Three Stooges

Oct 8, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Corruption, Democracy, Immigration, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Terrorism, USPol, Values

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.

Clive of Kogarah

Aug 27, 2007 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Clive of Kogarah

Clive James with Bill Moyers

 

Bill Moyers recently hosted Clive James on his show to talk about his new book, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts (not the 80s punk band).

Publishers Weekly  says:

“  From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, Tacitus to Margaret Thatcher, this scintillating compendium of 110 new biographical essays plumbs the responsibilities of artists, intellectuals and political leaders. British [sic] critic James…structures each entry as a brief life sketch followed by quotations that spark an appreciation, a condemnation or a tangent (a piece on filmmaker Terry Gilliam veers into a discussion of torturers’ pleasure in their work). Sometimes, as in his salute to Tony Curtis’s acting or his savage assault on bebop legend John Coltrane’s penchant for “subjecting some helpless standard to ritual murder,” James’s purpose is just bravura opinionating. But most articles are linked by a defense of liberal humanism against totalitarianisms of the left and right “and ideologues who champion them.”

Salon calls James “The greatest living critic”.

Clive’s approach in his book seems to be to help us to share his understanding of the value of culture and of humanity in all its variety, in all its forms and at all its levels. His is a passionately humanist, while healthily sceptical, world view (which is probably why we like him so much). And we like that while we don’t agree with him all the time we love that he gives us ideas to think about.

He talks about the way in which the understanding of cultures can come when they are torn apart,

”  Everybody concerned with the whole business of culture is scattered to the winds and…you see how the society fits together. It’s extremely complex and impossible to reproduce through one person’s will.

To us it brings to mind the stump of a severed limb. Sure, you can see the bits of flapping muscle, blood vessels and bone, the shiny sinews and nerves, and you can see how they were all put together. But they don’t work any more.

There are interesting parallels with the blogging culture in the interview.

” The Jewish intellectuals in the Vienna cafes, they learned to write “the article”, what they called the feuilleton, the little leaf, the entertaining thousand-word piece which is the basis of the whole of modern culture that I find fascinating.

And one of the maniacs in the Vienna cafes was Adolf Hitler…

But he is particularly passionate about the culture of liberal democracy.

” There’s something about the creative force of liberal democracy which gives you hope that it can overcome any challenge, including terrorism. I’m sure terrorism can punch very large holes in western civilisation, and probably will.

You’re inheriting civilisation. What you try to do is protect it and improve it, but get rid of the idea that it can all start again because a few men think it can.

And he doesn’t believe in an elitist view of culture (unlike some Australian journalists who hate bloggers)…

” My only originality when I started off as a journalist was I didn’t believe in these elites. I thought that intelligence was enough and if people were intelligent they’d hear what you had to say. I don’t believe that knowledge and understanding and wisdom are the property of a class at all. I believe they’re generally democratic things. That doesn’t mean that everyone will understand what anyone can, you know?

On the other hand, Clive comes to Australia so rarely, and is so busy, that he seems a little out of touch at times. He ascribes to the Leader of the National Party (and therefore Deputy Prime Minister) a statement made by Costello (Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party but not Deputy Prime Minister) and while he believes in the fair go, he is a little behind the times with one of its expressions (emphasis on the “ex”):

” In Australia we have a concept called the “fair go” which is built into the system. It’s built into the Basic Wage and so on.

In any case it is an interview very much worth watching  (if you don’t mind using Flash).

 

Which brings us to disclose that …

ValuesAustralia interviewed Clive James in London 32 years ago in the heat of the Whitlam debacle. We interviewed Clive in 1975 over a slab of Fosters about his “new” book, Felicity Fark in the Land of the Media, which is so out of print that it receives only the most fleeting of references, even on his own website.

Clive, to his great credit, has never lost or varied his Australian accent. We, on the other hand, are of the kind who tend to ‘merge’ into, or ‘immerse’ ourselves in, a new culture, to our somewhat amusement years later. We insist, however, that we have repatriated our accent.

‘My Culture the Bastard Child’

Aug 27, 2007 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values, War

‘My Culture the Bastard Child’

This angry, loving, passionate, poetic piece from John White was a comment on the previous post but we love it so much we do not want it lost in the wastes of commentdom.

It deserves to be shared with you. So here it is:

 

Australian Values, Australian Gold
John White

I live in a nation of ghosts and spirits, of Anzac martyrs and rural massacres. The damp soil of Gippsland, the haze of her mountain ash – I was born here; but if you think that being Australian is a birthright, you do not understand my country.
My country is wattle and blood.

Melbourne is all around me, the ferns protecting William Ricketts, the river whose Yarra water draws up the clay, the bindi-i in the summer grass, and the two-dollar buskers and cafes edging the wide streets.

The magic of my land whispers deeper than prawns on barbies and bikinis in utes. I have lost patience with displays of bloody-minded jingoism. Posts are for football, not for displaying the flags of patriotic insecurity.

Leaving Bendigo in 1916, my great grandfather’s mining lungs could not contend with the poison air of the Somme fields. He died on a hospital ship, never to return. He had marched under the flag and sung the anthem; they were rags and noise compared to the children he left orphaned at home. The entrepreneurs of war lied to him, but his intention was true.

I am a part of the Australian community. Do not glibly say “one nation”: our country longs to be as one.

We slag on the vacuous slogans of politicians and the questionnaires of immigration bureaucrats. Our parliament mound infested with termites. They rejected our values when they took office shaking the hands of the perentie clans, their business mates. Leadership must be earned. Our Kelly sons went way too far in their war on the authorities, but we felt the injustice that took them to the edge.

Nor do we fear religion. We have been inside temples and churches, listened to humanists and prayed in mosques. Our feeble attempts to understand the transcendent only gives us affection for our fellow peoples, and a desire to depose the little kings of racism and fear that threaten their peace.

We celebrate our failures. Peter, Lalor’s wounding at Eureka stockade, the betrayal of Nancy Wake in resistance France, Albert Namatjira despondent in prison; these people are our characters. To be ‘true blue’ is not the ashes of success; it is to have integrity.

We demand a fair go for all humans, for family and friends and especially strangers. We barrack for the underdog (even at times for Collingwood!). We want to hear the stories of the refugee children, to decide for ourselves. And we know that it is never too late to engrave a treaty, to admit our past failures.

For I am an Australian, my culture the bastard child of indigenous and intruder civilisations. Not until I acknowledge our rainbow heritage can I know who I am. Only when I understand that this ground cannot be bought and sold am I truly at home. The home that I love.

 Coburg, June 2007

WTF

Jun 25, 2007 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

WTF

What do we want? Freedom!

 

When do we want it? When it’s ok with the police!
Mr Howard, to his cheer squad at the Sydney Institute:

“   Freedoms and rights, especially for women and children, are little more than cruel fictions without the rule of law and some semblance of social order enforced by legitimate authority”

What does this mean? Read it again.

Freedoms and rights rely on enforcement by legitimate authority? If they are enforced how can they be freedoms? How can they be rights?

As we have said before somewhere, any “freedom” or “right” which is in the gift of another and bestowed at their whim is neither truly a freedom nor a right but a favour dispensed as a reward for obedience to the rulers who own us.

Our freedom is our birthright and it is not in the gift of anyone, least of all an anally-retentive Little Lord Fauntleroy, a jumped up squirt like Howard.

We’ll All Be Rooned, Said Hanrahan

Feb 14, 2007 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Global Warming, Lifestyle & Life, Values

We’ll All Be Rooned, Said Hanrahan

 

Hooray for the Rain! (if you got it)

In praise of the recent rain here is the most Strayan of Australian pomes;
Hanrahan versing the elements.
True Australian values.
Pure Poa Tree.

 

SAID HANRAHAN

by John O’Brien

“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.

The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.

“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”

“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.

And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.

“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.
”The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.

“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”

“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak –
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”

A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.

“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.

“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.

And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.

It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.

And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”

And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.

And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.

And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.

While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.

“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

Oh Pastor Ted, What a Jock You Are!

Feb 10, 2007 | Cultural Values, Lifestyle & Life, Religious Values, Values

Oh Pastor Ted, What a Jock You Are!

There’s a Lotta Love in This Place

 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s little girl, Alexandra Pelosi, has made a doco, Friends of God, starring Crystal Methodist, Pastor Ted Haggard, about evangelical christians. And quite an eye-opener it is.

And quite disturbing.

We assume that Pastor Ted will one day release the companion film, Friends of Dorothy.

It’s ironic that the doco was shot when Ted Haggard was still pretending to be straight, before he was outed by a gay ex-prostitute and resigned in disgrace, and before he converted back to Super-Heterodom by the grace of god in a world-record three weeks.

It’s disturbing because Pastor Ted involves his two evangelical friends in some jockstrapping competitive locker-room “dick-measuring” which shamelessly implicates their absent, compromised, objectivised wives. (They did not discuss the advantages of Crystal Meth.)

Values Australia, in any case, was intrigued by the purported heightened libido of those whom the ghostly fire has touched. We had assumed that most evangelical bedroom gymnastics would be confined to the missionary position. So we went in search of the alleged polling. After all, Ted says, “ALL the polls say…” We didn’t find one such poll.

But we did find some interesting material. Like this suggested bisexual threesome:

“Learn How To Please God and Your Wife From A Chirstian [sic] View Point!” shrieks sexually-skilled husband.com (now for sale).

“Discover How Christian Married Couples Have Exciting Sex“ offers christian-sex.net (no longer active)

We liked:

“Steamy Christian Sex: Have Passionate Sex In Marriage – Techniques and Advice That Work!” promised by SteamyChristianSex.com (defunct)

We checked out:

Jamaica Gleaner News – Porn in the pews – Churchmen wrestle with …
…Male church members surfing for sexy pics, survey reveals one-in-five churchmen …

“Churchmen wrestle with” …what? Their members? We had the unsavoury vision of male members searching for internet lolitas in their one-eyed way, and were intrigued by Jollyblogger’s:

The Purpose Driven Sex Life, Part 1

Perhaps Part 2 is “The Orgasm Driven Sex Life” and Part 3 “The Chauffeur Driven Sex Life” starring Hugh Grant.

There was the raunchy (and somehow appropriate for Pastor Ted):

In and Out of the Corporate Closet – Whitepapers – Publications …”Why do I need to know about someone’s sex life?” …
Between one and ten percent of the … Among Evangelical Christians, 60% are in favor while 34% are not. …

and the grossly suggestive:

Fuller Online 2005-2006 Catalogue

And then there was this:

Christian Sex Toys
Discreetly to Your Door-Private
Porn Free-Lingerie-Toys-online shop
mybelovedsgarden.net (in full bloom)

So we had to look.

The homepage promises to provide

“a safe, non-pornographic place to shop, For all your Christian Sex toys and Romance needs, While keeping Christ at the center of your marriage.”

We have to report that we found the assorted Vibrating Bullets, Massage Vibes, Glass Phalluses, G-Spot Vibes, Erection Control and Enhancement devices, Hands Free Clitoral Stimulators and Anal Stimulators very christian and inoffensively plain-brown-wrapperly, although, while they are promoted as specifically christian sex toys, we did not notice a crucifix engraved or embossed on, or attached to any of the vibrators or other devices.

The lingerie was hot and swinging but the photos – of what we assume are the choir girls from the local temple – had been sensitively retouched so as not to arouse.

 

But there was just one problem. We looked and looked and, for the longest time, could not work out what was upsetting us about the pictures until we saw – or rather didn’t see – it.

None of the models has a belly-button! Is this for biblical eve-ish accuracy? we wondered. or are evangelicals more aroused by the navel than the unsaved?

And then we noticed that one of the girls appeared to have soiled herself. That’s when we understood that for evangelicals, the biggest turn-on is indeed the navel and the biggest turn-off is a pooey bottom.

Safe from pornographic lust as promised!

Ah, we’ve come a long way from Augustine and John Calvin!

Thank you, Pastor Ted!