Raven Paradox

What a pack of animals that unruly mob of Abos were.

We are often told that we need to do more for the Aboriginal people, reconcile with them, provide them with more funding, better welfare services, better health care.

Up until now,  I have always agreed.

Whilst it is debatable as to whether or not the abos were the first people of Australia – it is thought by some scholars that they perhaps displaced a native people themselves – they have copped the rough end of the stick for a portion of the past 200 odd years.

The actions of the welfare recipients of the Tent Embassy yesterday, threatening the safety of our Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader was disgusting.

The Aboriginal people regularly complain about being stereotyped and treated like second class citizens.

The mob in Canberra yesterday showed why that is often the case.

If those 200 or so people applied themselves in the pursuit of work and education (for which they receive significant incentives  and benefits above and beyond that of non Aboriginals), as they did during their grubby protest yesterday, perhaps there would be no need for the Australian tax payer to continually reach into his and her pocket in order to prop them up.

The Tent Embassy should be burned to the ground. It is irrelevant and merely provides an excuse for a mob to sit around draining the coffers of the welfare system.

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Where possible, I always buy Australian owned products.

If it isn’t possible to buy something that is Australian owned, I at least try to ensure that it is Australian made.

The only exception being Fry’s Vegetarian food products and the Quorn meat free range. Whilst I know that Sanitarium is an Australian owned company, because of their “religious” status, Sanitarium is tax exempt and does not pay a single dollar of tax on their company profits. I can’t really stomach that fact and try to avoid them where possible, and besides, Fry’s in particular is a superior product to Sanitarium with Quorn a close second.

Up until a few years ago, one could still find an Australian owned equivalent of any of the foreign owned products in both Coles and Woolworths.

These days, it is nigh on impossible.

Coles have been pushing other brand products off their shelves for some time now, filling the space with their own range of products – usually sourced or made in China, Thailand and other places. No doubt this is done due to the “cost effectiveness” (read – increased profit margin).

I stopped shopping at Coles when I could no longer find several of my favourite Australian owned brands on their shelves any more.

Sadly, the same thing is happening at Woolworths. Each time I go there, more and more shelf space has been taken up by Woolworths’ imported, home brand products.

It isn’t enough that most of our iconic brands are now in foreign hands:

• Arnott’s
• Mynor
• Cottees
• Golden Circle
• Vegemite (for Christ’s sake)

Now, in the pursuit of greed and profit, the big supermarkets are pushing out the few Australian owned food manufacturers products and replacing them with imported rubbish.

Dick Smith has a list of the brands that we have lost:

Foreign ownership of Australian brands

He also has a list of reasons for buying Australian owned products:

Why buy Australian owned?

There are also a couple of sites that can help you find out if a product is truly Australian owned:

Australian owned products

Ausbuy

A couple of brands that I can wholeheartedly recommend that are Australian owned are:

• Roeslla (now back in Australian hands)
• 333
• The Conga foods range
• Aristocrat

Instead of eating a 9 month old baby sheep this Australia Day, buy some Australian owned products instead.

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George Calombaris is, in the opinion of this writer, a very average human being.

• An average chef
• Average looking
• Of average intelligence
• An average television performer
• Average when it comes to kindness to one’s fellow man

In this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, this fine specimen and advocate for workers rights, bitches and moans about having to pay his hard working staff penalty rates.

To quote:

And it’s not like they’ve had to go to uni for 15 years

Apart from someone doing a double degree or a doctorate, who does?

Does a uni degree make someone more employable or just provide them with knowledge?

Can a highly intelligent individual who has managed to get a degree in both dentistry and psychology be taught how to empathise with their patient?

Of course, Calombaris has been to uni for 15 years:

Calombaris studied at Box Hill Institute of TAFE and won the Bon Land scholarship in 1999 while an apprentice.

… so he is exceptionally well qualified to make such comments about education.

This is a man who has made a fortune out of:

• Cutting meat and vegetables
• Tasting things and over dramatically sighing when he approves
• Telling people what they should and shouldn’t like the taste of
• Making an arse out of himself on Australian television
• Being mean to people who aspire to become a chef
• Putting his smug face on things sold in Woolworths
• Claiming that he is in some way, superior to his fellow human

With all of the success that he has somehow stumbled into, he now wishes to penalise people who are only putting up with him as an employer in order to put themselves through uni and are probably living on two minute noodles, because he doesn’t quite have enough money just yet.

What a fucking disgrace.

George, you are, and will forever be in my eyes, a complete fuckwit.

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If there is one thing that annoys me more than one of those pathetic “baby on board” signs, or the fucking reindeer antlers and red noses on cars at Xmas time, it is those fucking “my family” stickers.

Homo sapiens have, without help, just like all other species, been breeding for about 200,000 years, and, that unlike most other species, have begun to devolve rather than evolve (I mean, any drunken bogan can slam its cock into the cunt of a drunken boganette and produce a rat tailed, pathetic oxygen thief who will be forever dependent on welfare or crime to get through life). Why do people feel the need to display the fact that they have managed to somehow fumble their way through the process of conception and child birth?

Despite the fact that these stickers are inane, conform to the herd mentality, are mass produced by Chinese child labour and are indisputably moronic, let’s take a look at what the above rendition illustrates.

A beer gutted alcoholic who is only good for slapping slabs of cow onto a burning furnace, two retarded, precocious children and a person of no specific gender attempting to electrocute a fish with some kind of magical powers.

I suppose that that is better than the usual stickers that you see, the man cooking the barbie, the woman going shopping, both kids are either cricket or tennis champions – the fucking Aussie stereotype.

That said, what kind or moron has any desire to emblazon their petrol guzzling four wheel drive (that’s right, they *aren’t* SUVs); for that is predominantly the kind of vehicle you see them on, with an indication of not only that they were somehow able to achieve what comes naturally to even the most unevolved forms of life, but that they are indeed proud of the fact that the father of the family is a drunk who beats his wife?

That is what I take from the above.

Fuck you, fuck your family, and a fatwa on the cunts who created the stickers.

Let’s get it straight – any moron can breed. Your family and friends know you have children – the rest of us don’t give a flying fuck.

You aren’t original for having a fictitious depiction of your “happy family” on the back of your car, you are a fucking sheep.

What I’d like to see were real representations of family life – Fritzl style.

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As I sit here, the rousing, uplifting music of the title screen of Skyrim taking me back to the time I spent as a manservant to a cruel man with a limp in the sleepy hamlet of Benediktbeuern in the 1930′s, I cannot bring myself to “press start”.

Not until I urge you all to boycott those conmen and shysters at EB.

The events:

• Receive a text from DEVICER, telling me that Skyrim is streetbroken (after having wound him up earlier in the day with a similar message, knowing he was on holidays)
• I call my local EB, a pleasant young lass answers.
  • “Hey, have you got Skyrim for the PS3?”
  • “Yes”
  • “Do you have any spare limited edition copies, I didn’t pre-order”
  • “Sure – come in, we’ll sort you out”
• Head into EB
• Go to counter and speak to the same lass “Hey, I called, after the limited edition copy of Skyrim for PS3″
• She asks me for ID… Huh?
• Refuses to sell it to me because I hadn’t pre-ordered despite telling me on the phone that she would.
• Grudgingly I ask the best price she can do on the normal version.
• She tells me “$109″ (same price as the limited edition)
• I ask if she can match Dick Smith or JB.
• She claims that there are none of those outlets in the area, and nobody else has it out yet, so no.
• I walk down to Dick Smith (100m away) and purchase a copy for $79.90
• I walk back up, present the copy and inform them that they lost a sale and my business forever.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened. They did it with the two copies of Dark Souls and UC3 that I recently went to purchase as well.

Usually I avoid buying from DSE because they are owned by Woolies and Woolies give the farmers a hard time.

I also avoid buying from JB because they treat their staff very poorly.

I go to EB or Game. Well, used to.

Never again will I shop at EB.

They inflate the price of games without any reason whatsoever.

Whilst I am aware that DSE and JB have more buying power, Game don’t try to sting the punter for over the odds prices, and they are a gaming only store, like EB.

It makes it even worse, the pure profiteering that EB indulge in, considering the value of the $AUD.

I urge you, comrades, do not buy Skyrim from EB – never set foot in an EB store again.

They don’t give a toss about gaming or gamers – they merely want to take as much of your hard earned as they possibly can.

Fuck EB – I shall never set foot into one of their stores unless it is to show them that I have purchased from a competitor.

Fair Trading will also get a little note from me, highlighting the fact that they have engaged in dishonest and misleading practices.

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I stumbled across a website called “Tolerance is our demise” today, courtesy of:

http://mike-stuchbery.com/2011/09/01/1332/

It perplexed me a little bit, I initially thought that it was a serious, racist, bigoted, rabid right wing rant about the usual topics, you know, multiculturalism, homosexuals, the Greens… but the more I scrolled through the poorly cobbled together diatribe, I began to realise that it was really a very clever troll.

The first paragraph gave me the hint:

Thank you for visiting our new Internet Website. We want to give you the opportunity to contact us to tell us about your concerns, views and opinions as to the way that our country is heading.

“new Internet Website” – I didn’t know that there was any other kind. That phrase kind of reminded me of something that Pauline Hanson would have said, something for which Mike Carlton often parodied her for.

We are hoping to encourage all average hard working Australians to adopt our catch phrase

“Tolerance is our Demise”™

After reading this (and searching ATMOSS to see if there was a trademark for that “slogan”), it really began to twig. There is no trademark, pretending that there was one is another clever part of the troll.

tolerance to “the not so silent minority” who shout out their opinions very loudly and lobby the government to have their minority opinions implemented even though they are not the opinions or wishes of the majority of hard working Australians. But most of all, it’s about tolerance to governments that treat their own people with the greatest of contempt by giving hand-outs to people who arrive here illegally while treating their own people who have worked and paid taxes, who were either born and raised here or came here legally and worked for a better life, as second class citizens!

Now, that paragraph – if you can call it that – is classic BoltJones doublespeak, and so cleverly crafted that you would be forgiven for thinking that these people were actually right wing nutcases instead of some clever uni students parodying the far right extremists.

We believe that those few people who stand on street corners and shout out their views have not helped to create the Australia that most of us have worked hard for. In many instances they are students who have never worked and paid taxes or have mortgages to pay; they are lawyers and a few journalists with self-interest; they are welfare recipients who have not any intention of ever working (and thus contributing through taxation) with a lot to lose. The average hard working Australian is out working and paying taxes to support these minority groups and therefore hasn’t got time to go out to stand on street corners to protest.

The penny drops here – the polarising comments, designed to draw media attention and highlight the hypocrisy of the far right.

Amusingly, there were people with the stickers advertised on these guys website, posted on placards, advertising outside the electoral office of Anthony Albanese he other day

The creators of this website have cleverly parodied those people by claiming that only people for whom we should have no tolerance can afford to take the time off to protest, as your average, hard working Aussie doesn’t have the time to do this.

Brilliant!

We are sick and tired of ordinary Australians who love their country being labelled “red-necks, racists and bigots” for speaking the truth, their only agenda being to keep Australia a great place for future generations. Whilst we are in favour of inviting people from other countries to come to live in our great country, we believe that we should be able to decide who we invite.

A very clever paraphrasing of the famous “We will decide who comes to this country” speech by the darling of the right, John Winston Howard.

It is a clever parody in many ways, particularly seeing as these cunning lefties who have designed this “hate site” know that the lefties that they seek to bait to rail against the extreme right will pick up on the “inviting people from other countries to… our great country” and indulge in a diatribe of their own about the original inhabitants of Australia.

It doesn’t matter where you were born and it doesn’t matter what colour your skin is. If you want to come to this great country and contribute and be a good Australian and live our way of life that our forefathers fought and died for, and not try to change our ideals, principles, standards, morals and ethics which all contribute to our life-style, then please come. You are very welcome! But please don’t bring with you any of the “rubbish” that caused you to want to leave your country of origin. Leave it behind and come to this great country of Australia for a better life. After all, isn’t that what you want to come here for – a better life?

Another very clever troll,

Imagine how the extreme leftists will react when they read the bit about the “rubbish” being left behind. They will moan on and on about small pox, influenza, alcohol and petrol…

They will talk about the destruction of “sacred sites”, the ruining of dreamtime myths, the forcing of Christianity on the indigenous people, the complete disregard for the culture of the people who had lived here for 40,000+ years or so…

This is quite brilliant really.

I think that this website is an extremely clever marketing ploy from the desperate powerbrokers of the ALP.

It is far too accurate a representation of the extreme right to be anything other than a parody.

The Greens do a brilliant job of parodying the extreme left (and actually acting it out), whereas Abbott and co have to exercise a modicum of self restraint.

Old Barnaby, he never holds back, but I strongly suspect that that some troublesome mischief makers on the left are responsible for this website, it is far too hypocritical and amusing to be anything else than a cleverly disguised troll that hopes to boost the flagging support for a flailing ALP.

The only place that they buggered up and gave a hint that they might actually be real right wing extremists was in the mailto link used to contact them – “tolerance” was misspelt as “tolerence” – though this could be another part of the elaborate troll.

Well done to the mischief makers who built this site – the extreme right couldn’t have done a better job of highlighting the dangers of neo conservatism.

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Lucifer over London.

Panic on Wall Street.

The Aussie dollar going below parity for the first time in five months.

Just what is going on in this world?

These are the headlines, dominating the media at the present moment.

One would think that the world is about to come to an end.

Interestingly, there is scant mention of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, nor the hundreds of thousands of people there who survive on a daily basis with less than you or I would eat for breakfast.

Nor is there mention of the millions of displaced people, refugees, who are living in limbo due to governments such as ours being unwilling (not unable) to provide them with even temporary care and accommodation.

No, our investments in shares, our superannuation, our mortgages, our jobs – they are all at risk – and this is much more important.

You might mistake me for someone who cares, for being a “bleeding heart liberal”, a leftist, a greenie…

I am none of those things.

I am a pragmatist.

I lost over $100k during the “GFC”.

It pissed me off – I had worked hard and invested diligently to accumulate it.

What if I had invested even 10% of that into a township in a developing country?

I would have not received any return on that “investment”, but what would have been the flow on effect?

Would that township have been able to build a well, raise a herd of cattle, plant some grains?

Would their community have grown, began to build a sustainable agriculture industry?

What if I only gave 2%, of that $100k, and everyone who can afford to buy a coffee each day on their way to work did the same?

Would we need to worry about GFC2, or would there be a sustainable second world economy developing to embrace the fall?

Right now, we in the “west” are deeply concerned about our way of life.

Right now, in Australia, America and the UK, over 50% of the population are obese.

In Australia, we have 108% of the population owning mobile telephones.

We have retailers arguing about who can provide the cheapest flat screen TV.

I think that we are missing the point a little in all the hysteria surrounding the latest round of financial turpitude in the global markets.

Whilst I have no intention of giving up my Mac Book Pro, my ‘droid, my PS3, my insatiable thirst for Evian, my LCD TV or my penchant for gourmet tomatoes , I am also not going to cry foul over the latest trough in the rollercoaster ride that is the global economy that we have all signed up to.

We slavishly consume, we pay the price that such consumption dictates.

If we evaluate our own actions, our own comparative wealth to our brethren in Africa and elsewhere – do any of us have the right to bemoan any hardship that comes our way as a result of the blazing inferno that has become of the beast that we continually fuel with our consumerism and vapidity?

Are we that hypocritically abhorrent?

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I have had enough, so it is time for a rant.

I hate people – loathe them in fact, always wanting something from you like knowledge about how your day has been, how you are, what is happening in your world… when all that they really want is to steal some precious oxygen and prompt you to query them on things of vast importance to them but which have absolutely no merit to you (or anyone else for that matter).

The rhetorical questions that we ask one another in our daily lives, as if by rote, have been amplified through “social media phenomenons” like facebook and twitter.

Whilst I am a self confessed user of both – it makes sense in the industry that pays me to laze about drinking wine on the weekends; I loathe the new cretinous sub class of humanity that has been given birth by these tools.

The common variety facebook whore will have between 200-300 friends.

If they are using it for business purposes – well and good, however if, as was the case with one oxygen thief that I knew, one of these virtual parasites has, lets say 372 friends and then comes crying when “two people have deleted me from facebook”, expecting sympathy; then they may as well neck themselves and do us all a favour.

Fuck me… this, well, to put it bluntly, piece of human waste honestly expected me to care that she had lost two “friends” from her cast of hundreds – and, more to the point, was indignant when I asked her who they were.

“Well, um, I don’t know, but the point is that I am upset and my other friends cared but you don’t”

Indeed I don’t, and you had better wake the fuck up to yourself if you think that the measure of your worth is gauged by a number next to your name on an insidious marketing tool like facebook.

Who cares how many friends you have in the virtual world?

I have decided that enough is enough.

In the “real world” – the place that I choose to go about my daily life – you know, the one that requires effort, engagement on a real level, getting the fuck up out of bed in the morning even when you really can’t be arsed facing the world yet again, I probably have what I would consider 10-20 friends if one doesn’t count family and colleagues.

I got to the outrageous point whereby I had 120+ “friends” on facebook. Yes, I was guilty of allowing virtual friendless social parasites to befriend me, no doubt feeding their burgeoning friend lists with the arrogant fuel that their narcissistic desires fed merrily upon – but it was fun for me to imagine their horror and despair when they scanned their “friends” list only to discover that it had been reduced by one when I evilly deleted them.

Basically my new strategy with facebook is thus:

• if I like you, you are in
• if I work with you, to avoid complications and uneasy lunchroom conversation and you don’t have a direct line to HR or the exec com team, you are in
• if there is some kind of mutual benefit to us being linked virtually (say, you can get me backstage at Cradle of Filth) you are in
• if I would have a beer/wine or selected spirit with you without having to put my mind into neutral, you are in
• if we have shared a night of drunken debauchery that doesn’t bear repeating here, you are probably in
• if you were to tell me that your mother/father/brother/sister/cat/significant other had suffered a hideous disfigurement and I envisage that I couldn’t care less, you are out.
• if I really don’t give a fuck what you are having for dinner, what time you are going to work, what your kids are doing, what household chores you are performing, what illness you are currently suffering, what you are doing on the weekend, how miserable you are feeling or what the fuck is going on with you and the love of your fucking life – you are out.
• If you are a grade A oxygen thief – then that is my fault, you should never have been on the list in the first place.

Call me arrogant – I don’t give a fuck, but the time has come people – time to take a stand.

Who really cares if:

• “Jemima really wishes that she didn’t have to work today” – toughen up bitch, the rest of us are dragging our arses out of bed
• “Johnny is pissed off that he missed out on tix for Vibes” – get a fuckin Visa debit you moaning fuck
• “George is devastated that Chloe left him for the pool boy” – should have learned how to fuck George – and waxed your back
• “Matilda is drunk” – gee, thanks for that pearl of wisdom you sad fuck
• “Cleopatra is hunting for Antony” – there are dating sites for that.

What I want to read are things like:

• “Nathan is really pleased with the quality of his new midget butler”
• “Harold has mastered the Pakistani Drill Press”
• “Lethal was not amused by the Angry Pirate that she had received”
• “Clint was devastated that he only had a handful more weeks of Warhawk left”

Get creative people – noone really gives a fuck if you are downtrodden, oppressed or bitter – that is what the news is for.

Harden up and cull people, cull until you can cull no more – even if it means culling me.

Time to commit some more congregaticide (faux latin for social networking culling)

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That this matter involving Kevin Rudd’s three meetings with Brian Burke even rated a mention in parliament (let alone the protracted airing that it has been given) shows just how farcical and desperate the Howard government has become.

Over at the SMH, Aaron Timms paints the matter in this amusing light:

“It used to be that the Panama was a sign of style and sophistication. Now it is short for suburban Italian meals and illegal mobile phone conversations involving repeated use of the word mate. Even over the past week, as the hat has remained malevolently glued to Burke’s scalp, it has been hard to escape the feeling that somewhere underneath that straw crown there must be at least a couple more Labor ministers hiding from the fact that they once shared a cream bun with Burke in the late 1990s.”

But in all seriousness, the vitriol that has been slung at Rudd in parliament by Abbott, Costelloand their increasingly rattled master Howard has been extraordinary – not the least when one considers the age old adage “let him without sin…”.

The mudslinging almost backfired spectacularly when it was discovered that one of the Liberals senior ministers, Ian Campbell, had not only met with Burke, but invited him into his office.

In a truely bizarre set of circumstances, instead of this becomming a problem for the government, it actually had the effect of reintroducing the long forgotten “ministerial code of conduct“.

One could be forgiven for wondering if we are living in a parrallel universe.

This government has a long and well publicised history of lies, coverups, disgraceful behaviour, scandals and misinformation.

- The alleged WMDs and the invasion of Iraq
- The Vivian Salon debarcle
- The David Hicks disgrace
- Children overboard
- No GST, never ever
- The Peter Reith phone card affair
- The bribes paid to Saddam Hussein under the auspices of the AWB

… hold on… Bribes? Saddam Hussein?

Yes indeed. And the two ministers who oversaw these bribes, Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile (Downer allegedly even signed a document authorising the bribes) not only maintain their roles within Howard’s government, but they are the Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively – two of the most senior positions in the government.

They may not have known that the $290 million, yes, $290,000,000 was going toward directly funding Saddam Hussein’s regime, but the incompetence that they displayed in allowing this terrible transgression should not only have cost them both their jobs but also their entitlements and superannuation.

What did poor old Ian Campbell do?

He met a fat, balding man in a Panama hat.

He has been forced to fall on his sword so that Howard and his minions may continue to pursue this pathetic line of attacks on Rudd.

This all reeks of a very deep sense of desperation and fear. The government has realised that there is a strong desire for change in the Australian populace and know that Rudd is a very credible alternative.

Their mudslinging is puerile and pathetic – what is worse is that they expect the Australian people to swallow the crap that they are dishing up.

Paul Keating put it wonderfully when interviewed on the ABC today:

“The little desiccated coconut [Howard] is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on,”
“Brian Burke and Julian Grill, they are the Arthur Daley and Terry of the West Australian Labor Party. They are like the wallpaper over there. You can’t visit Perth without running into them”

The best quote was the one that he left for Costello though:

“He’s all tip and no iceberg”

I can’t wait to vote this year…

Technorati Tags: Kevin Rudd, Brian Burke, Ian Campbell, John Howard, Peter Costello, WA Inc, Tony Abbott, hypocrisy, Paul Keating, Alexander Downer, Mark Vaile, AWB, David Hicks, GST

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What the bloody hell is going on?

Is nothing sacred?

Why is everything becoming Americanised?

The latest disgrace in the Americanisation of Australia is the importation of that damned acronym “SUV”.

The only time that I tend to watch commercial television is during the cricket season and this year it seems that we have stopped referring to 4WDs as 4WDs.. possibly due to the bad connotations that the word conjures up in the mind of the environmentally aware/pedestrian and smaller vehicle safety conscious Australian.

This…

… is a 4WD. It is not an SUV.

Harold Scruby – sit the fuck up and take some notice of this deceitful attempt to get more of these annoying mechanical hulks onto our roads.

Technorati Tags: 4wd, suv, harold scruby, americanisation, australia, car

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