The Waiting Man

THIS... THIS IS WHY religion has no place in politics!!!

Our Pentecostal would-be Pastor of a Prime Minister has introduced a Bill to Parliament that would allow schools to reject, or not hire, LGBTQ+ teachers on religious grounds. While it doesn't allow the schools to sack existing teachers who identify as any of the acronym, it doesn't exactly stop the school from privately making their lives difficult to say the least...

I don't care what you call your Imaginary Friend, just keep it out of my Parliament, you bunch of blinkered, bigoted, bloated bastards

The Dream Team of Australian politics is gone!! First Craig Kelly leaves the Liberal Party & says he'll stand as an Independent at the next election - in a seat he only held because the Prime Minister guaranteed it for him, now his fellow sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease George Christensen has announced he's quitting politics because of a lack of progress on 'Conservative' issues Those issues, according to him, would be religious & racial prejudice, coal mines & climate change denial. Apparently the Liberal/National coalition government is not doing enough to make sure ordinary Australians can vilify Muslims, drive V8s & buy waterfront property in central Queensland by 2050

I'm sure some executive at Sky News will offer the boys a slot in their evening line-up of fair, balanced & unbiased commentariat

Was he the monster, or was he just the public face of it? Will it make things better, worse, or pretty much the same, now he's been removed from the top job. We've all seen what's behind the curtain of misty-eyed 'land of the free, home of the brave, beacon of democracy, bring me your tired etc...' now - There's a racist, bigoted, sexist, repressive, greedy & self-obsessed country behind there, that at least 74 million voters are a part of. I admire Joe Biden for even putting his hand up for the job of trying to deal with all that, in the midst of a pandemic, a changing global climate, power balance & economy. I'm not sure I'd know where to start in a peaceful, inclusive fashion

A Department of Defence official said something like 'The DC insurrection wasn't sudden, or unexpected like a stroke, or an aneurysm... this was like diabetes - the results of a long-term disease'. I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the actual quote which I heard on ABC radio a couple of times today, but (s)he was right. The roots of the unrest go way deeper & waaaay further back than just the last 4 years... through both Republican & Democrat administrations alike. People aren't disenfranchised & disadvantaged overnight. Trump didn't build the bomb... but, for better or worse, he certainly applied a blowtorch to the fuse!!

Meanwhile the Great Pumpkin will have his hands full dealing with a bunch of troubles old & new, as the protective shield of the Presidency is taken from him

I'm looking forward to retiring my Trump icon... I wonder if the world will let me? Will the "Uncivil War", that Biden referred to, fizzle out, or fire up?

As more details emerge of the sinister undertones of the DC riots last week, with photos of armed, masked, camo-clad dipshits carrying cable-tie restraints, recordings of people chanting "Hang Mike Pence", along with the other usual 3-word slogans (Stop The Steal', 'Count The Votes', or alternatively 'Stop the Count', '4 More Years'... 'USA! USA!' etc...) Why is it these slogans only have 3 words? I have my theory... what's yours?

Having seen Arnold Schwarzenegger - former Republican Governor of California - comparing the riot to Kristallnacht, one of the great leaps forward by the nascent Nazi Party & personally finding it a bit of a long bow to draw & just another case of celebrity bandwagon-jumping... it was interesting to see some more images & reports from the riots, that actually bear Arnold out quite a bit. Put simply - you've heard one right-wing, racist fuckwit, you've heard them all... The baseless, unfounded, racist, bigoted, anti-semitic bullshit remains the same, only the names change to suit the times

Interesting that these white supremacists claim that "Europeans are the children of god"... given that Christianity was born in a Middle-Eastern country & that Europe actually includes Muslim countries like Turkey, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo & even Kazakhstan. The irony that Kazakhstan's most famous exponent is actually an English Jew is not lost on me. I wonder if it's lost on Trump's supporters?!

Probably... as are a great many other things, I'd wager

I haven't been posting about politics for a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been watching... & watching is about all I can do

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade has issued a warning about not visiting the USA, due to potential violence around the election. I note from the article that many Walmart stores are removing guns & ammunition from the shop floor, to discourage looters, but it may be too late, as people have been stocking up on weapons and military-style tactical gear as fearful Americans prepare to hunker down. Many gun shops have sold out of ammunition, and firearm stocks are running low.

I think I also mentioned the potential for Civil War version 2.0 a few months back... My name, apparently, is Nostradamus II. I know it's mostly scare-mongering, but it's being mongered by both sides of the yawning political divide in the USA & with the amount of civil unrest already going on, that's separate to the actual election, it's only going to take one Proud Boy draped in a rebel flag & a MAGA cap to light the blue touch paper... Meanwhile, also as I mentioned a while back, it's looking increasingly likely that the election will be decided, ultimately, in the Supreme Court, where... well, you know what happened last week - a new judge was installed after 60 million people had already voted in a Federal Election... Please explain how that's democratic, or even truly republican?!?!

Meanwhile, it looks like I'll have to postpone my long-desired European trip for a while, as Covid19 has decided to go back for a 3rd time this year - especially to the United Kingdom. I honestly don't know what's worse - denying the existence & severity of the virus & causing thousands of people to die... or knowing full well how serious the disease is, but then stuffing up its control & suppression, due to a lack of backbone, or intestinal fortitude, or... let's just say 'cojones' to get the job done - & causing thousands of people to die. Again, as I've previously ranted, the human race has faced these things before & has always come through, after drastic measures & consequences. Yet here we are today, complaining that this virus either has, or will, ruin civilisation (& it hasn't even been a year!!!), just because the economy is having a hiccup. The fucking Great Depression went for nearly a decade & you know who caused that? Greedy economists... the same guys who are demanding everyone & everything go back to work - public health be damned

Q. When did Bankers become more important than Doctors?

This is primarily for 2 people who left comments on my Journal a couple of weeks ago, when I expressed concern, dismay, disbelief & exasperation at the kind of people who voted & will vote again, for Trump. One respondent told me to calm down, the other told me that it never happens & "never mind" - to whom I responded with a link showing the rise in racially motivated attacks against Hispanic & African American citizens since the Great Pumpkin came to power & started spewing racist bile all over the place

Well, now you can add Asians to that list

Trump doubled down on the name 'Chinese Virus' at a press conference on Wednesday, insisting that using the term is not racist. “It comes from China, that’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate,” Trump said.

Trump has received support from his allies who have defended the president for giving coronavirus a new name. “China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that … that’s why China has been a source of a lot of these viruses,” John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, told a reporter when asked if the name was inappropriate.

Trump’s new name for coronavirus comes after weeks of racist attacks against Asian American seen across the country. An Asian woman in New York City wearing a face mask was assaulted and called “diseased” in early February by a stranger in a subway station. In Los Angeles, a man directed a racist rant about coronavirus to a fellow passenger, who is Asian.

One family in Fresno, California, had their car tagged with the word “Fuck Asions … and coronavirus”. A middle school student in California was told by his teacher to go to the nurse’s office after he coughed, though he told his teacher that he choked on water and was not sick. When he asked his teacher why he didn’t ask non-Asian students to go to the nurse after coughing, he was told to “let it go and move on”.

Still, never mind... because according to Baron Waste... "it never happens" But, by all means, don't take my word for it... get out there & read some things that might make you uncomfortable, but might make you think twice... or at least once!!

Before life so suddenly & tragically interrupted my... well, life, really... I'd been thinking about a lot of the things people have been saying & writing in the aftermath of our Federal Election, desperate to find some global trend to hang it on. Somehow, people seem to think that just because our conservative Liberal party won against what opinion polls indicated were insurmountable odds, a lot of people & especially pundits are really trying to tie it into Trump, Brexit, & the rise of the far-right. Even though the far-right candidates for both upper & lower Houses didn't fair particularly well anywhere, even in Queensland (famously described as our Alabama, by a past politician) - much to a lot of people's audible relief

Thinking about all of that, especially given our kind of sad longing to be part of a global movement, or epidemic (Again!!! Every half-baked loony with a gun here is quickly & erroneously linked to Islamic terrorism, as if we really want to be able to say "Look! See!! Us too!!!"), made my thoughts turn to where it's gone wrong, not just for Australia, but for the world in general. Okay... mostly the Western world, but that's the one I live in & feel qualified to comment on... Because I think the rise of globalism, mostly via ever more impressive technology designed to 'bring us together', is actually splitting us apart

To try & put it on a postcard - the more people of lesser opportunity, education & status see of the rest of the world, the less they like it. They're having a hard enough time hanging on to what they see as theirs, without the threat of the rich, over-educated, or overseas masses taking it away from them, let alone the horrible realisation that there aren't just a bunch of people in your own country getting better jobs than you, but they're everywhere!!!. And what if they come for your job & your path of opportunity, broken & torturous as it may be - it's still yours!! Even if you never actually get around to walking it... be damned if anyone else is going to. And possibly, the more you're fed images of fabulous no-talent nobodies having a fabulous time, the more you want that lifestyle & the angrier you get when it remains unachievable. Rightly or wrongly, the divide between rich & poor is not only growing, but it's being pushed in your face very time you look at your phone, or your 'smart' TV, or your computer - which you're struggling to keep up the payment plans on

Here in Australia, the far-right One Nation party can't seem to decide if Asian &/or Muslim immigrants/refugees are here to take your job, or take all the Government Welfare. It doesn't seem to matter that, surely, they can't do both... either message gets through to people who see themselves as having been left behind by the march of global technology & economy & are easily preached to, swayed, then mobilised to vote for racists with no solution, plan, suggestion, or agenda - other than a white one that involves saying 'No' to anything that threatens to advance Australia beyond the good old post-WWII days that nobody can really remember, but seem to represent some kind of (white) golden era...

... where women were encouraged to leave school at 16 to become a secretary, marry a middle-manager, quit the job & start breeding, Aboriginal people were not recognised as 'people', domestic violence wasn't frowned upon, or even much talked about, polio, rubella, smallpox, tuberculosis & skin cancer all did their part in keeping the population down & asbestos was the fibre of the future... Oh boy, it certainly was!

To put it on a postage stamp (remember those??), xenophobia, chronophobia, prosophobia & technophobia are the new fuel for the fires of the 21st century. Easily started & fanned large enough to start burning books in... or phones, computers, non-Christians, or eventually, just anyone who looks at you 'funny'

A bit of a grab-bag entry... bits & pieces of the last little while. Written at work, as my PC is having an extended stay at its doctor's, trying to cure a bout of blue-screens-of-death

First & foremost - the spark for this entry, is this heartfelt & pretty darned accurate op-ed from Craig Foster, a former 'Socceroo' - that's Australian National Football player to the rest of the world... He was recently very involved in the case of a Bahraini refugee who had been granted asylum in Australia, got married & went to have his honeymoon in Thailand, where he was promptly detained by Thai authorities acting on a tip-off from 'someone' & under pressure from the Bahrain 'government' (for want of a better word, like 'monarchy', 'dictatorship', or 'despotic regime'... okay, that's 2 words), thrown in jail & kept there for a few months while extradition proceedings were started, debated, contested, decried & ultimately dropped - mostly because of international pressure from other countries, including Australia, as well as the F.I.F.A. & high-profile sport ambassadors... All brought to bear at the pointy end by Mr Foster & his tireless support for the poor guy

Now that Hakeem is safely back in his adopted country, Craig has written this piece, calling on Australia to up its game when it comes to refugees & basic human rights - an area where both sides of our politics seem to be out of touch with the opinions & desires of the majority of the population. I say majority, because there is an extremely vocal & somehow influential right-wing minority who would rather peddle fear, xenophobia & racism, than allow multicultural integration to run its usually quite peaceful course - like it did when war-damaged Europeans came here in the 40s & 50s, like it did when the Vietnamese came here in the 70s. Like it should, now that more war-torn refugees are looking to get the hell out of what's left of their home & homeland. We gladly accepted German & Japanese migrants after WWII, so why not a bunch of innocent, displaced & largely persecuted Muslims?

The 'M' word seems to be the sticking point here... May I point out that, according to history, the Crusades were hundreds of years ago & weren't started by Muslims. It seems depressingly fitting that the 2 most recent 'Crusades' didn't go too well for the Christian soldiers either. It would appear that, if you want to be a World Leader, you need to have either not taken, or simply skipped, history lessons at school & university

On a different note... it's the little things that make me happy. Like 2 days of cloud & drizzling rain... getting a discount on my morning coffee... L-SP & I will be going on a technology-free holiday in about 2 weeks... & the Calvin Klein store I walk past every day has finally replaced the large photos of the Kardashian clan with generic models for its new advertising. Good riddance to the whole KKKKKKing lot of them

* Unless something even worse happens...

What has happened is all too predictable. When you have a Commander-In-Chief who spouts racist & sexist rhetoric, as well as practising & defending it, who not only gets away with it, but revels in his impunity, then it's only a matter of not-much time before his supporters/disciples/fanclub/mindless masses begin to act the same way - because, after all, if it's good enough for the Boss, it's good enough for them. Right?

Right. In fact... far-right

Exhibit A

Oh America... we will miss you