HomePageDaily) and Steven Poole whose Unspeak blog is our benchmark for economy, clarity, style and wit.

We have enjoyed the journey so far and we have no intention at this stage of stopping, although we have slowed down (work, you know).

Bobbo the Clown

Our favourite person in the world, of course, is the clown, Bob Correll (above), Deputy Secretary of DIC, OPM, because he wrote us the letter which inspired our outburst. As we discovered he was (and appears still to be) the person who had taken over departmental responsibility for “Borders, Compliance, Detention and Technology”, or in other words, perhaps, for keeping innocent kiddies locked up in the desert, deporting Australian citizens, supporting the failed state of Nauru, making the lives of genuine refugees a misery, doing it to please the Minister, and all at the touch of a computer key. Previously he had been the driving force behind developing and implementing Job Network, or “how to design exquisite, personalised punishment for people who are already struggling with the stress of being unemployed”. Godluvvya, Bob! How’s the Volvo? How’s the kids? How do you sleep at night?

One of the most satisfying things is how we always beat the Immigration Department on Google.

Our second favourite person is Mick Keelty, just for being such a hopeless buffoon and continually making appalling stuff-ups for us to make fun of. G’bye, Mick.

Anyway, just for the record.

(And a special “hi!” to Lang!)

Sack Keelty

Aug 30, 2008 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, Values

Sack Keelty

 

Sack the Bastard

 

…and DIC Senior Management, particularly the Deputy Secretary in charge of borders, compliance, and detention, the avowed expert in the use of the visa as a tool for enforcing (at the time) Liberal Party policy. Yes, it’s our old friend, Bob Correll who, outed himself on LinkedIn as a big supporter of the LNP; (not sort of ‘correct’ for a public servant?).

And sack Andrews and Ruddock from Parliament.
Sack them all for Misfeasance. Malfeasance. Non-feasance. Abuse of power by a public official. Criminal stupidity. Any of those will do.

Federal Police yesterday released a statement saying the former Gold Coast doctor [Haneef] is no longer a person of interest to them, and they have found there are no grounds to proceed against him. [SBS News]

Well fuck me dead – I’m Foreskin Fred!

Yes, after all this time. After all the waste. After all the harm. After all the stupidity and incompetence. After Scotland Yard laughed at the AFP; months after the Queensland Police Service and ASIO both said there were no grounds. After all the subversion of democracy, the courts and the rule of law.

Sack them.

Everything about the carriage of the Haneef affair by the AFP and the government suggests that it never was about public safety; that it always was a political stunt; that it was in fact a considered and calculated decision by the AFP to use the Haneef matter for political ends. As we know from another case, the AFP sought every possible opportunity to test the envelope of the terrorism laws.

Keelty, in particular, clearly operates a political agenda, having capitulated under pressure from John Howard years ago. He learned his lesson well and in the Haneef case hung his hat on the re-election of the Howard government. This means that he has lost sight of his actual role, his constitutional – and certainly his moral – obligation to the people of Australia and the democracy they own.

And so we say in the alleged words of Lawson, the Bastard’s curse:

“ May the itching piles torment you, may corns grow on your feet,
May crabs as big as spiders attack your balls a treat.
Then, when you’re down and out, and a hopeless bloody wreck,
May you slip back through your arsehole, and break your bloody neck.”