On this site we care about democracy even if we seem to be fooling around a bit with bad and good humour. Sometimes we might push the boundaries of good taste.

Overall the messages are clear. The mainstream media is not doing its job. It is pandering to its advertisers, including the government, to the detriment of the truth. This shifts the compounded mind set of general democracy into the red zone of personal selfishness.

For example, it would be simple and truthful for the media to have a front page headline: WE WERE LIED TO and show truthfully how Bush, Blair and Howard have created the war in Iraq. The proofs are available. Then the media could start to explore the true reasons of terror threats to our democracies — before and after that war — democracies in which we are prepared to let our freedoms be hemmed in for the sake of more lies. But the mainstream media is playing the game of "balance" by showing a bit of the truth while being biased 80 per cent in favour of the porkies.

We care because we can see that John Howard PM is dismantling all the mechanisms necessary to maintain a proper democracy while masquerading as an upright politician... A bent con-artist with a quivering lying lip who can sell us what we already own, take away what we should have and take us to war on lies.

Democracy demands a certain amount of universality.
John Howard is diluting this fundamental basis via the big con of privatisation and the user-pays-principle to the hilt. On many fronts, including the war in which we are ALL guilty of murder, we have been told massive clever porkies to achieve this aim.

Piece by piece, lie by lie, we are slowly but surely being enticed into the world of irresponsible greed and ugly scrooge, away from the true purpose of democracy which is sharing better and helping those in need, for a better life and future for all.

Howard often use these same good words to destroy their own meaning. He cleverly encourages less sharing and the minimising of support for most for the benefit of a few. He surely plans to turn Australian workers into US counterparts, where many work hard for not much, as a remnant of a slave-user country...

The US is a great powerful country. But many of its great features are obliterated by many ugly sides, including the amount of murders within that country — a number that makes Baghdad look like the safest town in the world despite the daily bombing.

We can do better and should do better. Not only that we already HAVE better.

The proposed dismantling of present IR is the ugliest front assault on the working population. Sure, some people might exploit the system, including unemployment benefits. But these are only a tiny proportion of the population. The fostering of private contracts will REDUCE employment security and INCREASE the psychopathic mentality necessary to survive in that uncertain environment. It will encourage the ugliest side of competition. It will turn workers against workers... It will create more desperation.

Another role of Democracy thus is to protect us from this ugly side that exist in all of us

Since this ugly side exist in all of us, it is easy for John Howard to tap into it and dazzle our senses by dangling a virtual carrot that we can all become one of these, the few top achievers — but although it appears fantastic on the surface, this is created at the expense of most. Even those who are more and more struggling on credit in an inflation-laced environment that is presently falsified "as being low" by imported goods that are dumped from overseas... The real Aussie index of inflation is much higher than 2.5 per cent. In the last six years, the median price of housing has gone through the roof. The price of petrol has done the same. The true cost of living has been stretched and many dreams cannot be achieved unless one sells one's soul.

Sell your soul anytime you wish, Mr Howard, but do not ask that from us. We beg you, on our knees if we have too. And please don't tell us us that what you're doing is for our own good... This would be another porkie of mega-magnitude. Please, just fade away...

Your IR proposal although not fully disclosed yet, already appear like the biggest con of them all: increase the illusion of accessible wealth while cutting down the rewards.
Like adding 10 more numbers to the lotto card...

And we'll buy two more tickets, thinking we are doubling our chances...

During the dought, I've been peeking at Old boundaries dissolve and other stuff at Digital Native.  I can overlook the youthfulness of the owner, Bob Denmore. A sparse presentation has merit.

Also, the art life. The Trout Mask Replicant yarn is a beaut. Now, if the reverse is possible, Lord Lex of Adelaide may turn up to work in some eye-catching clobber.

From the Guardian

BA crisis firm in fight with US unions
David Teather, Hugh Muir and Mark Milner
Saturday August 13, 2005
The Guardian

Gate Gourmet, the company at the centre of the row which grounded all BA flights and disrupted the travel plans of more than 100,000 holiday-makers, is embroiled in bruising industrial relations disputes on both sides of the Atlantic over plans to cut workers' pay and conditions.

In the US, the company is locked in a confrontation over what the unions claim are plans to cut average pay of $11 (£6.20) an hour by 12% and slash holiday, pension and health care benefits.

The Editor

The Age                                                                                       August 16, 2005

So, Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop thinks it would be a good idea to lower the recruitment age for our defence forces (‘Recruit 14-year-olds for navy, says Bishop’, Age, August 15). 

Why not bring back the lash & put those pesky 12-year-olds back into the coalmines while we’re at it?

Everything is possible in John Howard's brave new world of economic & industrial enlightenment.

From the ABC
Senate Clerk criticises IR ad spending
The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, has criticised the Federal Government's advertising campaign on its planned industrial relations changes.
The campaign has begun even before legislation has been drafted, with the Opposition anticipating the Government will spend $20 million on what it says is political advertising.
Appearing before a Senate inquiry, Mr Evans has argued that the Government needs to be more accountable to the Parliament for such public spending.
"To have a rather nebulous set of proposals ... the content of which is largely unknown and which will require legislation to be implemented, and to have an advertising about that is questionable to say the least," he said.
In an exchange with Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield, Mr Evans vowed to continue commenting where appropriate on government legislation.
"Clerk it comes to my mind, if you don't like the laws passed by the Parliament, you know stiff cheese is a phrase that tends to come to mind," Senator Fifield said.

GusSpeak
Gus Leonisky denies having received any remuneration above $2,000,000 in creating the advertising campaign (above) for the Howardian government. May be, Gus should join some elite Porkie Inc advertising agencies in order to suck a bit more dough out of tax payers to make a campagn that let them shoot themselves in the foot while smiling a bit more. Gus had no idea one had to sell stiff cheese as a by-product at the time he created the advert for the so-far-virtual Industrial relations of the Howardian government of "who-must-be-obeyed"...

The de-construction of democracy is well on the way. The high priest of Moralizationing and fear-in-the-underpants is spruiking from the socked-up roof tops of a microphone alley that "any slaves caught with a collective bargaining power-pack in his/hers pocket will be submitted to the singularly adapted work-place disagreement in which he or she shall suffer in silence the degradation of his or hers living standards. Your sacrifice is the key to the spruiker's salvation

Mond you, it’s also for the sake of global rationalism, or rationalzationingthingy, so that competition can flourish at full throttle and fall into the greasy hands of super corporations, to make your life that of shafting and knifing people to get ahead of them, a life of distrust with every one including your self, and of clubbing hard anyone in your way, like punching an opposition player in the groin on a football field.

Life could not be more basic nor more primitive. You struggle like a zombie, or your fight for your life, or your die, or at least you survive in the gutter while your mates now turned competitors look down upon you, with pity rather than a bit of care in the world. Some people might walk on your hands all according to the best johnethic work practices. But you are gracious in pain...

Who cares? life's short, isn't it, and clever-porky-ing individuals who cut the mustard with a strong dash of psycho-something do deserve to survive while the others, including yourself have no place in the sun... Welcome to Johnnee’s world, a Luna park for infantile philistines where illusions in the concave and convex mirrors are strong while proper care rests in private insurance companies if you fall of the ghost train... Sure, you may have paid your generous premiums it does not mean rubber stip that you’ll cash in on some due payout or get full compensation for injury...

The sky is not the limit and your handicap becomes not a handicap because you need to work cleaning dunnies to prove you exist. See you may be very intelligent and creative but the only place of employment is in the shrink-wrapping factory where your desires and hopes can go totally numb because there is no money in having any. Humanism is replaced by charitable crumbs... So, keep pressing that button at least 5000 times in that morning session and watch the result go by in front of you: plastic sheet after plastic wrapper — this is your life distilled to its minimum so you would not take so much space without being useful... ...

Hey,You’ve got to pay for your pension and such pitial work gives you self-esteem as long as you do not insert your head in the machine... Work on the assembly line without a safety-net is more bone-crushing-good than studying Shakespeare, listening to Beethoven or exploring Mozart's compositions ...

Hey, everyone is in the same boat (well, most of us on the one side of the fence). No preferential treatment. All this because someone else who has three houses — what am I saying, three mansions — two boats and five cars in the garage need some necessary tax cuts. So do your bit. Roll up your sleeves if you can and arrest your brain in a nice little focus of toil... Pray for more...

Ah yes, working is good for the soul — being unemployed and disadvantaged is so bad. Being employed and disadvantaged is better. Doing something is good... Who cares if you do get paid or not?

Democracy is dying. Opportunicracy is booming... welcome to Outofmywayyoupunkocracy.

‘It was a great year for labor - if you worked at a call center in India, made your living as a CEO or sold real estate to big-box stores. But deep in Cubicle Nation, the average American worker remained on a fast track to the Industrial Revolution, with soaring workweeks, declining wages, and health, pension and vacation benefits vanishing faster than you can say job security.  

Add to the siege outsourcing, cutbacks, the dismantling of ergonomics rules and forced overtime - all while business is racking up historic profits, the most in 75 years - and even a nearsighted dingo could see that the trends are unsustainable for families, personal health, company medical plans or an informed and involved citizenry. And completely unnecessary. 

As all the productivity research shows, we can get the job done without finishing ourselves off. So let's fire some of the worst habits that got us here and ring in resolutions for a sane workplace in 2006.’ 

Trouble in Cubicle Nation