Thursday 28th of March 2024

fruit loops or changing horses while blaming labor for tony's crap...

murdoch grooming...

From Victoria Rollison

Abbott must be having a horrible Christmas break. He can’t have missed that his old buddy, his mentor Rupert has completely dropped him and in doing so, has given permission for his newspapers to admit that PM Abbott is a dud.

They’re still not yet ready to admit he’s always been a dud and that they were stupid to support him in the first place (as if they’ll ever be ready for this sort of atonement), but they’re willing to go as far as actually reporting his poll numbers, which speak for themselves, and saying that if only he could get his ‘message’ right, their neoliberal Tea-Party agenda would be gratefully accepted by the electorate instead of wholeheartedly rejected. It’s fascinating to watch an entire news organisation finally coming round to the fact that the public knows better than they do whether someone is a good PM or not. I thought the whole definition of ‘news’ was telling us all something we didn’t know, and being first to the story? Abbott’s incompetence is old news, and News Ltd coming to this realisation last is really the only thing you need to know about the incompetence of News Ltd. ‘Oh Abbott’s polls are bad!’ they all cry in unison! ‘We totally didn’t see that coming!’.

So what are News Ltd going to do now that their favourite son has spectacularly failed? If you’ve been paying attention to the number of puff pieces being written at News Ltd about their chosen successor, Julie Bishop, you will see that a Libspill is clearly being planned.

As soon as I realised that Julie Bishop was being put forward as the most likely replacement for Abbott, I realised just how screwed the Abbott government is. Because if Bishop is deemed as the ‘best performer’, it shows just how badly the rest of them have performed. Think about it for a second. What exactly has Bishop done which is so high performing? Perhaps if the definition of high performing is ‘not stuffing up as badly as the rest of the Abbott ministry and being protected by News Ltd so even if you did stuff up the public never heard about it’, then Bishop has been high performing. But all I’ve seen is very basic no-more-competent-than-you’d-expect-of-an-average-politician-statements from her in response to international tragedies, such as disease, terrorism and plane crashes, and of course I’ve seen her slashing the Foreign Aid budget, making Australia the stingiest rich country in the world, bar none. I can see that News Ltd are clearly happy about this, but as I’ve said previously, News Ltd’s opinion and the general public’s opinion do not match and are increasingly at complete odds so News Ltd being happy about something more than likely works against Bishop in the long term.

read more: http://victoriarollison.com/2014/12/31/murdoch-prepares-bishop-for-libspill/

 

In the mind of Liberal (CONservative) people, Julie Bishop cannot place a foot wrong. Of course she wades up to the waist in the "blame Russia for everything shit" but it does not stick to her shoes... She is of course as bad as Tony Abbott on policies but then she is less dippy than her present master Miss O'Genie who sees competition from a female who could be more powerfully sneaky than he is... Malcolm has been doing too many summersault of late and in the media he is poisoned goods...

 

subtropical fascism...

From George Venturini...

 

    Conclusions
    This much is certain: no all purpose definition of Fascism is possible.

    Mussolini’s was born republican and anti-clerical, hired by land-owners and industrialists, for the repression of workers; soon turned monarchist, and corporatist, it found a good bed to lay down with the Fascist Popes: Pius XI and Pius XII (the latter a Nazi-sympathiser, all comfortable in ritual buffoonery) during 1922-43; it died ‘republican’ and ‘social’ under the wing of the German occupiers, 1943-45.

    Hitler’s was paid by big business, essentially pagan and anti-Christian, and lasted for twelve years of planned, unrelenting crime and genocide, from 1933-45.

    Franco’s was National-Catholic, corporatist, and luckier than the previous two to the point of becoming acceptable to the ‘western democracies’, and lasted for thirty nine years of blessed brutality, 1936-75.



    There are other examples, of course — Peron’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, and others, too, of more different hue. They all share some common elements: anti-Communism, anti-Bolshevism, anti-Semitism — albeit in various degrees.

    Sub-tropical – somewhat 
    Friendly  Fascism, if that should be the answer to the original question, presents many features common to other Fascisms — and then some. Here they are, perhaps not in any specific order, but listed as constitutive essential elements:

    ◊ 1788, British invasion of Gondwana-New Holland-Australia, untouched by the ‘spirit of 1789’, as well as that of 1776; 140 years to 1928 of planned genocide of the original Black population, during decades of institutional racism; unbridled nationalism — only now and only implicitly still proclaiming the cultural superiority of the British system, from classist law to a 
    putrescent monarchy, yet, still capable of censoring the production of a Royals' spoof by the publicly-supported Australian Broadcasting Corporation;

    ◊  a stolid insularity which proclaims Australia = the Southern Hemisphere, with ‘the world’ out there — people oblivious to the political and economic upheaval which is going on beyond its borders;

    ◊ a continuous rhetoric of freedom, liberty, democracy, and – much later – human rights, clashing with a reality of preferring authority to liberty, hierarchy to equality, and deference to fraternity;

    ◊  a close alliance of the State and the corporate world and its fraudsters;

    ◊ the domination by huge foreign business — themselves with a tradition off supporting dictators all over the world;

    ◊ the support which must be needed to participate in a transnational business-military complex, as a supplier of senseless growth;

    ◊ irrationality – largely due to ‘imported values’ – in an atmosphere of know-nothing-ism in which conformism and formal adherence to the ‘values’  of the Judeo-Christian tradition is ‘safer’, although it may bring home  varying degrees of anti-Semitism, but serves to sustain inequality and authoritarianism, and a sense of resignation which goes with that ‘faith’, superstition, predestination, delusion, and life-gambling;

    ◊ a parliamentary system in which television performance by highly paid, studiously ‘beautiful’ actors respects the game of a decaying, morally and intellectually corrupt Westminster System;

    ◊ a central 
    cabal to preside over a new coalition of concentrated oligarchic power and, in effect, unconcerned that pillaging over pillaging may cause shortages, pollution, unemployment, inflation and war;

    ◊  the growth of militarism as a ‘spirit of life’, early inculcated into future generations through school and family;

    ◊ duty, honour and patriotism redefined to defend observation of such business-military-corporate-transnational-bellicose ‘values’;

    ◊  a close alliance of the State, the Church and the corporate world and its fraudsters;

    ◊  all of the preceding wrapped into a flag with mixes the reference to early tax evaders with the perennial British servitude expressed in the Union Jack’s treble crucifixion — surely, surely, the surviving symbols of colonialism;



    ◊ an automatic aggressive, subservient, militaristic, ‘foreign policy’, which quietly transferred  a state of vassalage from ‘the mother country’ to a Great-And-Powerful-Friend’, always subsuming a position of superior ‘biological determinism’ — better racial superiority
    vis-à-vis the neighbours;

    ◊  a readiness to intervene whenever the ‘leader of the free world’ calls – if need be with a lie as in Vietnam, or to ‘export democracy’ as in Iraq – but realistically to guarantee the availability of petroleum for the ‘free world’;

    ◊ a fragmented ‘society’ in which, it may be difficult to tell and persuade an indifferent populace that homelessness, unemployment, a high cost of surviving, and urban congestion, transport, decay, and filth are good for them, although it is not too difficult to have that populace tighten the belt on an austerity programme from which the bottomless wealthy are obviously excluded by the size of their ill-gotten possessions and through recourse to tax minimisation and perks;

    ◊ an organisation of the economy to serve international and domestic cartels under the illusion of a ‘market economy’, which amounts to nothing more than a corporativist economy;

    ◊ the proclivity of a populace to ‘quick solutions’ which always end up in reduction of government spending for social services, health, fire protection, employment prospects and   –  for the few who still care – libraries;

    ◊ all this of course in strict observance of the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in a multicultural and secular society without any concern that such mindless ‘communion’ may make no-sense, especially to those many given to an inordinate consumption of alcohol, and an increasing use of drugs and always with a structural passion for gambling;

    ◊ a militant anti-Communism – now revised as an anti-Muslim attitude – coupled with the fear of an extreme and imminent threat to ‘national security’, which justifies an even more secret police apparatus, practically unlimited by constitutional restrictions or legal requirements — there being no Bill of Rights and a colonial reliance on the common law;

    ◊ a duopoly in printed media and an oligopoly in other media totally controlled and curtseyed in fear of retribution by a band of Right-wing talking heads, or pens and noisy minions in  the parliaments;

    ◊ an ‘education’ system which indoctrinates to incuriosity, imparted by well-dressed propagandists of ‘market values’, wondrous technology, and the virtues of hard time – under the cloak of acceptable ‘respectability’ – while words such as ‘academic’ and ‘intellectual’ become an expression of contempt if not of an attribution of lunacy in a new world where language is debased, SMEssed, and increasingly closer to grunts;

    ◊ a ‘society’ in which what matters is a sum of trivia + conformity + search-for-quick-enrichment + success and ‘popularity’;

    ◊  the reliance on a pill-for-everything and technology for every need in peace as in war;

    ◊  an unquestioning confidence that violence can win in the end – preferably with  bombs to kill people, but that respect ‘real property’ – or action from a distance on an automated battlefield;

    ◊ an innate disregard for any form of economic and or political planning because that is presented, inculcated, absorbed and regurgitated as ‘Socialism’ at best when not ‘Communism’;

    ◊ a national obsession for any sport and pomp and circumstance, with the corollary passion for marching as substitute for thought: occasionally ‘slow march’, as the English do, and bag-pipes as the Scots do  ― but nothing original;

    ◊  the totally incredible, but widely believed notion, that in Australia there are some very rich, some poor – largely because they are refractory to work – and a large, overwhelming majority of people who are both ‘middle class’ and blessed by a unique form of class-collaboration;



    ◊ the rota-like repetition and mindless assertion, out of laziness and indifference, by a generally uncultured populace, of the blessing of a multicultural society — a notion totally devoid of meaning and sense, if by that one should accept populist cretinism and Government Philistinism as defining a multi-folkloristic circus.


    * This series is dedicated to the memory of my friends, Professor Bertram Gross and Justice Lionel Murphy.
     GV...

trying to re-guild the lily...

 

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Sunday, meeting with top officials to discuss ways in which the country can aid Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic State (Isis).

Abbott and the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, discussed military cooperation between the two countries, including the training and equipping of Iraqi soldiers, state television reported. The Iraqi army collapsed last summer in the face of a blitz by Isis, which now holds about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/04/tony-abbott-visits-iraq-isis

----------------------------------

Obviously the phone lines are not secure and video conferencing is such a bore with time differences.

The next step for hopping international Turdy is to visit the Australian forces in the region and tell them that they are doing a great job and that the Australian population is with them all the way. It's not. It's crap... 40 per cent of the population — according to the most optimistic poll available designed to support any war by Turdy, a poll done by News Limited — don't like the idea of war, yet again... when we've "lost" two already — Afghanistan and Iraq... Nothing against our armed forces, but our turdy politicians stink. I guess a burst of "serious diplomatic glory" in the Murdoch press can re-guild the lily for Abbott, for five minutes... The caption for the picture of Tony meeting his counterpart (I hope the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is more intelligent and less sneaky) should be Abadi saying something like : "I don't remember inviting him to plant his flag next to mine? Who is this guy?"

 

still in need of "corrections"in the official version...

“This government, from the moment they came in, have adopted a culture of secrecy and I don’t think it’s helpful, I don’t think it’s smart, I don’t think it’s fair to the Australian people,” the acting opposition leader, Tony Burke, said.

Prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have in the past taken pool crews and journalists when they visited Australian troops in the Middle East.

The prime minister’s media office provided news outlets with transcripts of the Iraqi visit, including a corrected account of the joint press conference, in which Abbott accidentally referred to Abadi as president instead of prime minister.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/05/tony-abbott-criticised-for-excluding-australian-media-from-baghdad-visit

 

Humbug to Abbott... He pisses on the press and claims questions of security... Crap. What about him?... What is he doing out there being a target then?... I suppose I should be happy "he'd be a target" but no... I'm afraid this dorky PM is afraid of the press catching his slip ups or not reporting the "official" version as per his (new?) press suppository...