Every Cloud Has a Saliva Lining
Every Cloud Has a Saliva Lining
After Pavlov
[Apologies to the source of the original of this image whose provenance we do not know.]
Lolcats With a Vengeance
Lolcats With a Vengeance
Sir Roger is despondent
After all the hard work of so many people Australian politics is looking like Howard Lite, iSuck 2.0 déjà vu all over again. Boat people – “Aaaaarrrggghh! Foreigners! Tough on Queue-jumpers [but not on the causes of queue-jumpers]”.
“Let’s pretend to be doing something about climate change. We have to do something. We have to do something. I know! Let’s play tiddlywinks! That’s “something”. Hey, youse guys, the world is going to burn to a cinder unless we do something about it! So what we’re doing is, we’re playing tiddlywinks. If you don’t play tiddlywinks too, the world is going to burn to a cinder.”
“Okay, well, um … wait on … we don’t believe in tiddlywinks but we’ll play if Johnno and Wayne don’t have to play but you promise they will win.”
“But if Johnno and Wayne don’t play the world will burn to a crisp! No-one will win!”
“Okay, well…well…well get fuckin’ stuffed then! Let the world burn for all we fuckin’ care! … Fuckin’ lower class upstarts! Fuckin’ fairy eggheads!”
Palestine.
Israel.
Obama (what a fucking disappointment).
Russia.
Burma.
Sri Lanka.
China,
Tibet.
Fucking arrogant, corrupt and criminally-incompetent Indonesian politicians, bureaucrats, police and judges.
Walls everywhere.
Hatred.
Religious madmen in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia.
And the United States, which is terminally fucked in the collective head.
Democracy movements being crushed everywhere.
Freedoms, rights and privacy being shredded even – especially – by the good old Brits, eh, what?
Stupid global refusal to listen, based on creaking, long-ago-discredited, Industrial-Revolution-era social-political-religious theories that date back – even in their most recent versions – more than 200 years in the West, and on 4000-year-old, crazy, murderous, hate-filled, tribalist, racist, desert-engendered cruel religious fantasies in the rest of the world.
The hopes of “peace and love” from the last five decades crumbling like the naïve hallucinations they so pitiably were.
Young people who will “look after” things in a few years unable to think or care about anything but how some fake and shallow, talentless celebrity flashed her cunt, and what eyeshadow to wear …
And the people who actually care. the people with answers, who could possibly do something about it all, are sneered at and ridiculed.
It’s enough to make you want to just give up and forget it all and look at some funny cat video.
“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life
“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life
Oh Dear … DIC’s ‘Very Bad Event’. Again
Mr Bob Correll,
Deputy Secretary,
Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Wrongful Detention
Shit, Bob,
(You don’t mind me calling you ‘Shit’, do you Bob?)
You and I go way back, Bob, and I know this will seem out of character to you but … I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t. But unlovely as it is, Bob, I can’t help this feeling of smug superiority (you know, that feeling you always have, Bob, when it comes to other people).
Yet another “very bad event, a serious administrative error and a terrible circumstance,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith; the wrongful detention of Van Phuc Nguyen, a permanent resident who was detained in 2002 and held in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre for more than three years. Immigration officials – your officials, Bob – at Sydney airport did not recognise his visa – your visa, Bob.
How “holier than thou” are you feeling at the moment, Bob?
The longest term of wrongful detention in recent history according to the Ombudsman?
Yet another appalling miscarriage of justice perpetrated by your department and brought to light
- not through the transparency of your department
- not through your department’s decency or its ethical standards
- not through the exemplary corporate behaviour you are expected to display
- or the exemplary legal behaviour you are required to display as a government department
- but only through the persistence of the aggrieved man and the efforts of an overworked Ombudsman.
Indeed, far from pursuing the decent and ethical thing to do – let alone the right and the humane action to take – according to the Ombudsman your department engaged instead in (typical-public-service-arse-covering) legal debate about your options.
And so poorly does your department understand moral standards that still it offers only a pittance in compensation for your department’s incompetence – $70,000 for the theft of three years of an innocent person’s life (less $12,000 for the government’s own legal costs, of course).
How much do you earn get paid, Bob? How much does the DIC head, Andrew Metcalf, earn? [About a quarter of it, as the joke goes?] It’s hard to find out but certainly more than $200,000 and probably in at least the $300,000 vicinity.
Do you recall telling me smugly about “the important business managed by the Department”?
Do you recall telling me in your patronising way about your deep concern for “Australia’s reputation overseas“?
I certainly recall your telling me that you considered my website “offensive”. And how can I ever forget your bullying threats of legal action under Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 and Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995.
Well, Bob, so much for the Important Business Managed By Your Department.
It wasn’t managed at all, was it?
So much for Australia’s Reputation Overseas, or your department’s reputation at home.
And Bob? I find your department’s clearly-evidenced inhumane, incompetent, arrogant attitude towards human beings far more offensive than you could ever find my website.
I am not a lawyer Bob, and neither, clearly, are you, but Joe Public – not to mention Van Phuc Nguyen – is entitled to question your department’s capacity to carry out its duties. He is entitled to question the justification of departmental officials to their juicy salaries. He might well ask,
“If the department has so comprehensively, so frequently and so predictably failed to manage its responsibilities, are departmental officials, or the department itself, represented by its senior executives, therefore subject to legal action for misfeasance1? And might mandamus2 be sought against the Department because of the department’s incompetence? If the Ombudsman has determined that Nguyen’s detention was “wrongful” then shouldn’t Nguyen, rather than being offered some insultingly token compensation by the department, be awarded punitive damages by a court?”
You gave a speech in 2007, Bob, in which you said,
… on our website, the department currently lists ‘seven important things you should do as soon as possible after arriving in Australia’:
1. Apply for a Tax File Number (TFN)
2. Register with Medicare
3. Open a bank account
4. Register with Centrelink
5. Register for English Classes
6. Enrol Your Children in School
7. Apply for a Driver’s Licence
You should have added:
8. Apply for release from Villawood.
Hey Bob? Why don’t you resign?
1 When a party fails to perform at all, it is nonfeasance. When a party performs the duty inadequately or poorly, it is misfeasance. …The terms misfeasance and nonfeasance are most often used…with reference to the discharge of…statutory obligations; and it is an established rule that an action lies in favour of persons injured by misfeasance, i.e. by negligence in discharge of the duty…The courts can find evidence of carelessness in the discharge of public duties and on that basis award damages to individuals who have suffered thereby.
2“Mandamus is provided for by Section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution. The duty sought to be enforced must have two qualities: It must be a duty of public nature and the duty must be imperative and should not be discretionary.”
Richard Glover Lacks Sense of Humour About Atheists
Richard Glover Lacks Sense of Humour About Atheists
Brilliant French comedy: St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants by Catholics, 1572 / François Dubois
Hahahahahaha!
Yesterday on Richard Glover’s Drive (ABC local radio, Sydney), according to sources, Glover — who has built his considerable celebrity on unfunny puns and predictable punchlines — testily exhorted atheists to “get a sense of humour”.
How true!
Your Common or Lesser Spotted Godbotherer is such a hoot, after all.
Who can forget the hilarity of the Spanish Inquisition? Or the Taliban’s side-splitting public executions of women in the Kabul soccer stadium? Or al Qaeda’s laugh-a-minute comedy, 9/11 , with its follow-ups, World’s Craziest Suicide Bombings Parts I, II, III … (N) … directed by Allahu Akbar?
George W. Bush’s Iraq War II, of course, was a comedic tour de force in the grand tradition of The Great Crusades: Episodes I to IX.
And that girl being stoned to death for “adultery” should have been caught on Somalia’s Funniest Home Videos! (After all, the girl being merely whipped for leaving home without a male escort made it onto Paki-Standup-TV, didn’t she?)
Yes, the religious are so much more relaxed and chilled out and ready to laugh.
The Mohammedans, for example, were significantly more giggle-ready when they saw those atheistic Danish cartoons than any of your straight-laced, po-faced atheists would ever be if confronted with a satirical image of their own atheist god, Charles Darwin.
Chuckling behind his bushy pantomime beard, Groucho Marx eyebrows and silly dress-up turban, Ayatollah Khomeini was virtually doubled-over with mirth as he delivered his sidesplitting fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
Thanks, Richard, for the depth of your wisdom, for your fair and balanced advice, and for not letting your personal opinion get in the way of your deadpan public pontifications.
And for being a real chucklehead we can look up to.
Bundy Rum 2011 NSW Election
Bundy Rum 2011 NSW Election
Swine Flu, brought to you by SPAM
It’s all the rage these days. Not so long ago, as we were basking in the great spiritual joy of the Wetchex World Youth Day, we reflected also on the overwhelming success of the then recent Crown Casino Anzac Day Marches throughout Australia. It all seemed such a long way from the heady days of the shocking and awe-inspiring overture to the News Corp Iraq War.
We look forward to the 2010 Mercedes Benz Anzac Day celebrations with the planned ceremonies at the Coca Cola Cenotaph. We ourselves hope to be able to take our seats in the Fosters Stand at the Qantas Commemorative Site for the Toshiba Dawn Service where the highlight for us will, of course, be the sounding of the Acme Funeral Services Reveille.
We now call on Marvel Comics to do the right thing and become a corporate sponsor of the Australian War Memorial so that each evening at sunset we can hear the Daily Bugle Last Post.
Rights of Man
Rights of Man
Magna Carta 15 June 1215
We know where we stand on a Bill of Rights and we could argue for it but we don’t think we need to any more. John Howard has argued against it and that’s just about enough for us. The little shit has been so wrong about almost everything he has touched as he blundered cynically and sycophantically through his political career that anything he is against is almost certain to be the right thing to do.
…“ Mr Howard said MPs should not hand their decision-making powers to “unelected judges accountable to no-one”.
Just put this beside, say, Howard’s support for Guantánamo and the US military commissions – both legal black holes accountable to no-one but the “unitary Executive”.
Or put it beside the terrorism laws his government introduced, the rolling back of eight centuries of habeas corpus, the fact that the security forces and selected judges and magistrates were/are accountable for their actions not to Parliament and indeed to no-one but the Cabinet ministers, in secret.
The people have no right to know what they are up to. In fact knowing what they are up to, reporting what they are up to or probably even asking what they are up to could land you in gaol. This situation borders on (if it is not already) oligarchy. It is the sort of thing that the French Revolution was fought over, and that the Enlightenment was all about. And it is okay with John Howard.
Actually … where do “the people” fit in, for John Howard?
The idea that a Bill of Rights tears apart the fabric of civil society is a monstrous, cynical joke. Our entire legal and political system is based on bills of rights of one kind or another, in one way or another.
Magna Carta was a Bill of Rights; the English Parliament passed the Petition of Right in May 1628 which referred to rights secured in the reign of Edward III three centuries earlier:
IV. And in the eight-and-twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III, it was declared and enacted by authority of parliament, that no man, of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law.
V. Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the good laws and statutes of your realm to that end provided, divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed; and when for their deliverance they were brought before your justices by your Majesty’s writs of habeas corpus, there to undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer, no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty’s special command, signified by the lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might make answer according to the law.
[ … ]
VII. And whereas also by authority of parliament, in the five-and-twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III, it is declared and enacted, that no man shall be forejudged of life or limb against the form of the Great Charter and the law of the land; and by the said Great Charter and other the laws and statutes of this your realm, no man ought to be adjudged to death but by the laws established in this your realm, either by the customs of the same realm, or by acts of parliament: and whereas no offender of what kind soever is exempted from the proceedings to be used, and punishments to be inflicted by the laws and statutes of this your realm; nevertheless of late time divers commissions under your Majesty’s great seal have issued forth, by which certain persons have been assigned and appointed commissioners with power and authority to proceed within the land, according to the justice of martial law, against such soldiers or mariners, or other dissolute persons joining with them, as should commit any murder, robbery, felony, mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanor whatsoever, and by such summary course and order as is agreeable to martial law, and is used in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put to death according to the law martial.
The Howard/Ruddock terrorism laws amount to this description of martial law (and in fact to terrorism themselves). Howard bulldozed all of these hard-fought rights and liberties, the history and traditions of law. And why? Because he believes in his heart that the people can’t be trusted with their own lives? Can’t be trusted with power? That power should remain in the hands of those special few who “understand” it? That rights ought not be defined but should be secret privileges that are in the gift of the few, to be dispensed as the favours of a benevolent ruling elite?
Well, as long as we do have our constitution they are not privileges and they are not in his gift to dispense to the deserving and the compliant and the mates. They are ours and we want them written down and enshrined so that people such as Howard — like the pigs in Animal Farm — can’t take them away.
Amnesty’s human rights act campaign coordinator Jenny Leong says …
“We need to remember that it was under the Howard government that so many of the human rights of this country and our reputation internationally for respecting human rights were eroded,”
she told ABC News Online.
The French declared the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789.
The first four Articles are:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
In 1791 Thomas Paine wrote in Rights of Man:
“ The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
It is essential to our freedom as individuals and as communities that this sentiment is remembered and written in stone. The agreement by all the people together to form a government and that this government belongs entirely to the people, that political parties are the servants of the people’s government and are not its owners, is the core of our democracy and freedom from tyranny.