I am back, sorry for the break

Hi everyone (i know that probably only includes myself) but i am back and dertermined to actually add some more content to this blog.

heres hoping

What does Howard think about

I was watching the TV news the other day and i found myself smack bang in the mindset of a censervative politician. Whilst i have to admit it wasn't a story about war or locking up refugees and as a matter of fact wasn't really the point of the story at all, but it really did let people know (if they noticed it in the first place) what rightwingers actually think about.

The story in question was the little bit of a media stunt carried out by Family First over their push for the government to reduce the tax on petrol by 10c a litre, because it is bad for "aussie families" (obviously migrant families and people not in families must pay a secret lower rate of fuel so as not to be affected). In response to this the news crossed to a televised radio interview with John Howard who said that the proposal was flawed because it would cost somewhere in the range of 3.5 billion dollars and he claimed that if people were to know that he had cut that much money off fuel taxes they would think "why don't you use the money on something else, something like erm, err, erm, more money for the army or erm, err, erm, tax cuts" (now that is not a direct quote but the essence, erms and errs, included of what he said)

Now forgetting that he is counterposing tax cuts with tax cuts, the only other thing that he could think of spending 3.5 billion dollars on was the army on a institution which is designed to kill people. I wonder what people on hospital waiting lists think or people in overcrowded classrooms or people struggling to cope on low pay or welfare with all the cuts to services. The fact is that Howard does not goive two shits about 'battlers' but is preoccupied in shoring up our military to further the aims of his real constituency the big businesses that thrive on Australian imperialism. Oh, and opposing tax cuts with tax cuts, but even then maybe he prefers tax cuts that descrininate against the poor and which puts huge wads back in the pockets of the rich than in seeing an across the board tax cut on something that almost everyone uses.

Who are the real terrorists

Recently we have seen the Australian Muslim Advisory Committee recomend to the Australian government that Hezbollah should be taken off the terrorist list, a request that John Howard claims he won't be swayed on. The media also continue to include terrorist as a prefix whenever it talks about Hezbollah. But are they terrorists? and what actually is a terrorist?

Most people would argue that terrorists are people who use terror to achieve political aims. That is, they create terror by deliberatly targetting enemy civillians. So does that describe Hezbollah? Zionists argue that it does, that unlike the Israel Defence Force Hezbollah targets civillians.

So lets now look at the facts. Lets compare the casualty figures between Israeli's and Lebanese and look at the proportion of civillians who have been killed.

Israel claims that 68 Israelis have been killed in the conflict which includes 41 military personnel. That leaves a civillian death toll of 27. That is 39.7% of casualties have been civillians.

Lebanon claims that 900 Lebanese have been killed. With figures of Hezbollah and military deaths ranging from 106 (from the UK Guardian) to 300 (from Israel) leaving a civillian death toll of between 794 and 600. That puts the percentage of civillian deaths at between 88.22% and 66.66% of all Lebanese casualities.

Those figures beggar the question 'Who are the real terrorists?'

I knew Irony was lost on Americans

Watching TV the other day i realized that underneath the public persona of a talking baboon George Bush is really a very intellegent person.

why? you ask. Well we all know from his public speeches that big W appears a bit short of that important matter which resides between your ears. But the catch is that is just a ruse. Catch him off guard and he is really a quite intellegent person giving insightful analysis in the current situation in the Middle East.

See whilst you may think that a sensible analysis would look at the effects of Isreals occupation of Palestine, the denial of political rights to Muslims, the brutal treatment of Arabs in Palestine and previously and recently in Lebanon, as part of the reason why most other people in the region despise the Zionist state and the US for providing the military and economic assistance that allows it to laud over the region. Thus, why most people support the resistance movement who are fighting back with such disparate means ranging from children throwing stones who a few thousand small calibre rockets.

But no. Big W knows that this is wrong all you need to do which is 'ironic' is to get Syria to make Hezbollah stop this shit and it would be all over. No need to worry about who is responsible for rebuilding Lebanons infrastructure, no need to worry about the millions of Palestinians who have been kicked of their land, no need to worry about the thousands of Palestinians and other Arabs locked up without charge in Isreali jails.

See he really is is intellegent. Now that is ironic, or is it?

The Australian Editorial watch

It struck me reading the comment section of yesterdays "Australian" that if you look closely at any conservative comment especially if it is aimed at so called "lefties" it becomes apparent at how blatent thier hypocracy actually is and is just a smokescreen to justify a world view which places profit as the supreme god especially if it comes in the traditional form of share dividends or bank interest (don't mention decent wages or good working conditions).

The example i am refering to is the commment by that arch free marketeer David Flint about the attempt (which failed!) by a ABC journalist to get the ABC to publish an biography of the right wing pin up Alan Jones published.

Flint shares with us an intersting anecdote about how he couldn't find a copy of his book criticising the "liberal elites" (read small l liberal) for being out of touch with the Australian "mainstream" in any ABC bookshop. He was told by the attendent that they didn't stock that book because only books from the left sell. Now what would you think would be the reaction of this arch free marketeer who in the same article expressed his disagreement over what he termed Jones's agrarian socialism?

You would think that he would welcome and champion ABC shops market driven approach as a step forward away from the "economically inefficiencies" of state run organisations. Surely ABC Shops are just supplying what the consumers demand surely this is the best way to meet equilibrium. Surely he isn't argueing that ABC shops interfere with the free market and provide books by conservatives that they know doesn't have market demand.

But he does. This champion of the free market inadvertantly showed his ideological hypocracies to the world. We can have free market in everything from education to health and that we should remove all impediments to free trade, but we can't allow the free market to determine that 'leftie' speak dominates the bookshelves of ABC stores.

What a world

Hi everyone

This is imatrot signing on with my first post to my new blog "Big red house".

Big red house will aim to provide people (and hopefully myself) with some sort of understanding of the of the world, space and the universe (because you have to aim big) but will probably degenerate into semi incoherant innane ramblings.

But hey! hopefully we can have some fun along the way.