Politics

There’s this strange cover of grey smoke-like matter covering the sky and partially obscuring the sun. And it seems to be depositing a strange, viscous liquid. Experimental sampling by direct touch and taste has determined the liquid to be non-poisonous, non-corrosive and pH neutral; most likely water. Water falling from the sky. How odd. Is this a common meteorological occurrence anywhere else? It’s been doing this for over 24 hours now and I’m starting to get a bit worried.

Frankly, I don’t see the problem behind simply calling them “civil unions” or what have you. If it is a matter of upholding the sanctity of “marriage”, which I am for, then why not just call it something else and have the same legalities?
Derek KGB, Atlanta, GA, USA

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has accused Opposition leader Mark Latham of having a confused position on Australia’s military relationship with the United States…

…”I think a good politician is somebody who stands very clearly for things and in his case I have no idea what he stands for.”

Mr Latham says he supports the joint defence facility at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory, which he visited yesterday.

But Mr Latham says he opposes the Howard Government’s decision to join the US in developing its missile defence system, known as ‘Son of Star Wars’.

…”I find it very hard to understand what’s he’s about,” Mr Downer said.

A new dirty tricks campaign to embarrass the Democratic front runner, John Kerry, backfired ignominiously yesterday when it emerged that a widely circulated photograph of a protest against the Vietnam war was a crude forgery.
The photograph, falsely credited to Associated Press, combined two separate images to make it appear as if Mr Kerry shared a stage at an anti-war rally in the early 1970s with the actress, Jane Fonda.

Ms Fonda is reviled by many Vietnam vets for her wartime visit to Hanoi, and the image was widely aired over the internet by a fringe group of Vietnam veterans who have pursued a vendetta against Mr Kerry for years…

I just watched what must have been a 2-minute loop of footage of John Kerry making a brief toking gesture on Fox News, shown with ultra zoom-in and repeated at varying speeds. You Yanks are a riot.

Unbelievable. 20 years ago it was amusing. Now it’s just pathetic. And, in the current international diplomatic climate, alarming. And I couldn’t give a shit about Indonesia, I’m talking about the increased possibility of this insane spawn of madmen coming into fruition. If a single cent of the federal treasury goes into this cockamamie stunt I just may fucking lose it once and for all. People are starving, homeless, unable to get a hospital bed in an emergency or afford childcare, and you’re seriously considering sinking billions of our dollars into this white elephant. You make me sick you puffed-up, self-righteous, lying, belligerent, arms-dealing, narcissistic, fear-mongering, arrogant cunts. You are the lowest form of life. You are the reason the guillotine was invented. Commit hari kari and stop sucking the life out of health and education you greedy, pompous fucks.

That was the exact reaction I had when I read the headline Britney Spears Weds Jason Alexander.

Anyway, I’ve just been thinking about what an interesting little federal election system you Yanks seem to have. So, the big knobs in each respective party nominate themselves to run for President. They all tour the country (or rather, just the states with the largest swinging populations to save on time and money), drumming up support by appealing to the lowest common denominator, shaking hands and baby kissing and spouting off what the majority of the population want to hear (or rather, since voting is non-compulsory, a sizeable minority of the population, without offending any significantly powerful socio-economic lobby groups), back-stabbing and bitching about the weaknesses and/or questionable personal histories of their fellow party member running-mates at every possible opportunity.

I’ve always viewed American politics from the role of bemused outsider watching a trashy reality tv show, sort of half-heartedly willing on the more leftist political elements purely for the sake of fuzzy trans-Pacific ideological affinity, but I’ve just today come to the conclusion that taking a closer and more involved analytical stance would be in my own best interest. Prime Minister John Howard’s strategy of undermining the potential voter base for new Opposition Leader Mark Latham in Parliament over the past two days has centred mainly around the latter’s references to President Bush earlier this year as “the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory”, suggesting that an elected Labor government under his leadership would be dangerously erosive to the vital Austro-American alliance. Notwithstanding how, conversely, the importance of obsequious fawning is to said association, it made me realise just how much of an impact the US Presidential elections in November 2004 should have on the Australian Federal election, due to be held roughly within a month of the former. If Bush were to be confidently reinstalled for another term, Australian voters may be swayed towards the conservative end of the spectrum to avoid any friction between the two nations, particularly if there’s another major terrorist attack in the next 11 months. On the other hand, if Bush were to be ousted by a Democratic candidate, Latham’s comments would be seen to be vindicated and, perhaps, more justified. If Howard had any sense, he’d bump the elections forward slightly to prevent this scenario from eventuating. All I have to do is cross my fingers that the election date is nice and late, that he doesn’t read this entry, and that you Yanks do your best to restore my desperately flagging confidence in your proclivity for common sense on a large scale.

And that’s saying a lot, considering the near-8 years of insidiously dreary, cobwebbed conservative Federal rule trampling my will to get out of bed in the morning. I realise I’m probably biased because the guy is my local member who grew up around Sydney’s lower/middle-class western suburbs like me (he also went to my high school), but I don’t care. A passionate, charismatic young liberal firebrand infamous for his recent criticisms of the Australian government’s embarassing sycophancy to American foreign policy (amongst other great lines, referring to PM John Howard as an “arse-licker” and his entourage to Washington as “a conga line of suckholes” (admittedly tame by my standards, but infinitely stronger than the threadbare PC doubletalk employed by all experienced politicians, and the sanctimonious moral mock-outrage which rippled through the media was hilarious to witness)) and his ability to systematically alienate the stuffed-shirt wowsers who prefer their politicians three shades blander than a wet noodle with his no-bullshit, shoot-from-the-hip approach, he’s a breath of fresh air into a deflated Labor Party being seen as steadily less relevant in our subtly (yet tangibly) xenophobic, moderate, defense/security-obsessed and easily alarmed and manipulated post-September 11 society. Crean (the ousted leader) is an intelligent, dedicated MP who thoroughly deserves to retain a portfolio in the cabinet, but he just wasn’t leadership material. The tame lack of conviction and concrete ideological differentiation in his speeches and interviews was an increasing source of frustration for me as his approval ratings continued to dip and, with the next Federal election assured within the next 12 months, a change was vital for the sake of a strong Opposition. But it’s Beazley (ex-leader and unsuccessful re-election candidate for the second time in 6 months) I feel the most sorry for. A brilliant, articulate man (and Rhodes Scholar) who forever won my respect with the tears he shed as he addressed Parliament a few years ago, apologising on behalf of the ALP over the crimes of the Aboriginal “stolen generation” (a topic Howard and his private-school cronies still refuse to touch with a 20-metre pole), he was simply the wrong guy at the wrong time, robbed of a well-deserved election win in 2001 when his health and education policy-driven campaigns were successfully hijacked by the Coalition governent’s obfuscatory fear-mongering surrounding a single boat of asylum-seekers from Indonesia (later demonstrated to be a complete and utter lie, yet the government escaped responsibility through acrobatic back-flipping and buck-passing). I don’t normally get personally emotional about differing political ideologies, but you have no idea how over the moon I’ll be when the most arrogant, deceitful, manipulative and short-sighted government since Federation gets booted out the back door of Parliament House by an Australian voting public who should, SHOULD, know better than to be led by the nose down the same cynical, self-serving democratic path well-trod by the trans-Pacific “aluminium” tetra-syllabicators over the past three years.

There’s something so disappointingly repugnant about representatives of a minority unanimously agreeing to stoop to the lowest common denominator by caving into the intellectual bankruptcy of our times and adopting a self-styled “politically-correct” nomenclature. So the term “atheist” has misguided connotations of anarchy, communism and nihilism. Whose frigging problem is that? The masses of ignorant, bigoted, narcissistic, god-fearing, Coulteresque peons, that’s who. All you’re doing by adopting a trendy, new-agey, aesthetically agreeable blanket term is implying that you can’t beat Joe McCarthy’s legacy, so we might as well sidestep the issue by tinkering with semantics. Fuck that. Why even dignify it with an iota of serious, non-mockingly abusive attention it clearly doesn’t deserve?

Teachers warn of more strikes

I’ve made my position quite clear about this before, namely that you can’t pay teachers enough in my opinion, and I hope the continuing strikes cause the arrogant and intransigent state MPs get really pissed off, along with the moronic parents who whine about the inconvenience of their personal child-minding service being unavailable for a day. I realise I may be biased considering both my parents are teachers, but in my view they, along with nurses, represent the most important public positions in any healthy liberal democratic state. Why the hell anyone would want to incur 3-4 years of university debts to be employed in a highly stressful job with a first year salary of around A$40,000 before tax, with incremental annual salary increases to a maximum of around A$57,000 before tax, is beyond me. No, I didn’t just make a typographical error; a teacher who has been working for 30 years makes A$17,000 more than a first year teacher in the same position. Is it any wonder the best and brightest in the profession are being scalped by private institutions or just plain ditching the public education system altogether for career paths with better economic prospects?

fDing Dong, the witch is dead

Holy shit! Liberia really exists! At least, it does now that “America has bowed to international pressure” (as the BBC News 24 anchorman put it earlier this morning). In fact it now exists so well the BBC are headlining it for the first time (though not on their website). Liberia, we were told, was “founded by American slaves,” and Liberians are “fed up with vague promises from America” about intervening.

Of course, if the US had been a little more vague in its threats over Iraq like most of the world wanted, those silly Liberians wouldn’t ever have gotten their hopes up so high, would they? So I blame Polly Toynbee. Naturally.