How Howard ‘Destroyed’ Hanson

Oct 27, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Immigration, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values

How Howard ‘Destroyed’ Hanson

“We’re running hard on security and terrorism”

 
It’s just past the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV-X and the drowning of approximately 353 people.We found this post by ex-Liberal candidate for Reid, Irfan Yusuf, via the [Andrew] Bartlett Diaries.

Excerpt:

” Then, one afternoon in October, I received a call from a lady named Mahbooba who ran a small charity working among Afghan orphans in Pakistan. She wanted to introduce me to a Middle Eastern chap. We agreed to meet at a small mosque in Auburn.

 

I entered the mosque and saw Mahbooba sitting with a visibly distraught man whose reddened eyes betrayed days of mourning. The man continued to weep in my presence while Mahbooba showed me some photos of some young children. The man then spoke:

 

These are the children of my sister. She was killed by the government of our homeland. I”ve been an Australian citizen for 25 years. I run my own business. I pay my taxes. I have only ever asked one thing from my local member and that was to help me get my sister and her children out of there.

 

“Who is your local member?” I asked. “John Howard,” was his answer.

 

He then told me about how he was informed by other relatives that the children had been placed on an unseaworthy boat. They were among some 350 others who had drowned.

 

This was the first time I had heard of the SIEV-X incident. I wasn”t sure what I could do. I was just a candidate in a hard-luck seat with little hope of winning. What could I hope to achieve for this man?

 

“Some people in your Party are starting to tell lies about my sister”s children. They are saying my sister taught her children to be terrorists. You must speak out against them. Remember what the Prophet Mohammed said — that the best jihad is to speak the truth to rulers. It is easy for you because you are in their Party”

 

I listened to the man”s story and looked at the photos of these young children who had barely reached their teens. After the meeting, I got onto the phone with campaign HQ. I told them about the conversation I”d had with the man, and how I wanted to make some statement about it.

 

“No way, Irfan,” said the voice from HQ. “You mustn”t talk about this topic. I”m warning you that if you say anything about it, you might find yourself disendorsed and expelled from the Party. We are running hard on security and terrorism.“

“But these are young kids,” I objected. Then the HQ officer told me something that made me shudder.

 

“Listen, I know how much you hate Pauline Hanson. You”ve got to understand that we have a deliberate strategy here. We want to destroy Hanson by sounding like her and attracting her voter base away from her. It”s part of a deliberate strategy, and it”s temporary.”

Temporary? It’s party policy! It’s dogma. It’s mandatory to promote the Pauline xenophobia. It’s been dragged out yet again by the Hansonite Kevin Andrews (wash my mouth out) with his ‘dirty filthy black diseased criminal African refugee rapist gangs’. Destroy Pauline Hanson? They’ve become Pauline Hanson.

In July we reported on Tony Kevin‘s interview with Richard Fidler on his advocacy about the SIEV-X issue when he said,

” I think my work achieved useful results going beyond SIEV X. It helped more people to see the truth behind the now discredited myth that John Howard is just another Australian politician trying to do his job more or less decently. Australians know the real Howard now. I think my SIEV X research and advocacy helped to expose the ugly truth about this man.

And it is such an ugly truth.

Disaster Capitalism

Oct 14, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Capital Punishment, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Global Warming, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Terrorism, Values, War

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

Oct 12, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values

…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.

Hell, Pell

Oct 3, 2007 | Australian Values, Global Warming, OzPol Values, PedoPriests, Religious Values, Values

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?

‘Compassionate’ Costello Reach-around

Sep 19, 2007 | Australian Values, Democracy, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

‘Compassionate’ Costello Reach-around

 

Costello reaches out to the downtrodden …

[Drawing by Tony King, 1969]

 

… The electorate merely retches.

Mr Costello said that in the election campaign he would talk about what Australia needs for its future, in particular drawing the marginalised into mainstream society.

” Maybe they have been marginalised with health problems, maybe they have been marginalised by the welfare system, maybe they have been marginalised by an education system which has failed them,” he said.

“Now that we have a strong economy and we have paid off Labor debt and balanced our budgets, now we can use our economic strength to reach out to these people and bring them into the mainstream.

He added,

” Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

A recent Newspoll has shown that, at these words, electors all over Australia, who had been considering voting Labor, fell to their knees like audience plants in a Benny Hinn service, or a Hillsong meeting, praying:

” Almighty Sweetie Dollar, new Father of our nation, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against Thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly Thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings: The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please Thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of Thy Name; Through the Divine Grace of the Holy Trinity – the Rodent, the Don and the Ming. Amen.

Unrepentant sinners assert that Costello has been the Treasurer of a morally corrupt government which has methodically vandalised individual and legal freedoms and rights, a government which has never told the truth when a lie would do, a government which has, as a matter of policy – which Costello has wholeheartedly and enthusiastically promoted – systematically and systemically marginalised large sections of the society which it has then vilified and punished for their marginalisation.

Uncharitably, these sinners point out that he has had almost twelve years to act on his professed compassionate impulses. And he has done nothing. They say that he has the moral backbone of a leech. Even if he had wanted to stand up against the viciousness of the outgoing Prime Minister he never had the guts to do so, showing more compassion for his own ambition to sit in the big seat.

The unforgiven suggest that his awkward, nauseating, muculent Uriah Heep impression, the soft-voiced caring and concern of the radio interview, contrasts starkly with his more characteristically spiteful, arrogant performance in Parliament today when he proudly paraded himself as the supercilious, bullying, narcissistic misanthrope that he truly is.

(May the Almighty Sweetie Dollar have mercy upon them. R’amen)

The Courtier’s Reply

Sep 18, 2007 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Freedom of Speech, Religious Values, Values

The Courtier’s Reply

The Emperor’s New Clothes

 

The King is in the altogether,
The altogether, the altogether,
He’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born.
~ Danny Kaye/HC Andersen

One of the constant “arguments” – actually not so much an argument as a condescending whinge – made against Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is Dawkins’ failure deeply to consider the omnitude of historical religious discourse – what Sam Harris in Letters to a Christian Nation describes as “bookish men parsing a collective delusion” – and in fact this “oversight” is often used to insinuate an intellectual inferiority.

Of course it is nothing of the sort.

The worst, or at least most voluble, of these – really, mendacious – detractors is H. Allen Orr who wrote

” You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’s book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they’re terminally ill?).

Breathtakingly illogical, as you can see, since Dawkins’ point is not the finer subtleties of religious credos but lack of any gods at all.

Dawkins has attempted to answer these critics and criticisms, but it is difficult to hope that your answer might make sense to someone who so obviously cannot, or refuses to, understand the question.

Dawkins wrote to The Independent to answer two other such detractors, Messrs Cornwell and Stanford:

” Cornwell’s slighting of my reading list is singled out for special praise by Stanford. This is a stock criticism. It assumes that there is a serious subject called Theology, which one must study in depth before one can disbelieve in God. My own stock reply (Would you need to read learned volumes on Leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?) is now superseded by P Z Myers’ brilliant satire on the Emperor’s New Clothes…

Stanford’s trump card is his observation that “religion is not primarily about belief, as we understand the word today, but faith.” Religion, as he sums it up, “simply isn’t about facts.”

Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

So here is the meat of The Courtier’s Reply by PZ Myers.

” I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots, nor does he give a moment’s consideration to Bellini’s masterwork, “On the Luminescence of the Emperor’s Feathered Hat”. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor’s raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all.
[….]
Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

How dare he. The impertinence!