The boot polish on the face and the afro shock-wigs are classic tools of oppression of African American people, used to mock and belittle the black people by depicting them as obvious objects of ridicule. None of the Jackson 5 were ever black black - they were only ever brown - and they never had great big clumps of hair standing bolt upright.

The guys clearly had a budget for the act, given the startlingly bright matching white suits they wore, if they'd simply got some proper brown make-up and fine afro wigs - even if they were 5 feet across - none of this would have been an issue. The fact that the people at Hey Hey had years and years of acts to choose from and chose that act shows that they have no better understanding of what is offensive now than they did 10 years ago when they got axed, or 20 or 30 years ago. It had always been a bit of an anachronistic embarrassment but, this time, they had someone on the spot who knew about the specific sensitivities and had the international clout to receive an immediate on-air apology.

And the idiots who are signing up for the Facebook group saying that Harry Connick is a PC idiot and just a spoilsport obviously have no idea of the outside world and the death sentence he would have been handing his career if he'd said nothing. Silence is, after all, just to tacitly support what had gone on.

Being a renowned control freak on everything he does - whether or not he actually has a producer's role - Daryl is the ultimate arbiter on the show and the one who must end up taking responsibility for it.

There are good people that work on Hey Hey, people that can create entertainment from content that doesn't require someone to be made to look like a fool, and if it wasn't for them there's no possible way I could go near the show. Daryl obviously follows the age old credo of surrounding yourself with talented people to make yourself look good but he stills comes across as the perverted uncle that smells of BO and stale beer who is going to try to finger your teenage niece as soon as he gets the opportunity. Unless they have living legend status, any women on the show are only going to be on because they look pretty and if they're a bit dim as well all the better because then we can all make jokes about them. There should have been a drinking game where you had to skull whenever Daryl made a comment about the most recently arrived beautiful/lovely/pretty/etc girl.

Having said that, Livinia Nixon has dived in my esteem since the second show, with her lack of knowledge of comic setups, talking over people on camera and sucking any creative oxygen out of the room by being critical of someone taking a chance such as saying "Wot cheeses me off is that" while pointing at the band who had gone for a bit in the intro.

But back to the point... Yes, you all are racist motheruckers - just as racist now as you were when you went to Cronulla to go Lebo-bashing - cheered on by Alan Jones, who should personally know a thing or two about bigotry - just as racist as when you thought it was a good thing when John Howard said he was glad that politicians were able to speak without having to consider political correctness, which was his only response to Pauline Hanson declaring in her maiden speech that Australia was being taken over by the Asians and brown people and the Abos were unpleasant to look at, you're just as racist as when you bought the Kevin 'Bloody' Wilson album because you pissed yourself at the song with the Abo getting more money on the dole and from benefits than Alan Bond in his prime, and you're all just as racist as when you laughed at the joke about the bloke driving through the outback, opening his door to knock down boongs, picking up the priest, almost knocking down the next boong only to have the priest say it was OK because he got him with his door.

I'd thought there might be some hope with the acknowledgment of the inhumane way this country treats asylum seekers and the apology to indigenous people but it seems I'm surrounded by inbred hick yokels who want to have a whinge about being expected to reach a civilised international standard for the treatment of fellow human beings. As much as I'll be tarred with your brush, I kinda hope there's an international characterisation of Australians as some backwoods, hillbilly type, ostracised by everyone else in the world so you can experience just what it's like and maybe gain some understanding about what's going on here.

Youse can all go and get fucked, ya cunts.

When I was last writing, I was quite depressed at the cynicism of the Howard government and the inability of so many people to be able to see through the obvious deceptions and still be talking up the fear of an ALP government in regard to fiscal responsibility. The polls were all looking favourable and it didn't look like the Libs could possibly come through but we'd seen that before and they still pull it off.

When Beazley told us, "I. Want. The Job.", it looked like a lay down misère until the Tampa showed up and even fairly rational papers, like The Age, published 3/4 page photos on the front page, of an aerial view of the un-Christian invaders, praying on the deck to their savage god. At that point, Howard began to play on the racism that he'd been fostering in the populace since, rather than shutting down Pauline Hanson when she started with her xenophobic, uneducated rants, he didn't explicitly state that racism is bad and actually applauded the prospect of not having to care about political correctness in the public realm. If our politicians don't need to worry about being sensitive when dealing with the sly, slitty-eyed Asians, the godless towelheads or the unvaryingly alcoholic and abusive Abos then why should any normal white person living in the suburbs worry about it either?

If that weren't enough, by the time election day had come, on November 10, 2001, more of those brown infidels had launched an attack on the entire free world by flying planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in the US and there's no way anyone would take the risk of an untested government on the brink of a world war.

Personally, I don't think Beazley was ever a realistic prospect for Prime Minister. It was only that the Howard government had made such a mess of things up to Tampa that they were set to lose government regardless of who the alternative was - even the proverbial drover's dog. That line from Beazley - "I. Want. The Job." - during the debate pre-Tampa, still makes me cringe. It wasn't a line that he owned - it was a line of spin, of marketing, that he'd been very consciously fed by the backroom spinmeisters of the ALP that seemed to have complete control over how that election campaign was run.

Beazley couldn't sell the lines that he was fed and he looked embarrassed delivering them. But then, he looked embarrassed or uncomfortable quite often when he was leader. On top of not being a strong personality and having a couple of recurrent health problems, he was too much of a teddy bear. Look at him there, in that picture. He's towering over Howard and Ray Martin. It gives him a definite natural advantage as a party leader - Malcolm Fraser was a tall party leader, Gough Whitlam was a tall party leader - but Kim could never capitulate on that natural advantage because of the way that he held himself and because, regardless of how much weight he lost in the lead-up to that election, he always looked like a big, cuddly teddy bear.

I suspect it is an issue that Joe Hockey will come up against if he ever becomes leader of the Liberal Party. As much of a head-kicker as he may be in his actions, he still has that big, round neck that comes out to meet the bottom of where his chin should be, with the Droopy Dog speech type where he doesn't really move his lips enough to be clipped in his enunciation because his lips are such great slug-like sausages of flesh, and the perceived inches of soft flab all over his body that infer the cuddly bear body that doesn't lend itself to being a strong leader. I've never seen Joe Hockey in real life and I've not taken the time to observe how he stacks up, height wise, against the other members of the opposition but we have many opportunities to see him on camera, as a regular on breakfast TV and political interviews, and, with the framing and the tendency of the camera to add weight, comes across as someone that can't really be taken seriously.

In the run-up to the next election, with Mark Latham as leader, the ALP seemed to have taken the next generational step and instilled the party with new blood and a new energy. Surely the factional power brokers that installed Latham into the leadership position should have known that 1) Latham had a history of violence that was undeniable, well documented and would inevitably become an issue that the Libs would be able to exploit and 2) he was still prone to anger management issues and that those issues would likely be brought out in the undisciplined Latham under the pressure of leading a federal election campaign. For those deal makers to put Latham in that role, surely, was an act of gross stupidity and, if we're following the trail back, they're the source of an additional term of damaging Howard rule.

By the time election day came around - in fact, probably two days before that - Latham's attitude had wasted another strong lead in the polls over Howard and thrown the election away. It wasn't until the day after that loss that I saw the footage of the infamous handshake at the Sydney radio station, which was an act of physical aggression - you could almost call it assault - against Howard, shaking him around like a frail little rag doll and standing over him, asking threateningly, "You right?", while the cameras of the nation's media snapped and rolled tape. Political views aside, Howard was like the shrinking little grandfather that was likely to break a hip if he sneezed too hard. What a fucking idiotic cunt. And then to virtually go into hiding, not even communicating with fellow party members - people he'd supposedly been on the frontlines with in the trenches of the election battle - before addressing the media at an anonymous suburban park to announce his resignation over a very convenient malady. It was barely a surprise that he then started to act like a bitter spoilt brat, attacking everyone else in the ALP and insisting that the election loss was all their fault and he wasn't responsible at all. The only thing notable about the publication of his 'diaries', full of vitriol about how everyone else had it in for him, was that any publisher would bother to take it on and expect to make any profit out of it.

All I'm saying is that as large as the polls were saying the lead of the ALP going into the 2007 election was, you could never fully trust that they would translate into the actual election result.

Now it's 2009 and we've seen off Howard but things aren't so different in too many ways. What was traditionally the left of the political spectrum has shifted to the right of centre and there is no alternative for a those of us who retain some humanity and didn't get sucked into the promises of 12 years of Howard.

I hope I can clarify what's really going on behind the spin for you in future posts - in this post-Howard era and on the first 9/11 since Bush left office - and that you'll come with me on a journey of enlightenment.

After changing web servers and not having the sub-domain or blog up on my friend's server since late last year, there has just been too much that needs to be said and too much education that is crying out to be shared. So much of it seems so obvious but I think there's been too much self-involvement from too many people and we, as a nation, as the first world, have forgotten how to see anyone else around us. That's why I've resurrected the blog and will be looking to foster as much discussion and participation as I can.

Young workers ruling unnecessary: Hockey

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says today's ruling on junior workers by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission will confuse both business and workers.

The commission says it is apparent AWAs are designed to reduce wages and working conditions under WorkChoices to the detriment of children.

The commission has set out principles to protect New South Wales children on AWAs from losing their penalties and breaks without compensation.

But Mr Hockey says the Federal Government has included parental consent in the workplace laws to protect young workers.

"If you believe Mr Della Bosca and the Labor Party, it's a free-for-all against children with AWAs," he said.

"That's completely false. That's why we've been saying in our ads that you need the consent of parents or guardians if you are under 18 to sign an AWA."

Mr Hockey says under the Howard Government, teenage employment and wages for young people have both increased.

"One of the reasons why young people's wages have increased in real terms by three times the amount [they were] under Labor was because we have introduced a fairer and more flexible system," he said.

How the fuck is parental consent supposed to do anything when it comes to adolescents getting screwed over by unfair, underpaid AWAs? Is Hockey implying that parents have some sort of control over employers that compels them to make the AWA a fair and properly paid contract? What fantasy land does he think we're living in?

Parental consent does nothing to prevent employers exploiting junior workers. If they want to work, they have to convince their parents to consent, no matter what's on offer. Short of that, is Joe Hockey suggesting that juniors not work if the AWAs on offer aren't fair? Not really an option these days, when parts of the school curriculum involves things like working at MacDonalds for credit.

What Hockey completely ignores is the fact that the "fairness test" announced recently by John Howard does nothing to protect these junior workers as they enter the workforce. The test is designed to ensure that someone moving onto an AWA receives fair pay considerations for any penalty rates, holidays or any other working conditions lost by being moved to the AWA. But if someone is taking up new employment, there's no measure of what those conditions were. Ergo, it's a blank sheet on which any conditions the employer wants for whatever pay the employer wants can be writ.

Joe Hockey, stop trying to defend the indefensible. Your government has abused the power it won at the last general election and it's time you all just fucked off and let someone else come in and clean up the mess you've made.

SOURCE

Taking the theatre out of ABC criticism
The ABC's new policies will give audiences a full range of views, writes Mark Scott. The Age, 18/10/06

IN MY early weeks as managing director, I have called on some of the ABC's harshest public critics. And almost to a man and woman, they have been at pains to point out how much they love the ABC.

Then comes the but - and as my father-in-law has often warned me, ignore everything before the but. There is a sense that the organisation has issues with balance and fairness, particularly through its news and current affairs content, although some critics would suggest across its entire content. We need to address the criticism carefully and comprehensively. To ignore it or reflexively dismiss it only serves to limit ourselves, and is at odds with the ethos of open debate and discourse that is central to our reason for being.

Instead of facing up to these criticisms, it is easy to take comfort in the market research that suggests the ABC is remarkably popular with its owners: the public. A recent Newspoll indicated 90 per cent of the public believed the ABC provided a valuable or very valuable service. And there is comfort in recent research by Young and Rubicam that said the only brand more popular in Australia than the ABC is Vegemite.

Within the ABC, it is easy to say that people like us, the ratings are reasonable and the critics are the ones who really don't get it. At times it does appear that criticism of the ABC takes the form of set-piece theatre: everyone knowing their lines and going through well-known rituals. But such an approach is unwise and misses the real point: is there substance in the criticism? Does the ABC have a problem with editorial values? It is an important question. It is very clear to me that this pattern of critique and reflexive defence needs to be challenged.

What I am outlining represents the ABC taking the lead to break this ritual. It is a challenge to both ourselves and our critics to learn some new steps and think afresh about how we deliver balance, diversity, impartiality. It is only reasonable, that as the public broadcaster using public money, the ABC set high standards for itself; higher standards than anyone else in the Australian media.

The public invests its trust in all ABC content, regardless of its source within the ABC. The new policies reflect this reality. The policies will ensure that ABC audiences can see and hear a broad range of viewpoints on matters of importance. The policies are contained in a document that runs to some 50 pages. It says upfront that as a creator, broadcaster and publisher of news and current affairs content, there is a requirement for impartiality. Each news and current affairs story and program must be impartial. For opinion programs or programs of topical and factual content, individual items of content can take a particular perspective, but the ABC must be able to demonstrate that it has provided audiences with a range of different perspectives on the subject under consideration on each platform, be it radio, television or online.

On contentious matters, we need to hear the full range of voices. We have taken another look at fairness and what it means to be impartial. Impartiality is a long-held expectation of our news coverage. Being a responsible public broadcaster is not synonymous with universal public popularity. The editorial policies now require the ABC to be impartial as a broadcaster and generator of content. As we assess the output of each of our platforms - ABC TV, Radio National, local stations such as 702 ABC Sydney - there is now the expectation that there is impartiality. That there is a demonstrated plurality of opinion and perspective.

The new category of opinion will be content presented from a partisan point of view about a matter of public contention. This content will be signposted as opinion and the impartiality test will be: has the ABC presented a plurality of views? And the ABC will expect staff to operate in a way that is reflecting key values of honesty, fairness, independence and respect.

We are looking to have three mechanisms for quality assurance around the implementation of our editorial policies. The first is regular program and performance review. Second, we have our established mechanism for dealing with public complaints.

A new mechanism is through the director of editorial policies, who will be able to commission research to provide better insight into whether we are meeting our own expectations. And when staff are dealing with a difficult decision in light of interpreting editorial policies, or I am concerned about a matter before broadcast or publication, the director of editorial policies will be able to provide independent advice.

Our journalists need to be able to undertake courageous journalism. Our radio broadcasters need to be lively and engaging and provocative at times to win and keep an audience. So, too, with television and online. Our policies promote the spirit of inquiry, not dampen it. As I have explained to our newsrooms, I want them to practise great journalism. To find the big stories and to hold those who seek to lead us to account for the promises they have made and the truths they espouse. But to achieve great journalism, you need to practise good journalism. Journalism that is fair, accurate, balanced and objective.

If there is a deference in these policies, it is to the primacy of ideas, to the intelligence of an audience, to the right of audience members to make up their own minds.

Mark Scott is managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This is an edited version of his speech to the Sydney Institute last night.

The critics that Mark Scott speaks of are, invariably, right-wing, conservative supporters of the Howard government - people like Andrew Bolt, Gerard Henderson (who is the executive director of the Sydney Institute - who happened to host the speech) and Piers Ackerman - people who support Australia being part of the invading forces in Iraq, the locking up of asylum-seekers in detention centres, the denial of climate change and the refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement, the new "work choices" industrial relations legislation that reduces the pay and conditions of Australian workers and the reduction in public funding for the ABC.

And the reason why they are loud, bully-boy critics of the ABC is because the ABC hasn't played the part of a cheer squad on each of these issues as they've arisen and they don't like being challenged. Mark Scott's new policy simply panders to these thugs and gives them more air time than they already have to spout their lies and to proselytise for their church of the far right... not to mention the more extreme groups of the right who will be compulsorily included so that we "hear the full range of voices" "on contentious matters".

For example, this means that if there's a program that deals in evolution - say Walking With Dinosaurs - which some claim is a contentious matter, the ABC would have to give air time to creationists to argue their case for creationism or, as they've repackaged it, Intelligent Design. A similar thing has happened in various states in the US in the schools' curricula with 'Intelligent Design' being taught in SCIENCE classes, in order to refute Darwin's theory of evolution and consolidate the belief that the Genesis book of the bible is a literal document of how God created all life.

Already, even without any new policy, 774 radio in Melbourne has filled their afternoon and drive programs with Richard Stubbs and Lindy Burns - two presenters that distinctly lack the intelligence of their predecessors who present programs that waste two and three hours every day covering crap like world massage day and whether footballers should be held up to greater accountability because they're role models.

Already we've got Helen Razer cutting off guests because they say that newly appointed, conservative ABC board member, Keith Windshuttle's denial of the Aboriginal stolen generation is akin to holocaust deniers - because she'll lose her job.

The new ABC policy marks the beginning of the end of the ABC being anything but an excuse for dead air that acts merely as an exercise in covering its own ass, lest the vocal, far-right, conservatives be offended.

Now let's take a look at who's at the controls of the ABC: Mark Scott is the Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was previously the senior political adviser to former NSW Liberal education minister, Terry Metherell.

According to a report by Crikey.com.au, while editor-in-chief of metropolitan newspapers at Fairfax, Scott overturned a decision by the editorial staff at The Age newspaper's to call for a change of government at the 2004 federal election. Accoding to Crikey, "a decision was taken to call for a change of government. That decision was then overturned by Mark Scott, Fairfax's head of metropolitan newspapers, who apparently made the rather extraordinary claim that backing [Opposition Leader Mark] Latham wasn't in the commercial interests of the company."

There wasn't a single definitive answer to the question but some of the factors that were brought up drew some parallels in Australian society with the conservative government. It's something incremental that people don't notice through any individual piece of change that happens but if you step back and look at the bigger picture, you can see the trend and add things together. Such as all this going on about Australian "Values" and the suggestion to require anyone who enters the country to undertake an oath to live by and defend these self same 'values'.

Here's a piece of commentary from a former County Court judge from last Saturday's Age:

Nothing concrete in PM's 'values'
By Peter Gebhardt
September 23, 2006

Australian rules football has been an evolving game and sometimes the evolution offends those who look for certainty. The pursuit of certainty is an understandable, but hopeless, chase.

It is in the context of the pursuit of certainty that the current debate - or debacle - about Australian "values" has arisen. I had a good friend, a valued theologian, who used to shudder when people resorted to "values". He would, were he alive today, be shuddering in a convulsive way. Of course, the current Prime Minister and, latterly, the Opposition Leader, have sought to capture the populist imagination, limited as it is, by trying to codify the values in a way that will satisfy the fears, prejudices and intolerances that the electorate has been fed unashamedly for the past decade. First, you create insecurities. Then you feed them to such a point that reason is displaced by unwarranted irrationality. And only this week Andrew Robb said that the Australian value-based regime is designed to give the community a sense of security. "In a sense we have become more tribal as we have become more global."

Last week, I saw The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the film about the Irish civil war over which the English right-wing press was apoplectic and director Ken Loach was deemed unworthy to be a citizen of England. What the film does demonstrate is the need to keep alive the historical memory and imagination so we are not driven into a kind of present-centred amnesia where we have forgotten what our pasts were about and how, like Australian rules, there is a continuum of change.

Respect for dissent used to be appreciated, now it is usurped by sedition, mostly practised by "the chattering classes" and "the cultural elites", whoever or whatever they may be.

It is the absence of conversation that is most destructive of the present. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott (and he's no soft leftie) in a marvellous essay, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, says: "As civilised human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves."

What he says is that there is a multiplicity of voices and they all need to be heard, to be a part of the public discourse.

"Multiculturalism" was an unfortunate linguistic appellation to use to reflect what was a growing concept to demonstrate that, after the end of the White Australia policy and the demise of the language test, we were able to accommodate a stream of migrants to help us build our society and to enrich the diversity of it. Consider eating.

I live in an area where many Greeks came. Many of them still do not speak English, but who would ever begrudge their contribution to the expanding nature of our society? Do we forget our name-calling of and our attitudes to wogs? Reliance upon "mateship" and "a fair go" is a brutal contradiction of the spiritual and democratic underpinning of those now beleaguered and battered war cries, mantras.

Respect for the law, respect for diversity and variety, respect for divergent views, respect for the environment and the future we bequeath, and respect for the rights and responsibilities citizen-to-citizen - the mutuality of relationships: none of these is the breeding ground of dull conformity as now would be imposed upon us in a none-too-subtle form of slavery.

If governments pre-eminently espouse policies and practices that appeal to the baser motives - greed, fear and prejudice - then there can be no doubt that the engendered outcomes will lead to civil disengagement and the growth of self-centred and aggressive individualism which cuts neighbour off from neighbour. Trust is usurped by distrust, love by hate.

I can understand that individuals may have moral or immoral dispositions, they may hold to certain beliefs. How a "country" can have "values" is beyond my comprehension and I suspect it is a jingoistic and/or xenophobic nonsense. We are told about "the American way of life" but, having lived there for three years of my adult life, neither I nor any American I met understood anything of the abstraction.

In an address to the National Press Club in January this year, the Prime Minister talked of social cohesion, which in my view cannot exist if there is no reciprocity. He also said: "A sense of shared values is our social cement." Pretty fluid sort of cement, where lying is now part of its make-up and, worse, that it is lying that doesn't worry anyone. So much for witnesses of truth!

Peter Gebhardt is a writer and former County Court judge.

I get the feeling that our politicians see a certain political expediency, at this moment, in being just a little racist to pick up what I guess is a big enough slab of the electorate to make a difference. The sad thing is they may be right and the sadder thing is what that says about our society.

Learning the difficult lessons of global warming

By Tracee Hutchison
September 23, 2006

The inconvenient truth just isn't cricket . . .

Hello, class. Today we have a special guest coming to show us a very important film. But before we meet him, let's go over last night's homework. Howard! Macfarlane! Put down your Biggles books, and eyes to the front. Johnny, can you come up to the blackboard and spell carbon-neutral please?

Sorry, Miss, I had cricket practice. I can't spell it.

Seems like an early start to the season. Do you have a note from your parents?

Well, they said they'd never heard of carbo-nuisance. And they think what you teach isn't factual, and I've got a better future as a spinner, anyway.

That's disappointing, Johnny. There was a whole section about the school's carbon-neutral ambitions in last month's parent-teacher newsletter, after we all got inspired by the Melbourne City Council's new ecologically sustainable green building. Carbon-neutral is the new black. Everyone's talking about it. That's why we're having the tree-planting day. Aren't they coming?

I'm not sure, Miss. I think Mum has carbo-ambitions, but I thought it was about Tim Tams. But she likes black. She says it makes her look thinner.

That's a different concept, Johnny. What about you, Ian? Can you spell carbon-neutral?

No, Miss. I was at cricket too.

What about geothermal?

Is that like geo-sequestration? I think our dog had that when he was a puppy.

No, Ian, that's a different concept again. How about global warming? Will either of you tackle that?

I'll have a go at the first part, Miss. G.L.O.W.B.A.L.L

No, Ian, that's actually a concept related to the factual question.

I don't understand, Miss.

Well, it's about the shape of the Earth, Ian, and it's round, just like a cricket ball. And the early start to the hot weather might be great for a snarling pitch at the Boxing Day Test, but the groundsmen will be watering with recycled sewage because it doesn't rain enough anymore.

What! You're lying to us again, Miss! No one in their right mind would think of putting recycled wee and poo on the 'G. It's sacrilege. I'm going home to tell Mum on you.

Johnny, please, sit down. Our guest will be here soon. This is what we call a big-picture discussion. It's very exciting and it's all about your future. Its about changing the way we think about power and energy sources and water, and taking control of how much we use and when. And it's a scary thought because some governments like to keep all the power themselves, but this is about everyone being responsible for our future by starting with the little things, even if they seem inconvenient.

My Dad says we don't do things by halves in our family.

Well, little things make a difference over time, John. Little things, such as changing the flow-control on our taps and choosing renewable energy sources from the electricity company. It's about having rainwater tanks on all our buildings and grey-water reticulation and solar panels like the ones the school is saving for from our annual snowball drive.

I hate snowballs.

Ian, please, snowballs are important! And many of them are disappearing faster than we can make them. And if the ones at the bottom and the top of the world keep disappearing at the current rate, then the famous pitch in Galle will be completely underwater before Murali's kids are old enough to play.

That could be good for the game, Miss.

That's not very sporting, Johnny. Of course it's not good for the game. The pitch at Galle is part of cricket heritage and it's only just recovering from the tsunami. But let's talk more about it after we've watched the movie.

Class, can you bring your permission slips to see the film up the front? Ian? Johnny? Do you have your permission slips?

No, Miss. Our parents don't want us to see that film. They said it's just misleading entertainment and it says bad things about our Uncle George in America.

But really important Americans like the Murdochs, and even the Terminator, are on board with carbon-neutral. Have your parents seen the film?

No, Miss. They said that the guy who made it is a loser. And that he is just inventing stuff to make us scared.

What kind of stuff?

That one day the world will get so hot it will turn into an ice block and there wont be any central heating. Besides, Mum says people who talk about the weather are boring.

Well, it might be boring now, John, but wait until it's too hot for cricket and the players want to call off the Ashes.

No! Stop! Youre lying again! I'm really telling on you now. Nothing will stop the cricket on Boxing Day. Nothing! N !

Tracee Hutchison is a Melbourne writer and broadcaster.

Here's something from today's Age. If you're in Melbourne and you read the Herald-Sun, you really should give it a try.

Poor, poor pitiful Oz

By Richard Neville
September 23, 2006

When the Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany, was caught telling the truth to his party about the lies he had told the electorate, and how he had "screwed up", citizens with flowers and the odd Molotov cocktail rushed to Parliament and state TV. When John Howard was caught lying about refugees who "threw their children overboard", he was voted back into office.

Gyurcsany admitted that "f---ing Hungary" had only managed to keep its economy afloat thanks to good luck, an "abundance of cash in the economy and hundreds of tricks", which pretty much coincides with what the former governor of the Reserve Bank stated about our Government's fiscal management. But the Prime Minister is still top of the pops.

It is said that a leader who thinks of the next election is a politician, but a leader who thinks of the next generation is a statesman. By that criterion, it is no mystery where history will place John Howard. The key threats facing Australia today, including environmental degradation, the rise of militarism and the decline of free speech, are rooted in a decade of toxic federal governance. Instead of storming TV, the views of voters are shaped by it and the shock-jocks.

Once we were larrikins with a taste of defiance; now we are lapdogs with a thirst for conformity. On the matter of values, John Howard and Kim Beazley are joined at the hip. In Oz 2006, to be a "civil libertarian" is to invite abuse, while to dismiss human rights as "no longer sacrosanct", or to deny inconvenient facts about global warming or indigenous history, is to attract government patronage. Once we had bush poets, mocking the pompous; now we have scribblers, licking the hands of their feeders.

Puffed-up politicians on both sides of the House seek from new arrivals a pledge of citizenship that endorses "Australian values" at a time when our values are tangled in a global tumble-dryer. That a government should demand such endorsement is itself a violation of a core Australian value - the freedom to think what we please. To think, for example, that numerous values exemplified by our Prime Minister are crap. Like truth avoidance, flag fetishism, excessive secrecy, anti-intellectualism, witch-hunting the whistleblowers, appeasement of George Bush, boasting about this country's generosity, whitewashing black history, bribing Saddam Hussein to buy our wheat then bombing his people, toleration of US torture and its treatment of David Hicks, to name a few.

The stature of Australia has not only been diminished in the eyes of the world, but this country now faces a future laced with nasty shocks. By branding the intelligentsia as a loudmouth latte-slurping "elite", and turning a deaf ear to the findings of scientists, Howard finds himself surprised by the arrival of climate change. Despite over a decade of warnings, this country is woefully unprepared. Leaders of developing nations are becoming enraged by our indifference to the impact of emissions on their citizens. A statesman would recognise that the fate of the earth is a shared responsibility, but we have turned our backs on potential climate refugees from waterlogged Tuvalu. Isn't it about time John Howard was asked to sign a pledge of global citizenship?

Callous obstinacy was also on display in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, where propaganda was put above truth. The jolly hordes of peaceful protesters in Sydney and Melbourne were branded a "mob", and those who tried to alert the nation to the manipulations of intelligence and the subsequent outbreaks of torture were gagged or slandered. The result is continuing carnage, with the fingerprints of our leaders on the corpses. In the "war on terror", Australia's fair-go reputation was traded for "future security" and a White House banquet.

Unaccompanied child refugees from war zones are denied basic rights by the Department of Immigration, itself a hotbed of black values, including the silencing of the right to be heard. The horrors are documented in the study Seeking Asylum Alone, by Mary Crock, who has concluded that in comparison with other advanced nations, Australia's capacity to mistreat children stands out "like a sore thumb". Seven escapees from the Burmese dictatorship have been dumped on the isle of Nauru. Is cruelty an Australian value?

Freedom of information has been re-constituted into a new value, the freedom from information. Any document with the potential of "embarrassing" the Government is quarantined from public scrutiny. Academic Johan Lidberg compared the effectiveness of our Freedom of Information Act with the ones operating in Sweden, America, South Africa and Thailand, and found that ours was the worst, having "deteriorated into dysfunctionality". When Flinders University sociologist Riaz Hassan was awarded a grant to study the incubation of suicide bombers, he planned to enrich his research by interviewing leaders of terror groups. Hassan dropped the idea when Attorney-General Philip Ruddock threatened legal consequences. Not content with extinguishing habeas corpus and shrinking civil liberties, Ruddock plans to curb the excesses of Big Brother; that is, the TV show, not the excesses of his own office.

There was a time when Aussies scorned officialdom. The boys from the farms and the factories who swarmed to the front line in the First World War, including those who landed at Gallipoli, were renowned for their disregard of red tape and for pricking the pomp of superiors. Rebellion was in their genes. In the camps on the outskirts of Australian cities, and during their journey to the other side of the world, the diggers were irreverent as well as brave.

The huge anti-war moratoriums of the Vietnam era also displayed a sharp defiance for delusions of big-wigs, the like of which has failed to be re-ignited, despite the provocations of today's smug autocrats. Perhaps the penny will eventually drop. Sport and shopping cannot keep this country under sedation forever.

The first cause of today's global terror mess is a matter of opinion. Some are using the "Muslim riots" to ramp up support for yet another war against what George Bush this week told the UN are "the enemies of humanity". (The war against germs?)

It is true that Muslims have carried out numerous acts of terror in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and, most prominently, the United States. It is also true that Christian states have bombed untold thousands of Muslim civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan (even some in Pakistan), as well as condoning the ravaging of Lebanon and supplying Israel with illegal weapons.

How would you feel if "over a million cluster bombs" had been fired into your city? Since the end of June, more than 37 children in Gaza have been killed in operations mounted by Israel. In short, the wild reaction to the Pope's theological musings was not just about the Pope.

Meanwhile, the neo-cons backtrack though history to prove that "Islamic terror" long pre-dated September 11, 2001, so you're not allowed to blame the pre-emptive strike on Iraq for destabilising the world. Muslim mayhem actually "began in Iran 1979 with the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini", according to an editorial in The Australian, slyly stoking the fire for a future invasion, and implying that the populist cleric had leapt out of Aladdin's lamp.

In fact, the "revolution" was pre-ordained in 1953, after the CIA ousted the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, for his un-American aspiration to nationalise oil. Washington installed a puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran, who founded the feared secret police, SAVAK, while his wife hosted lavish international film festivals, flying in Hollywood celebrities to speak well of tyranny. By imposing the shah on the Persians for all those years, the West must surely accept some responsibility for the rebirth of radical Islam and all that's followed.

"Both the right and the left cultivate a politics of fear," writes, Kevin Clements, a Brisbane-based professor of peace and conflict studies, "where citizens are infantilised and we have become both politically and socially paralysed."

Today's TV politics is unable to provide perspective, history, meaning or foresight. For that, you need a statesman.

The world is heating up, both climactically and militarily, and yet those leaders who are most responsible for underplaying global warming and overplaying the response to 9/11 are the least likely to look in the mirror and tell the truth - either to the voters or themselves.

While some pro-war enthusiasts have admitted their blunder, those politicians who led the charge seem incapable of facing the truth. To do so, would be to accept that their actions have multiplied the instances of worldwide terror and so contributed to many thousands of civilian deaths and maimings.

Perhaps this country's mad, authoritarian lurch to the right is an unconscious attempt by those at the top to suppress their inner shame. To distract themselves with propaganda, brass bands, tall stories of war-zone reconstruction, terror laws, show trials, fear-mongering and boasting. Having lit the match, they are surrounded by fire, and are desperately seeking scapegoats. Is it beyond their capacity to accept that they might be the arsonists?

Richard Neville is a social commentator and futurist.

Respect.

"The fact is, if we signed the Kyoto Protocol, we would destroy a lot of Australian industry and we would send Australian jobs to countries like China, Indonesia and India," John Howard said.

What a fucking cunt.

The only thing Howard's got going for him is the strong economy that he's found himself left with from the previous government. Take that away and you open the eyes of the electorate to how repugnant this government actually is and they're swinging in the breeze at the next election.

While John Howard legislates to bring down wages of regular workers and gives outrageous powers to employers, he closes his eyes and pretends that there's nothing happening with climate change. Why? Because he's a spiteful, self-interested and selfish little fuck.

If nothing is done to stem the damage being done to the environment on this planet then the economy isn't going to mean shit in a few years' time. But by then Howard's not going to be around to have to deal with it - he'll be safe in his delusion, rotting away in his retirement, believing he left some sort of grand legacy from his time as PM. He should hope that he'll have shuffled off by the time history truly judges him because it ain't gonna be pretty.

You disgust me, John Howard.

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Global warming poses major threat to Aust: Gore

But that doesn't really get me anywhere, and besides, there's other things going on. Like apparently, the Brits caught some douchebags who were going to blow up some planes.

Now, the way I see it, you can't have terrorism without terror. The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk.

Airline industry stocks plummetted today, while the industry braced for a rash of cancellations. This, despite the fact that even with the risk of airplane bombings it's still more dangerous to drive your car. Or smoke cigarettes.

As long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.

London's police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." No, it is imaginable: between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life.

Bush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation.

Today the President said, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation." Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.

In Australia, it's convenient, for the government, to have the populace fearing 'terror'. It keeps them quiet and makes them easier to control.

If you live in Australia, think about what the real risk is and then think about what the government has done to this country in the name of that risk.

When the farmer drove up the next day, he said, "Sorry son, I have some bad news. The donkey is on my truck, but I'm afraid he's dead."

Johnny replied, "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said, "I can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Johnny said, "Just unload the donkey anyway."

The farmer asked, "What are you going to do with him?"

Johnny said, "I'm going to raffle him off."

The farmer exclaimed, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

But Johnny, with a big smile on his face, said "O yes I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody that he's dead."

A month later the farmer met up with Johnny and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Johnny said, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $798.00."

Totally amazed, the farmer asked, "Didn't anyone complain that you had stolen their money because you lied about the donkey being dead?"

Johnny replied, "The only guy who found out about the donkey being dead was the raffle winner, when he came to claim his prize. So I gave him his $2 back plus $200 extra, which is double the going value of a donkey, so he thought I was a really great guy."

Johnny grew up and eventually became the Prime Minister of Australia, and no matter how many times he lied or how much money he stole from Aussie voters, as long as he gave them back some of the stolen money, most of them thought he was a great guy.