It’s Madeleine Albright

Aug 26, 2007 | Australian Values, Humour, OzPol Values, USPol, Values

It’s Madeleine Albright

Stop us if you’ve head this one…

 

Early in his term as Prime Minister, John Howard went to Washington for a meeting with Bill Clinton. After a private dinner, Bill says to Howard, “Well John, I don’t know what you think of the members of your Cabinet, but mine are all bright and brilliant.”

“How do you know?” asks Howard.

“Oh well, it’s simple”, says Bill. “They all have to take special tests before they can be a minister. Wait a second”.

He calls Madeleine Albright in and says to her, “Tell me Madeleine, who is the child of your father and of your mother who is not your brother and is not your sister?”

“Ah, that’s simple Mr. President”, says Madeleine, “it’s me!”

“Well done Madeleine,” says Clinton, and Howard is very impressed indeed.

John Howard returns to Canberra somewhat concerned about the intelligence of the members of his own Cabinet.

He calls in Alexander Downer and says: “Alex, tell me, who is the child of your father and of your mother who is not your brother and is not your sister?”

Downer thinks and thinks and doesn’t know the answer. “Um, you know, um, you know that is a hypothetical question and so of course …”

Howard looks at him darkly. “You know that bullshit doesn’t wash with me, Alex. I invented it.”

Downer pauses. “Yes. You know, um, I think we need to, um…such an important question obviously deserves very serious consideration. It may take some time.”

“Take all the time you need,” says Howard. “You’ve got 24 hours.”

Downer goes away, thinks as hard as he can, calls in his team, but no-one knows the answer.

22 hours later, after a sleepless night, Downer is sick to his considerable stomach – still no answer and only 2 hours to go.

Eventually Downer says, “I’ll phone Ruddock, he’s clever, he’ll know the answer.”

“Phil,” he says, “tell me, who is the child of your father and of your mother who is not your brother and is not your sister?”

“Very simple”, says Ruddock, “it’s me!”

“Of course! Just wanted to make sure you knew,” says Downer. 

He calls John Howard.

“Prime Minister”, says Downer proudly, “I have the answer:    It’s Philip Ruddock”.

“No, you idiot!” says Howard. “It’s Madeleine Albright!”

Grey Cardigans at 20 Paces

Aug 15, 2007 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Grey Cardigans at 20 Paces

 

The greater triumphs and achievements

 

Today in 3QuarksDaily Abbas Raza quotes Nehru:

“   We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.

Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

This is precisely the opportunity, we thought, that Australia faces right now and seems, world-wearily, to be about to decline.

Thirty-five years ago Australians were excited at the prospect of throwing off the shackles of 25 years of boring, po-faced, arrogantly self-righteous, calvinoid/augustinoid coalition rule. And how we did throw them off!

Australia experienced a cultural excitement and energy and a social flowering unseen in decades. If ever. And brief though it was it changed our social landscape and our cultural and creative self-confidence for decades to come.

It took a man who was a visionary – an arrogant visionary, for sure (a justifiably arrogant visionary, perhaps) – with almost unlimited willingness to nurture his vision, to release us from the shackles of a most unpopular war and to have the confidence in Australians to encourage us to be ourselves, and to grow into whoever we would turn out to be.

And then before too long the lights dimmed.

The grey sludge of coalition rule crept up over our boots and then our hearts and we were once again forced by lies into the ugly, unpopular, insane, illegal horror of another war we didn’t want and didn’t understand.

And we have once again learnt obediently

to trudge daily to the foundry to collect our stale daily crumbs,

knowing that it is more than we deserve,

tugging our forelocks at the mill owners who have never had it so good,

being pathetically grateful for our good fortune,

and being expected to vote loyally yet again for our masters and betters

and the yoke of an only-mildly-despotic regime.

So now here we are again, just as we were in ’72 with the opportunity to overthrow the tyrants, to end our part in a horrible war and to flourish enthusiastically again as a nation of creators and experimenters and revellers in Life.

And we know, or we feel in our bones, that it is about to happen.

But where is the excitement?

Where is our sense of “the greater triumphs and achievements that await us”? What has happened to our courage and wisdom “to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future”?

There is none.

We are resigned.

We have on the one side the hand of living death and on the other a candidate who promises to be no different.

There is no vision, no promise.

No brave new morality,

no freshly-polished values,

no curtains opened to let the sunshine into our souls,

no outraged insistence on our birthright as free, imaginative and resourceful Australians.

Just more of the boring, left-brain, repetitive, cardiganed, conventional, calvinistic, po-faced, minutely-regulated, micro-managed, soup-kitchen-slop, soul-destroying same.

Two leaders: both of whom will send you into an instant coma, if they breathe on you,.

We do not deserve such alternatives.

We are better than that.

We ought not accept such a choice.

We are better than both of them.

What Cheney Really Thinks

Aug 13, 2007 | Australian Values, Democracy, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

What Cheney Really Thinks

Invading Baghdad Would Create a Quagmire

 

In this interview from April 15th, 1994 Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein‘s regime wouldn’t be a great idea. He also stipulates that “not very many” American soldiers’ lives were worth losing to take out Saddam during the Gulf War.

Less than a decade later …… ?

Feel we need a shower to cleanse ourselves of this man’s ordure. What an immoral hypocrite he really is! And one of Howard’s “mates”.

Now with Karl Rove deserting the sinking ship on 31 August, perhaps Cheney won’t be far behind. At least he will be more isolated than ever.

Review of recent DIC Waving

Jul 29, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Values

Review of recent DIC Waving

 

A slightly different audience …

 

Some time ago, Bob Correll, the Deputy Secretary of DIC¹ , contacted us to complain that the Values Australia website

“may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas”

before going on to threaten us with a variety of laws.

We are sure that Bob’s people are watching, so we just wanted to ask him, “How do you think your department’s “important work” of managing Australia’s reputation overseas has been going in the last few weeks?” (I mean vis-a-vis Haneef?)

By the way, Bob, we notice that you gave a speech right in the middle of the debacle, on July 24, strangely not mentioning Mohamed Haneef. “Strangely”, because your talk was titled “Managing our shared future: the use of the visa as a whole-of-government policy tool”.

We would have thought that your master’s “use of the visa” in the Haneef matter would have been an excellent illustration of its use – “leverage” you called it – in serving government objectives.

If you don’t mind, Bob, I’ll share just a few of your observations with a slightly different audience than the one you addressed at the Government Policy Evolution conference.

“One of the clear challenges we have is to spread this leverage throughout the government, so that every relevant agency is using the visa to extract the maximum outcome and benefit for the nation as a whole.
[…]
To an extent, the visa sets the Department of Immigration and Citizenship apart in the Australian policy landscape. For instance, many Australian Government portfolios are working to achieve a range of impressive policy outcomes, through the usual methods of the Budget cycle, legislation, grants programmes and so on. Within my department, the visa gives a focus to a great deal of our work.

 

We can use the visa as a whole-of-government instrument to contribute to broader government policy objectives through the delivery of services on behalf of lead policy departments. The areas we can contribute to cross almost every aspect of the government’s economic, security, social, cultural and international responsibilities. This can be done by the conditions attached to the visa. For example, access to health and welfare services and work rights.

https://valuesaustralia.com/blog/visapolicy.jpg
You may or may not be surprised to know that the Minister for Immigration is one of the most litigated individuals in Australia — although I am pleased to note he is successful in more than 90 per cent of these cases
[…]
If this all seems theoretical then just three weeks ago the Prime Minister announced a new cross-portfolio border security initiative with the visa at it’s heart.

But Bob, our favourite line was when you said:

“the possibilities for tuning this policy tool are limited only by our policy creativity…”

Well, your Minister has certainly been creative. You go, Bob!

Really. Go

¹ Department of Immigration and Citizenship

Haneef “Not Uninnocent”

Jul 27, 2007 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Humour, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, Values

Haneef “Not Uninnocent”

 

The materials available to me

“While there are inferences that are available from the material I have, I am of the view that they are not sufficiently strong to exclude reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence.”

– Damien Bugg, DPP

Did the Government interfere in any way with the investigation of Haneef, the charges brought against him and the withdrawal of his visa?

I am advised to aver that there are inferences that may be drawn from the material that is available and that such inferences are not inconsistent with any number of hypotheses, including that Mr Howard may have jumped up and down with glee when Dr Haneef was apprehended at the airport, that Mr Ruddock lit the black candle, donned his black hood, rubbed his skeletal hands with grim and cold satisfaction and began practising his hangman’s knot, and that Kevin Rudd said, “Shit! another wedging attempt! Memo to troops: say nothing and do nothing!” However, I am also bound to assert that whilst such hypotheses may not be inconsistent with the materials available to me, the material is at the same time not inconsistent also with other hypotheses which are themselves not inconsistent with innocence and which a reasonable person may think do not exclude the possiblity of lack of guilt.

You mean they were probably all over the Haneef affair like a rash but you can’t prove it?

Your hypothetical distillation of my exposition of the matters pertinent is unable to be confirmed by the person standing before you.

Why not?

I am not unconstrained by the requirement to utilise linguistic circumlocutions characterised by the passive voice, double negatives, arcane concepts and elaborately constructed sentences designed to confuse and obfuscate thereby ensuring that recipients of such communications are not unmistaken as to the purport of the communiqué.

You have to bloviate.

It may be not incorrectly hypothesised that a reasonable person might form the inference that the proposition which has been put by my interlocutor is sufficiently persuasive as to have a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd is reported¹ to have commented,

“Fuck! Fucking fuck! How the fuck can I fucking well claim a fucking moral victory now? Who’s the fuckwit who told me to say nothing, do nothing? Why didn’t the fucking bastards tell me they were going to fuck the whole fucking business up! Cunts!”

¹Whilst there are inferences that may be drawn from the material available, we are of the view that they are not sufficiently strong to exclude reasonable hypotheses consistent with Mr Rudd’s innocence of the use of the quoted expletives.

Just Checking our MASSIVE STUFF-UP

Jul 26, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Terrorism, Values

Just Checking our MASSIVE STUFF-UP

A note about the Haneef debacle/fallout…

 

The police and the government — notably Howard, Andrews, Downer and Ruddock (all of whom would have purple dye on their hands if they stole a briefcase instead of hijacking the brief on Haneef )  — have been constantly calling for the public and the law fraternity to “back off”, “take a cold shower”, “leave the legal process to run its course”, etc. etc.

They have been saying that the attacks on the police, the DPP and the government have been unethical, despicable and improper and compromising due legal process and the possibility of Haneef receiving a fair trial.

WE WUZ RIGHT all along and THEY WUZ SO WRONG.

There was sufficient error in the process and the handling of the case to cause serious disquiet to the very people who were calling for non-interference.

The case against Haneef is being reviewed by the DPP and the visa cancellation is being reviewed by the police.

It can’t be overstated, really, that the cancellation of Haneef’s visa by Kevin Andrews was a guilty verdict before any evidence had been tested at all, let alone in a court of law. And in fact, as Andrews said, the verdict of a court was irrelevant to his personal determination of Haneef’s guilt (by association, in fact) on the hearsay evidence of the police.

Haneef could not have had a fair trial.

If everyone had followed the police and ministerial advice, warnings and threats not to interfere, the police case would have gone unchallenged. Even in a court the purported ultra-secret police “evidence” would have gone unchallenged by the defence. We would have trusted our government’s “integrity” and meekly believed our politicians when they swore they did not have their hands in the legal till.

We were right not to trust them.

Not because Haneef is innocent – that hasn’t been tried – but because such people must never be allowed to get away with the kind of sloppy, political, vested-interest, dishonest subversion of the law in general and a bad law in particular.

Not for me. Not in my name.