"How the PM does it?" How can you do it?...

First you strangle all the services (using whatever excuse, including "everyone knows" when nobody knows..), thus making sure the States do not have enough cash to pay for these services (education, health, whatever).. The States have to fight and fiddle to get anywhere, including "borrow" money...

Second, because you do not give all the due moneys for services to the states, you accumulate a reserve of cash in a cool blue corner...

Third when an election comes along, and people are unhappy about this or that service having been downgraded, you blame the states and offer cash to "help" the situation out as long as it is recognised the "moneys" are coming from CANBERRA ("benefactor") not from the states (those "scrooges")... But in reality, the money that is given so "benevolently as long as you vote for me" IS the STATES' MONEY that was retained (robbed from the states) by Canberra in the first place...

The trick is not so obvious as explained here, but in the end that has been the spirit of the process since 1996...

Rattus plans far ahead... I know that for sure (with a degree of certainty). In the 1980s with his mate Bill Heffernan, he was already placing "pegs" to make sure that when the time was ripe — after having left the duds like the Clowner-things-that-batter take the bullets from Paul Keating... and when the media luv affair with Bob Hawke had turned sour followed by the media's assassination (with a nudge-nudge wink wink from youknowwho) of Paul Keating with "arrogant this, arrogant that.." — Rattus would collect the leadership of the Liberal party although Rattus was not liked by most of the fair minded Liberals... These "pegs" were little gems of "incentives" (in the style of: "you play with me or I expose your little indiscretions" - destroying careers or families so to speak) — a bit of arm twisting, gangster style, that make people do what you want... Vote for me... This is not so obvious as this... a lot of meandering and soup kitchen deals had to be made but the general gist of "incentives" played a part... I know a few names but you won't hear those from me, under ANY circumstances... I mean it. Or did I dream all this?

So we see the dirt bag being emptied from time to time... from the removal of John Brogden in the Liberal party of NSW to the present "Polldancingate"... Plenty more in the pipeline and some power-brokers in the Federal Liberal Party may still be wetting their pants...

Thus since 1996, Rattus gangsterus godfatherii has develop a calm, reflective and discreet attitude to make him appear like an ordinary bloke, a generous tough bastard doing the "right" thing, including going to war into a conflict that may (will) keep US troops in Iraq for another 50 years... And making promises of non-core stone solid stuff that turns into sand as soon as elections are over... And destroying a well tune fair-go (not perfect as things never are) system in Australia with a system in which the selfish bastards collect the loot... and we are left with the illusion we can "aspire" while our credit cards stretch beyond breaking point... to buy Chinese made goods...

Thus, flanked by his team of "accountants" who organised the "protection syphoned-money"... one can hear the don: "we take our cut of the loot by giving you less than your cut, but don't complain otherwise we break your windows... and by the way WE'LL BREAK YOUR WINDOWS ANYWAY..."

With his "aspirational nationalist" bizo, we are now witnessing the time of WINDOW BREAKING phase... The States are being side-stepped... Rattus magnaminous: "We'll be selling the crap direct to the public from now on, but we will still let you sell a few cookies if you behave... "

The States may never saw it coming or trusted the Rattus all the way with his conviviality and enticing offers, like the snake of Adam and Eve... in the garden of Hell...

But as I explained earlier, Rattus plans ahead... not for the country's best interest but for the RULING CLASS to RULE by pushing the proletariat down the drain with finesse (national interest and other expressive gems) and by placing nice perfume in the drain so the situation is aromatherapied, the working class does not feel the darkness falling upon them...

Now go and revise with exactitude the way the PM lied his way through to get Australia to war in Iraq... then you will understand one of the main conning process... And there are many.

Throw him and his aspirational (aspirational: a word borrowed from Margo Kingston dictionary, but re-framed by Rattus thesaurus) selfish cronies out.

Howard announces surplus spending spree

Prime Minister John Howard says there is a clear case for the Federal Government to invest future budget surpluses and spend the earnings on infrastructure.

A report in today's The Australian newspaper says Mr Howard has set up a "community war chest" which could be worth up to $20 billion to fund local community infrastructure like libraries and sporting facilities.

Mr Howard says the decision about which projects receive funding will be based on sensible national priorities.

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Gus: The gall of this man... The man who starved many institutions of funds, unless they towed his line, and destroyed ("rationalised") many working social entities... Now he is in his "rebuilding phase" as if things like that never existed before his Majesty Rattus the First... Rattus is no renaissance man... Just a cocky-farmer of GM social crop, where diversity is a noxious weed... and where Pauline-herbicide is welcome to wring out the "foreign" pests... Can't you see his scare crows, Abbott and Costello, and his dung beetles of the gutter press? Sensible national priorities? Here comes the censor with the Roundup...

Talking about the press, Gerard Henderson the wise old man of opinionatus is spewing chips about journalists releasing off the record conversations and stuff :

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Journalists make a meal of it

Gerard Henderson
August 21, 2007
It's a tale about two dinners - in Canberra and New York. Both events have put reporters in the news - Michael Brissenden, Paul Daley and Tony Wright, who dined with the Treasurer, Peter Costello, at the Waters Edge Restaurant in Canberra on June 2, 2005; and the New York Post editor, Col Allan, who went with Kevin Rudd, then the shadow foreign affairs minister, to what has been described as the Scores "gentleman's club" in New York in September 2003. Both occasions indicate that when journalists become part of the news they tend to behave like politicians. Fancy that.

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Gus: More often than not Gerard is also part of the clique although he has not so much "gossip" to reveal... No, he just sputters the words that our glorious PM wants the little people "need" to hear... Gerard defends the conservative values with his pen and has no regard for the other side... Thus Gerard also behave like a politician, promoting a point of view... but Gerard would not claim that he is a journalist... Just an opinionator, and opinionated at that. Like the pollies. Fancy that...

Richard Farmer writes

Howard spins the gravy like Herr Warne

The pre-election gravy train keeps chugging along with six recent promises by the Prime Minister adding $1,292,026,700 to the list of projects announced by the Prime Minister on is campaign jaunts around the country.

You will find the details at Grass Roots Gravy Train on the Crikey election website where we will keep updating the way John Howard gives away tax payers money during his re-election bid.

Even Mr Howard, it seems, is now getting slightly embarrassed about the extent of his largesse because yesterday, with spin that would do Herr Warne proud, he attempted to put his outrageous attempts at vote buying into a supposedly intellectually coherent framework.

Instead of priming the parish pump, the Coalition Government is now engaged in a revamped federalism that incorporates "aspirational nationalism".

What Mr Howard really means is that he wants to promise handouts to people in marginal electorates for things like libraries, town halls and sports stadiums that are conditional on his re-election.

To do that will involve delaying the date for handing over the money by pretending that the goodies will be financed not from tax revenue but from interest to be received in the future on the surplus of taxation that his Government is presently collecting.

This "promise now, pay later" scheme, touched on yesterday in Mr Howard’s Address to the Millennium Forum, will be launched with appropriate pork barrelling when Treasurer Peter Costello gives his next update on the projected increase in the budget surplus.

JOURNALIST:

Have you met with members of the Exclusive Brethren and have they offered any financial or in-kind support?

PRIME RATTUS:

Well I have met all sorts of people. I am the Prime Minister. The Exclusive Brethren is a legal, legitimate organisation. I meet them from time to time. As to matters relating to financial support, they're things that you should talk to them, should talk to the Liberal Party organisation about. I don't handle in a direct sense, any fundraising matters related to the Liberal Party, they're handled by the organisation. But I do not deny for a moment I've met representatives of the Exclusive Brethren and why not? They're Australian citizens, it's a lawful organisation and as Prime Minister I have met an enormous number of organisations. It's my job and I find it quite astonishing that people think it's odd I have met representatives of a lawful organisation.

Irfan Yusuf writes …..

Double standards in pollies' approach to religion

Today's broadsheets contain two stories about politicians meeting with people. The Fairfax papers report Howard meeting with representatives of Exclusive Brethren, including a member being investigated for election funding irregularities.

The Brethren aren’t exactly known for their commitment to the values of integration Mr Howard so fervently preaches to non-Christian minorities.

Then The Australian reports responses from ministers (and lack of response from Julia Gillard) over their meeting with controversial American psychiatrist Dr Wafa Sultan who argues that "the West has to monitor the majority of Muslims because you don't know when they're ready to be activated. Because they share the same basic belief [as terrorists] ...".

Predictably, Janet Albrechtsen supports Sultan and attacks an American rabbi who is critical of Sultan’s anti-Muslim diatribe. The rabbi’s perspective can be found here.

Naturally, the pollies are all using the same excuse - they are happy to meet with anyone who asks. In the case of a local group, that might be understandable. But does Mr Downer make time for overseas visitors knocking on his door, even if they have little significant to say about his portfolio or a matter concerning his electorate? Downer's meeting won’t go down well in Jakarta or KL. Indonesians must be asking themselves whether he’d have made time to see someone who said the same things about Jews or Christians.

Richard Kerbaj reported Sultan's visit was sponsored by a shadowy group calling itself "Multi-Net". Crikey received a tip-off that the group includes one Dr Mark Durie, a Melbourne Anglican priest and former linguistics associate professor who acted as a witness for the two Danny's in the Catch-The-Fire Ministries case.

Durie claimed that Sultan's tour was kept deliberately secret due to concerns about her security. "She's got two fatwas out on her". When asked to define what these fatwas were (or indeed what a fatwa is), Durie became evasive. "I'm not going to buy into this."

Why would Multi-Net keep her Aussie visit secret? Ayaan Hirsi Ali visited Australia with much fanfare and without any security incidents. Most Muslims ignored her. Heck, even a big boofy Muslim bloke like me managed to score an interview with her for NewMatilda.com, and there were no guards present.

Further, why would the average Muslim care about what Sultan says? She belongs to the fringe Alawite sect which (for many Muslims) is to mainstream Islam what the Church of Scientology is to mainstream Christianity.

Again, the double standards are obvious. DIAC-head Kevin Andrews refused entry to Muslim speakers with less extreme and radical views. Yet he allows a woman whose personal jihad consists of telling everyone that 1.2 billion Muslims are our enemy.

Yet it also shows the growing influence of evangelical Christian fundamentalists with extreme agendas on our politicians. Durie is close to the Australian Christian Lobby which Howard and Rudd recently addressed. ACL doesn’t exactly have an ecumenical approach to interfaith relations.

Yes, politicians can and should meet with whoever asks for a meeting. But they are also stretched for time. The people they choose to meet will reflect their priorities. Speaking of which, yesterday I wrote that Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had not attended any functions or gatherings of any Australian Muslim group or community.

In fact, I have been informed by a source that Mr Downer attended a function of the al-Faisal Islamic College in Auburn in June 2007. This in itself is interesting. The al-Faisal College is managed by a well-known Saudi financier.

Mr Downer has in the past expressed concern about Saudi funding of Muslim institutions (including a mosque in South Australia) and the nefarious influence of the Wahhabi sect.

Free speech? Not while we're on sheep's back

David Marr
August 23, 2007

No price is too high to pay to protect the Aussie woolgrower. With marked contempt for the effect it would have on freewheeling public debate, Peter Costello has introduced a little bill to clobber campaigners against the bloody business of mulesing sheep. But not only them: his strategy will snare anyone calling for customer boycotts.

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Gus: how are we travelling if we bag some faulty Chinese goods? Would we be hurting the FTA between Aussielandia and Chinolandia? What about if these goods are not dangerous but just shoddy and cheap, with the obsolescence of a gnat? can we protest and encourage boycotts? What about shoddily manufactured Aussie goods? What about improving the lives of animals that suffer some unethical distress like pigs in cages, etc?

Costello is mad, greedy and stupid with his laws against protesters... We need protest to improve our understanding of our humanity... removing that right is crazy Nazi... 

Issues with Woolies' green tissues

Wendy Frew, Environment Reporter
August 23, 2007

AUSTRALIA'S largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, is marketing some of its tissue and paper products as environmentally responsible even though the paper is imported from Indonesia, a country with one of the world's worst records for illegal and unsustainable logging.

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Gus: under the laws of Mr Costellonazi, we would not be allowed to protest against Woolworth pulling the wool over the eyes of shoppers on this issue... It would take a brave person to even expose such heists, "accidental" or not...

I could cry in some real green tissues... if tissues were ever "green" in the first place...

From Inside Canberra News, a few months ago...

Democracy not needed for success: It is also worth noting the level of democracy in a political party does not equate with electoral success. The Liberals are less democratic than Labor: they don’t have a platform devised by those elected to the Labor conference which (at least nominally) is binding on the parliamentary party. Nor can the Liberal Party room overturn a decision by a Liberal Cabinet, as can the Labor Caucus. Yet with one man rule from John Howard, Labor has lost four successive elections. The party with the most democratic constitution of all, and which gives undoubted power to the membership, is the Australian Democrats. Yet it is finished. The Democrats are supposed to be most powerful in South Australia, yet in Saturday’s election, this most democratic of parties garnered a mere 12,000 first-preference votes. Compare this to the 160,000 collected for the independent, Nick Xenophon, of the ‘No Pokies’ Party. All of which points to the reality of federal politics. If John Howard were suddenly to fall under the proverbial bus, the Liberals would be in deep trouble. Peter Costello would be anything but a certainty against any Labor Leader at the next election. [24.03.06]

From The New York Times

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success.

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Gus: No... China is choking on the western world's own restructuring... Displacing its manufacturing to cheaper shores and becoming "rich" (not according to trade deficits, mind you) by shifting its workforce mostly into "service" industries — including trading in currency and selling the cheap goods from China with a hefty profit margin... The whole shift has been a catastrophe of global proportion, environmentally speaking. The problem is not the odd "defective" Chinese goods... But the whole transfer into making "consumerism" the new religion of humanity... on credit... More trees will be cut, more devastation will be made in the name of progress... In the end, we are the masters and slaves of "our" consuming decisions — and the decisions made for us by the Bushits and Johnnee who cannot see beyond the end of day... That's the capitalism system that demands increases from the previous statements — at any cost, day in day out — and more takeover of resources leading to wars... Down-sizing is not an option in that system of borrowing for growth... In the long run down-sizing might be the only option, once we've lost what we had, naturally speaking... But we did not have it in the first place, it was the earth's... the planet that created us. Not ours to burn. But we stole it anyway... and we will carry on stealing it to feed our consuming of the future... until there is no future left for natural life... relatively speaking...

 

World Clock 

Make sure you check out the ‘Life Expectancy Clock” under the globe ....