31 May, 2012
Nothing like returning from an ‘authoritarian’ communist country like China to encounter a great moment in bourgeois democracy: back in Australia, Tony Abbott (leader of the opposition) runs from parliament so he doesn’t have to vote on his own motion. No argument here about which system is best.
23 May, 2011
As news is out that Murdoch has let it be known that a ‘regime change’ is needed in Australia (that is, to Tony Abbott and his bunch of rabid conservatives), and as the 70% of media he owns in Australia slavishly follows his every whim, I could not help thinking of Lenin’s comments concerning freedom of the press: it is merely the ‘freedom’ of one or two billionnaire media moguls to express their opinions. Time for some good old ‘re-education’ of the Murdoch press?
16 March, 2011
Or at least more silly than usual. First, Boris Johnson, mayor of London and socialite sex symbol, is aghast at the effect of the nuclear reactor disasters in Japan. Thinking he should jump in first to defend nuclear power against those who might have some legitimate concerns, the conservative fop writes about the ‘anti-nuke’ lobby:
These are the atomkraft-nein-danke brigade, who have always believed that any kind of nuclear fission – tampering with the building blocks of the universe – was an invitation to cosmic retribution. They will now do everything they can to exploit the Fukushima explosion and the difficulties being experienced in bringing a couple of plants under control. I don’t want in any way to minimise these problems, and we must hope they are sorted out as soon as possible with the barest leaks of radiation. I just doubt that there is any real read-across between the difficulties of nuclear reactors in a well-known earthquake zone, and the proposed nuclear programme in this country, which is becoming more essential with every day that passes.
Ah, Boris the greenie, waging a righteous campaign against all those nutters. But why do we get the sense that we are not being told what is really happening in those reactors at Fukushima?
And then Tony Abbott debates with himself over climate change. Back in 2009 he infamously stated that global warming is ‘crap’ and that the scientists on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, are ‘alarmist’. But then he turned on himself to say that it was ‘real’ and that we need to do something about it. Then again, he countered his own argument by telling a community forum a couple days ago: ‘whether carbon dioxide is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out to be is not yet proven … I don’t think we can say that the science is settled here’. But yesterday he rebutted his own argument, to say that ‘climate change is real’ and that ‘Humanity is making a contribution’.
Now, Abbott is a formidable and pugnacious opponent, as Gillard and Rudd before have found, but never quite as ferocious as when he is taking on himself. So what does Abbott believe? It looks like Jesus has the answer:
OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth, the climate was considerably warmer than it is now. And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history. It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays.
13 March, 2011
Always worth checking on a daily basis: Pete Andrew’s cartoons from the Communist Party of Australia. This one concerns the stupid carbon debate in Austalia:
9 September, 2010
A very modest Tony Abbott, on learning that he is not the prime minister.
20 August, 2010
One of the downsides to getting internet access again is catching up the news regarding the Australian election on Saturday, 21 August. If 2007 was the first environmental election in the world – as commentators outside the parochial scene of Aussie politics put it – then this one would have to be the racist election, with each side trying to outdo each other on keeping those dreadful boat people out.
It hate to say it, but I was skeptical about the promise that Rudd seemed to give people back in 07. People poo-pooed me, saying Rudd and Labor would make a difference. But now the disillusion is palpable. As I pointed out in Rescuing the Bible, within parliamentary systems like Australia we really have only one mega-party, the pro-capitalist party. It has various wings and factions, who like to call themselves liberal, labour, conservative, national and so forth. But each one argues that it can provide the best conditions for capitalism to flourish. Tomorrow we get to choose between the Labor faction, led by prime minister Julia Gillard, and the curiously named Liberal-National faction, led by Tony Abbott. I’d rather be tarred and feathered than see Abbott win, but it is a long shot for him to do so. Gillard is a shade better, but not by much.
So here’s a tip. Labor under Gillard wins 75 seats in a 150 seat house, Liberal-National 71, country independents (National renegades) 3 and the Greens 1 – the seat of Melbourne which they may well take from Labor. Gillard will have a minority government, requiring the Green MP to get anything through. And the Greens will for the first time be able to propose legislation. Even better, the Greens, polling at times close to 20%, should win the balance of power in the proportionally represented Senate.
No guesses for where my vote is going.
18 May, 2010
This one is racing around the traps today: Tony Abbott, conservative leader of the federal opposition, last night admitting that what he says in the heat of the moment is not ‘gospel truth’ and that we should only believe what is scripted and prepared. This from a man who shoots from the hip about 99% of the time. Since I can’t embed the footage here, watch this stunning moment at this site (after the annoying ad).
14 May, 2010
Is it just me, or are we in a season of stunningly stupid political developments:
1) Australia: the new conservative party (which used to be called the liberal party) takes an official position denying climate change.
2) Australia: Nick Minchin, former senate leader of aforesaid party, denies that both passive and active smoking are bad for you.
3) Australia: in response to the boring and widely praised budget by the Labor government, Tony Abbott, leader of the former liberal party, and Joe Hockey, finance spokesperson for the same party, state that there was no recession in 2008-9 or indeed global financial crisis, that it was all scare-mongering to justify stimulus spending. Must be something in their coffee.
4) UK: the conservatives and liberals form an alliance after swearing the abyss between them is impassable, all of which shows that the political caste is really only interested in its own preservation.
5) UK: the red tories have come out in support of liberalism, which has until now been the source of all evil. In the process, both red tory and radical orthodox proponents – Alasdair Maclagan, John Milbank, Phillip Blond et al – have lost any shred of credibility they might have had.
6) New Zealand: the prime minister, John Key, states – in the midst of land claim negotiations - that he is happy to be having dinner with the Ngati Porou rather than Tuhoe, since in that case he would be dinner.
9 April, 2010
Jesus didn’t say yes to everyone. I mean Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia … I’m just saying that, look, Jesus was the best man who ever lived but that doesn’t mean that he said yes to everyone, that he was permissive to everything, and this idea that Jesus would say to every person who wanted to come to Australia, “Fine”, the door is open, I just don’t think is necessarily right. But let’s not verbal Jesus. I mean, he’s not here to defend himself.
Tony Abbott, conservative Christian, leader of the Liberal party and the federal Opposition (HT to the Vulgar Marxist)
22 February, 2010
Every now and then I wake up to find some enlightened and considerate individual has stumbled across an old blog post and been inspired to comment. As with my series on Tony Abbott, Nick Minchin (also here and here) and right-wing conspiracy theories concerning climate change science.
And so, months later comes a blast from a conservative think tank by a ‘Captain Reality’:
Nick Minchin is one of the only sensible politicians. He has seen through the lefty communist scientists who have taken over the world and are destroying our freedom.
When Mr Minchin comes to power the government will cut all funding to left wing scientists like climatologists and only fund real science like geology and chemistry which you need to mine and make refineries, which actually help people to live…
…unlike climate change, which is a lefty scientist LIE and BIG FAT TAX ON EVERYTHING and will kill billions with their TAX. Rudd is worse than Stalin.
P.S. I am not a crank =|:^0>
I am a patriot!
I love this stuff, gives me hope for Australian politics, for a real alternative … The Captain reassures us:
For those who are a bit slow, my previous post is a summary of the intellectual basis of today’s right.
