Category Archives: john howard is a fool

by

Will Howard get off scot free?
“What is all too often overlooked is that the $290 million paid in kickbacks to Saddam was money originally earmarked for medicines and food for the Iraqi people. Year after year, AWB inflated its contracts to redirect this money from an escrow account supposedly overseen by the UN.
Howard and Downer have since 2003 wanted to be seen as champions of ordinary Iraqis. But for a long time, although warnings about AWB and oil-for-food kept popping up, they and the people who worked for them demonstrated almost zero interest – even though any rorting would have added to the suffering of many Iraqis.
If the real business of a government is to remain in government, such things probably do not matter. And there is a fair bit of evidence around that for most of us they do not.” (Age)

by

“Internet prank targets Berlusconi
An apparent internet prank targeting Silvio Berlusconi days before a general election is causing a Google search of the words “wretched” and “failure” to bring up the Italian premier’s CV posted on the government’s official website.” Age
We need to do one for John Howard. But which two words sum him up best?

by

“The Australian government has said it will oppose any new laws legalising gay civil unions.
Prime Minister John Howard said he did not intend to allow the institution of marriage “to be in any way undermined”.
…
The head of the ACT government, John Stanhope, said Mr Ruddock’s reaction revealed homophobia in the Howard administration.
“One has to pose the question of whether or not the real reason (for Mr Ruddock’s stance) is that there is no place in John Howard’s Australia for homosexuals,” he told ABC radio.” (BBC)

by

“The Federal Government will try to override laws introduced to the ACT Parliament this week that would allow marriage celebrants to officiate over civil unions between same-sex couples.
The move is reminiscent of the Government’s 1997 disallowance of a Northern Territory law legalising euthanasia.” (The Age)
So, where the bloody hell am I? I’m in a country that doesn’t treat queer people as second-class citizens, and I’m staying here until John Howard is gone.

by

Government orders spoof site shut
“A spoof John Howard website that featured a soul searching “apology” speech for the Iraq war has been shut down under orders from the Australian Government.
Richard Neville, an Australian futurist and social commentator was “mystified” to discover his satirical website johnhowardpm.org had been blocked on Tuesday with no explanation from either his web hosting company, Yahoo or the domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.
He said that after two days of silence, a customer service representative from Melbourne IT today informed him by telephone that the site had “been closed on the advice from the Australian Government”.
Mr Neville’s satirical “apology” speech ran on a mocked-up version of a spoof website that resembled Mr Howard’s own, and after going live on Monday, received 10,500 visits within 24 hours.
…
Mr Neville describes the parody as an act of satire and culture jamming, and is now running a link to a PDF copy of the speech on his website.” (The Age)
Ridiculous. Even the US lets the parody site whitehouse.org co-exist with the official whitehouse.gov.
It prompted me to look into what rights Australians have to freedom of speech.
According to this research note on Free Speech and the Constitution from the Parliamentary Library of the Parliament of Australia, “Members of the Commonwealth Parliament reaffirmed the principles of the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] during a sitting on 10 December 1998 to mark the 50th anniversary of the UDHR and pledged to give wholehearted support to the principles enshrined in the Declaration.”
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
However, “The Australian Constitution does not have any express provision relating to freedom of speech.”

by

“The Australian media’s coverage of Muslims and Arabs is tainted with a racism that portrays them as “tricky, sleazy, sexual and untrustworthy”, according to one of the country’s most experienced journalists.
Muslims are portrayed as uniformly violent, oppressors of women, and members of a global conspiracy opposed to Australian values, said Peter Manning, former head of ABC News, now Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Sydney’s University of Technology. He said that the words “Arab” or “Muslim” were associated with terrorism in 89 per cent of articles that appeared in Sydney’s two major newspapers in the year after September 11, 2001.
He did not confine his criticism to the media, however, adding that it was time politicians stopped “stoking up the embers of racist hatred”.”
The Age

by

“The Australian Government has joined the United States to oppose efforts by the United Nations to protect world heritage sites such as the Great Barrier Reef from global warming.”
My emphasis, and my disbelief. I never realised the Australian/US ‘special relationship’ would go that far. I think we need to describe Howard as a PIMBY – “Please, In My BackYard”.
The Age

by

It’s been interesting reading the reactions to Kerry Packer’s memorial service:
“So how did we come to the conclusion that a life spent turning an inherited fortune into an astronomically bigger one is a life well lived? We didn’t. Rather, as Orwell showed in 1984, those who control the means of communication control the language itself, and can assert, and have a large enough number of people actually believe, that freedom is slavery, war is peace, or that a life spent gorging oneself, squandering amounts on blackjack tables that could help solve, say, the global malaria epidemic, avoiding one’s civic duties and speaking to everybody with barely concealed contempt, is a life of generosity and grace.
…
Beazley and Hawke are both Rhodes scholars. It’s more likely they know that their party now stands for nothing, and think it’s better to be present at the memorial service of a devout enemy of working people (despite Packer’s love of sport, pies and swear words), than risk offending the owners of a vast media conglomerate whose “opinions” hold more sway over elections than any well-formulated policy.
The memorial service was broadcast without advertisements. Thus viewers could experience, for once, what it is like to watch a program on Channel Nine for an hour without fools screaming at them for 15 minutes to buy things. The only people who protested against this disgraceful, taxpayer-funded event – four members of the noble Kerry Packer dis-memorial society – were arrested.” (Age)
I was amazed to read of the arrests. The BBC said: “Six people were arrested outside the Opera House, for protesting against the memorial service because it was funded by taxpayers’ money.” Arrested? Charged with what? Don’t they have the right to protest?
Sometimes it feels like the Australia I left five years ago was a completely different Australia.