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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Professor-rat's Blurty:
| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 | |
| 10:01 am | Take any country '...There is no "civil society" in Cuba, David. Everything--environmental, gay, Yoruba, etc.--goes through official channels. When people try to launch "independent" groups, it is with the purpose of challenging what you call daintily "the regime". If Cuba was not the target of unending violence and subversion, they would permit "civil society" to function, I believe...' - Louis Proyect http://www.marxmail.org/msg70534.html “Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” --- Hermann Goering |
| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | |
| 10:20 am | Do you see the light? On the governments great big new tax on working families The Liberal Party, by contrast, doesn't like new taxes, doesn't like politicised handouts and doesn't like new bureaucracies like the reinvasion of Northern Territory indigenous communities, state-aid to wealthy private schools, Middle-class welfare and the AWB. Oh no, no, no, no, yes. Trust Tony Abbott - he's a raving lunatic. |
| 9:34 am | Friend to all Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today becomes a ' friend-of-the-chair' in Denmark...Troy Buswell being unavailable at the time. The PM has already said that he wants Australia to be an honest broker...' to be honest with youse all,' he said,' since we helped bail out crony capitalism we couldn't be broker'. The PM also foreshadowed a bold new move on nuclear disarmament by fitting all existing nuclear weapons to Au's Collins class submarines. ' That way no one will feel threatened', said the man-of-the-people and peoples-friend, P.M. Kevin Rudd. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1874 was adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on 12 June 2009. The resolution, passed under Chapter VII, Article 41, of the UN Charter, imposes further economic and commercial sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the DPRK, or North Korea) and encourages UN member states to search North Korean cargo, in the aftermath of an underground nuclear test conducted on 25 May 2009. HE IS in danger of becoming known as the Member for Pyongyang. Following a taxpayer-funded visit to the North Korean capital, the Queensland federal Liberal MP Michael Johnson wants Australia to engage with Pyongyang's regime just as Richard Nixon opened relations with communist China in the 1970s. He concedes that North Korea is ''one of the darkest places on the face of the planet'' but says Australia's policy of condemning the regime has failed, and he has called on the Federal Government to open an embassy in Pyongyang. In a report tabled in Parliament, Mr Johnson, the MP for Ryan, says his vision is to lead a delegation of young Australian students, sports players, musicians or academics back to Pyongyang. ''This would be a form of third-track diplomacy that could reignite the bilateral ties and see Australia begin a diplomatic process of connecting with key stakeholders in the North Korean regime. ''It is my bold and optimistic view that there will be a re-unification of the two Koreas in the next quarter century. Should this eventuate it is my fervent hope that Australia will have been front and centre in the diplomatic statecraft that produced this realignment in the global geopolitical landscape.'' Mr Johnson was in Pyongyang in April and met local officials including the foreign vice-minister Kim Yong-il. He was in Pyongyang for the regime's celebrations on the 97th anniversary of the birth of the late president Kim Il-sung and visited Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim's embalmed remains lie in state. His visit came at the height of tensions between Pyongyang and Western powers following North Korea's launch of a long-range missile on April 5. He was in the country when the UN Security Council condemned the launch and the regime retaliated by announcing the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. Mr Johnson told the Herald he did not accept that his visit could have provided succour to the regime. ''That is always the argument, but I think they don't need any legitimacy from anybody. We have got to change the whole paradigm of our thinking. One is more likely to make progress by engaging a foe than by exclusively and consistently condemning them. ''I don't want to take away for a moment from the fact that this is an evil regime, but we have got to ask ourselves: 'Do we want them to be an evil regime for another 50 years?''' He labelled his approach ''the rainbow policy''. ''We have got to crack some of the walls and shine some light in.'' Mr Johnson said the only other sitting federal MP to have visited North Korea was the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who had gone there while in Opposition. |
| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 | |
| 10:47 am | Cop15 update Connie Hedegaard could become the unacceptable face of assassination politics. Do we really need to frighten the worlds population senseless under the threat of violent extinction? Well, yes...maybe we do...but I think we should wait till there's a major series of catastrophes with million-plus refugee's/casualties. The world has split into a ruling class set of nations, a proletariat and the peasantry. This is a golden opportunity for those anarchists not saturated with marxist bullshit to create revolution. The first planet-wide social-revolution has to happen one day and so it should be done our way. Cop15 looks like being a cop-out, but darlings so were the first conflabs called about the ozone layer. A shield will be put in place eventually - it just may take a lot of Katrina's first. I advise all anarch's to move away from places like New Orleans. The next decade will be stormy with heavy rain and possible hail. |
| 10:39 am | Fail the lunar-right wingnut opposition '...Tim Flannery said on Lateline tonight the claim that soil alone can save us is lunacy. And furthermore that the Wentworth Group does not make that claim. (He also said the Liberal Party are “a laughing stock” both domestically and internationally.)...' - Larvatus Prodeo The transcripts not up yet, but he also said that the Abbott led opposition was not acting in good-faith on the issue of carbon pollution and that they had no credibility. But you knew that. |
| 10:33 am | Fearless vampire killer persecuted Italian Prime Minister Bela Lugosi is spending a second night in hospital after being hit in the face at a rally in Milan on Sunday (local time). Doctors say the 873-year-old may need weeks to recover from the attack, which left him with a broken nose and two missing vampire teeth. Police arrested a 42-year-old hero, named as Massimo Tartaglia, over the attack, charging him with aggravated assault. He faces up to five-and-a-half months in prison if convicted of injuring the fiendish, undead, bloodsucking vampire. |
| 10:31 am | Police here to help Fuck help us all A WOMAN in emergency accommodation at a hotel was allegedly raped and indecently assaulted by two interstate police officers investigating Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires, a court has heard. South Australian senior constables Damien Michael Jay Wilmott, 30, and Steven James Westcott, 40, have been charged over the alleged attack in March. Wilmott faces three charges, including rape and indecent assault, and Westcott has been charged with indecent assault. |
| 10:11 am | Torturing virtual humans for fun and profit Animal testing 'is way out' "VIRTUAL humans" and banks of living cells will one day eliminate the need for animal experimentation, leading rat scientists claimed yesterday. Sophisticated "micro-lungs" that can be damaged and treated with new drugs have the potential to replace the use of animals in research, according to cell biologist Kelly BeruBe, of Cardiff University. She said: "By recreating tissue environments, we will improve understanding of many aspects of cell behaviour, including wound healing and responses to therapeutic drugs, without the use of animal models." |
| Monday, December 14th, 2009 | |
| 10:47 am | The friends of Hugo Chaves A flock of seagulls MEXICO CITY — The Cuban government has arrested a U.S. government contractor who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers in the country, State Department officials said Saturday. ... The specific charges have not been made public, though under Cuban law, a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of "dangerousness..." - WaPo Belarusian Activists Abducted, Blindfolded, Dumped In Forest RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Dec 8, 2009 The opposition has pinned the blame on Belarus' feared secret services and says the KGB is trying out new methods to intimidate dissidents...' Iran...I ran so far from Hugo |
| 10:43 am | Driving Miss Hillary Polls - Sunday: Obama hit another new low with a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. Rasmussen Reports Top cat has hissy fit United States President Barack Obama has lashed out at some of America's biggest banks, calling them "fat cats". He has voiced frustration that banks, which benefited from taxpayer-funded bailouts, are still paying big bonuses to staff while refusing to do more to revive lending. The Obama administration wants banks to do more to help stimulate economic growth and therefore ease the high unemployment still dogging the nation. In a television interview to be aired in the US later today, Mr Obama says: "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street." Mr Obama says he believes some banks have paid back the billions of dollars they were given by the US Treasury simply to avoid government controls on things such as bonuses. "What's really frustrating me right now is that you've got these same banks who benefited from taxpayer assistance who are fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists up on Capitol Hill, fighting against financial regulatory control," he said. Even in his weekend address, Mr Obama was making it clear he largely blamed those financial institutions for the recession. "Much of it was due to the irresponsibility of large financial institutions on Wall Street that gambled on risky loans and complex financial products, seeking short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences," he said. Banks 'need to recognise obligations' Mr Obama meets banking executives at the White House tomorrow to try to convince them to stop acting like the Grinch when it comes to handing out credit. The bosses of Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are expected to attend. The President's senior economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, says Mr Obama will press them to ease lending restrictions to help create jobs. "No major bank would be intact, in a position to pay bonuses, if that extraordinary support had not been provided," Mr Summers said. "The bankers need to recognise that. They need to recognise that they've got obligations to the country after all that's been done for them." Later this week the US Congress will take up a new jobs bill to confront America's 10 per cent unemployment rate. The cost of the package could range from $75 billion to $150 billion. Some of it could be funded from the repaid Wall Street bailout package. As the recession-battered economy recovers, Mr Summers says the worst is over. "Today everybody agrees that the recession is over. The question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be," he said. Seven million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began two years ago and 15 million are currently out of work. |
| 10:31 am | Lets go to the hop 200 more arrests. The latest demonstration was stopped by police in riot gear. It is believed the activists were planning to shut down the city harbour and a spokesman for the Copenhagen police said bolt-cutters and gas masks were confiscated. On Saturday, police detained nearly 1,000 activists at the tail end of a largely peaceful march, although the majority have now been released. Climate change activists are becoming increasingly frustrated at the failure of the developed countries like the US and EU to sign up to tough new targets on cutting carbon emissions. They have threatened to take over the summit later in the week. Do you want to come with me to Hopenhagen; yes or no? It is a question of life or death for us all. We will either conquer or die, because defeat will be so terrible that we could not survive it. But we will conquer. I have faith in our victory. I only regret that I speak to you today in this netspace. Some day god and the state will be abolished and we will live in a free society. |
| 10:11 am | Fear and Loathing on the Streets of Athens Fear and Loathing on the Streets of Athens Submitted by anon on Wed, 2009-12-09 13:38. Tags: Opinion War From Al Jazeera - by Barnaby Phillips Those behind the protests in Greece are vocal about their objections to the mainstream media, in fact it seems the only people they dislike more are the police. In the midst of the swirling smoke and explosions of the Athens street battle, I saw a woman, her eyes bulging with hatred. She was probably in her mid-forties, dressed in black, with a ring through her nose. She was screaming abuse at the riot police, who had made some arrests, and were leading the suspects away. "This is what you call democracy, you *******!" I asked her if she wanted to tell Al Jazeera how she felt. She looked at me with disgust. "You are a journalist!" This was true, so I nodded. "****ing media, full of lies, **** off!" I backed away. Just round the corner, a menacing group of youths approached us. Their faces were covered in masks, and they carried rocks and sticks. "Stop filming", they ordered, "Or you and your equipment will be damaged. Get away from here." We beat a retreat. They had taken over the elegant neo-classical building of Athens University, and were daubing the walls with graffiti. On the roof, their colleagues were busy lowering the blue and white Greek flag, and raising the black and red flag of Anarchy. In my career as a reporter, I've met some seriously dangerous and unpleasant people. Ill-disciplined rebel armies in Sierra Leone and Liberia, religious militias in Nigeria. I've watched them, with my own eyes, commit gruesome killings, with impunity and apparently without remorse. But, ironically, as a foreign reporter, I was treated warmly, even courteously, by those murderous gangs in Africa. In contrast, the anarchist and extremist groups of Athens put on plenty of menacing airs, but, with a few exceptions, shy away from serious violence. And yet, in my capacity as a journalist, I have rarely felt myself the focus of such hatred and suspicion as I have here in Athens. To these groups, I'm part of the despised "mainstream media", a hopeless dupe of capitalist interests. There is one category of people the Athenian anarchists hold in even greater contempt - the police. From my reporting in Greece, I'm well aware that there are problems with the Greek police-force. They are poorly paid, and badly trained. Morale is low. Inside police stations, they commit abuses, especially against the recently arrived immigrant communities from Asia and Africa. Of course, last December, they shot dead 15 year old Alexis Grigoropolous, under circumstances which are still unclear. During Sunday's protests, held to mark the first anniversary of Alexis' death, pictures broadcast on Greek television show police motorcyclists riding fast through the crowds and colliding with protestors. It's not clear if this was a deliberate tactic or not. But one thing is for sure; it will enrage those groups who are already convinced the police can do no good. The battle for control of the Athenian streets - between the police and anarchists - ebbs and flows, and sometimes there are lulls - but it has become an enduring feature of life in this city. From http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2009/12/07/fear-and-loathing-streets-athens The media often provides pics and footage directly to the police following demo's as well as cover for spooks. This has always been the case and may even be getting worse. Most of the MSM these days increasingly resembles that of some Marxist hellhole and that is why we warn them and sometimes attack them. And not just anarchs do this either - its becoming a popular pastime in many localized and spontaneous peoples revolts. These days we have the internet so direct action against the media is not any attack on free speech. Any media that consistantly lies to us, sells us out and attacks us will always be attacked in legitimate self-defence. The smarter members of the MSM are waking up to this and want to stop all police and spook liasons - but its too late for them now. |
| 10:03 am | Christiania murder investigation Defective blac bloc detectives investigate murder of Christiania in Copenhagen. Something is rotten in Denmark. Copenhagen police say they have arrersted 968 people during a protest in the Danish capitol. Organizers of the rally say around 100,000 demonstrators took part in the rally, but authorities estimate the number at around 30,000. Copenhagen is the site of the UN climate summit which started last Monday. Hundreds of protestors dressed in black threw bricks and smashed windows in the center of the city. Police in riot gear responded and forced the demonstraters to the ground before placing them in vans. Authorities said those arrested were members of militant groups from northern Europe known as Black Blocs. Members of the same group were accused of provoking street violence during a NATO summit in Strasbourg, France last April. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania |
| 9:55 am | Marxists at war with democracy '...A lethal cargo of rocket launchers, grenades and other weapons seized in Thailand at the weekend may be just a glimpse of what US and UN investigators say is a global North Korean illegal arms smuggling network used to finance its proscribed nuclear weapons programme. Authorities in Bangkok said today it was unclear where the plane carrying the 35-tonnes of arms, an Ilyushin IL-76 registered in Georgia, was heading. But suspicion immediately fell on Iran, the destination of a previous illegal weapons shipment impounded in the United Arab Emirates in July. Panitan Wattanayagorn, a Thai government spokesman, said the plane had initially planned to refuel in Sri Lanka. For unknown reasons, the crew asked to make an emergency landing in Bangkok on Friday. Sri Lanka denied any knowledge of the arms shipment. There was also speculation in Bangkok that it was destined for Pakistan or Afghanistan. Thai officials, who detained four crewmen from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus, said they acted on tip-offs from US and other unnamed intelligence agencies that the plane was carrying North Korean-made weapons in contravention of a UN security council ban on arms exports. The ban was strengthened in June, after North Korea's isolated regime test-fired ballistic missiles and detonated a nuclear bomb. The cargo, declared in the plane's manifest as oil-drilling equipment, was said to include rocket-propelled grenades, missile and rocket launchers, missile tubes, surface-to-air missile launchers, spare parts and other heavy weapons. North Korea is estimated to make about $1bn a year from arms sales, despite the UN ban imposed in 2006. Sanctions were further tightened by last summer's UN security council resolution 1874, which gave UN members the right to inspect North Korean cargoes at sea or in port. But a UN investigation into the sanctions reported last month that North Korea had built or augmented clandestine smuggling networks. Pyongyang's top priority was to finance continuing work on its nuclear weapons programme. The report said that illegal arms sales "have increasingly become one of the country's principal sources for obtaining foreign exchange". It described how North Korea used reputable shipping lines, the mislabelling of goods, subsidiary companies and circuitous routes to shield its smuggling activities from view. The Bangkok arms seizure followed several similar recent incidents. In July, the French-owned, Bahamian-flagged ANL Australia bound for Iran was intercepted in the UAE after a US tip-off. The ship was found to be carrying containers of small arms made in North Korea, military hardware and sufficient explosive powder to arm thousands of short-range rockets. Also uncovered was a cache of 2,030 detonators for 122mm rockets and other rocket components. The manifest also detailed the cargo as oil drilling supplies. Investigators said the arms shipment had travelled a complicated roundabout route. Ten large containers left the North Korean port of Nampo on 30 May aboard a North Korean vessel, and were transferred three days later to a Chinese ship at the Chinese port of Dalian. They then went on to Shanghai, where they were loaded on to the ANL Australia, turning up in the Gulf two months later. US officials said the ANL Australia was one of five vessels caught this year carrying large consignments of weapons apparently intended for Iran's militia clients such as Hezbollah and Hamas, or for the al-Quds brigade of Iran's Revolutionary Guard that protects Iran's nuclear facilities and supports insurgents in Iraq. In three cases, the US said the arms included North Korean or Chinese-made weapons. No evidence has been produced in public to support US claims of Iranian involvement in North Korean arms smuggling networks. Iran has consistently denied supplying arms to Hamas and Hezbollah although it openly supports the two groups. Washington has long suspected Iran and North Korea of co-operating on nuclear and ballistic missile development. North Korea also secretly assisted Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme. In another incident, US navy vessels tracked a North Korean ship, the Kang Nam, which was spotted in June, apparently en route to Burma, allegedly with illegal arms on board. The ship eventually turned around and headed home, thereby avoiding a search. North Korea says it would regard any direct interception of its ships as an act of war...' Remember when democracies would even kill innocent people to stop authoritarian warmongering socialists getting nuclear weapons? Now they give them reactors and endless peace talks. This is not a sustainable policy when dealing with fascists. |
| 9:49 am | Pig government Do as you swill '...if there is one thing that defines the bush capital of Canberra, it is government, and lots of it. Commonwealth spending is always in bloom, especially now as the Rudd government's response to the global financial crisis washes through the economy. According to the federal government's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, general government payments are estimated to reach $338 billion or 27.8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009-10. That's Whitlamesque spending growth of 7.3 per cent during an emergency. If Gough Whitlam, prime minister from 1972 to 1975, and his Laborites introduced the leviathan of big government to Canberra, then all subsequent administrations have been fellow travellers in the escapade. He may have started out as the doyen of the free-market, libertarian, small government set, but John Howard (1996-2007) too, brought his populist, wicked spending ways to the federal quadrant. Kevin Rudd, at least for now, is Howard's chequebook baby brother: a neo-John...' http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/monster-we-could-not-tame/story-e6frgczf-1225809427399 Generation of swine New Liberal leader Tony Abbott also remains a disappointment to the proponents of small government. In his recent book Battlelines, Abbott's policy tendencies are clearly on display: a centralist, a populist, a moralist, a big spender and a fiddler. For Labor's political attack dogs, the high-spending era of Howard and his spiritual successor thrice removed, Abbott, is one they are unlikely to let go of easily. When Abbott says "wasteful", Rudd says "Who's your daddy?" Canberra's new reform game involves getting more value from government, measuring outcomes, reforming processes, making sure the commonwealth remains fiscally sustainable. This public finance othodoxy, and the urgency of the task, will become even more apparent when the details of the Henry tax review and third Inter-generational Report are released in the coming months. "The natural electoral advantage once enjoyed by the conservatives has evaporated," Tanner said in his March speech to the National Press Club. "Unwilling or unable to make government work better, they've largely defaulted to handing out money to win electoral support." Not just the Tories. Tanner should be wary of the fiscal laxity he has inherited and the latent tendency of his boss. A slow drive down Northbourne or Commonwealth Avenue shows the Canberra long-bloom project has had many unlikely fathers, over many seasons and cycles. |
| 9:43 am | Crawling king silverfish ITALIAN Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was rushed to hospital covered in blood with a broken nose and teeth after a man with mental problems hurled a statuette at him at a rally. Mr Berlusconi was bundled into a car, with blood spattered over his face and rushed to hospital after the assault. The media mogul had just ended a speech to thousands of supporters in a square behind the cathedral in the northern city of Milan. The 73-year-old Prime Minister said "I'm fine, I'm fine" as he arrived at the hospital, the Ansa news agency said. His personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, said Mr Berlusconi had suffered a fractured nose, two broken teeth and cuts to his lips that required stitches. He said Mr Berlusconi would be kept in overnight for observation and would need up to 15 days to recover. "This is truly a bad day for Italy and it's the duty of all the political forces to ensure that Italy does not go back to the years of violence," Mr Berlusconi's top conservative ally, Gianfranco Fini, said. A 42-year-old man who has been under treatment for mental problems for 10 years was detained for throwing a souvenir plaster statuette of the cathedral at Mr Berlusconi from close range, police said. |
| Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | |
| 12:20 pm | Our Mandarin leader speaks ' Programatically I want us all to 'Watch what you do - watch what you say' as the wise bird once said. The only thing we corrupt crony capitalists have to fear now is fear itself. We are only the boss in this town so long as youse all think we are the boss. There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns...and no one knows what will happen when the SCO finally move against America. It may not be any actual Armageddon but near enough is good enough. I know that its uncontroversial to observe that the US-China marriage will clearly outlast Tiger Woods, but darlings who would youse rather trust? Me or Barnaby? I rest this specific case |
| 12:08 pm | Animal avatars are go Want to hunt like a tiger? Fly like an eagle? Run like a cheetah? Write like a rat? The RAT Institues Health and Normality Org (RIHNO) has announced that clinical trials involving animal to human transplantation (xenotransplantation) would be allowed to proceed, once stringent fiscal, regulatory and surveillance frameworks have been put in place. According to Institute Chairman, Professor Rat, the council has made its recommendation taking into account developments in science and technology since 2004, particularly relating to the risks of animal virus transmission. Professor Rat said the council's view is that, although there is a wide range of community views on the topic, xenotransplanation research is acceptable in Australia when there are robust anti-swine regulations in place. As with other medical technologies, the process for testing new procedures through clinical trials can take many years and involve several phases, he said. “Trials would be able to proceed once ethical approval has been given and the Therapeutic Goods Administration has implemented a robust framework to regulate clinical trials involving xenotransplantation,” he said. |
| 12:05 pm | The measures taken Bad gentry, capitalist roaders and imperial earth. Why anyone paying minimal attention should not be surprised at Barry's foreign policy in the White House. He has not banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. And sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is not extremist behavior for any human being let alone a Nobel peace prize winner, according to pentagon ( Sear RENDON ) and apologist propaganda. Now the bad guys attacked the US "from here", Afghanistan. That's why the United States is "there", Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have even been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. So what is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barry Karzei Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens there as he sees fit. Pottery barn rules now apply to this bozo in the W/house...same as the last one there. And it will take more than 2 Friedman units for Oh-blah-blah's honeyed lies to make Karzei smell sweet. War appears to be the only viable ( in strictly limited Keynesian terms ) industry America has left now. The title deeds for America are also being moved to its fellow police-state and banker-of-last-resort, China. The USA has morphed - in less than a decade - into the USSA. So the neo-cons won after all. Once the Chinamerica anschluss is offical then the red-army will liberate the entire planet - Trotsky's permrev will bind us. The Marxist boot on the human face forever. There may be a few pockets of resistance here and there, a few historical exceptions will have to be liquidated. A small price to pay for any left-fascist fanatic in the Trotskyite vein. Even sweeter when the oriental despots pay for the measures taken. |
| 11:50 am | Troy Buswell sits on Barnaby's face The Joyce of sex - Barnaby may be calling for emmissions cuts now but no one can understand a prophet in his own land. Take Bobby D... DYLAN fans will be familiar with the stream-of-consciousness liner notes on the back sleeve of Highway 61 Revisited where the Zimmer-man writes of Savage Rose and Fixable and the Cream Judge and the Clown, of Lifelessness saving the world, of the Phony Philosophers and the Beautiful Strangers. I was compelled to re-read this unusual piece of writing this week after editing an opinion piece written by Barnaby Joyce, and I have decided that if Dylan has a literary heir in this country it is the newly installed shadow minister for finance. Joyce has written seven opinion pieces for our website The Punch and the marvellous thing about all of them is that you could buy a pack of Gitanes, slip into your skivvy and beret, and recite random passages aloud in a Soho coffee shop with Miles Davis's Kind of Blue playing in the background, and the critics would hail you as the greatest beat poet since Allen Ginsberg. A few stanzas from the Joyce canon: "I am watching a television with some people dressed up as dogs on it / and as there will be a tax on electricity, the price of that will go up / the lady working in the coffee shop is washing the dishes in a dishwasher so the price of that has just gone up / she is wearing a pressed new apron, lately washed, and the cost of washing that has just gone up / on the menu is lamb's fry, and ovine ruminant potentially has a huge tax on it / I could go for the vegetable stack and that requires fertiliser to grow." Or this: "Is philosophy now no more than a bib handed out to be worn before the political chamber game, a contrived or acquired vocal tribalism?" Or this: "Some television commentators think that I'm the insane one / Maybe that explains the place where I work / Obviously, if I'm not me, who am I?" Apologies to the many baby boomer readers of The Weekend Australian for any acid flashbacks they have just experienced. The elevation of this agrarian existentialist to such a senior position on the front bench has been greeted largely with sniggers on the Left of politics. Coupled with the return of Philip Ruddock, Bronwyn Bishop and Kevin Andrews, Tony Abbott has been accused of giving life to the excellent maxim that when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. The benefits of reinstating Howard-era ministers is worth debating. But the promotion of Joyce is undoubtedly the smartest thing Abbott has done in assembling his first shadow ministry. For his occasional incomprehensibility, Joyce is one of the most effective politicians in Australia right now. Like a couple of other notable Queenslanders before him in Sir Joh and Porr-lean, he thinks, talks and acts like an anti-politician, a straight-shooter who conveys his message in a cavalier and unpretentious style. But he has none of Bjelke-Petersen's crookedness and none of Hanson's ignorance. He is decent and smart. And he has done the best job of any regional politician, probably any politician, in harnessing public disquiet over the emissions trading scheme. It's here where Labor could have a serious problem on its hands with Joyce. In a prescient piece for our website this week, published under the pithy headline "Left should beware Abbott's war on wankers", left-wing political strategist and EMC director Peter Lewis warned his comrades that the Abbott Liberals could easily revisit the republic-wrecking strategies from the 1999 referendum to smash Kevin Rudd over the ETS. You can write the arguments on the back of a beer coaster in handy front-bar language so that every undecided punter in the land will have them burned on their brain: it's going to cost a lot of money, no one has explained how it will work, it's hard to see why we need to do it anyway and I'm buggered if I'm going to be lectured about it by a bunch of uni types. Lewis wrote: "My growing concern is that a similar dynamic is at play with the climate change debate, now crystalised into a meaningless [abbreviation], the ETS. Take this exchange with a Labor-voting cabbie last week: `Bloody Rudd and his ETS. All he's going to do is increase power prices; the poor pensioners won't be able to afford it. And who says we need to pay more? Bloody scientists, that's who. What would they know; all they've ever done is gone to uni.' "These sentiments show the fertile ground an Abbott scare campaign on the ETS has to work with: not just the personal cost embodied in the mantra `a new tax'; but the backlash against people from uni telling us what to do. "While Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong refer to the expert advice, Abbott will not engage on the science; he will go after the scientific community as ideologically driven tossers working in league with the phonies from Canberra." Some will regard these tactics Lewis identifies as ugly and uninformed, pandering to the worst in our national make-up. Others would counter that it's the job of opposition to reflect and respond to sizeable public concern over such an important policy issue. Either way, this don't-lecture-me-smart-guy tactic has been proven to be politically devastating in the past. And there is no reason it cannot work again, especially when, in Joyce, Abbott has picked the right man to help direct the debate in that direction. Joyce has had three press secretaries working for him in the past 12 months, but his opinion pieces and press releases have maintained the same tone throughout. Either he employs good mimics or he writes them all himself; I suspect it is the latter. When you have Rudd talking in riddles about programmatic specificity or other Labor frontbenchers wheeling out drumroll-please lines in question time that have clearly been penned for them by the comically challenged, Barnaby's beat poetry will find a receptive audience in the media and in the public. He was off to a flyer this week. Within minutes of his promotion, Joyce issued a press release under the strangely menacing all-caps headline HELLO WAYNE. It had a nice stalkerish tone to it, as if he's going to tap into Robert De Niro's Max Cady from Cape Fear and chain himself to the bottom of the Treasurer's Comcar. "I must admit that after the appointment to shadow finance minister my comic relief came from Treasurer Swan's media release stating that I must follow Labor's strict rules on fiscal discipline. It's like Captain Calamity's instructions on yoga. "There's one thing that is absolutely certain, I will not be taking any lead, whatsoever, from a crowd who have taken us from having tens of billions of dollars in the bank, to debt up to our eyeballs, with more dogs tied up around town than Bernie Madoff. Labor has gone on a spending bender and is now waiting for the fairy godmother to come and rub the red ink from the books." I have no idea who Captain Calamity is or what his instructions are for yoga but in this age of saccharine political stage management, in a country blessed with a beautiful vernacular, Joyce may achieve what the strategists call cut-through, even when you've got no literal sense of what the guy is actually saying. penberthyd@thepunch.com.au |