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Live Whacking Permalink Archive
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27-8-02

Watching moralist howlers

Jason Soon over at Catallaxy has a good piece on tiresome moralist bore and New Ltd. columnist Angela Shanahan, who is blaming lack of jesus and general immorality in modern society for the murder of the two English schoolgirls.
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Asimov & Bin Laden?

What the hell?
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New Senator sez: "America sucks!! Capitalism sucks!!"

I was doing my daily Sydney Morning Herald scan. For the first time in ages, I ventured into Margot Kingston's awful webdiary section, and stumbled upon this entry:

The Green manifesto
By Margo Kingston
August 26 2002
I call myself a 'reluctant Green', forced to vote for them for the first time to take a stand on refugee policy. So what did people like me get for our vote? The first Green Senator for NSW, Kerry Nettle, gave her maiden speech last week.

And joy of joys, Margot includes the full text of Senator Nettle's speech, and what a shit-for-brains self-righteous "save us all from evil" crackpot she has turned out to be. The speech itself was full of the familiar weary anti-capitalist, anti-american hippy ideology we thought most non-smelly people had grown out of. It's depressing someone so completely removed from the real world could win a seat in the senate.

Nettle began with some nice-sounding blandisms, eh.
- unions good
- indigenous people good
- racism bad, multiculturalism good

All very nice so far, then the real fun starts.....

The Greens bring a vision to politics in Australia and around the world that is based on four core principles:

Oh, this'll be fun.

social and economic justice,

= capitalism bad, socialism good.

ecological sustainability,

= see above.

peace and non-violence

= americans are evil, islamofascist psychos are "misunderstood". Force is never justified against anybody.

and grassroots democracy.

......a commitment to democracy which strangely never includes the unelected government regulators that would control your life in the greenie-world.

Communities in Australia and overseas are increasingly turning towards the Greens because we offer an optimistic and caring vision for the future.

Let's not have delusions of grandeur dearie. There are currently two green senators in the Australian Senate.

People are sick of a lack of choice at election time. They are sick of an emphasis on self-interest and the predictable surrender to the power of profit. Increasingly, there is a need to restate the fact that we are not simply a collection of individuals, but people who live in a society where a sense of community strengthens our connection with humanity and the environment on which we depend.

Yeah baby, tax us to death and take our property. We selfish bastards need to be punished. Fuck all those hard-working home-owners!

As a young activist concerned about issues such as public transport and proposals to extend the tragedy of uranium mining in Kakadu National Park, I became interested in the Greens because I saw the Greens as a political party that was made up of community activists - people who were interested in the same sorts of issues as I was and who brought an activist approach to the work that they did in parliament and also in the community.

What tragedy in Kakadu? Has this woman *seen* the place where they conduct the mining? I've seen more beautiful garbage tips. It's dry, ugly, clapped-out scrubland. So we're not exactly despoiling pristine wilderness, and the last I checked there were no animals or humans being poisoned/killed by this mining. Still, uranium = nuclear = Americans = evil. I believe that's how the value equation goes.

I define this activist approach as a belief that progressive social change is not only possible but vitally necessary.

She's gonna save us all from the horrors of living in the best country on earth with the highest standard of living.

History shows us that social change does not start in chambers like this; it starts in the hearts and the minds of committed and passionate individuals. It builds strength on the streets and in the community, and only then can it enter this chamber.

Well a grand total of two senators isn't exactly a great testament to your supposedly growing public consensus.

The ecological vandalism that is inherent in our current land clearing patterns is part of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly familiar to all of us.

It's not "increasingly" familiar. Land clearing and pollution has been around for a long time.

It is part of the economic funda-mentalism that has blighted much of Australian society and rages now at a global level through the destructive policies of the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Here's where the fantasies start: environmental damage the result of economic fundamentalism and the capitalist global hierarchy. Nothing to do, I suppose, with corrupt governments in third-world toiletbowls
destroying the landscape. Of course, such people are not politically correct targets. Let's blame it all on evil, rich white people.

Again, it is the tireless work of community activists who are attempting to halt this ever increasing drive towards the corporate free-for-all that has misleadingly been dubbed globalisation. This process is, in fact, not globalisation but centralisation - the centralisation of power into the hands of a small group of corporate elites. There is nothing inherently global about this transfer of economic and cultural power.

Ideological paranoia, greenie hypocrisy and historical cluelessness all in the one paragraph.

A diverse multitude of people have taken to the streets to raise their voices against this corporate takeover, and they look on as vitally important decisions are taken out of the hands of
representative, democratically elected parliaments and placed into the hands of unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats and CEOs of transnational corporations.

The small problem with this inane thesis is that governments who support such policies keep getting elected all over the world, while ideological warriors like Nettle win a stunning total of TWO seats in the Australian senate. I guess the uneducated dullards in the suburbs must have been brainwashed by the Illuminati or something.

Many people are outraged about this loss of democratic control over decisions that affect their lives. This is an issue about which parliament should be ecstatic. People are actually jumping up and down about the importance of parliament and yet our legislatures are complicit in the silencing of the electors voice.

Typical Hugh Mackay / Margo Kingston / Phillip Adams drivel: people showing in every election that they couldn't give a rat's arse about the pious crusades of the likes of Nettle. But rather than the being seen as the outcome of the democratic decision of the population, we get waffle about the "true voices" of the people being "silenced". It's remarkable how someone elected to the Australian senate could be so utterly clueless about the democratic process.

The rise of corporate globalisation is the greatest threat to our current democratic systems, and the increasing role of corporations in our governments and our democratic institutions amounts to nothing less than a creeping coup detat.

Stalinist Sludge 101: "The capitalist cabal is controlling our lives and institutions. Only we can't give you any specifics". People exercising free trade and exercising their democratic right to vote for who they want is apparently "a creeping coup detat". Nothing as horrifying to a socialist as people making their own decisions, the bastards.

At the moment on the horizon sits the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The neo-liberal ideologues have repackaged and expanded the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which was defeated by community pressure in 1998. The new brand name is General Agreement on Trade in
Services. It is back on the international trade negotiating table, to which you and I are not invited.

Well, it would get a little crowded. And people can always vote for governments who resist such evil - and as the Greens' stunning electoral success shows - they aren't.

Besides, the leftie squealers who announce themselves the Voices Of The Oppressed have some funny ideas about letting people's voices be heard - like stopping a busload of NGO speakers from entering a certain free trade conference in Melbourne. But hey, only YOU guys are qualified to decide who gets to talk, right?

Public ownership has historically proven to be the only way to ensure that essential services are provided to all citizens in an equitable way.

Sure they are. This is why we have 18-month waiting lists in public hospitals, why the "victims of telecom" group was formed and why my fucking mail never gets delivered on time, and often to the wrong house.

This is done by providing the service on the basis of social need rather than trying to pursue private profits. The Greens recognise that the seemingly endless pursuit of privatisation is a form of social theft on a grand scale, with the transferring of wealth from the citizen to the already rich.

You're a great loss to the USSR senator: the citizen has zero control or ownership of "public" utilities, and if they don't like it, there's fuck-all they can do about it. I'm not convinced everything needs to be privatised either, but let's drop the pious commie bullshit OK?

.....(several paragraphs of waffle about Australia selling it's sovereignty away with naughty free-trade agreements)....

GATS is designed also to remove the rights of nation states to set environmental, labour, local content or human rights standards. This will lead us to a situation where it becomes impossible for Australia not to accept an international nuclear waste dump.

Is she serious? Does she actually believe people are going to be bringing waste into this country against our wishes? Haven't people like Nettle been bleating endlessly because our evil fascist government has been exercising it's sovereign democratic rights in rejecting people smugglers and the Kyoto agreement? Isn't national sovereignty and protecting the borders a bad thing?

Australia has the opportunity to take a progressive role, to show some leadership and some courage as a responsible global citizen not only on trade issues but also in relation to international conflicts. Right now, more than at any time in our recent history, it is vitally important that we speak out in the name of peace and that we articulate a message of true global justice that is based on equity and not on power.

Right. We know how much our Chinese, Iraqi and Saudi friends are interested in friendship and equity.

It is nearly a year since we were all horrified by the attacks on Washington and New York. The time immediately after September 11 could have been, and still can be, an opportunity to reflect calmly and rationally on the reasons behind the attacks on the World Trade Centre.

Oh lordy. Here's a clue: a bunch of spoiled, rich islamic fundamentalists decided to exercise a plan for terrorist mass-murder. I guess we should have sat down with them and had counselling sessions beforehand, apologising to them for how evil we western types are.

We need an international effort that recognises the growing inequities between the haves and the have-nots of this world and then seeks to redress these imbalances.

Exactly what "imbalance" are you going to address? Osama Bin Laden is (was) a billionaire. The terrorist in Sep11 all came from financially healthy families. Where are all the Ethiopian terrorists, hmm? Funny how the origins of these groups are all wealthy islamofascist sects, and not an income group, but I guess it's not PC to point that out.

Here's the deal: you twats can sit down and have meetings with them. Personally, I'd rather just kill the fuckers before they kill us.

Instead, we have seen an arrogant unilateralism from the United States through their so-called war on terrorism and the response of the Australian government has been sycophantic.

I guess it can't just be that our government agrees with the USA. But no. In the mind of the kindergarten-left, there is only the evil yanks and their brainwashed allies stomping all over the oppressed tyrants of the world. How sad.

In trying to out-swagger the cowboys in Washington, we have only succeeded in making ourselves look foolish at a time when we could have and should have been a calming voice in our allies' ear.

And told them what? This is the real deal dumbasses. Action is called for, and all you can offer is "let's all just get along" platitudes.

Then Nettle really loses her marbles;

A war on Iraq cannot be justified. The hypocrisies and the inconsistencies of such an aggressive policy are obvious for all to see. We do not live in George Bush's comic book world of goodies and
baddies.

Well, we're closer to this comic book world than your silly-arsed leftie loonie-bin, where genocidal tyrants should be appeased, and where there is no moral distinction to be made between the likes of Saddam Hussein and the world's most powerful democratic nation. Anti-American infantilism at it's finest

Trading with oppressive regimes is commonplace,

Oh, so you're in favour of sanctions? That's not what you say below.

and more weapons of mass destruction are developed and held illegally in Western countries than in any axis of evil.

Yeah. Then again, we haven't got around to using them on everyone around us as soon as we get our hands on them

A war would also be blatantly naive in a political sense. It would be tantamount to throwing a Molotov cocktail into the Middle East peace process.

So...instead of the entire Muslim world wanting to exterminate jews, they'll want to exterminate jews?

A war on Iraq would be illegal under international law; it would also be blatantly inhumane. The Greens will continue to fight any extension of this so-called war on terrorism. We recognise that we need a program for peace, not a rush to war.

Well what are your peace plans, oh wise garden-fairies?

The first step in this program for peace is for John Howard, Alexander Downer and George Bush to step back from their warmongering rhetoric. There is a place for weapons inspections in all countries that develop weapons of mass destruction,

Indeed there is. And perhaps you'd like to explain why Hussein has rejected and obstructed them at ever turn for the last decade. If he was willing to play ball, he would have done so by now, don't you think?

but there will be no lasting solution in Iraq or similar countries until we restore their dignity and their autonomy so that their people can pursue democracy and prosperity like any other nation.

Yes you heard it right: we must restore "dignity and autonomy" to iraq. This is all the west's fault. Saddam is an incidental player in all of this apparently.

The Iraqi people must be given back not only the right but also the capacity to decide their own rulers, without intervention from the United States

And how are you going to do this while Saddam is there, you dipshit lefty airhead cunt?

We need an international effort to rebuild Iraqi society and infrastructure, which was deliberately destroyed to undermine the civilian population. Sanctions that have caused immeasurable suffering must be lifted.

Fact check: Saddam sells around $12billion of oil per annum the last time I checked, which he is free to spend of food, medicines and basic health infrastructure. yet he builds palaces and funds Palestinian terror groups, while his population dies. In other words - you pixie-addled fucktard - he's got the money to do this himself, and he doesn't.

Of course, to the loon-left, it's all the Americans' fault.

Of course, these solutions do not apply only to Iraq. It is our responsibility to address the appalling inequalities wherever they occur around the world, and the way to do so is through support for local communities and their organisations so that they can determine their visions of democracy for their country.

Exactly. Only this comes through encouraging democracy and productive economic activity, not licking the arseholes of every tinpot dictator on the planet and lining their corrupt pockets with aid money which will never reach the people.

Together with my colleagues inside and outside parliaments around the world, I am proud to be part of a movement that is about so much more than opposing the self-interested and profit-oriented views of the major parties. Our movement is about vision, responsibility and an optimism for the future. I look forward to working with Bob Brown to present the Greens vision in this parliament and to building a movement that strives for a more just, equitable and sustainable society here in Australia and around the world.

Sure. Only your vision for this wonderful world would have every bureaucratic restriction imaginable strangling economic activity, and have western democracies begging for forgiveness from every genocidal psychopath and islamofascist on earth.

The Nettle-idiot-left are ultimately not the least bit interested in finding a solution for any problem. They are people for whom ideas will always be more important than people.

The Nettle crowd are people who's entire mindset rests within a never-ending fantasy where no matter how successful their own reality is, they will still want to save us from it. Because they are smarter than us. Because they know better. The enemy is always capitalism, the americans, and individual choice, and these things must be stopped, no matter what level of catastrophe they visit upon everyone else in doing do. It doesn't matter if your solution to a problem makes the situation worse, as long as it's not what the americans are doing. Doing the non-american thing is Ideologically pure, and the Ideologically pure is always better, no matter what the cost.

We could see this ideology in every batty leftist USSR/Castro apologist in the west, who thought nothing of their Red Brothers exercising vicious tyranny over millions, because those same folk exuded the language of brotherhood, egalitarianism, and enlightenment, while the blood busily flooded under their bootheels. No acts of genocide, no level of cultural destruction, will in the minds of people like Nettle ever equal the horror of americans selling consumer goods to people who want them.

The pathological lunacy of the left never seems to evolve. It'll always be the same, pathetic, envy-laden screeching of a five -year old kindergarten bully who wants his ice-cream - not because he's hungry, but because someone else has it and he thinks they shouldn't.

If enlightened socialist thinkers like these ever controlled the world, we'd all be better off in Somalia.
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