How do you think Australia’s economy is going, compared to the rest of the world?
Sir Roger wonders because some rainbow-lovers say it’s magnificent and some shrill hurricane chasers say we’re going to hell in a handbasket and doom is upon us. Sir Roger had his servan staff do some forensic research. They discovered that only the following 11 countries (i.e. the top roughly 6%) have AAA ratings with stable or positive outlooks with all three “big” ratings agencies (Fitch, Moody’s, Standard and Poors):
Australia
Canada
Denmark
Finland
Norway
Singapore
Sweden
Switzerland
Germany
Luxembourg
Netherlands
This is nice…isn’t it? That’s an elite group! Even the UK and US aren’t in it. Shouldn’t we be grateful and count our blessings, even celebrate? So if we are doing so well, if the economy is so excellent and apparently we’ve really “never had it so good”, why are so many people (all right I mean Jolly Joe and Tony the Tool and all the Liberal Premiers) trying to convince us how badly the economy is being managed, how tough life is, how bad we feel, and how much we’re all struggling? Remember it’s been 5 years now and they can no longer lay the wreaths at Costello’s door. Maybe they hope no-one will actually look at the facts.
Or did Sir Roger miss something?
You’re aware that a AAA rating is only about the money and in a “two-tiered economy” that may not mean a lot to the people on the lower tier (not being Andrew, Gina or Clive). But there is another list called the UN Human Development Index. It rates countries for Life Expectancy/Health, Education and Standard of Living. Here are the top few countries (corrected for “inequality”):
Norway
Australia
Sweden
Netherlands
Iceland
Ireland
Germany
Denmark
Switzerland
Slovenia
Finland
Canada New Zealand would be in the top ten (it is #5 in the uncorrected index)
So surely it can’t get much better than this? I mean, if we’re miserable and pessimistic and afraid of the future in this environment, when would we EVER be happy and appreciative and optimistic?
Sir Roger thinks it’s not the facts that are at play but the clash of perceptual “frames” being manufactured by each side, the optimists and pessimists, that is directing the narrative and the perception of how well we’re doing.
What do you think? Tell Sir Roger in the comments.
Sir Roger is generally a jovial fellow when not contemplating the tragic, terrifying farce that is politics both national and global. But he was bemused and then tickled with annoyance by a somewhat acquaintance who seems on the one hand to be a decent and committed man dedicated to and driven by service to others and on the other hand to be a self-congratulatory cock-a-doodle-do-gooder.
However, on closer inspection, and with the assistance of his slavservants “assistants” Sir Roger is willing to allow that Graham Giblin’s self-diminishment – an exceptional weightloss of 30kg – was an achievement through which others can learn and that Giblin has done a noble thing by sharing his weightloss secret in a book for others who may wish to benefit from it also.
But what of his blatant self-promotion as “Graham Giblin – Trainer“? Again, Sir Roger’s drudges point out that his website appears to authentically express humility, gratitude and a passion to make a difference. “He must,” say Sir Roger’s peons, “explain to those who might wish to use his skills why they would make a fine choice, else his skills would go unused and his potential students would go un-made-a-difference-to.” (Sir Roger’s vassals never were quite the masters of the language.)
Sir Roger requires me to express that he thinks this:
“Humility is fine. It is modesty I object to so hotly. Modesty is saying “I am not very good” while knowing that one is. That is, modesty is a filthy, spineless yellow lie. And not only that, it is a lie that steals one’s skills and contribution from the world. It is simpering, deceitful, foul theft.
Humility is saying “I am good at this, it is true. I believe I am better at this than others are. And yet this fact and these skills, by which I contribute to the world what I can, do not make me, as a human being, superior to any other human being. And I am grateful for these skills and for my life and for the opportunity to make my contribution.”
So, says Sir Roger, if this is who you are, go well Mr Giblin. Help people by all means to lose weight (I may be the first to purchase your tome); may they live longer and better lives. And train your training if it helps others to live the lives they dream of.
We, the Most Powerful Nations of the World, having met face to face and flab to flab for two days in the beachside resort of Los Cabos Mexico, and having carefully avoided any difficult topics or trodden on any sensitive toes, are immensely proud to be able to now release our joint communiqué of enough pointless puffing and blowing to power massive windfarms in Spain and Greece:
We the Most Powerful Nations of the World “support the intention to consider concrete steps towards a more integrated financial architecture encompassing bank supervision“.
Did you see how we did that? No-one needs to do anything at all about a nebulous, obfuscous, conceptual sleight of hand that is so inchoate as to be completely meaningless! Brilliantly pretentious political gibberish! Now you understand why we deserve to rule the world!
So in the Cimitière Montmartre I found one of my heroes.
Émile Zola
That is to say, I found the memorial. He is interred at the Panthéon.
Why a hero? Amongst his many writings Emile Zola wrote this, which is as relevant today in our political discourse and climate as it was almost exactly 50 years to the day before my birth.
Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people’s cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext.
It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.
Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!
[ ... ]
I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.
Just insert, for example, Abbott, or Howard, or Liberal Party, or Hockey, or Jones, or Bolt; strike out anti-semitism and replace it with asylum seekers, or global warming, or in earlier days Iraq, wherever they seem appropriate to you.
The French, I am convinced, are serious about and cherish and are vigilant about their hard-won democracy, their Rights of Man, their “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. Do Australians, in contrast, tend to think “she’ll be right”?
Sir Roger is currently in the land of the poppy but not near Flanders fields. Yet there are poppies here in the South of France and the whiff of war and bloody conflict is inescapably faintly background to all.
And so it was a cold and brassy wind which blew through Sir Roger’s eye sockets and resonated in his skull and rattled the bones of his skeleton when Les recited this poem, perhaps the angriest, truest, most biting and chilling verse of war Sir Roger has ever heard.
Notes for My Son
Remember when you hear them beginning to say Freedom
Look carefully–see who it is that they want you to butcher.
Remember, when you say that the old trick would not have
fooled you for a moment
That every time it is the trick which seems new.
Remember that you will have to put in irons
Your better nature, if it will desert to them.
Remember, remember their faces–watch them carefully:
For every step you take is on somebody’s body.
And every cherry you plant for them is a gibbet
And every furrow you turn for them is a grave
Remember, the smell of burning will not sicken you
If they persuade you that it will thaw the world
Beware. The blood of a child does not smell so bitter
If you have shed it with a high moral purpose.
So that because the woodcutter disobeyed
they will not burn her today or any day
So that for lack of a joiner’s obedience
The crucifixion will not now take place
So that when they come to sell you their bloody corruption
You will gather the spit of your chest
And plant it in their faces.
When will they get it? Or do they get it and try to hide the truth about the Afghanistan photos before anyone notices they’ve got it?
First the disclaimer: To gloatingly photograph yourself with a slain enemy (whether self-slaughtered or not) is obscene, but then if the entire situation is obscene…
The American political-military establishment – not to mention the Australian and the European/NATO war departments – once again insists that “this is not us”, “this behavior does not reflect our values.”
“This is not who we are,” says Leon Panetta.
“[The Afghanistan photos] don’t in anyway represent the principles and values that are the basis for our mission in Afghanistan,” says Anders Fogh Rasmussen who also said this was “an isolated event.”
Yes, it’s the case of the bad apples.
The question is, how did these apples pop fully formed – armed and in uniform – into existence? Was it by a miracle of birth, more miraculous than immaculate conception because apparently they had neither father nor mother nor even country or past?
Of course not. These “bad apples” carry the social DNA of their apple tree: their country, their nation, their society, the situation they have been shoe-horned into by a military establishment that is more concerned with the politics of the game and the public perception of the state of the game than with the human realities of the way war inflicts itself on cannon-fodder.
And the Generals and diplomats¹ think they can sweep the results of their ugly game under the carpet by disclaiming all knowledge and responsibility – while, of course, those who carry the most obscenity and culpability, those who have most truly lost their moral compass, are the ones who initiate, or who endorse, or who neatly fold up their moral sensibility in a shroud and place it carefully out of sight and hearing in a hole in a dark and hidden corner of their mind.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.
What a difference in attitude by the American military/political conglomerate compared to its response to Julian Assange!
With Assange and Bradley Manning the biggest beef was that they had put Americans “in harm’s way”. But we know that they scrupulously had not. As far as we know not a single hair on an American head has been put out of place as a result of the Wikileaks release.
In contrast, the release of the photos by the LA Times is almost certain to cause yet more aggression against Americans and their allies, not just by the Taliban but by others worldwide.
Not that the LA Times should not have shared what it knew – that is in a way its sacred duty.
But that no-one in political/military circles in the US has sworn by hook or by crook to get LA Times staff for publishing the Afghanistan photos, offered their opinion that someone should kill them by contract or “accident”, which numerous high-profile Americans (and a Canadian…oh, and an Alaskan) did about Assange, well, the difference is stark and striking and, frankly, rank hypocrisy and jingoism.
Is Sir Roger the only one to notice this?
¹So plain the advantages of machination
It constitutes a moral obligation,
And honest wolves who think upon’t with loathing
Feel bound to don the sheep’s deceptive clothing.
So prospers still the diplomatic art,
And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.
– R.S.K.
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
– The Devil’s Dictionary
On this definition most of the press, radio and television – at least the “popular” versions – are very small indeed.
So are most of the politicians who spewed their vitriol over the last week, including especially Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and the country’s most boring politician since Barry Unsworth, Simon Crean. Tony Abbott has rarely if ever talked about anything but other people and what is wrong with them (unless he’s talking about B A Santamaria or George Pell).
Some recent politicians have talked about “things”, but it’s rare that those things are anything but “Jobs Jobs Jobs” or “Teh Economy”. Or Pink Bats.
Australia has had politicians great and small. And very, very average. The Great politicians Australia has been blessed with are few and far between. In fact there are only two in Sir Roger’s living memory. And of course you can’t guess. Under the above definition the only truly great Australian politicians in the last 50 years have been Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. And what is wrong with that? Well, people have hated them passionately. And the reason most people who dislike(d) them is that “most people” are small, or average at best if they are lucky, and couldn’t quite grasp the concept, or value, of talking about “ideas”.
Anyway, it’s just a definition and an idea someone made up.
Sir Roger has just received a request from Canberra saying that the National Library of Australia wished permission to include ValuesAustralia.com in the PANDORA Archive of Australian websites. So … Sir Roger … archived in perpetuity. That’s a kind of immortality. Fame of a sort, one supposes. It’s better than not being archived at least. Although, as Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Where has Sir Roger been? Why has he been absent from his adoring public?
Well, first and least, how could Sir Roger satirise Australian politics any more than Australia’s laughingstock politicians were doing by themselves? How could he point out the ridiculous any more clearly than the ridiculous politicians themselves? It is an unavoidable fact that Australian politics in 2012 are beyond absurd.
It is also an unavoidable fact that the Australian people do not deserve these appalling, self-serving, lying, cheating, machine room rabble.
There are various intelligences. Ordinary general intelligence is one of them. It may be necessary but it far from sufficient. More important are emotional, moral and social intelligence.
Sir Roger is also totally conflicted. He can’t stand Gillard or Rudd both of whom have above average general intelligence and both of whom lack emotional, moral and social intelligence. How can one vote for such awfulness and allow them to ionflict themselves any longer on Australia? But then Tony Abbott lacks all four modes of intelligence. He is terminally gullible and intellectually dishonest apart from being transparently dishonest. Abbott is impossible to vote for.
So who is left? The Greens? They’re certainly more honest and more intelligent in most ways but they can’t step up in their present state especially with the extremists hanging on.
So that’s one reason why Sir Roger has been silent. What could he say?
The big reason for Sir Roger’s silence is that he has been working on his weight loss book, Weightloss Without Willpower. Sir Roger hasn’t made much of it here but he has lost a lot of weight recently. Intentionally, of course. And he decided to share his system by writing a book. It is now available on Amazon.
The Government is pushing ahead with its demand that dozens of dentists repay $20 million claimed under Medicare for treating people with chronic diseases.
Here’s how it is: Few people can afford dental service, not even preventive.
Just to open your mouth for a dentist will set you back over $70. To have any work done will cost you a lot more.
People who have low-paying jobs or none at all, especially if they have, for example, parental responsibilities, simply can’t afford to go to a private dentist.
They can go to the Dental Hospital (if they happen to live in a capital city) and wait for two or three years in some cases to complete a series of consultations.
Meanwhile, people with missing teeth can lose jobs, miss promotions or, if unemployed, find it extremely difficult to find employment. This is especially serious for people whose work involves standing up in front of people, or managing them: trainers, coaches, teachers, actors, etc. etc. etc.
What can they do? Until some time ago if you had rotting or broken teeth you could go to your GP and make a case that your dental condition was life-threatening – which it can be because, for example, of gum disease which can be linked to heart disease. Your GP could create a Patient Management Plan which included dental work.
Dentist could, with this Plan, provide their services under Medicare. The problem was that they could claim only one item at a time. Therefore some dentists, if they had to do two extractions in a sitting, chose to space them over more than one date. They weren’t claiming or being paid for work they were not doing.
And even then, if a prosthesis was needed – false teeth – only the prosthetist’s services were covered. The false teeth themselves could cost $2000, which is a lot for an unemployed person.
Older (especially pre-fluoride), less-well-paid Australians have dreadful dentition. This scheme was the only possible way to stay in the employment game, not to mention to cling onto some sort of quality of life, self-esteem and respect.
It was, frankly a crappy scheme put together by the coalition years ago. It was, in conscience, the least they could do. And they did the very least they could.
Now the Labor Party thinks even that was too much and wants to junk it.
And on top of that they are punishing dentists with fines for making it possible for that scheme to work.
The most likely reason Health Minister Plibersek has taken this action is as part of a larger strategy to claw back outgoings so that Treasurer Swan can announce his surplus in 2012. This surplus is supposed to prove his economic management credentials (and to poke his tongue out at Fatty Joe Hockey who said Labor would “never deliver a surplus”). But that Labor might win the next election, surplus or not, is a vain hope.
For Sir Roger, this action is the last straw.
With this there is no policy area remaining in which Labor can claim moral or political superiority over the coalition.
On every important issue Labor is in a panicked race to the ethics-free bottom to appease narrow-minded, ignorant, cashed-up bogans who are already, not rusted-on, but welded-on to the coalition.
Gillard today announces a tax-benefit bribe to low-income families with teenage children.
Labor has been in power for three and a half years. They could have done this years ago. Why didn’t they?
They’re in panic.
Do you think immediately, as I did, of Gillard and Abbott (not to mention almost their entire front benches) when you read this from the final chapter of Kevin Dutton’s Flipnosis?
“If experience teaches us anything, it’s this: behind the façade of assiduous, fumbling accomplishment there shimmers a realm of despicably effortless incompetence. An imperishable array of faux-pas, cock-ups and howlers that clunks into mortal existence at the whim of the cognitively challenged.”
So who is left to vote for? Who is left with the moral authority to manage a country for the welfare of its people? Not the Coalition ptui! ptui! who lost their moral compass years ago – so who is left who might keep them both honest?
He walked away. He walked back. He could not look at her. He could not look away. He began to say something. He could not say anything. What could he say? Whatever he said must appal Elenora, perhaps disgust her. Certainly discomfort and embarrass her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain or discomfort or embarrassment. Certainly it would embarrass him. Nothing he could say about his love for Elenora could possibly be appropriate. And, though he longed to say something of his love, he said nothing.
This was the first of what were the very few wise decisions he made from this fateful day forward.
He did not know what to do. He could not sleep. Every evening he went home delirious with desire and aching with yearning. Each night he dreamt of Elenora. Each day he woke early with anticipation and hope in his heart at the thought merely of seeing her again, even if only fleetingly.
Until this day, this butter-fingered Cupid’s tragically clumsy day, Hamgar had been upright and self-possessed, knowing and capable, confident with his students and even a little proud, for there were things, so people said, for him to take pride in. How had he deserved this terrible punishment?
Today, just a day after the failure of industrial negotiations between itself and the Unions, and with people still furious only three weeks after CEO Joyce gave the finger to its entire customer base, the Prime Minister and Australia generally, the Qantas social media uber-geniuses began a twitter campaign with the hashtag #qantasluxury, asking tweeple to tweet “creative” ideas about – um – Qantasluxury, in order to win, honestly, a pair of Qantas pyjamas, and a “luxury amenity kit”.
What happened next was salutory. Derisory tweets were flying within minutes and hours later as Sir Roger now dips his quill it is still the No. 2 trending topic in Australia.
Within an hour, the hashtag was trending across the country, but the tweets were not quite what management expected.
@GrogsGamut tweeted: “#QantasLuxury- when the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.
ABC radio’s PM presenter Mark Colvin, @Colvinius said: “Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #qantasluxury”.
And @the-aaron-smith said: “#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”.
Social media expert James Griffin from SR7 said that, by about 1pm, Australians were sending out 51 tweets a minute on the hashtag. Most of these were tweets making fun of the idea of #qantasluxury.
But Sir Roger’s favourite response is not on twitter:
In less than a heartbeat it was done. The Cupid’s, Bertrand’s, tiny arrow was buried deep in his heart.
Cold as deep blue ice. Hot as white hot gold.
From this moment there was no hope of Cupid’s cruelly-barbed steel ever being removed without tearing his heart out with it.
And Hamgar looked up.
And there was Elenora.
And he loved her.
Suddenly.
Unexpectedly.
Astonishingly.
Unforeseeably.
Unasked-for.
Unrequitably.
Unrequitably, for he knew Elenora. She was a good woman, a private woman, with a love and a home and family of her own.
From his grey hair to his brown sandals Hamgar was shocked, ashamed and confused.
Hamgar was ashamed because he knew his hair was grey. While Elenora’s hair was shiny and black. She was young. She could not love him, he knew. Indeed she hardly noticed him.
He could not love her. It was impossible.
And yet he did. Suddenly and shockingly he loved her with his entire being.
Hamgar did not know what to do, where to look, what to say. It made no sense. Why Elenora? She was nice; she was friendly enough in her way; he had always liked her. Indeed, from the moment he first met her on the day she joined the workshop he had had that feeling you get, don’t you, when you feel you have known someone all your life, in a pleasant, comfortable sort of way. He had always thought Elenora was pretty, it’s true. And she was clever, it’s also true, with a quick and sometimes wicked wit. Yet these things are not on their own enough to lead to Love.
But the Elenora he now saw was beautiful and wonderful and he longed and ached for her, with his body and his mind; with his heart and his soul; with the parts of himself that we will not mention here.
In his daze he forgot where he was; he did not care where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He cared not at all what his life had been, what his life had meant before this moment. There was nothing else but the wondrous Elenora, standing in front of him, blissfully unaware of what felt to him like the volcanic eruption of his heart.
Desire and Doom tore him between them on their torturers’ rack.
There was no way forward. There was no way back. What was he to do?
Today as Hamgar was admiring Elenora’s miniatures, Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
His little wings began trembling with excitement.
His arrow slotted onto the string and with frowning concentration Bertrand began to draw it slowly back.
But his cute little pudgy fingers couldn’t hold the arrow and suddenly out twanged the arrow towards the ground. Through the nets and the draped hangings it flew. Straight into the breast of Hamgar, who looked up in astonishment to see before him the face of Elenora.
And so began the Tragedy that Hamgar’s life from that moment became.
– Aims at Unions’ Gooleys and Shoots Self In Heart
Alan Joyce, a person who appears not to properly grasp the iconic emotional attachment of Australians to the airline he “runs”, and fresh from his greedy, stupid, unearned ~70% pay increase to $5,000,000 a year, has lost no time in proving how little he deserves to be paid at all.
Anyone who has any true, properly developed people skills and understanding of ethical negotiation would have sorted this industrial dispute long ago. But he has apparently grown up with a belief in confrontation and win-lose styles and no ability to persuade, lead, inspire or any of the other qualities which many people on $50,000 a year have and that someone who is paid $5,000,000 a year should be required to have at the highest possible level.
Apparently he claims to be protecting the airline from having its brand trashed by the unions.
As Nick Xenophon says:
“Alan Joyce doesn’t need any help trashing Qantas’ brand.
“He’s done a pretty good job so far and this bizarre move appears to be the next phase in a plan to gut the flying kangaroo.”
As for his pay rise, Sir Roger heard a Qantas shareholder opining that Joyce had done a “pretty good job” and another saying he thought there was a chance Joyce would probably do all right in future.
Any senior executive of a public company will tell you that the CEO’s prime directive is to maximise the return to shareholders. And yet Joyce has been rewarded for presiding over:
and a massive loss of confidence in what was Qantas’s huge and statistically undefeatable advantage – its unrivalled reputation for safety.
Sir Roger recommends everyone try the Joyce Manoeuvre with their own boss.
Go to your boss and request a 70% pay rise on the basis that some people think you have done a “pretty good job” and that you think there’s a chance you will probably do all right in the future. Tell him/her that there’s a public precedent that’s been set by Alan Joyce.
And if it’s good enough for the Qantas board to reward him for that, it’s got to be good enough for your boss to reward you even better in advance for being at least competent.
In the aftermath of his very public News of the World disgrace¹, as Rupert displays the abject decency and compassion he so miraculously discovered, today he has gone even further.
Rupert Murdoch is determined to protect us from drivel, lies, bias, distortion and bullshit.
He has today selflessly erected a paywall around his “flagship” Australian newspaper’s online presence. The intention is to discourage ordinary, intelligent, clean-living Australians from subjection to the cesspool of The Australian‘s politically fanatical, right-wing-agenda-driven garbage of writers like Greg Sheridan.
If you want to be lied to online by Rupert’s nest of sycophantic fools, folks you’re going to have to pay for the privilege. And Rupert’s betting you won’t. That’s how he plans to save the planet from the horrors he unleashed on it and nurtured for so long. And it’s heartwarming – isn’t it? – to see some pretence of morality in the malignant old cunt?
And soon you’ll even have to pay to be lied to if you want to wallow online in the Murdoch sewage works – the Terror, the Fail and the Hun.
Who else wants to pay to eat Rupert’s warm vomit? He’s gambling that you will say, “NOTWorth any money”.
¹BREAKING NEWS:
News is just emerging of plans for a movie about Rupert’s harrowing ordeal in the News of the World fiasco. The movie, to be called The Great Disgrace, is slated to star Steve McQueen’s skeleton as Rupert, and with James Murdoch played by that Gestapo guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face melts like wax when confronted with the Holy Spirit.
Hamgar never really noticed the fat little Cherubs flying around, or sitting on the beams above him. For as long as he could remember, Cherubs had always been everywhere, so common that he no longer saw them, and if he had, well, they were nothing to do with him at this time in his life. The Cherubs, he would have thought, if he did think about them, which really he didn’t, were looking at the young ones, the pretty girls and the handsome boys, not interested in him at all.
And to tell you the truth, they weren’t.
Now Bertrand was a special kind of Cherub called a Cupid. And he was trying really hard to be a good Cupid and to remember all of the instructions he had been taught by his tutors and his mum. But the trouble was, you see, that being that special kind of Cherub called a Cupid he didn’t just have to remember how to fly around and sit in the rafters and on the top of columns. He had to manage a little bow and arrow as well. And he had to do that while he was flying.
You can imagine how difficult it would be for you, remembering to flap your little wings and watch where you were going all the while holding on to a tiny bow in one hand and your fistful of fiddly little arrows in the other. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone and it was all the more difficult because, being a Cupid, and very young, and very new to it all, and his fingers being a bit Cherub-cute and pudgy, holding his little bow and arrow with his fat little fingers was difficult. I mean, had the bow and the arrows been a little larger it might have been easier for a novice Cupid to manage them. But Bertrand wanted so much to get it right. Every chance he got, he’d sit and practise with his little bow and arrow. But it was so hard. He’d take an arrow out of his quiver and try to hold it in place on the bowstring. He’d even flutter his tiny wings as he tried to pull the arrow back a little. But almost always it just went “plop!” onto the floor.
So on this particular day, Bertrand was sitting in Hamgar’s workshop practising as usual and not getting very far as usual, his arrows plopping about into the nets and hangings that were suspended about the workshop. Down below him Hamgar was, as usual, working away, teaching his pupils and now and again chatting to his fellow artisans. It was just a normal day and Hamgar was quite unconscious of Bertrand’s presence above him. Had he looked down, Bertrand could not have seen very much of Hamgar but his grey hair and his shoulders.
Also in the workshop that day were many others as always. Among them Maria the seamstress was there this day, and Alad the painter, and Melina, his voluptuous artist’s model, and ElenoraTrulov, the sculptor of perfect Russian miniatures, and Kira the romantic poet, all busily pursuing their crafts.
When it happened, Hamgar was idly admiring the fine decorative brushstrokes of Elenora’s miniatures, as he often admiringly did. Above him, distracted and frustrated, Bertrand was struggling with his bow and arrow.
And today Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
If only, for Hamgar’s sake, that he hadn’t only almost got it
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
It was a long, long time ago, of course, back when there were cherubim and seraphim flitting about everywhere and the Great Masters could paint their portraits. I know they were real because I have seen photos of their pictures and I have seen ceilings in great palaces and grand cathedrals with their likenesses brushed into the plaster, the cherubs flying around while with saintly patience the great masters painted them from the life.
There was a little Cherub whose name was Bertrand. His cheeks were rosy and his little red mouth was pouty and his golden hair was curly and he had the cutest little wings fluttering on his back. But Bertrand was a disaster waiting to happen (and it did). It’s true he was cute but as cherubs go he wasn’t very good at cherubbing. The truth is he was a bit flustered most of the time. I don’t know why. Perhaps he hadn’t been properly trained. Perhaps he was a First Reserve Cherub, or a Probationary Cherub, or a Work Experience Cherub. Something like that, whatever they had in the olden days. Or perhaps he just hadn’t had breakfast yet.
Anyway Bertrand was a bit nervous and uncertain and clumsy. But he tried. He really did. “More haste less speed,” his mother might have said, if Cherubs have mothers. He tried really hard. Perhaps he tried too hard. Yes that could have been what it was. Perhaps that was the reason he made the terrible mistake.
So one day Bertrand was flying around in the rafters of the workshop where an older man, an artisan and teacher named Hamgar, worked.
Hamgar was a good man for the most part, as men, for the most part, go. He was no saint. He left that up to others who liked fun less than he.
But he was mostly kind and thoughtful and cared about the wellbeing of others, not just his own. He enjoyed using the special skills he brought to his craft and he enjoyed passing them on to others. He joked and people liked him, more or less.
Hamgar’s workshop was busy. Others were there, too, men and girls all busy with their own craft. Some had worked there for a long time, some were new and some, like Hamgar, had worked there for what seemed a long time but really was not so long after all in the scheme of things. If there is a scheme, which, frankly, is a bit doubtful, don’t you think? That’s certainly not how it turned out, anyway. Later on, after “it” happened, Hamgar would search desperately for such a scheme, some sort of meaning to things, however vague, some point to it all, all the pain, something that made the slightest sense whatever.
From time to time over the next few weeks Sir Roger will be sharing the tragickly true mediæval story of Hamgar and Elenora whose secret he unearthed only recently. Today he offers the introduction.
The Extraordinary Tale
Behind The Discovery Of The Tragic Love Story
Of Hamgar, Elenora And Bertrand
More than one hundred years ago during renovations to the mediæval Castella della Zenzeropane in the Italian province of Rigatoni workmen discovered in the cellar a scarred and battered, ancient wooden chest. The chest, with all the other rescued artifacts of potential value, was shipped to “temporary” storage where it remained forgotten and unopened until just a few years ago. Only on the death of the son of the castle’s owner did his grandson, flicking through yellowed leaves of ancient documents, discover the accounts for the storehouse where the chest had lain covered in dust for a century. He realised that here was a veritable storehouse of potential treasures which had remained undisclosed for generations and in a moment of curiosity he determined to learn what secrets may lie hidden there. At long last he creaked open the chest and in the dim light was disappointed to find it apparently empty. As he began to close the lid a ray of faint sunlight flickered on the brass clasps and dashed briefly into the depths of the chest, revealing for the briefest moment what seemed like a dark red leather lump. Surprised, he opened the chest again, felt into the bottom and grasped what turned out to be a leather bound volume.
He studied it and carefully prised apart its pages. It was an ancient illuminated manuscript such as the monks used to create by candlelight in mediæval monasteries. The text was entirely in Latin. The grandson loved it and kept it and afterwards displayed it on a golden lectern. But he never knew what it said because no-one these days reads Latin. It looked like a Bible story so that would do for most.
However, I happened two years ago to be visiting the old Castella della Zenzeropane and noticed the ancient book on the golden lectern and asked what it was about. Finding that no-one knew anything more than they could see, I began attempting to decipher what I could in my rusty schoolboy Latin. Something about the words told me this was a special book but I could not tell why. I offered to have it translated at my own expense. When the translation was eventually done I was astonished to learn the beautiful, romantic, tragic, true story which unfolded. It was a story of the unrequited love of one who had not been seeking love at all, who was shot in the heart by cupid’s dart and fell instantly in love with, well, the wrong person. Mortally embarrassed by his love he could find no panacæa for his agony.
So many parallels in the story show that what is now known to science often was already known to be true by the wise.
Cupid’s love dart, said the sages, is instant, unforgiving and irreparable. Science now knows that we fall in love in less than one fifth of a second. The deed is done and our fate is sealed before we even recognise it has happened.
We humans have forever told stories of star-crossed lovers, people who fall in love with the wrong people. Science has discovered that the Australian jewel beetle (Julodimorpha bakewelli), will become so enamored with a small brown beer bottle, believing it to be a magnificent female jewel beetle, that he will try to mate with it – so vigorously that he dies trying to copulate in the hot sun rather than leave his love.
This is the tragedy of the hero of this ancient story locked in a chest in a dungeon for hundreds of years and only brought to life by accident upon accident – a hero impossibly and improbably in love, with no possible means to save himself.
Here is the opening page from the ancient manuscript which had lain in the dungeon for so many years.
Next time, Chapter 1 of Hamgar & Elenora & Bertrand’s Tragick Mistake.
The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.
The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.
The memo provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine.
Pardon me?
Who in America needs any special new legal case to execute an American citizen? They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and loving it. There’s a tacit competition, a dick-measuring competition – especially in Texas – to see who can be the most brutal executioner (they would say “strongest” or “toughest”, or god help us “most resolute”) and accumulate the most dead by their hand in the execution of American citizens.
In his six years as Governor of Texas George W. Bush famously, notoriously, presided over 152 executions – including that of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.
When he had washed his hands of the Governorship, Bush’s magnificent, towering, 152 judicial murders were more than for any other Governor in the recent history of the United States.
But on 2 June 2009, Texas reached the Glorious Milestone of its 200th execution during the term of Bush’s successor James Richard “Rick” Perry (or “Bigus Dickus”).
And by 10 August 2011 Texas had carried out 234 executions since Bigus Dickus became Governor.
So who needs any more, especially secret, legal niceties? Americans love killing their own. It’s what they do, It’s who they are and how they define themselves. Everyone knows and understands that. No need to pretend it’s a bit of a moral struggle, Mr President. “Off with their heads”, or “juice in their veins”, or in this case “drones in their bones”, is just Business As Usual, Standard Operating Procedure in the ethical/legal/social environment of your country.
Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
Astroturfers attempt to manipulate public opinion by both overt (“outreach”, “awareness”, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual promoting a personal agenda, or highly organized professional groups with money from large corporations, unions, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often, the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research. Beneficiaries are not “grass root” campaigners but distant organizations that orchestrate such campaigns.
Back in May of last year the much loved Channel Nine commentator Ray Warren was up front about the amount of money he had lost through gambling over the years and said something needed to be done. “It annoys me,” he said frankly, “that gambling, as a vice, gets swept under the carpet as a destroyer of people and families. It hasn’t been attacked in the same way as tobacco. Certainly, you can bet safely, unlike smoking, but it is a very serious problem, and it annoys me that many people don’t realise how serious it can be if you let it get out of control. I’ve seen some very good friends of mine end up in psychiatric homes, others in jail, and it’s very sad what can happen.”
That was last year. Last week at the Semi-final he said:
“Not only has the Manly football club been doing great work on the field this season,” Rabs starts off, “they’ve also been very busy working with the community off the field.” He goes on to detail the commendable programs run by the Sea Eagles, being paid for by pokies, and then says the technology for the pre-commitment legislation is “untested”…
BIASED CALL
Cue Phil Gould, still as part of what is meant to be football commentary: “Yeah, the proposed mandatory pre-commitment that they’ve put forward is a rubbish policy. It won’t work. It won’t solve the problem they say they’re going to target, and it will do irreparable damage to the hospitality industry. It won’t work and it will hurt.”
This is all astroturfing – political advocacy of a corporate agenda (the clubs, hotels and pokies industry) masquerading as just good old blokie home-grown, barbie-conversation, grassroots personal opinion. Some guy from Ch 9 (I think) said he didn’t give them a “script”, just (wtteo) “some dot-point talking points”. For goodness’ sake, you employ people like Gould and Warren because they can take dot points and turn them into a script live on air, because they can take thin air and turn it miraculously into 3D bullshit. You pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (if not millions) to do it. “Oi give ‘em dot points but I never ment ‘em to acksherly tork abowed ‘em. Yaw as fuggin’ shocked as Oi em! Oi mean, there sposedter jist sit there lookin’ like obese dickheads so the orjance ken oidennify with ‘em! Thass wot we pay ‘em for!”
Alan Jones is a master Astroturfer, feeding to his ignorant and needy audience the corporate/political agenda bullshit on which they grow, and then trying to sell the mushrooms he harvests as fresh green grass. And the climate change deniers’ arsenal is full to overflowing with fake “concerned citizens’” groups and bogus “Institutes” and “Coalitions”. But it is mostly made up of lies and distortions. Which brings us back to Phil Gould’s rant.
Here is Sir Roger’s advice on asylum seeker/immigration policy for Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and the rest of Australia’s panicked, “pragmatic” [=unethical, immoral and stupid] political elite who are slavishly, and in terror, reacting to the unholy self-righteousness of the christian right, the egomaniacal commentariat and the ignorant unwashed. It comes straight from the bible so it might resonate with Abbott at least:
Sir Roger has been absent from his adoring public. He has been busy, of course, and apologises from the bottom of what is left of his heart; from what is left of Australian politics by the Australian politicians who have mercilessly and inexorably broken it.
Sir Roger has made a deep study of the state of Australian politics over the last few weeks and the Executive Summary of his report is one line:
Bastards, cunts and ferals.
All of the politicians making public statements in Australia now are liars and dissemblers, desperately competing to be the first to dig Australian politics to the bottom of the political sewer. They are weak, gutless, fear-driven cowards. And they all seem to be trembling with terror in front of the toxic opinions of the deranged, ignorant, selfish, self-loathing, self-soul-saving, racist, hate-mongering, xenophobic Christians of Sydney’s west and Melbourne’s army of lip-service christian bogans.
I just wish that the politicians would have the courage to say what they believed was right, and if necessary walk away, just walk away from all the glory of office for the sake of what they believe is true. And I think that’s what the public wants.
Yes of course it’s exactly what the public wants. But they’re not going to get it.
Are our politicians really the best we can get? Do we really deserve this bunch of cheats and liars, dick measurers and gutless wonders? Are these bastards, cunts and ferals really a true reflection of who we are as a nation? Is this today’s high point of Australian politics?
And now Sir Roger needs to lie down with Johnny, or Jim and try to forget.
Ex-Media-Princess Reba à Crook today expressed astonishment at the latest revelations in the murky Views of the World scandal.
“On behalf of the Worst of the News I personally gave Sasha a mobile phone to help her in our law reform campaign on behalf of her daughter.
“The suggestion that anyone at the nudespaper had the faintest idea of anything at all that ever went on at the paper or where the stories came from is an obscenity and unthinkable and quite possibly scurrilous. To even vaguely suggest that the News of the Worst holds anything but the very highest moral values or that it has ever done anything the slightest bit unethical, particularly under my tenure at the helm, I mean, any such suggestion is you know, abhorrent and particularly upsetting. Look at me! I’m tearing up. See my face leaking?
“How could I possibly have know what was happening at Murder News of the Sleazy Sex World? Especially with a great story like Sasha’s which had both murder and sex? I couldn’t possibly be seen to be anywhere near it? In any case, most of the time I was supposed to be running the rag I was having a bit of a social thing with a few politicians and Rupert at the time, so I’m not sure exactly who was steering the ship … does Mulcahy…Mohawk…Muckraker…ring a bell? I don’t know. I never met him, so help me god.
“I truly believe Mr Mulligatawny…or whatever his name is…didn’t even work for us. No-one at the Used Toilet Roll of the World remembers, or admits to, employing him. I think he hacked his way into our systems and planted his obscene and highly profitable stories without our knowledge. In fact no-one ever noticed, or if they did they thought someone else must have done it. You can’t blame me. I represent the peak of News Corp’s journalistic ethics. Rupert’s ethics. Need I say more?
“Anyway, I like to think I can still call Sasha a really good and truly close friend, even if she now utterly despises me and everything I stand for. I know I have been as good a friend to her as I am capable of being to any human being.
You know … everyone knows … Rupert Murdoch is an evil genius. And this latest move is certainly worthy of his deep-seated amorality. If Murdoch believes in anything he believes in two things: nothing and money.
His latest move is pure evil genius at his best, perfectly amoral and perfectly greedy.
The “red-top” News of the World was a lightning rod for all that is awful about Murdoch’s evil empire, his willingness not simply to condone – even apparently (at least to Sir Roger) to encourage – unethical journalism (as long as there is money in it) and unethical business practice (if there is money in it), but also to ignore the certainty of the toxic and socially destructive effects his work brings to the world. If there is money in it (see, for example, Fox News and Roger Ailes).
Is Murdoch personally responsible for the harm and hurt he brings to the world? After all, he’s just a businessman and not personally involved in the day to day journalistic decisions of his staff. If there is one thing Sir Roger has learned in his long years it is this: the nature of an organisation, the culture, the ethical sense, the attitudes, the mood, that pervade and really influence and direct the behaviour of all the people who work within it, spring from just one source and that is its leader. Everything in an organisation is a reflection of who – and what – the leader is. In a school, that’s the Principal. In a company, it’s the boss. And the News of the World with all its foulness, dishonesty, greed, inhumanity and deceit is a direct reflection of Murdoch. It’s inescapable because who he is as a man influences every part of what and whom he leads.
News of the World had become a huge and easy target for attacking the Murdoch empire generally. So what Murdoch has done is to remove the target. Now there is nothing to shoot at. News of the World had become a floodlit monument to all the real reasons why Murdoch and his megacorp would not be fit and proper controllers of a huge and influential satellite television company.
“What do you mean? What newspaper? I don’t see any so-called ‘News of the World‘.
No NoW, no NoW staff. Do they keep the documents? Or shred them (you know, for commercial-in-confidence reasons)? Can they be sued? For example, by Milly Dowler’s parents or any number of celebrities and politicians?
Murdoch has sacked hundreds (presumably) of staff at NoW. Not too much sympathy there for people who were willing to sell their souls for a shiny penny and the privilege of shitting into the same sewer as the Great Hero. But he hasn’t sacked the one person he ought to have: the ex-Editor – in the big seat when much of the worst phone-tapping was going on – who is now Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks. He can’t fire her, of course, or release her to the wolves (unless there’s money in it) because she is, like the now arrested and out-on-bail Coulson, another magnificent product of the Murdoch School of Business and Journalistic Ethics, the arsepaper previously known as News of the World.
Murdoch has done all this not out of ethics or integrity or even shame, or even to protect the “good name” of his companies. It is to try to protect his attempt to obtain control of BSkyB and if people get hurt? Too bad.
As we know, but just to remind ourselves, the row over the News of the World was re-ignited this week when it was revealed that it had paid people to hack into the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was murdered in 2002.
How must Louise Casey, Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, feel?
Last Sunday, 3 July, under a bellowing, finger-wagging News of the World article [IN DEFENCE OF DIGNITY - opposite a picture of a sexy girl showing not quite so much dignity as breast] moralistically slamming “ruthless lawyers” for berating murder victims’ families “in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial”, “the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime” and “the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler”, she wrote in NoW:
“Many of us felt such compassion for the brave family of Milly Dowler and anger at the way they were treated in court.
Sadly for me, although I was shocked and appalled, I wasn’t surprised.
When I started working for the rights of victims I thought I was unshockable. But what I have found over the last year has made my jaw drop.
Like most people I assumed that families who, like the Dowlers, have had their lives ripped apart by criminals, would get all the help they need….
What I discovered is they are often not given the support, care or consideration they deserve. Many are still treated as if they are an “inconvenience”, and this can make their grief worse…..
…They deserve to be treated with humanity, dignity and most of all a bit of respect.
So when my report comes out about the treatment of families like these, I ask that you be shocked too…
The next day, 4 July, the story broke in the Guardian that Scotland Yard had discovered Milly Dowler’s voicemail had been hacked by journalists and private investigators of the newspaper Louise Casey had so helpfully and passionately contributed to. They had deleted messages – potential evidence – to free up space for more juicy messages. The deletions misled family and friends into thinking that Milly was still alive.
We bet Louise Casey’s jaw really did drop when she saw that. They probably had to give her smelling salts to bring her round. And a bucket for her shame.
The worst that can happen to Murdoch is probably much too little and now almost too late, for the wrinkled old caricature of (or perhaps inspiration for) Emperor Palpatine, as retribution for the global damage he has done to civil society, let alone the personal grief he has caused during his foul, oh-so-long (and, to an Australian, deeply embarrassing) career. It would be easy to wish there really were a hell for him to be consigned to, “into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”. Wikipedia says he’s Catholic, but he probably thinks god works for him.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Oh, I dunno, about $US8 Billion?
Late Breaking: The Guardian newspaper is now also reporting an executive from News International – News Corp’s UK wing – has deleted four or five years worth of emails between staff and their bosses. Might that be illegal? Given the police investigation? Perverting the course of justice (well, British law, anyway, which increasingly is an ass)?
And Brooks told angry staff on Friday, “Yes, we’re in a very bad moment but we will continue to invest in journalism.” Her logical error is that to “continue” to do something you must already have been doing it.
STOP PRESS
Alison Frankel on the Reuters website says,
…Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper—even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.
If News of the World is to be liquidated, [British media law star Mark] Stephens told Reuters, it “is a stroke of genius—perhaps evil genius.”
My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed promotion. I don’t think she was joking.
Both her brothers – my uncles – worked in banks and eventually became bank managers.
She married a doctor. His job was secure as long as people got sick or had babies.
Her father was an Anglican minister. He’d always have a job as long as there was a god – or as long as people believed there was.
I think my mother wanted me to be safe. She worried about my creative, artistic, unworldly temperament. If I relied on it, it might not lead to stability and security. The bank was safe if unexciting and the school system was the ideal training for future decades of boredom and repetition.
And that’s how parents tend to think.
First we want our children to be safe.
Second we want them to do well and succeed.
Third we want them to be normal and fit in.
And we want them to find someone nice to settle down with and raise a family (for the most part).
We encourage our children to be reasonable and more or less ordinary; to be realistic. That’s the way it works, that’s the way things are, that’s the recipe for survival and success.
Mediocrity.
And that’s what schools are exceptional at producing.
Nothing important or worthwhile that has ever been achieved in the world has been achieved by reasonable, realistic, mediocre people. They have been achieved by people prepared to be unreasonable, to see beyond the realistic to the possibilities and to fight to achieve them.
And that’s who our children are before we school them.
Indeed, says Sir Roger, schools are not only exceptional at producing these results. That is their primary function and the original purpose of the compulsory education system in Prussia to which all modern education more or less owes its tradition. Obedient hardworking bureaucrats, obedient unquestioning factory workers. Today’s office slaves.
Bruce Petty once somewhere said (or was it, drew) something close to, “Having reproduced the species, efforts are made to have it employable as cheaply as possible. Through persistence and determination many survive these deformative years and go on to be average.”
Wimbledon parallels Australian politics for tennis tragic Sir Roger on this Men’s Finals day.
So in a nutshell, the way Australian politics is going at the moment, Labor is 2 sets to love down, and down a break early in the third.
Julia really has to drink a cup of concrete and harden up if Labor wants to survive till the next election and win the Championship. They have to play their natural game instead of their strategic, academic game, stop listening to the opponent’s cheer squad and fire down a few aces. Or the Anti-Christ will become the new Champion.
Louis CK on being white. Sir Roger nearly choked on his Château Barréjat, spat out the truffle-marinated baby’s nipples…before realising it was shockingly true.
This is a heads-up that Roger Waters’ The Wall is heading to Australia and NZ early next year.
It’s been a phenomenon in the US and Europe and the shows are certain to be booked out especially with only one concert scheduled in each city at this stage.
After more than 100 dates across North America and Europe, Roger Waters’ The Wall Live tour has become a phenomenon, selling out venues everywhere and drawing rave reviews from fans and critics alike.
Now comes the exciting news that fans in Australia and New Zealand will get a chance to see the show for themselves, when the tour heads down under early in 2012. This new leg of the tour will begin in Perth, AU on January 27 and will wrap up in Auckland, NZ on February 20
If you don’t want to miss out you can sign up for pre-sale tickets through Ticketek or through the Roger Waters The Wall website.
Here are the current dates:
Jan 27
PERTH – BURSWOOD DOME
Feb 01
BRISBANE – BRISBANE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
Feb 07
MELBOURNE – ROD LAVER ARENA
Feb 14
SYDNEY – ACER ARENA
Feb 20
AUCKLAND – VECTOR ARENA
See you there!!! And here’s a little bit of background:
Sir Roger does not wish to marry a man. To put it another way, while Sir Roger and Dorothy have many good friends in common, Dorothy and Sir Roger are not Facebook buddies. And Sir Roger does not think that his personal preference for his own life is of any moment or interest whatever in what another human “should” or should not do or be permitted to do, particularly in the area of human personal relationships. It is quite simply none of Sir Roger’s bloody business. Sir Roger’s opinion is irrelevant. So, very much, is Julia Gillard’s. Even more so is Tony Abbott’s.
Sir Roger was shocked this evening, however, to hear a Labor Party heavy claiming on the 7.30 Report that Labor shouldn’t approve gay marriage because if it did Labor would lose 10-15 seats in Queensland. So stuff doing what’s right. It’s all about staying in power.
Now, Sir Roger can understand that a political party would argue that you have to win seats to form government.
The question is, to form government to do what exactly?
The answer can’t be to form government in order to stay in government. Nor can it be simply to keep the other mob out. There is no vision, leadership, or social progress in that. It is morally bankrupt.
The point of winning the privilege of forming a government is so that you can do good things, so that you can do what’s right, not just so that you can be in power. You don’t sacrifice what’s right on the altar of Power.
This Labor backroom zombie has, like almost the entirety of the Labor machine, lost sight of what it’s all really about and what really matters. It’s people like him – once again, basically the entire Labor machine – who are responsible for the decline of the party. They’re not going anywhere. They’re just clinging to power.
The other question is, why a gay or lesbian person would want to be “Married”, other than the financial/legal benefits? If they want to publicly affirm their love for each other in front of their friends they can do that already and more cheaply than a full-on wedding. Why would they want to ape the straight community’s rituals? Why would they want to be just like stuffy old straight people, or like Mum and Dad? It would surely be easier to pass legislation that confers non-discriminatory economic/legal rights on all people. If the big problem for straight people is just calling it “marriage”, why not just call it something else?
Of course, legislation that confers equal, non-gender-specific economic/legal rights on all people in whatever combination of relationship, where it is not in law now ought to be.
But as Sir Roger says, it’s none of his bloody business and the government(s) should stand away and get out of our bedrooms. Their job is to manage infrastructure like education, police, power and health and not to legislate morals. After all, being politicians they can hardly claim the high moral ground. In most cases in every party they are among the least moral and most dishonest (let’s just say “sleazy”) members of the community they are supposed to serve. Just look at Tony Abbott.
The Pacific solution didn’t work. We know that. It made too many people go mad (unless, of course that’s the point and Tony Abbot is in favour of that).
Here’s an idea! While Julia and Tony are cat-fighting over who can think up the most brutal, vicious and inhumane treatment of people seeking asylum in a newly hard-hearted Australia (which means a newly cowardly, afraid, and therefore xenophobic {please explain?} Australia) Sir Roger Migently has had his research team develop a unique, elegant and ingenious solution to the twin problems of
1) unwanted boat people invading our shores with their disease, barbarity, terroristic predispositions and, frankly, brownness, and
2) the ruthless cruelty of sweet, moistly brown-eyed “Australian” cattle by Indonesian butchers.
Sir Roger’s team’s elegantly simple solution is …
a) send the (as one is assured by any number of radio shock jocks) queue-jumping, cashed-up, economic refugees to the Indonesian abattoirs where they will get the treatment they deserve for daring to imagine Australia as a generous, civilised, welcoming and friendly country that would honour its international treaty obligations, and
b) send the cattle to Malaysia where they will be looked after with care and loving attention, receive a nice identity tag and won’t be caned or anything unfriendly like that.
What do you think, readers?
P.S. We find it an interesting insight into the Indonesian “mind”-set that the country values the punishment due a human excrescence at least partly responsible for, and certainly and admittedly supportive of, the murder of something above 250 mostly-non-muslim mostly-foreigners at a maximum of 15 years in prison with perks; and the punishment due a stupid young man who was taking drugs out of Indonesia away from their children, and killed no-one, as death by firing squad. By the way, thanks again to our old friend and at least now happily ex-commissioner of the AFP. Mick Keelty, for setting up the sting and setting up the young man to be shot to death.
[By the way, apparently when we say we don't believe in the death penalty we mean we don't believe in it for Australians in Australia but we love it for Indonesians and their guests.]
Please explain to Sir Roger how these corrupt Indonesian politicians, judges, police and bureaucrats (or in other words the Indonesian establishment) are our “friends”. How do we get into bed with people with these values without throwing up? Are we as a nation really that greedy? What do the people who pursue these arrangements take to vomiting when they make their deals? RM (Kt)
So Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is moved by humanitarian motives. Probably in the same way as his predecessor Philip Ruddock was a fair dinkum believer in the values of Amnesty International while he was ruthlessly screwing the lives of countless fellow human beings. “Let your heart bleed publicly for the oppressed while cruelly oppressing those who are crying out for your help.”
Sir Roger has required this staff writer to say by way of setting the scene that – from Sir Roger’s personal experience and study – for corruption, intolerance, cruelty and racism Malaysia gives Indonesia a really good run for its money.
In order to discourage asylum seekers from leaving Indonesia in leaky boats Minister Bowen is engaging in 1) blackmail with the threat of child sacrifice and 2) hostage taking.
He is preparing to use unaccompanied children as hostages in order, as he freely admits, to blackmail other asylum seekers into not getting on boats to try to make it to Australia. Bowen is basically saying, “Don’t make a move or the kid gets it.” He says that’s humane.
Mr Bowen says he understands the concerns, but insists a blanket rule against including unaccompanied children in the exchange plan would be inhumane.
“There would be nothing humane about an arrangement that encourages children, accompanied or unaccompanied, to get on boats,” he said.
“It sends the message that the way to get re-settlement into Australia is to send children who would then be accepted and allow those children to then sponsor the rest of the family.
“There would be nothing humane or appropriate about that.”
Mr Bowen says the Government will assess the children’s vulnerability on a case-by-case basis before including them among the asylum seekers to be sent to Malaysia.
He says that but he’s an idiot, and a heartless and ignorant one at that. It’s fucked in the head. It’s sacrificing the innocent for the greater good. The ends justifying the means. The ends never justify the means. The means are always what last. If bastardry is sanctioned to some glorious end, it’s the bastardry that survives and is validated in the culture long after the desired ends are forgotten and irrelevant.
Also he is preparing to send these children to notorious hell-holes where (despite reluctant unsigned “assurances” by the Malaysians) brutal canings will be used – to maintain order and compliance, or just for fun (after all, as Sir Roger says, this is Malaysia we’re talking about) – the way the Indonesians treat cattle. The children are guaranteed to be brutalised, either physically or emotionally or both. The children will be fucked for life and it will be on his head. Does he accept accountability for that? They are, after all, actual children, real individuals, to whom real things happen. They are not merely symbols and agents of his intellectual policy. Does he accept accountability for that?
So Bowen pretends he believes he is doing the right thing by taking these kids hostage in his blackmail scheme. He thinks it’s justified. But what if – just what if – one of his own kids (assuming he has any – one doesn’t know) was taken from him and held hostage and he received a message saying, “Resign as Minister and stop fucking the country, OR THE KID GETS IT!” Wouldn’t he think that was just a fraction unfair? Wouldn’t he complain, “But my child is innocent! I’m the politician, not the child. Leave them out of this. Why are you punishing him/her?”
You know, in a way, as Minister the unaccompanied asylum-seeker children are his children. He is legally their guardian, they being in his care and subject to his personal discretion. Then let him consider his policy in that light and consider whether what he is proposing for these children he would for a moment visit upon his own.
Sadly enough all of this posturing and panic-stricken policy-making-on-the-run is not deeply considered but knee-jerking in the general direction of Abbott and Morrison.
What a sad day it is when the Minister has to ask the fucked in the head Leader of the Opposition what his agenda should be. And what a sad day it was when Bowen became Minister.
What a fucking load of motherfucking dickheaded bullshit those cunts in the Victorian parliament are, trying to impose old-fashioned tight-arsed, pursed-lipped, prune-faced, shrivelled-up, broomstick-arsed moral values on a free people, with their proposed laws against swearing in public. Goodbye barracking at fucking footie matches, for one thing. Or having a bloody beer in the pub. Or, shit, Melbourne comedy festivals. Or most prime-time TV these days. What will they do about Deadwood (ABC2 Mondays at 9.30) where almost every second word is “fuck”? (Honestly.) Ban a TV show in Victoria?
Fucking wowsers. It’s fucking un-Australian! Next the bloody moral guardians – arseholes to a man and woman (politicians, QED) – will bring in six-o’clock closing and book burning. No sex please, we’re Victorian; noisy sex-making that is audible through paper-thin walls (oh! oh! fuck me! fuck me!) will be a worry and attract the rozzers: so very Victorian, in the historical/colonial sense. When they (a Melburnian) told Sir Roger that Melbourne was essentially a conservative Irish Catholic village, Sir Roger declined to agree and has continued to disagree for 30 years, and continued to really like Melbourne people very much indeed. But this ….? Is the description seeping through?
Thought we’d got over all this in the 60s. Thought Don Chipp put an end to all this. Please do try to keep up, Victoria!
What politicians keep forgetting and we have to, what we MUST, keep reminding them of, is
THEY ARE NOT THE BOSS OF US. WE ARE THE BOSS OF THEM.
The micks will be delighted, especially the black-hearted, shit-for-brains Opus Dei. As long as the cunt Pell doesn’t try to import it to his new hometown.
P.S. I perhaps ought to warn any Victorians that although this post is published via servers in the United States, when you load the page you are legally “making” it in your own home which makes you liable if the plods sneak out from behind your curtains, or from under your bed. So before you read on please draw the curtains and check under the bed so Victorian government snoops can’t peek in.
Anyway, just saying … from the safety of NotVictoria.
To celebrate the bright new morality to the South, Sir Roger would like to share the difference Sydney makes with a special version of Lawson’s best-loved Pome.
And to quote from this glittering poetic prize: Ted Baillieu, may you slip back through your arsehole and break your fucking neck!
The Bastard from the Bush Henry Lawson (with additional material)
As night was falling slowly on city, town and bush,
from a slum in Jones’s Alley came the Captain of the Push,
and his whistle, loud and piercing, woke the echoes of the Rocks,
and a dozen ghouls came slouching round the corners of the blocks.
Then the Captain jerked a finger at a stranger by the kerb,
whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb.
Then he made the introduction: “Here’s a covey from the bush;
fuck me blind, he wants to join us, be a member of the Push!’
Then the stranger made this answer to the Captain of the Push:
‘Why, fuck me dead, I’m Foreskin Fred, the Bastard from the Bush!
I’ve been in every two-up school from Darwin to the Loo;
I’ve ridden colts and blackgins; what more can a bugger do?’
‘Are you game to break a window?’ said the Captain of the Push.
‘I’d knock a fucking house down!’ said the Bastard from the Bush.
‘Would you out a man and rob him?’ said the Captain of the Push.
‘I’d knock him down and fuck him’ said the Bastard from the Bush.
”Would you dong a bloddy copper if you caught the cunt alone?
Would you stoush a swell or Chinkie, split his garret with a stone?
Would you have a moll to keep you; would you swear off work for good?’
Said the Bastard: ‘My colonial silver-mounted oath I would!’
“Can you play a game of billiards? Can you canon off the cush?”
“I can canon off the shithouse,” said the Bastard from the Bush.
“But you wouldn’t fuck your mother,” said the Captain of the Push.
“I’ve even fucked me bloody brother,” said the Bastard from the Bush.
‘Would you care to have a gasper?’ said the Captain of the Push.
‘I’ll take that bloody packet!’ said the Bastard from the Bush.
Then the Pushites all took council, saying, ‘Fuck me, but he’s game!
Let’s make him our star basher; he’ll live up to his name.’
So they took him to their hideout, that Bastard from the Bush,
and granted him all privileges appertaining to the Push.
But soon they found his little ways were more than they could stand,
and finally their Captain addressed the members of his band:
‘Now listen here, you buggers, we’ve caught a fucking Tartar.
At every kind of bludging, that Bastard is a starter.
At poker and at two-up he’s shook out our fucking rolls;
he swipes our fucking likker and he robs our bloody molls!’
So down in Jones’s Alley all the members of the Push
laid a dark and dirty ambush for that Bastard from the Bush.
But against the wall of Riley’s pub the Bastard made a stand,
a nasty grin upon his dial; a bike-chain in each hand.
They sprang upon him in a bunch, but one by one they fell,
with crack of bone, unearthly groan, and agonising yell,
till the sorely battered Captain, spitting teeth and gouts of blood,
held an ear all torn and bleeding in a hand bedaubed with mud.
‘You low polluted Bastard!’ snarled the Captain of the Push,
‘Get back where your sort belongs – that’s somewhere in the bush.
And I hope heaps of misfortunes may soon tumble down on you;
may some lousy harlot dose you till your ballocks turn sky-blue!
‘May the itching piles torment you; may corns grow on your feet!
May crabs as big as spiders attack your balls a treat!
And when you’re down and outed, to a hopeless bloody wreck,
may you slip back through your arsehole and break your fucking neck!’
Sir Roger is generally a jovial fellow when not contemplating the tragic, terrifying farce that is politics both national and global. But he was bemused and then tickled with annoyance by a somewhat acquaintance who seems on the one hand to be a decent and committed man dedicated to and driven by service to others and on the other hand to be a self-congratulatory cock-a-doodle-do-gooder. 
