I wonder sometimes what country I'm living in. I've always liked being Australian. I've been happy knowing that the evil bastards who sent my family here in chains miscalculated - we didn't die, we survived and thrived , and our children ran barefoot in the sun.

So I've been jumping up and down and screaming WARNING - shouting from the rooftops and equating John W. Howard, the evil little runt, with the totalitarian regime of Hitler.

But Howard and A/G Ruddock sound increasingly like South African prime ministers from the 1960s. The inward looking, xenophobic cowardice of Howard's Australia is a copy of the South African experience.

And why not? The South Africans learnt apartheid from us in the first place - they merely borrowed the Queensland rulings on Kanakas. Remember Kanakas? We shanghaied them, we abducted them, kidnapped them, dragged them away against their will from Kanaky. We took them in chains to Queensland and forced them to work on the cane fields.

First off, a friend from Canada points out that our words for political parties are pretty silly. (They weren't her words, but you know what I mean).

In this case, it's very important to understand

1. Australian Liberal Party .. are not 'liberal', they are the conservatives, the bosses, (and often the useless great grandchildren of the thieving squatters who still believe in the feudal system.) Nowadays a sorry bunch of homophobes, wife-beaters, petty thieves, obese bean counters and drunken sots, lead by an evil little egomaniac whose face is a nasty shade of brown from lapping the fundament of the amerikan president

2. The Australian Labor Party (their spelling)... originally stood for the working people of this country, the ones who built this nation and created its wealth. But nowadays it's difficult to distinguish them from the Liberals

3. National Party.. used to be called the Country Party. I preferred the old name, at least you knew where they stood. Squatters, bloody squatters, with their grasping paws out for more of our money

4. Democrats .. a breakaway sect of the Liberals. They pretend to be 'decent liberals'. Their education is sadly lacking if they think we can't see an oxymoron a mile high

5. The Greens... small in parliament but terrifying to the big boys. Both Liberal and Labor were so frightened of a Green getting a seat in the House that they made a deal with the bible-thumping misogynist reactionary arch-conservative 'Family First'

I should also mention Family First. This is the Assembly of God. Enough said.

P.S. Squatters are "persons who placed themselves upon public lands without license." The English Government had difficulties controlling the settlement of land, younger sons of inbred aristocrats and assorted born-to-rule bully boys just sailed out here with a few bodyguards and faithful retainers and squatted on vast tracts of land.

(No one asked the original inhabitants - a bit of poisoned flour kept them quiet).

By 1836, for example, most of the State of Victoria was "owned" by a handful of squatters. Their descendants still haunt us.

Some really offensive people!
Easy to find, all in one spot - the new website Offensive People features all of the usual suspects, plus a few more offensive arseholes you wouldn't believe could walk the face of the earth.

VICTORIA Update on Police Shootings : The Office of Police Integrity Report tabled in State Parliament yesterday said officers failed to follow correct procedures in five of the past six fatal shootings, and that some of the victims might still be alive if officers had performed as they should. (duh)

One shooting criticised was that of alleged murderer and convicted criminal Wayne Joannou, 26, in February.

He was killed when special operations group officers fired 25-30 shots at him in South Melbourne. Four SOG officers opened fire as Mr Joannou raised a shotgun towards them from the back seat of the parked car he was in. The OPI report said the lives of the two people in the car with Mr Joannou were put at risk and that stray shots ricocheted off the car, potentially placing police and members of the public in danger.

It criticised the level of planning and questioned the decision to attempt the arrest while others were in the car.

Most vulnerable are the victims of police shootings
The OPI report also said badly trained police were shooting dead too many mentally ill people.

Seventeen of the 32 people shot dead by Victoria Police since 1990 had a mental illness disorder. (Five of the six killed in the past three years were mental illness patients) Mentally ill people are clearly over-represented in fatal police shootings.

The report also criticised supervisors for failing to properly assess risks before sending police in to situations in which people were shot dead.

It recommended changing the structure of the SOG, paying particular attention to the command structure and protocols for deploying the elite officers.

The report also found:

THE recent increase in police shootings was fostered by a gradual decrease in the training of officers in how to handle volatile situations.

TRAINING deficiencies existed across all levels of Victoria Police.

SENIOR officers were reluctant to properly evaluate police shootings and learn from them.

INCIDENT debriefings in three of the past four shootings by uniformed officers were inadequate.

FAMILIES of people shot by police were not receiving any support.

NEITHER inspector in charge of the SOG was properly qualified in safety and tactics.

THREE SOG members involved in the raid that led to the fatal shooting of Mohamed Chaouk in April were armed with equipment they were not qualified to use.

What's going on with immigration laws? A Melbourne man was convicted of burglary, stripped of his Australian residency and sent to Serbia, stateless and destitute.

Robert Jovicic was deported to Serbia, a country he had never before set foot in, with a language he does not speak, in June last year despite having lived in Australia for all but two of his 38 years.

Mr Jovicic arrived in Australia from France with his Serbian-born parents in 1968 when he was just two years old. But last year then-immigration minister Philip Ruddock deported him on character grounds after he spent time in jail for a string of burglaries to support his heroin habit.

Serbia has refused to recognise Mr Jovicic as a citizen, meaning he is now stateless and has no right to work or obtain welfare benefits in Belgrade.

Womens Web Get-Together

Yes, it's that time of year again. Meet in the Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy (Melways 2c-1c on Saturday December 3rd at 1.00pm. You'll see the banner near the bandstand.

Bring lunch to share, and then on to Old Homestead Inn, Queens Pde, Nth Fitzroy at 3.00 p.m (Melways reference 2C- 3E)
Topic: Change.

A charmimg letter from behind the gated community of inherited stolen wealth in Toorak - a blot on our city

"John Howard is an IR wuss
As a long-time Liberal supporter, I was devastated at his backdown from a completely casualised workforce, dismantling of the anti-competitive and redundant unions and not abolishing unfair dismissal laws for all businesses.

And the Government's insistence on a minimum wage sounds like, and is, a joke coming from a party allegedly committed to the principles of the free market. Why shouldn't the market determine the price? Without more bold reforms, the proposals are useless and will have a negligible effect on business and the economy. "
James Wilson, Toorak

Have you any idea, James Wilson, that people acrually live on the minimum wage? That people actually live on $420 a week? I'm not talking about your gym fees and your petrol James Wilsom, nor your restaurant bill

I KOFI ANNAN, secretary-general of the united nations, would like to ask
your partnership in reprofilling funds over $250m in excess ,the funds would
be coming via a string of selected banks in Europe and Asia.

The funds in question were generated by me during the oil for food program
in Iraq.

I have been getting scandals/ controversy in this regards, you can read
more on the links below-

You would be paid 5% as your management fee. please do not write back
directly to me via my official email address as all further correspondence
should be sent to my private mail box. As soon as you indicate your interest
i will give further details, remember to treat this mail and transaction as
strictly confidential.
I will wait to get your urgent correspondence via my private mail box-

WSWS
Canada Free Press

John W.Howard says he is 'glad' that the wrongfully deported Australian citizen, Vivian Solon, is back in Australia, but says he will not be personally apologising to her.

He also says he cannot guarantee the same mistake will not happen again.

Ms Solon finally arrived back more than four years after she was deported to the Philippines on the mistaken belief she was an illegal immigrant and six months after she was found in a home for the abandoned. Solon had been seriously injured in a car accident and, 24 hours after this, had been taken by wheelchair to the airport and dispatched, with severe head injuries, to Manila.

I can't really say how this happened, but some very nice people have unfortunately died and left me oodles of money which is fortunate for me

It's an ill wind that blows no good and, though my heart is touched by the passing of Mr Bradley, Mr Greer, Mrs Benson and the hitherto unknown relation Mr. G. Jasper Duffy, I can't help but experience a wild surge of joy at the news.

There's just one small problem with a minor stamp duty fee and apparently some government official has decreed that international transactions require a small deposit first

I plan to travel, see the world, drive through Paris in a sports car with the wind blowing in my hair

This is a great shot of the rally yesterday

For the clearest and most well laid out article on the IR changes from our extremist government, I can't beat Sue Bolton Howard's lies on industrial relations ‘reforms'

More images from the rally today.
Apparently these people are "trying to turn the tide of public opinion .."

The photos are starting to come in from the rally ..



I just love the miracles of modern technology, don't you? In my day we had the old Brownie Box