More wiki, less leaks

As in, what have we actually found out from this giant pile of stuff, rather than talking about if it is a crime? I admit, I'm as weak and lazy as the next man at sorting through giant dumps of information, and haven't been tracking a lot of it, but this wonderful site has synthesized some of the really important leaks.

Of course, it's still a lot of stuff, and that may be its own greatest weakness - you can't effect change without dominating a news cycle and you can't dominate a news cycle with a hundred facts a day. Not only does news not work like that, humans don't work like that...

Prime Minister suggests using army for defence, people are shocked

So Wikileaks has revealed that Kevin Rudd said to Hilary Clinton that everything possible should be done to get China to the table, but should "everything goes wrong" Australian should be "prepard to deploy force".

And there is a problem with this? I guess the Liberal solution to say, China starting World War 3, would be to not use force? To use knitting?

Sewing their lips shut - again

If you're wondering why I have yet to comment on the desperate people locked in Christmas Island who are starving themselves and sewing their lips together to raise awareness for their plight and those who killed themselves at Villawood...it's because what the hell can you say? The point of this blog (besides rageventing) is to raise awareness about the issues. When somebody sews their own lips together, you can't top that as a red flag. That says, in letters fifty-feet high, "SOMETHING HAS GONE VERY VERY VERY SERIOUSLY WRONG HERE".

Meanwhile, Amnesty hammers home the message themselves very well with this lovely TV campaign.

Whine some more, Kochie you fatuous fuck

Actress Portia de Rossi does a book-promoting puff piece on Sunrise. As part of the interview deal she expresses a preference to being interviewed by a woman. Kochie, the ultimate ugly Australian, the racist, privileged hatemongering fuck who spews his middle of the road I'm-okay-jack oppression to other privileged white upper middle class people on his TV show Sunrise, decides she's an uppity feminist who should be back in the kitchen, not trying to oppress him. Damn her, she can't do that to me! I'm a white male and she hurt my feelings!

Don't click on that link unless you want the bile to fill your throat at the most whiny piece of mansplaining you'll see this year.

At least the SMH exposed this for the beat up it was, with the inverted commas around 'refuse'.

What's important is they're in control

50 Afghan boys involved in a brawl but that's okay, Immigration Minister Sandi Logan knows what the important issue is:

"We are concerned about ensuring the centre remains in order, remains calm and that we are in control, which we are," he said.

I currently receive a welfare cheque because my mental illness makes it difficult, if not impossible for me to work sufficient hours so as to support my family. The penalty for doing this are many. I can't get a loan. I can't save money because there's not enough. And most of all, I am a target for hate. It is difficult to miss someone, every day, decrying those on welfare. Sometimes - rarely - they will take the time to decry specifically those who cheat welfare, but that of course is not a term they are willing to define. Generally they think everyone cheats welfare. That people on it are lazy and good for nothing and should be culled to reduce the surplus population. Every day, I have to justify myself to those people, to that attitude. Or at least, I feel like I do.

But there are some who face much greater hatred. A hatred that simmers constantly beneath almost every facet of culture and bubbles up all over the place. A hate that judges and condemns people, for the crime of being different. These people don't take money, they don't cost money, they don't hurt anyone or deprive anyone of anything, they don't change anything, they don't want anything, except to be just like everyone else. All they really want is to love someone, and for that, they are hunted down and viciously attacked, denied justice, freedom and due process, segragated and pilloried, villified, stigmatised, excluded, mocked and spat on.

I know what's it like to have to wake up every morning and justify my current choices. I also know how hard it is to love somebody. Anyone who's ever been in a long-term relationship, or been a parent, or a child, who's lived with friends, who's walked as a human being with others for any time, knows how hard it is to love and go on loving, to push beyond every nerve and sinew that is worn down by the exhausting mundanity and cruelty of life and its endless demands and distractions, to look beyond the petty and the selfish and find a reason to care about someone and keep caring about them, over and over, day after day. Love is the hard option, the tiring option, the back-breaking option, and it is hard enough without having to, every day, defend that love from those who want it nullified and exterminated. When the world and all its cultures seems to want to slough you off because it feels like you don't fit in and it would be just easier to go on without you and your strangeness. When it would be simpler to just give up loving so people don't have to be angry at you any more, or scared of you any more, or uncomfortable any more, so it could just be, even for a moment, less of a battle, simply to exist. To just lay down and say, I'm tired, I can't fight any more, I just want to rest.

Every day those who choose to love someone of a matching gender face this battle, and choose not to rest. And they smile. They choose love over hate, joy over shame - and it shames me that all I can do is stand up and applaud them for it. But at least I can do that.

Join me, won't you?

Courage is awesome

Hannah Williams is 16, gay and took her school to task for being massive homophobic fucks when they wouldn't let her bring her girlfriend to grade 11 prom. John Birmingham calls the school on it beautifully. As he points out, be honest. Have the courage of your convictions. Like Hannah.

High Court says Australians have to follow Australian Law

Gosh, really? Who would have thunk it. Nice work High Court, though, for waking us the fuck up.

From their mouths

Bush confirms the buck stopped with him when it came to approving torture.

Gillard confiirms she's a bigotted gay-hating bitch.

At least we may be able to do something about the latter - see you all November 20.

Robinson Crusoe, the Master Story

This is a very, very long but excellently written thesis on Robinson Crusoe as the Master Narrative of the white Protestant ethic of exploration and enslavement and how, through the book's popularity that meme infects all modern culture to keep perpetuating that story throughout history.

The political echoes of the White Man's Burden began long before Kipling and have echoed long after. What's particular interesting is also the idea of Crusoe being the "man alone", away from the cloying nature of others, where he can make the world anew, to his ethics and his standards. Crusoe is, clearly, a maverick, not a Washington insider. He's also, of course, John Galt and his disciples, the Tea Party. We don't need society, because I'm Alright Jack. I've got my island. And that's the problem with homosexuals of course - they can live how they choose but when they come into your island, that's crossing the line.

America is the Man on the Frontier, and The Man Alone there, like Gary Cooper at the end of High Noon. Yes, he'll save the women, because, like the black folks and such, they can't save themselves - but of course just like a woman, Grace goes and gets herself captured. That's why Ethnic Sidekicks are better than women: the ethnics have the good sense to die in your arms thanking you for freeing them. Gary saves Grace (because he's a bleeding heart in the end) but John Galt would leave her and the town to die. They made their own bed by being pacifists, ethnics and women.

As always, there's Futurama:
Leela: Fry, one of these men will be the ruler of Earth!
Fry: What do I care? I live in America!
Leela: Fry, America is PART of the Earth!
Fry: Wow. I have been gone along time!

America is an island from the world; its inhabitants islands from each other. While many in the left hated Obama's centricism there were a lot of people who responded to his message of healing a divided country (another Master Story, of course). And that's because either consciously or unconsciously, they (and we in the rest of the West are not immune to this in our mad dash for individualism) can see their islands may kill them all.

E Pluribus Unum, indeed.

Seriously, WTF people

Some residents of Adelaide Hills have vowed to fight the decision that 400 people be moved into an empty army base near the suburb of Inverbrackie. 400 people into a city of 1.3 million, into a suburb of thousands. There are probably more than 400 people born in Inverbrackie each year. What kind of insanity makes you wake up and be afraid of this?

It's insanity, of course, that has to be fuelled by hate-mongering psycopaths. Fucking fuck this fucking fucker in his fucking ass. I'm sorry, I'm too angry to even have words.

What I'm Taking Away From the Rally to Restore Sanity

Obviously I have a problem with some of the ideas behind the rally. Of course I do, because I'm kind of its enemy. I'm a pundit, a rabble-rouser, the man trying to instil fear and anger into people. But I can take my lumps and find the things I do agree with.

I agree that fear is dangerous, as are those who thrive on fear, who manufacture it and sell it for their own profit. The same goes for those who make and sell division simply for the sake of division. As we saw back in 1947 division and fear are the tools of tyranny and oppression. Extremism is also dangerous, in any form. As John said in his intelligent and moving closing speech, it is through the little concessions that we not only make the struggle of our lives bearable but that we also accomplish great things and that when everything is extreme, nothing is extreme. The very problem of not being heard becomes only worse when everything becomes a critical issue. The real life and death issues becomes lost in a media where everything is beat up into a life or death issue.

My point of diversion, if you will, is simply to hope we do not forget that there ARE life and death issues. And that in taking time out to remember that all our so-called monsters are in fact men, we do not ever forget that just because they are men does not stop them from being monstrous. That although we must be ever-careful not to paint the devil's horns on everything and cast ourselves as the righteous soldiers aimed at destroying that evil, there are times when those devil horns fit and shying away from that fact lets people escape the true condemnation they deserve.

There are so many who use the cover of defusing the argument or calling for sanity to do just that, to dodge the appelations placed upon them without responding to them. There are those who are offended when they are called racists or bigots, and accuse those who apply the label as not helping the process with such extreme accusations. But the classifications fit and the very reason we use that kind of language is to drive the point home, to point out that by their views (or indeed, their inaction or silence) they consent, assent or actively pursue ideas which are monstrous and outcomes which are abusive, oppresive, inhumane, unfair, and very often, outright deadly. I don't call John Howard a murderer or children to make myself feel righteous (although I admit that can and often is part of the fun), I do it so that the world never forgets that he was a murderer of children.

And I disagree strongly with Stewart's suggestion that the asshole who comes up the turnpike and butts is only a rare abberation. He's right that the truly anti-social hater is rare (or uncommon) and that there's a difference between Fred Phelps a very nice person who is a bit startled by gay marriage...but in action, in effect, there IS no difference. It is the casual racism, the timid bigotry, the general tendency for the world to go slow and keep an even keel because we've all got to get to work and look after our families - it is these things, just as much as the madmen and hate-mongers, that keep the suffering ongoing, that let tyranny and oppression breed. Again, this is precisely WHY we must call bigotry what it is, that we must show people for the demons they are, so that they realise the suffering they are part of, and the hatred they permit.

What's more, the idea that racists and bigots are "bad people", extreme and alien creatures, and that normal people just could never be like that is a truly terrifying one that is seen everywhere these days. The insane National Organisation of Marriage has on its talking points page a way to respond to questions, viz:

1. Are you a bigot?
A: “Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists? I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you?

There's that terrifying insanity, the idea that "people like me" could be "like bigots and racists". Because bigots and racists wear sheets and live in compounds. No, they really don't. They're you, they're me, and of course it's offensive. We intend to offend you for your poisonous views and tiny little minds.

BUT.

While the Rally to Restore Sanity risks doing just this - dividing the world into the extremist who is crazy and the regular people who aren't (and Stewart even invoked the working schlub idea) - it did manage to make a bigger point at the same time, which was the opposite of that idea. The idea that the bigots are you and me is the same idea of that all our monsters are also men. And that in a pluralist society we need division, and disagreement and should never turn opposiing ideas into throughtcrime or taboos. And that free men must pull in all directions - but not pull each other to pieces over divisions which can be better fixed with discourse and democracy. That, after all, is the whole point of democracy: the defying of Mao Zedong's idea that change only comes from the barrell of a gun.

We must never forget that. We must not turn things into battles and wars where they can be avoided because in the end, everyone loses. And because wars are too easy. Recently the Tea Party have been accused of showing up for pretty much any right-wing cause under the sun and thus having no real definition; what's happening in what happens in the left all the time, where you have a mobile and active activist movement who are joiners, and show up for everything even remotely near their wheelhouse. And that happens because people want to fight battles, as often and as loudly and as simplistically as they can, without actual thought. Deep down, we all want the Electric Monk so we don't need to read, listen, and think, we can just believe, and show up - and fight.

But this weekend two hundred thousand Americans stood up against that idea. And to do that, they had to have thought about it, because I'm sure most of them had to be politically aware. They had to mediate their attendance with their other, probably strong but certainly aware political views. Even if they didn't, they stood up for thought over belief. For discourse over slogans. For facts over factionalism. For the whole picture, not the flag on top. For choosing for yourself instead of following the herd. And against simply showing up and shouting because your team says so, which, whatever your side, is no help to anybody. Apathy is dangerous, but blind, hate-filled obedience is no solution.

Once, some clever people asked "what if they gave a war and nobody came?". I applaud Stewart for his new version: "what if they held a political rally, and nobody came?"

Well, I do know what that's like, I support refugee rights. But you know what I mean.

Evil then Stupid

Liberal MP Don Randall calls the ABC the "Gay BC" (evil) then fails to identify his own party's policies (stupid). All in a day's work.

One inch forward, two giant leaps backward

As I said, just the fact that Chris Bowen seems vaguely concerned about imprisoning children was a step in the right direction. But at the same time, the government hasn't actually done anything except had an MP promise an executive order that will take, apparently, nine months to execute and as yet as no actual defined perameters of what they mean by "in the community" (like the Brisbane refugees near the airport who were locked in motel rooms 24-7 and guarded by armed guards). At the same time, they've opened two new camps and expanded the Darwin one.

Read more from Ian Rintoul and Tom Cowrie.

Good news for refugees

It's not an entire solution but it's possible a good beginning: New Immigration minister Chris Bowen is moving 1500 asylum seekers into Australian borders and wants to accompany that with community placements for children and families. Just his choice of language is a relief.

Of course, Abbott didn't miss a chance to decry this as leading to more boats. Yes Tony. You must do everything you can to keep children in concentration camps and whatever else Satan instructs you. Maybe, just maybe people are getting shitted off with that line, since it didn't work last time.

Go tell it on the mountain

Federal Judge tells the US military to stop with the DADT bullshit right the hell now Hooray!

Cracked article on why power corrupts

As always, there's some cherry picking in studies that aren't totally conclusive but it does seem to be gathering evidence that power corrupts, and not just because of the kinds of people who seek it. Power itself makes you more likely to lie, less likely to have empathy and more likely to believe you're a super-normal person with magical capabilities to whom the rules do not apply. (This also happens if you read The Secret).

Which is why we need to a) take as much as it out of the hands of authority as possible and b) put as much as possible into the hands of everyone else. Kind of like empowering employees. Or as so beautifully summed up by CJ on The West Wing:

"In times of crisis, people want to feel like soldiers, not victims."

And that's why the arguments of "don't vote, they're all bastards anyway" annoys me so much. The more you strip people of agency, the more they let themselves become victims, which just lets authority be even more bastardly.

Colbert Takes On The Hill

People sometimes view humour like sex, in that the moment it touches something, it corrupts it entirely and therefore there are things that must be protected from humour at all costs. There are, they say, places where humour does not and cannot belong. Certainly humour is dangerous. It reacts to the serious explosively and destructively and that can undermine important issues. But it doesn't have to do so. Humour can enlighten, enrichen and embolden the serious and the critical, raise the level of debate, evince truth, encourage nobility and demand attention.

So it is that while some cry out that Steven Colbert testifying to congress about the conditions of migrant farm workers is a mockery, I say it is awesome. Especially when he drops character slightly and, in his less-intoned voice, speaks from the heart.

CONGRESSWOMAN JUDY CHU: Mr. Colbert, you could work on so many issues, why are you interested in this issue?

COLBERT: I like talking about people who don't have any power. And this seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave. And, you know, whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers, these seem like the least of our brothers, right now. And I know that a lot of people are the least of my brothers because the economy is so hard, and I don't want to take anyone's hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that, but migrant workers suffer, and they have no rights."

With his comic spoonful of sugar, Colbert sneaks into the public consciousness, then shoots, scores and buries it to the bone.

Screaming in Crowds

One of my many day jobs is acting as a tour guide on horror and crime themed tours of my fair city. One of our tours, the Bloody Brisbane trail, talks about a particularly grisly murder. At around 4pm in a business office in Albert Street, in the centre of the city, a man discovered his secretary was moving to a new job, where he would no longer be able to pressure her into meeting his sexual demands. In a rage, he beat her savagely, tore off her clothes, raped her and then murdered her by throwing cleaning fluid in her face.

What was noted both then and now about the crime was that, according to witnesses, her screams were heard right across the busy CBD (then both a residential and working environment), up to a mile away. And when he'd finished, her killed walked out of the building covered in blood, with one of his fingers half bitten off from her struggles.

The suggestion made by the tour script is that most people are generally good natured. If you walk up to them and ask them for help, they will generally help. But they also assume, as part of their good nature, that someone else will help out of their good nature. Particularly in a big city. And most importantly, the more terrible the crisis, the more we assume someone else will help. Surely somebody is running to investigate that blood-curdling death scream?

The classic Milgram experiment found much the same thing. Yes, people kept pressing the button, sending shocks to the "victim", when ordered. What isn't usually mentioned however is that almost everyone who did so alerted the person giving the orders to their concerns and asked about the safety of the target. However, once they were assured that the survey organisers would take full responsibility and knew about the situation, they would continue pushing the button. Having cried "fire", they felt they had done their job. And indeed, we're told that that is the primary part of our duty - to alert people to the situation. As a child, we're told to tell a teacher or a parent or a policeman.

Of course, we're not usually told that this may do no good, and we have to keep telling until something is done.

The tour script concludes by suggesting that if ever you are in trouble, don't scream for help. Point to somebody or walk up to them and say "I need YOUR help". And if you see someone in trouble, help them or failing that, engage somebody else personally, by saying "THAT person needs YOUR help".

Where am I going with this? I'm going to politics, of course. We all like to believe that awareness is enough. That's the purpose of this blog, after all, to raise awareness (and vent hate, too, which is fun but ultimately masturbatory). That's also why we march in protest and write letters and call journalists. Once its in the paper, surely people will care? Once the crimes are known, surely they will stop? All it takes is awareness - if only the world knew, it would be okay. If only the media reported it more. If only the community understood the depths of depravity to which we have sunk. Then it would stop.

Except it doesn't. And we end up having newspapers reporting that it is the government's policy NOT TO REMOVE SHRAPNEL FROM CHILDREN because it costs money and hey, they're just worthless towelheads. And it's in the newspaper so surely something will be done? But no, it's like the blood-curdling scream - it's so incredibly horrible we assume even more it will be stopped (or we try even harder to assume it can't be that bad). And so it is never stopped and it only gets worse.

And the truth is, I don't know what the solution is. Yes, we can write to our MPs - point to them and say this is YOUR problem, fix it. But they too exist in a system where other people assure them the issue is being fixed. If enough of the public demand something is done, the government may act if they fear losing votes, but the democratic system rewards inaction and at the very best, change in teeny tiny increments. But even then, getting the public engaged at that level is terribly hard because things are so bad. We look at the Gordian knot and walk away.

Excuse me, I'm going to go read Watchmen again. Or chain myself to government house. Maybe both.

Oh, and also...

Burning of Koran rumours spread by Taliban lead to Australian troops being put in greatly increased danger.

I'm really not making this shit up. Racism KILLS PEOPLE.

Suicide in detention centre

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says that despite pressure on the detention centres, they are "coping".

Except that yesterday a man was flagged as being suicidal, and nothing was done. When he climbed onto the roof this morning, nobody with any suicide training was called, resulting in people doing REALLY STUPID THINGS that didn't help. Not surprisingly, the desperate man jumped to his death.

Now the protest on the roof of the Villawood centre is going through the night.

This coming a few days after it was revealed that child sex abuse is happening in a WA centre.

No, Mr Bowen, the centres aren't coping. The centres are FAILING. The centres are cesspools of abuse, violence, sickness, despair and terrible management. Stop them right the fuck now before more of this happens.

Pacific Solution Back Again

You know, when we wanted the politicans to close the camps, we didn't mean close most of them so the other ones are filled to bursting. Because that would be stupid. Or evil.

But they did it anyway, and now they're too full so we need more in East Timor.

Dear Ms Gillard: Bite my shiny metal ass.

Why Conservatives Are Just Plain Bad People

The talk is here, but I'll summarise:

Basically the idea is trying to understand what divides liberal and conservative mindsets by breaking down our central moral values. The speaker, Jonathan Haidt, first posits that the idea of the human mind as a blank slate is completely false, and science tends to agree. He then says that his work looked to establish the things humans care about from birth. The things we are hard-coded from the moment of birth to believe in as important enough to load with a sense of right or wrong. They worked out a big five:

- Avoiding harm and caring for the weak

- That things should be fair and equitable (aka the duckfeeding rule, because every kid knows that that duck at the back hasn't had any yet)

- tribalism and groups in general are awesome things, giving us rejuvenation and strength in lots of ways

- authority is important and needs to be inherently respected

- there are things which are pure and things which are dirty (in various senses), and being pure is better.

Obviously, there are lots of good evolutionary reasons to have these thoughts. Then they did lots of tests in various ways to see which of the five people cared about more. Generally, everyone mostly cares about the same about Harm and Fairness, but liberals put little value on group membership, authority and purity, whereas conservatives, since they tend to like the familiar, value those things quite highly.

His overall point is that to bridge the divide between the two mindsets and work towards understanding (because we're stuck with conservatives, dammit, and hey, maybe they were born that way) is to understand that the five things may be equally valuable. That certainly we need purity, authority and groups to achieve great things. We know that total anarchy never works, that people need an encoded system of belonging, justice and right ways to do things to feel safe and act purposefully and hopefully. Lots of studies have confirmed this.

The fun bit is you can join this research and go to www.yourmorals.com and find out which ones you care about. Unsurprisingly, I am big on harm and don't give a damn about purity or authority...but that's partly because their examples of purity tend to be very culturally fixed. As a liberal (and a person who likes the new and the open) I would no doubt say this but I think in general the idea is flawed that these five things ARE worth caring about equally, or without great care, simply because we start with them encoded in us. Because the last three are the ideas that become dangerous incredibly quickly, and completely ruin the first two. (For examples, see Zimbardo himself talking about his Stanford Prison Experiment and Mr Milgram in another awesome TED talk here)

Good for understanding though, and lots of other good tests on that website (you must refister though, so they get good data). The OCEAN test is interesting, basically another Myers Briggs with slightly different categories - Openness (to new experiences, ie liberal vs conservative), Conscientious (planning, self control, ie a kind of purity), Extroversion, Agreeableness (going with the group) and Neuroses (do you worry). I'm a OceAN, of course.

Which prompts the question: do I just dislike purity and authority because I suck at them, or vice versa?

Also, this man has balls of steel

Imam goes to talk to Jones face to face, looking for understanding. This makes Chuck Norris look like a total pussy.

When everybody is disavowing, maybe you should reconsider your POV...

Pastor Terry "Happy to Endanger American Soldiers" Jones has been disavowed by his own townsfolk and community. Of course, he's also been disavowed by religious groups, protesters around the world, news journalists and the head of the US forces in Afghanistan has told him to shut up, the President has told him to shut up and Secretary of Defence has called him at home to tell him to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

But you know, I'm sure he knows best.

Our message is very clear

"When we fly planes into the Twin Towers, our message is very clear. It is not to the moderate Americans. It is not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical American and I think we see right now around the globe provides exactly what we're talking about."

Or maybe we should stop spelling things out with fire.

Wait a minute, your ideas are SILLY!

CNN interviewer points out to Terry Jones that he's being a BIG SILLY (and has blood on his hands) when he claims that burning the Koran is just a way to say no to radical Muslims and that moderate Muslims should be for them. Your grasp of semiotics is shithouse, Jones. Or maybe...you're just a racist fuck.

I mean, this is from the interview:

Pastor who wants to burn the Koran on 9-11:

"Our message is very clear," he said. "It is not to the moderate Muslim. Our message is not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical element of Islam, and I think what we see right now around the globe provides exactly what we're talking about," he said.

And this is from your website, "Islam is of the Devil"

Pastor who wants to burn the Koran on 9-11:

"Any religion which would profess anything other than this truth is of the devil. This is why we also take a stand against Islam, which teaches that Jesus is not the Son of God, therefore taking away the saving power of Jesus Christ and leading people straight to Hell," the site says.

Also note that he begins his spiel by saying he's honouring the 9-11 dead. If you're gonna get your hate-erection on, please don't do it on the graves of the innocent.

Giving comfort and support to the enemy

Newsweek reports that the protests against the Not Near Ground Zero Not Mosque is helping Taliban recruiters up their numbers.

And General Petraeus himself has reminded the lunatics planning their "Burn the Koran Day" that they are endangering the lives of American soldiers.

Again, I say: do you think we're against racism because we like the hippy wardrobe and the marching gives us fresh air? You think I'm out there on the streets with a sign because I like joining things? You think I wouldn't rather be home watching cartoons? We protest because LIVES ARE AT STAKE HERE. We're trying to reduce the rate of murder. The day you stop pointing guns at the undeserving and the innocent is the day I can fucking stay home and watch cartoons.

And that, really, is why I'm so pissed off. I WANT MY FUCKING CARTOONS BACK, but no, you had to go all kill-happy with your torture-boners.

Greens list of demands from the ALP

Balances of power are scary, yes. But it's hard to be afraid of the Greens railroading the government to do what they want when their demands to the ALP are full of all these terribly sensible, democratic ideals that put power in the people's hands. Here's the list they got the ALP to agree to.


- A Climate Change Committee

• A full parliamentary debate on Afghanistan

• A commitment to work with the Greens on dental health care investment

• Completion of a $20 million High Speed Rail study by July 2011

• Legislating for truth in political advertising

• A Leaders’ Debate Commission

• Establishing a Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner

• Establishing a Parliamentary Budget Office

• Restrictions on political donations

• A move toward full three year governments

• Specially allocated time for debate and voting on private members bills and a fixed and fair allocation of questions for Independent and minor party members in Question Time

• Referenda for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and Local Government

• A commitment for reform to provide above the line voting in the Senate

• Better processes for the release of documents in the public interest in both Houses of Parliament

• Access to relevant departments, including Treasury and Finance & Deregulation for Greens election policies.

And again

Hate leads to arson at the Murfreesboro mosque site in Tennessee. Why? Because of movements like the one beautifully skewered in this Daily Show clip. Warning - funny, but terrifying.

Also, Ted Rall's blog

is here and always worth reading.

Comics for truth

Ted Rall, Matt Bors and Steven Cloud, three of the great political cartoonists of our day and age, have gone to Afghanistan (or back to Afghanistan) to get the story on the ground.

Hooray for the genre. The thing about comics is that they fit into our soundbite world but without sacrificing any of their truth to do it, and such are our last hope.

Where the story always ends

A bunch of people stir up racist bigotry. And then a man gets drunk and stabs a Muslim cab driver screaming "Assalamu Alaikum, consider this a checkpoint".

That blood is on the hands of everyone who rallied against the Not Near Ground Zero Not Mosque. Seriously. Hate leads to violence. Don't you get that? How do you not care?

Oh yeah. You're stupid and evil. Goddammit.

Don't Be A Sucker

This 1947 film, Don't Be A Sucker made by the US War Department likens inciting prejudice to a shell game designed to bilk you out of your money and your freedom. I think that's awesome because very often people can't be convinced by humanitarian arguments, so pointing out that someone is fucking you over for their own gain (and your direct loss) might work.

Nice work, 1947!

Stupid or Evil?

Did the Daily Show just name check my blog? :D Not really, but it's freaking glorious television anyway, as they expose that Fox is actually funding the "terror mosque" itself.

Watch the election on line

ABC has full streaming coverage

Play the drinking game!

- take a sip every time you see a bar graph
- take a sip every time someone says "swing"
- take a swig every time they report an electorate result even thought less than 2% of the vote is counted
- any time anyone says something is still too close to call or we're in for a long night or we just don't know that yet, finish your beer
- if Tony Abbott wins, finish your hemlock

Best election summary ever

Warning: contains awesome cartoon politicians. From our friends in Taiwan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ_s6V1Kv6A&feature=player_embedded

Whoops, turns out you ARE refugees after all

Labour has been claiming that over 40% and up to 70% of Afghanis and Sri Lankans are having their refugee status denied. However, all of those went to appeal (through a body set up by the Rudd government) and the Australian reported yesterday that a minimum of 90% of these cases are being overturned on appeal, with some of the lawyers reporting 100% of them being overturned. Good thing we didn't SEND THEM BACK TO THE WARZONE THEN.

Yesterday the Australian also repoted that large sections of the East Timor government really don't want to be Australian's dumping ground. Julia's it's-like-Tony's-idea-but-not-really-I-promise Pacific Solution is not just evil but incompetent.

Once again, we have to choose between evil through stupidity or evil with intent. Elections: welcome to the suck.

Keith Olberman delivers the smackdown

There's one journalist left in America, and he delivers a pure and glorious smackdown of truth on the Not Near Ground Zero Not Mosque. Truth is beauty. I could listen to this forever.

"From the beginning of this nation we have fought prejudice, religious intolerance and our greatest enemy, stupidity exploited by rapacious politicians."

Stupid and Evil.

Whoever wins...

We lose. Australia loses. Democracy loses. Asylum seekers lose and they lose their lives and their family's lives, their hope and their freedom and their dignity. Hardly an original sentiment but a nice man did the photoshop for me:



The question then is what hay CAN we make. Elections force politics into the spotlight. Maybe we can change a few minds about asylum seekers. Maybe we can wake people up about climate change and gay marriage. Maybe we can chisel further into a balance of power to minor parties.

We win in tiny tiny increments. In blood-soaked, screaming increments, and they take everything we've got to get them, but if you can find them, they can stop you from going nuts or giving up. One day, we might just piss enough people off for the dam to burst and there will be real change. Until then, we keep woodpeckering away, beating our skulls against a gigantic brick wall...

Choke on my fuck, Gloria Jeans Coffee

Glorian Jeans coffe chain is owned by religious fuckers the Hillsong Church group. Part of their evil fucked up mission was something called Mercy Mission where they promise to help young women "in trouble" (eg drugs, unwanted pregnany, homeless) by forcing them to, in exchange for their "help", stop getting welfare, cut off all ties with their friends and family and go and stay in a refuge for two months until they agree to be shiny happy christians. IE its a fucking cult.

However, in happy happy white puppy schadenfreude victory dance news, The Age reports that they're now insolvent and have been forced to apologise to the women whose lives they damaged. It hardly makes up for it, but I like to see the bad guys get kicked in the balls however lightly.

"In December, Mr Irvine and fellow Mercy Ministry directors admitted engaging in false, misleading and deceptive conduct following an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigation into the practices of the Hillsong-connected organisation. They were required to pay $1050 and apologise to each person affected by Mercy Ministries' conduct, all young women with mental health and drug and alcohol problems."

Picking on weaklings: humanity's favourite hobby!

Know Your Nutjob

Some of them WILL be running the country. This awesome blog post runs down the parties, large, small, tiny and independent. Doesn't cover all the states but it was a titanic task getting as far as he did. Sheer brilliance!

Am I crazy or is Australia finally getting more politically awake? Of course, the more our ballots force us to choose between the pathetic and the puerile, the more we take to the streets and look for things to burn. But at the same time, people are using the net to get actually informed, and as a pull medium, that makes people look harder and think more.

As a great man said, You Can't Stop the Signal.

Well, good on the church

Not everyone in the church is as mad as George Pell or as blind as the Pope. The Uniting Church in Australia has always been working hard to tear down the barriers between denominations and between the secular and the sacred. And the August issue of its internal newspaper looks at its relationship to politics. It includes an article which talks about the generally left-wing nature of the church, which has the wonderful quote:

"The damage to the credibility of the Christian Church by Family First Senator Steve Fielding is incalculable" - Dr John Harrison.

Poor bastards have to not only deal with Fielding's evil, but that he does it while wearing their colours.

It also closes with a statement from a Uniting Church member from Labor, the Libs, the Greens and Family First, where they explain why their political work is an expression of their faith. Props for them for showing that their church is a messy place filled with very different philosophies (and that even the general versions of those philosophies can lead to completely different politics), unlike Pell who demands all his sheep follow his politics word for word.

To paraphrase Scott Adams - I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-idiot.

Tony, seriously, wtf is wrong with you?

I mean, I set aside this morning to do some non-election writing and you open your mouth and come out with this insane bullshit about being the man with the hand on the button to turn back the boats.

It's actually not unexpected - Tony has been playing the "Action Man" card since the moment he put on the budgie-smugglers and showed off his six-pack. Being a call away from the navy is totally part of his spin.

The really sad thing is selling Action Man means he needs an enemy, and he says shit like this:

"I think reopening Nauru would send an immediate signal to the people smugglers and their customers or potential customers that the game is up,"

There are no words for how evil that quote is. You just turned refugees into criminals, Tony, because it made you feel like a hard man. It points to not just aspirations to ascend over however big a pile of blood and torture it takes but that same kind of psychopathic sexual joy from inflicting pain that John Howard had. We really really need to stop electing sociopaths.

Green advertisements

A lot of people are talking about the fantastic ad for the Greens mocked up for the Gruen Nation TV show on the ABC (which of course the Greens can't use.) They should have done better than their own ad which was just fucking awful.

Luckily, they HAVE done better than both of those with this bloody masterpiece. It's about the real cost of doing business - refugee business.

Voting

I like to keep this by me during election time. It makes everything so clear.

Same-Sex Marriage

Sometimes it's difficult to find the right argument, the one that gets to the heart of the matter as quickly and cleanly as possible. It doesn't mean your argument is weak or faulty or that your beliefs are foolish or wavering - sometimes you have trouble expressing something, no matter how much you feel it. Or you can't express it in a way that will convince others.

Such is the case, I find, with Same Sex Marriage. This Sunday is of course the big protest march about it, and I will be there of course (1pm in Queens Park, that's the one opposite the casino). But sometimes it's hard to convince people why it's important. Important enough to protest. Important enough to demand to be fixed, right the hell now.

Then this morning my flatmate was reading through The Sneetches. If you don't know it, it's a fantastic Dr Seuss story about a group of bird-like creatures called Sneetches who live near beaches. And some of the Sneeches have bellies with stars and some of the sneetches have no stars upon thars. And the star-belly sneetches are the only ones allowed to walk on the beaches while the plain-belly sneetches are second class creatures. Soon enough, a figure comes along and messes with the status quo. He charges a small fee to turn plain-belly sneetches into star-belly sneetches. Lacking a way to exclude others, the star-belly sneetches are miserable - until the outsider offers to remove their stars for a small fee. They all agree and then try to assert than having no star on your belly is the source of societal primacy. This causes the newly-star-bellied to be forced to revert, but before they can finish the star-bellied want theirs back again. The process devolves into chaos until the outsider is rich and the sneetches are all mixed up again - half starred, half unstarred.

Like most of Seuss' work the parables seem obvious but have a surprising amount of depth to them as well. It's not just an indictment of corportations controlling our low sense of self esteem, it's greater than that. To me, I see it as a total reductionist approach to all tribalism.

Humans are tribal creatures. We can't escape that and most of the time, there's nothing wrong with it. It only becomes problematic when we use our tribalism to justify our moral outrage (or when our moral outrage leads us into tribalism, declaring those whose actions we find immoral to be anethama and inhuman, but of course this blog would never stoop so low). At times like that it's important to not just realise that such outrage is silly to be fuelled by nothing but tribalism but that the tribalism itself is fundamentally ridiculous.

And that's really what this is about. There are some people in this world who think that only star-bellied sneetches should walk along beaches, because star-bellied sneetches are better than plain-bellied sneetches. It's all very silly of course, but these people seem to take it very seriously indeed. Their beaches are so very very important that to let a plain-bellied sneetch in would destroy the value of that beach. Of course, if a plain-bellied sneetch would only go and acquire a star, they would be happy to let them in to their beaches.

Some of us, however, think everyone should enjoy the beach. The beach is lovely, and the more people who enjoy it, the better. Some of us don't see any reason to care about the contents of a sneetch's belly. Some of us grew out of sneetch-like behaviour when we were six. Some of us think government and laws are for grown ups, not little children who don't want to share.

If you think laws are for grownups, do join us on Saturday. Numbers are a weapon.

Good link on Asylum Seekers

Tony and Julia are still doing the dance so we still need to hit voters with the clue hammer, and here it is, all rolled into one clear, simple document

Cardinal Pell hates the Greens

Sometimes I think there's nothing on earth more evil than John Howard, the man who liked to torture children just for the hard-on it gave him. Then I remember there's Cardinal Pell, a man of such cartoonish villainy that if you wrote him in fiction people wouldn't believe it.

I think what I hate most about Pell is he's so absolutely convinced of his power and his untouchability that he can be lazy in his evil. I mean, Wendy Francis hates the gays but she can't just come out and say it, she has to sit down for five minutes and pull an excuse out of her ass, something about how children without parents of both sexes will suffer. Something that looks vaguely sane and respectable. She can't get away with saying what she really thinks because then the diseased sickness she pretends is a working mind would be obvious to all.

Pell does though. Back in 2007 he told the world that Islam was a "violent, dangerous religion" that was Australia's enemy and John Howard was our holy soldier fighting against it. In the same article, he admitted he got this impression of Islam by "skimming over" a few pages of the Koran for "about half an hour".

Now he's decided that the Greens are Australia's enemy - being "anti-Christian" "stalinists" and sweet camoflauged poison" - because the Australian Christian Lobby sent them a voluntary survey and the Greens didn't volunteer to fill it out. Also they're a bunch of commies. For this reason, Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, urges the entire Catholic church not to vote for them.

For fuck's sake, it's 2010 and Pell is looking for reds under the bed. It's just not fucking funny any more, Pell. It's one thing to have the political arena filled with evil fuckers who want to fuck you with switchblades, but it's quite another to have to deal with someone who has all the mental sophistication of a two-year old AND wants to fuck you with switchblades.

Luckily, there's some dissention in the ranks, with some rational Catholics suggesting that maybe a Catholic bishop using his immense power to sway elections at the very least appears a bit fucking obvious. Meanwhile his position as Archbishop lasts for life, after which we can only pray God has mercy on his blood-stained soul.

Right to marriage

Before we go marching on Sunday for gay rights in Australia, here's conservative lawyer Ted Olson who ran the case against Proposition 8 explaining why gay marriage is a constitutional right in the US because "the right to marry is a part of liberty, privacy, association and spirituality, guaranteed to every individual".

Of course, Australia doesn't have a Bill of Rights guaranteeing due process to all. So we have nothing to fall back on, except public outrage.

Audience Participation - Indigenous Rights

Amnesty International needs bums on seats I mean email clickies to help raise awareness about the Northern Territory Emergency Response, which is a system by which every Aboriginal person in the NT loses half their paypacket in exchange for vouchers for state-approved goods. Because apparently we can't trust the darkies to know how to deal with big-people money. They might all rush out and buy copies of Twilight, for example.

Help Amnesty end this bullshit by clicking on the link and reading the info on this page.

Julia, Stand and Deliver WAS JUST A MOVIE

So was Lean on Me, and Mr Holland's Opus. Just movies, okay? You weren't supposed to base you education policy on them!

"I want to reward a teacher who is in a disadvantaged classroom who transforms kids' lives by making sure they're most improved," she said.

In theory, there's nothing particularly wrong with rewarding good teachers, but in practice, it kind of falls over and dies. Because good teaching is an intangible and trying to put a dollar value on it only works to further turn education into a business. In business, it can make sense to reward good workers. Of course, in practice it often just builds resentment and fucks up morale, but it CAN work. But a business often has measurable outcomes like how much money you make. Schools do not. Nor do they exist in perfect situations where teacher dedication magically creates good outcomes.

And finally, rewarding teachers like this creates even more stigma on bad teachers. When was the last time you heard about the government encouraging good nurses or good doctors, by singling them out? But teachers, they're societies punching bags. That's why we can get away with handing them societies' garbage bags, paying them for half the hours they work each day and then blaming them when they don't produce angels. And true enough, this "reward teachers" system comes with a big series of tests to make sure teachers are good enough. Again, there's this hideous assumption in all of Gillard's policies that teachers are just crap.

Julia, you get what you pay for. Pay teachers like doctors and you might get the best and the brightest. Make those passionate/insane few who do it for love and dedication jump through your hoops to prove they're good enough to do a job they've already qualified for will just piss people off.

But it appeals to the battlers, doesn't it Julia. Those gangs Tony is trying to round up, those wild teenagers with their long hair, that's not the fault of the parents or a massively poorly run and funded education system, it's just bad teachers. I think Julia liked the dog whistle so much she swallowed it.

Bigotry First

Boy howdy does Family First hate teh gay. Wendy Francis went so far as to twitter that gay marriage is emotional child abuse. The hilarious thing is it caused so much outrage they took it down and blamed it on an intern - standard practice in politics these days (cf John McCain's website faux pas in 2008). Then Francis decided she didn't mean gay marriage was like child abuse, it was like kidnapping:

"In the situation that we're proposing here, we are saying that a child will be taken from its natural parent and it will be put in a situation where it is with two mothers or two fathers that is actually not possible to conceive that child.

"So I'm just asking the question... in 20 years time are we really going to be facing another Stolen Generation where this child has been taken from their parents and placed in another situation that was not of their choice?"

Do we start with the homophobia, the racism or the sheer insanity of babies choosing their parents?

We could just point out that in fact we have the science anyway, and it says over and over again that having two mummies or daddies actually improves a child's life. Said families create children who accept other viewpoints and make strong clear choices for themselves. Sorry Francis, the experiment's already been done and teh gay is not only non-toxic, it's PART OF THIS COMPLETE BREAKFAST.

The question is, why does Wendy Francis hate children and want to stunt their development and reduce their chance for success by forcing them to be raised by heterosexuals?

Actually, the real question is, how can we call this a civilised society and yet Wendy Francis is allowed to not be kicked to death by angry, vomiting yaks?

Abbott promises evil with more evil

Abbott came to Brisbane to launch his campaign officially yesterday, presumably because he fears the rising shadow of Rudd.

Full speech from his campaign launch here

Summary here

His first priorities are:

Lift the carbon tax (because yeah, climate change is hilarious)
Reopen Nauru (because concentration camps are hilarious)
Stop Marine parks (because overfishing is hilarious)

As always, the Liberals are driven to be overtly, passionately, clearly evil, making them at least an alternatively to the inept, bumbling, evil by default and laziness of Labor. Evil or stupid...it's like a blog name or something.

Good news, everyone!

The Get Up guys won their court case, overturning Howard's electoral changes that allowed him to spring surprise elections on people. Now at least 100,000 people can be grandfathered into this election - woot!

From the mouths of bastards

GetUp's new ad lets Tony Abbot hang himself with his own ridiculous and horrible quotes.

Awesome.

What They Stand For

Universal sufferage can only work with universal education. So it's nice to see some genius has made a useful spread-sheet on where the parties (big and small) stand on the issues.

Check it out, and share it with others! Let's not have the same thing as 2004 when Family First got voted for because nobody knew they were a bunch of fundamentalist bigots.

Political Compass

...has been updated with its take on the current Australian election. Compass has its flaws but at least it has a good stab at breaking out of one dimensional political classifications.

It's test is also not perfect but if you're not sure where you stand on the axes, have a go and see what you get! Then do it a week later and aggregate your scores.

Why this blog exists

Reposted from last month on my LJ:

I'm not a great reader. Not anymore. Not since my depression shredded my attention span and the internet hoovered up the scraps and smoked them as a joint. I like TV though. And I like comics. I can read comics. And I like Transmet. If you like Transmet, you knew I was going to say that, because of the style of this post. Fucking Spider and Ellis are in my head, and they want me to write like this. And it feels good to do what they tell me. It makes me feel awesome.

I like Transmet and I read it a lot, for pretty much exactly the same reason I watch The West Wing over and over again. Because they're not about politics, they're about writing. An idiot I once knew told me that all musicians get boring when they start singing about being a rock star. He was completely wrong, of course; that's when they get interesting. That's why Billy Joel fucking rocks. And occasionally, you get that privelige with TV writers and comic writers. They sit down and they write about what they know. About the beast and the keyboard. About playing God and being tired. About the sex and the drugs that you never, ever get. About cadence, and floating opposites and latinate reversals and repetition and the endless shadow-boxing with your own ego. And the truth, and how to swing it so it doesn't chop your head off.

It's not an accident they're both about writing AND politics. On the streets of DC - a town where, for some reason, hope never dies - they write their truth on the streets, bore it into the concrete and the marble, the words of great men with even better script writers. And on a minor street off the mall, it says "Those who write history in words often forget history is MADE with words". Not all political entities are writers. But almost all wirters are political. We cling to it, because we recognise the bullshit, and the beast. Especially these days, when politicians tell stories, each inventing their own fairytale where they are the hero, six-foot-six of VIn Diesel-shaped tungsten with a dagger pointed at the heart of whatever you hate the most.

Tony Abbot wernt on TV tonight and told a story with big red arrows, invading Australia. Your country, he said, was under threat from Big Red Arrows. From Iraq and Iran and other bad places. What he means is he wants to put children in prison camps where there's no running water and no UN oversight because it gives him an erection the size of Kirribilli House - and he thinks it will also give him the House. The marthon running and the sex jokes didn't make everyone swoon for him enough, he wasn't everyone's favourite Action Hero, so he decided to get some bad guys to blow up while he's covered in Baby Oil and saying "Yippee-Kai-Yay". There weren't any real bad guys so he found some starving people with funny faces and no rights and cast them instead.

Transmet can sometimes be seen as being too over the top, too grand guignol to get at the truth. And sometimes, it's nothing but the truth, pure truth, wisdom from the goddamn mountain. There are people out there who will kill anyone they can to make you vote for them, and jerk off at the very thought of it. Beware of them. Do not accept their candy, or their lies.

But know this: they do fear the truth. Speak it, write it, tell it. In whatever form that takes. Because good writing makes people feel awesome, and no longer afraid. And when they're not afraid, they're much harder to fuck with.

I'm Not John Clarke

I just wish I was.

Miss Gillard, how does it feel to be the first female Prime Minister of Australia?

Can I just stop you there, Brian?

Sure.

I'm not just the first female Prime Minister of Australia.

No?

No, Brian. No. No, what I am, Brian, is the first red-haired female Prime Minister of Australia.

Is that important?

Well the media seem to think so.

Why's that?

Well, you know what they say about redheads, Brian.

What do they say?

Well, Brian, you know. They say...well, they say we're firebands, don't they?

Are you a firebrand?

Oh by crikey I am, Brian, yes. Absolutely.

What's a firebrand?

Well, a firebrand, Brian, your basic firebrand, is well, a firebrand is someone who is full of fire Brian.

Fire?

Fire, Brian, my word yes. If you were to try and tell a firebrand, Brian.

Tell them what?

Tell them anything. If you try to tell a firebrand, well...

Well what?

Well, well, then, you'd, you'd better watch out, Brian.

For the fire?

For the fire.

Why was Kevin Rudd ousted from the leadership?

Well, he couldn't be told, Brian.

And you can?

Well, we believe in making government open again to consultation and communication.

But with you still being a firebrand?

Of course.

Hmm. Originally you said you didn't want the leadership.

Yes, Brian, but I had a long consultation with certain key figures in the Labour party.

And what did that say?

They said they wanted me to be leader of the Labour party.

And what did you say?

I said yes, Brian.

And what was your first actions as the leader?

Well, I had to the fix the mining tax problem, of course.

And did you consult with people on that?

Absolutely, Brian. Of course we did.

Whom did you consult with?

Mostly the mining companies.

And what did they say?

They said could they pretty please have a much smaller mining tax.

And what did you say?

I said yes, Brian.

Any other big announcements?

Well, yes, yes, I did make a point that I was taking a hard stance against gay marriage, too.

Did you consult anyone about that?

Yes, yes, of course we did.

Whom did you consult?

The Australian Christian Lobby.

And what did they say?

They said would I like to win the next election

And what did you say?

I said yes, Brian.

Why was Kevin Rudd ousted from the leadership again?

Because he wouldn't be told, Brian.

Anything else?

Well, of course, yes. There was also the issue that he'd gone soft on climate change.

Gone soft?

Yes.

How soft?

Extremely soft.

Extremely soft?

Oh my word yes. He was practically a liquid by the end of it. He was leaking all over the place.

He seemed pretty hard about the mining tax.

Yes, Brian but he was very soft on climate change.

Should he have been harder about climate change?

No, he should have been softer on the mining tax.

So he was hard in the wrong places?

Yes.

And soft in others?

Exactly.

And he couldn't be smoothed out?

No.

Why not?

Well, he couldn't be told, Brian.

Was he a firebrand?

Of course not.

Why not?

He didn't have red hair.

Why do we need the Sex Party?

Well, you could say it was because Fiona Patten is bringing intelligent and lively debate to the table, and the internet, what with the article on Gizmodo about the extremely terrifying things the Labour government is doing right now what with the imprisonment of innocent people for breaking no laws whatsoever.


Or you could just point to her general distrust of religion in government as the only possible alternative to Creationists hijacking queensland classrooms to tell children about Noah casting Protection From Dinosaurs, 15" Radius.

When Dungeons and Dragons makes more sense than your religion, your religion sucks.