Catsidhe

This is an abomination against every principle of the presumption of innocence, and must not be allowed to stand.


And anyone who tries on “Oh, but he might be a terrorist-supporter, and it is just too risky to leave him on the streets...“: fucking bite me, you fascist dickhead.

He has been found guilty, without any need to resort to some old-fashioned ‘trial’, of giving his cousin a phone card which would be useless in the country to which he was moving.

Or, in other words, not only is he being punitively detained (because there is no other rational explanation for this act of monumental bastardry but that it is punitive), but his ‘crime’ is that of innocently helping a relative. Even the charge brought against him is that he ‘negligently’, not ‘wilfully’, assisted terrorism. That means that he didn't have to have the slightest suspicion that there was going to be any terrorist act perpetrated by his cousin, it was up to him to ensure that there was no risk of that. The burden of proof is, I am willing to bet, reversed for this ‘crime’ as well. It will likely be up to him to prove that he didn't expect his cousin to be one of the most incompetent ‘terrorists’ of modern times.

I... I...
I simply can't express my outrage. Not even expletives are adequate.

Speaking as someone who talks with those who do University budgetting, I can say that Julie Bishop, once again, has no idea what is going on. Or else is deliberately misrepresenting and over-simplifying a complex situation for her own political benefit...


So Universities are building up surplusses. Would she like to know why?

It's for the same reason squirrels hoard nuts.

When things are going well, when grants and other funding sources are secure and plentiful, most departments don't worry too much about increasing their surplusses. They don't, as a rule, run them into the ground (unless they are being run by idiots...), but they don't panic so much. If capital works are required, upgraded buildings, for example, it can be budgetted for. Normal expenses, like upgrading computers as they become obsolete, are also budgetted for. Surplusses can be, and are, fed into expansion: new academics, new offices, new courses, new professional support. This is seen to be a good thing, and is also human nature. Every HoD wants to increase the size of his (almost always ‘his’) little empire — even if he's expecting to move on in a year or so, it looks good on the résumé.

When it looks like things are going to get bad, however... Then a nest-egg is needed. You need a buffer to tide you over the lean times ahead. That surplus is going into savings, and when the bad times come, it will go to cover the normal everyday needs which the normal funding sources won't cover any more. That surplus will go on needed upgrades, and salary. And still, positions will shrink, or disappear, and equipment will be held on to for longer, being patched with baling wire and chewing gum instead of being replaced. Academics share offices (which can be more of an imposition than you might think). The hope is that that surplus will keep things ticking over until student numbers rise again, until grants come back, until funding is restored.

If the Universities are spending so much effort on raising surplusses, it means that they are expecting (not just contemplating, but actively waiting for) a big problem coming soon. It means that they don't feel that funding sources are reliable enough to, well, to rely on. It means that the foundation of universities, funding per undergrad bum-on-seat is expected to decrease.

And further to this, the numbers quoted were averaged over the G8. Unimelb is part of the G8. Unimelb is doing the Melbourne Model thing, which is expected to result in a short-to-medium term decrease in ugrads. A noticeable decrease. How much, therefore, of that wonderful surplus which Bishop is blathering about (and will almost certainly use as an excuse not to improve funding of universities thereby) is simply Melbourne Uni hunkering down for an expected long winter?

What do we know about our beloved government?

Well, we know that they don't like people who disagree with them. A lot. It's almost like they think that such people should either not exist, or never say anything, because the government is always right, and no-one who disagrees with them can ever, therefore, have anything useful to say. Of course, the ABC is by definition a hotbed of Stalinists and Anarcho-Syndicalists, each and every one frothing for the chance to campaign for the Labor Party. You know, people like Pru Goward and Gary Hardgrave. We know, of course, a priori that Senator Fierravanti-Wells is a balanced, rational human being, free of barrows to push.

We know that they think that money is more than sufficient compensation in return for total abnegation of sovereignty. In fact, they react with shock and dismay when people say that the government can keep its money, they would rather die poor and thirsty than hand over, hastily, all power and ownership, now and forever. It should be noted that in each case the ungrateful bastards have actually said that they're not rejecting the idea per se, but that they have, despite the urgings of the Feds, actually considered the terms of the deal, and have found them laughable. If only they had just done what the Federal Government had told them, NOW, NOW, NOW DON'T THINK, JUST SIGN! SIGH HERE! SIGN NOW! WOLVES! WOLVES ARE ATTACKING!! SIGN!!!1!.

We know that if you're not talking about exactly the same solution as we are, then you are exacerbating the problem. Only the government has the solution. Any deviation will make things worse, so much worse. Why, advocating ‘Harm Minimisation’ is tantamount to personally injecting babies with dirty heroin! Moreover, allowing two people with similar genitals to call themselves ‘married’ is one short step from fucking cattle in the streets and raping small children.

We know that, as the government is by definition right, that whatever is spent on advertising is only ever important information. Anything, everything, put out by the ACTU or Labor party, on the other hand, are either in agreement with Liberal party diktat, in which case they are superfluous, or they disagree, in which case they are blasphemous blatant lying propaganda.

We know that thanks to eleven years of being the Avatars of 51%, that Howard and the Liberal party have long since identified themselves with everything Good and Proper and Right — they must be, because 51% of Australians after preferences think so. If it turns out that the magical number is now below 50% — well below — then there is a problem. The problem, however, can't be with them, because they're always right, remember? It must be someone else's fault. Like Labor and the ACTU; their nasty, vicious, slanderous, lying propaganda is twisting the poor innocent minds of the trusting voting public. Or those stupid greenies, scaring people, terrifying them with unfounded paranoid rantings, which must be countered, for fairness, for balance, for human dignity, with demonstrated propaganda considered counterarguments. And the important people, those whose reasoned and articulate opinions actually matter, agree whole-heartedly. So that's alright.

Or else, the problem is the population itself. If the Liberal Party is so obviously right, then not voting for them, not supporting everything they do unreservedly and reflexively, is ipso facto symptoms of unreason, of hysteria, of the public being so STUPID as to turn away from the Light of Truth and Justice. It's everyone else's fault!!1!


It could never be that people are sick of Big Strict Father in Canberra telling everyone that they're wrong ... except for big businesses and millionaires, of course.

It could never be that people are finally realising that their McMansion's mortgage is going up anyway, and while Howard was pretending to be your friend when it was going well, he's fucked if he's going to help you up if when it all goes pear-shaped.

It could never be that people have realised that, holy shit, the climate is changing, and we have to do something (Just because people have been saying that for thirty years or more — there was an entire episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos dedicated to the concept for Goddess' sake!), but Howard has put a millionaire in charge of the Environment, and his biggest action to date is to claim complete sovereignty over a good third of the nation directly, in return for thirty sheckels of silver, which will have their destination dictated in any case.

It could never be that even the rusted-on Useful Idiots (who over-represent themselves in Andrew Bolt's blog and Talkback Radio everywhere) are wondering when Howard is going to retire, and having a good hard look at the choice of succession. And not liking it.

It could never be that people have finally realised what some have been saying all along, that the Invasion of Iraq was a mind-bogglingly stoopid waste of time and money and lives, while the guy who actually is responsible for 9-11 is still running around out there. That invading a country is a big, horrible, messy, sticky tarbaby, and that while Saddam Hussein was a really, really bad man, and his sons worse, the Invasion and its aftermath has been so, so, so much worse.


No, it must be the population's fault. For believing Labor. For listening to Scientists. For talking to their accountants. For watching the news. For looking around them. For thinking.

For not drinking the Kool-Aid, like they have for the last eleven years.



Now if only the rest of us had a real hope of anything changing as a result.

STOP TRYING TO OUT-FUCKING-HOWARD HOWARD, YOU IDIOT!

When you start holding your opponent up as something to be praised and imitated, then why the Fucking hell would anyone vote for you, when they can have the original?

When you suck up to Howard and his zombie army, they won't praise you in return! They won't stop attacking you just because you say how much you like them!

Moreover, when you say how much you like him and adore him and want to be like him, have you forgotten the great fucking swathes of the population of Australia desperately sweating for the chance to vote for someone who isn't John Fucking Howard?!?!?!?!?!? In your quest to suck up to Howard's drones, you've just very successfully alienated just about everyone who would have voted for you, if you weren't such an evident FUCKING MORON.



For FUCK'S SAKE, how stupid can you be? What, if anything, WERE YOU THINKING?????




Expect a pick-up in Green and Democrat votes next Federal election. Family First as well, for that matter. That's my quick and dirty prediction.

If we're really lucky, Greens/Dems will get balance of power. We might even see the need for a Labor/Green/Dem coalition (while I'm fantasising, I'd also like a pony).
My wildest dreams do not, at this stage, include a Green/Dem coalition in power in its own right, let alone one or the other. But if Rudd is going to head the Labor party like this for much longer, he's pushing the country in that direction.

Unless Rudd turns out to be Blair.au, to Howard's Thatcher. Fuck that's depressing. I'm going to go home and get drunk.

Govt considers banning pseudoephedrine products

That is, all pseudoephedrine, in any form whatsoever, completely. Effectively, it would make pseudephedrine as illegal a drug as Heroin.

You...

Fucking...

WHAT?!?!?

"There are alternatives" he says. Yeah, Phenylepherine, which doesn't work. Sudafed PE with the Phenylepherine in it does almost precisely squat for my sinuses, combined with all the side effects working at full strength. So what I get is discombobulation, and blocked sinuses.

It used to be that I could get my hands on Pseudoephedrine, in the form of Sudafed Classic. And it worked, reliably and quickly. Sinus headaches vanished, yay!

Then there were some noises about this 'speed' stuff, made from 'ephedrine', and how you could turn pseudoephedine into ephedrine. And it started getting harder to get hold of Sudafed. But I could still get it, so I wasn't too worried. Then I started getting asked questions when I bought it. I could see the point of such questions, so I went along.

Then they started tracking purchases of Pseudoephedrine. O...kay. Still, only makes sense, if you're trying to prevent surreptitious bulk purchases, right?

Then the Chemists, as one, decided to say 'fuck you, you can't have any' unless I had begged a doctor for the privilege. Now I was starting to get pissed off. Don't you get between my sinuses and the medication to make them not hurt, don't you dare. I could still get medication that worked, but I was no longer taking just what I needed, but had to inflict Codeine and Paracetamol on myself as well, whether or not I wanted it. In other words, for safety's sake, I was being forced to take drugs which I neither needed nor wanted, in order to get the one I did need.

Now I won't even have that option.


( Cut to protect the eyes of the innocent. Rating: PG, strong language and some hatred-of-politician speech )


Codeine's next. Then the feltching *$%Ss will be after your insulin (injecting materials, you know) and Brycanyl huffer (stepping-stone to chroming, you know).

John Howard thinks that Alan Jones is a fine broadcaster, representative of most Australians. Which says much more about Ratbastard Johnny than it does about that frothing megalomaniac Jones. Despite Alan having, quite clearly, stated that Muslims and Lebanese are not 'Australians', then exhorting 'Australians' to go and beat up those dirty rapist brown bastards en masse. Howard thinks that Alan "would never make prejudicial comments."

"Anyone who knows me knows I've never encouraged violence or brutality in anything ... and I did the exact opposite, but our defences counted for nothing," Mr Jones told his listeners.

One excerpt Jones read from a listener on December 7, 2005 recommended that bikie gangs confront ``Lebanese thugs'' at the Cronulla railway station.

Because, of course, reading out a message saying "let's all meet at Cronulla and beat the shit out of any brown person we see", and following with "oh, that's a little harsh. I wouldn't go that far. Oh my stars and whiskers, oh dear, no," that's neither vilification nor exhortation to violence.

"I have a message here which reads: "Lets go and bash Lebs coz they deserve it coz theyr all rapist bastards lets take back OUR beaches," and I can really understand where these guys are coming from, they speak to a lot of reasonable people, " but don't actually hit anyone, because it's a little naughty, you know *wink*

And just when my disgust reaches peak, Rudd goes and joins in the praise, fearing -- presumably -- to lose the ignorant redneck fuckwit vote. Every so often I have faint hopes that Rudd will show signs of being an actual human being, and then he goes and proves he can suck up to the lowest common denominator with just as much aplomb.


Actually, I just thought of something which is even worse. This quote from Ratbastard:

"I don't think he's a person who encourages prejudice in the Australian community, not for one moment but he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think."

What that says, when you dissect it is that Alan Jones hasn't encouraged prejudice, but merely reflected the prejudice already there. In other words, Jones cannot possibly have made the situation worse, because real Australians are all prejudicial, racist and violent already.

The really sad thing is that the Cronulla riot showed that the Ratbastard might be right.

I think I'm going to go home and get drunk.

We have a consistent pattern here.

If a new report comes out, saying something that the government doesn't like, then the response is "Oh, but this is untested research" (like, e.g., the Stern Report), or "This is new, and we have to think about it before we can do anything," or "We could not have possibly known before this report came out."

If it turns out that the warnings go back, in essence unchanged, for years, then the response is "You think this is news? This is ancient! We've known about this forever! Go find some news to report you useless partisan hack!!"

Do you think that they know that the two responses are mutually contradictory? Their response to continual warnings of looming problems (I won't say 'disaster' because then erudito and the Lavoisier group would accuse me of scare-mongering) is "This is new, and unproven!", and their response to revelations that the warnings have been pretty consistent for years is "that's boring, old news, of course we knew the whole time, what do you think we are, incompetent?" (Except when they go back a few more decades, and say "They gave different dire predictions thirty years ago, therefore they are wrong now!1! Ha, I've run rings 'round you logically!")

The thing is though, Mr Turnbull, that for those years that your department and your boss (you think he reports to his electorate? HA!) were fully cognisant of the potential for disaster, you were standing up in public, with your bare faces showing, shouting from the rooftops that nothing was wrong, everything was fine, and anyone who said otherwise was probably just a tree-hugging communist. Who eats babies.

Were you all full-of-shit lying opportunistic short-sighted two-faced bastards then, or are you now? Or is it, as is more likely, both?

"Oh, it's their right in a democracy to do whatever they want. It's just that their failure to do what I told them to proves that those dirty Muslims hate Australia!!!1!"

Or words to that effect.

Update: In a complete shock, Rudd says: "Me too!".

(Grr. Every so often Rudd gives me the slightest, ever so slightest hope that things might be different when Howard finally relinquishes his death grip on his personal ownership of this country and its political process. Then he has to go and say something like this.

If we don't call it an ID card, then it isn't an ID card. Nothing that is so, is so.

But what's another lie from John RatBastard Howard? He came out guns blazing when Hawke tried to pull this stunt. And that ID card which wasn't really an ID card wasn't nearly as egregious as this ID card which isn't really an ID card.

RatBastard and his gang of thugs and lackeys can say that the sky is green and that lead is nutritious. That won't make it so. He can say that this isn't an ID card, and a couple of lines in legislation will prevent it ever being so. That ain't so either.

I was going to make a comment about what sort of attempt of an argument he is making, and what contempt it shows he has for our intelligence, but then I realised that 1) he doesn't need to make an argument — he owns the parliament, and fuck all can stop him from doing it, and 2) not only is it violently obvious how much contempt he has for us, mere citizens consumers, that he has gotten away with it for so long — for so many years, over so many elections — shows that his contempt is deserved. As a nation we really have bent over and begged for it.