The Irony Party of Australia's Electrophotelephralagraphanetic Pamphlet
archive
Minister
orders opaque inquiry
Following revelations an Australian resident suffering from schizophrenia has been accidentally held in immigration detention for the last 10 months, Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone yesterday announced an opaque inquiry will be conducted into the unfortunate mis-gaoling, to be held behind closed doors, well away from public fora, and relatively safe from media scrutiny.
After careful scrutiny and investigation over a period of three years, the most innocent man in the United States has finally been identified. He is Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib, arrested in 2001 in Afghanistan, and held without charge until the present day.
Irony
Party regrets death of Jesus
The Irony Party of Australia expresses regret for the death of Jesus H. Christ some 1970 years ago in Jerusalem during a critical period in Judean-Roman relations, commemorated by practitioners of the archaic 'Christian' religion this weekend in 'Easter' celebrations.
Irony
Party recognises independent Taiwanese
In the face of apparently openly bellicose action from the Chinese State, and the cautious response of the Governments of Taiwan, Australia, and other countries around the world, the Irony Party of Australia reiterates its unequivocal recognition of all those Taiwanese people who identify themselves as such.
Barnett
promises star-ship, cyber-slaves by 2010
In increasing desperation, on the eve of a State election, inane Western Australian Opposition Leader Colin Barnett has promised each WA citizen a dozen cybernetic servants who will do their every bidding, and pledged a Coalition government in the West would build an inter-stellar spacecraft by 2010 capable of reaching the nearest star systems within a decade after the project's completion.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan yesterday announced the appointment of vicious, elitist, fascist dragon and Murdoch hack Janet Albrechtsen to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's board for a period of five years, leaving the Government open to criticism it has abandoned covert attacks on the capable public broadcasting network and instead resorted to the throwing of grenades.
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello's decision to approve global mining giant Xstrata's takeover bid for Australia's last major iconic mining corporation Western Mining has surprised very few, and disappointed many. Among critics of Xstrata is Western Australian Coalition Senator Ross Lightfoot, who described the Swiss-based company as 'predatory' and declared it had previously treated Western Australia 'like a developing nation'!
Funds Flag Rise in Price of Fuck All
After Australian private health funds today unveiled their proposal for a 5% to 7% increase in the cost of private health insurance premiums the Federal Government promised the new deal would be 'heavily scrutinised' before it is approved with a small face-saving reduction in the New Year. If the proposal is approved a fifth consecutive annual increase to health fund members costs at double the rate of inflation will be introduced in April 2006.
While the Australian public flocked to the heavily-promoted schemes several years ago at the time of their introduction, the numbers of people signing on for private health care have since plateaued.
Saccharine spokesmouths for the health funds warn a rash of pragmatism among Australians has seen health funds used by consumers in a way that sometimes compromises the profits of private health insurance corporations and forces increased costs for members. Where it is clearly ideal in terms of corporate returns that exclusively fit and healthy people join health funds, it was always anticipated that a broad cross-section of the population would take advantage of private insurance. But the public has instead cheated the private health care system. Those who are more likely to need health care services - the elderly and infirm - have created a dangerous imbalance in the private health sector by signing on in greater numbers and for more substantial coverage. Meanwhile those who are healthy and unlikely to require expensive medical procedures have taken a self-serving and unco-operative attitude, staying away from expensive private health funds in an obstinate show of rude good health.
As a result the large corporations that run health insurance in Australia have had little option but to massively escalate costs, draw more heavily on the public purse in the form of the 30% subsidy paid by the Government to private health funds, and at the same time impose large additional or 'gap' payments on those requiring medical treatment.
This last impost has steadily increased in recent years and now averages $720 per hospital procedure. While this may seem absurd, and contrary to the intention, application or concept of health insurance, it must be remembered the large ‘gap’ payments are the result of the manipulation of the health system by a recalcitrant public.
Due to this consumer intransigence, community minded corporations struggling to bring improved health services to all solvent Australians are placed in an invidious position, criticised on all sides by a bitter nation unwilling to properly fund the private health care system single-handedly preserving the viability of inefficient public health.
Obviously, this is not a time to refer to the need for profits and consumer returns of health insurance funds. The mention of profits, or of consumer returns, in the context of an increase in a taxpayer-subsidised premium, is inappropriate. Best reserved for the reporting season, for the AGM. The appropriate discussion to be had annually in the context of private health care premiums is a sensible discussion of the high cost of health care, of the need for incentives to bring those recalcitrant and self-interested young and healthy people into private schemes.
0800
Analysts Convinced Replacement Packer Utter Bastard
Following the honourable death of mogul Kerry Packer on Monday night, there were concerns the share price of Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting Limited would fall sharply when the Australian Stock Exchange reopened after the Christmas break yesterday. But fund managers appeared confident of a relatively smooth transition, and Channel Nine's business reports throughout the day stressed the network's owners would maintain the growth of PBL under the leadership of the replacement Packer.
After years of life-threatening illness including a heart attack in 2000 and kidney failure, Packer had reportedly informed doctors he did not wish to continue adding machines that go 'ping' to his permanent medical entourage. Despite millions of dollars spent sustaining Packer through a few additional years of life, Packer has decided declining quality of life is no longer worth maintaining.
On Monday a team of doctors kept Packer alive long enough for the magnate's son to return to Australia and farewell his dying parent. On Wednesday James Packer went back to work, assuming control of the multi-billion dollar Publishing and Broadcasting Limited group of companies.
Concerns for the future of PBL have centred on the importance of the role of the central figure in the family-controlled. James Packer has spent the past decade being groomed for his current role, and has taken an increasingly active part in the running of the company. But his heavy involvement in the collapse of the failed communications company One.Tel, after PBL and sometime rivals NewsCorp together funded the telecommunications venture to the tune of $1 billion, continues to undermine the reputation of the younger Packer. Reports Packer wept when he informed former News Limited chairman Lachlan Murdoch of One.Tel's problems during a meeting in Murdoch's kitchen have engendered further investor concerns James may lack the brutal will and iron soul of his father.
But when the share market opened yesterday at ten a.m, PBL's share price rose slightly before settling slightly lower. And Only one per cent (21 cents) of the stock's value had been shed in relatively heavy trading by day's end.
If concerns over James Packer's capabilities were that he might prove too soft or human to lead a multi-national corporation, the relatively small dip in PBL's stock today alleviated those concerns. The company's stability indicates significant investors are confident the replacement Packer will prove every bit the utter bastard his father always was.
Kerry Packer was famous for bringing Australian culture low with incessant appeals to the baser human instincts on his television network and with cheap, ugly magazines such as Women's Weekly that promised little and delivered less. But in recent years, the company had branched out more widely into the exploitation of human tragedy in the form of casino ownership.
Indications are that James Packer is prepared to shoulder the responsibility for destroying countless lives with gambling machines and continue cheapening Australian culture with the shallow, glossy fare available on Channel Nine and through the smutty magazines of Australian Consolidated Press. December 29th 2005
December
28th 2005
0915 The Free Aceh movement has voluntarily given up militant action, disbanding its armed wing and giving up its weapons as part of a peace agreement forged in 2004 with the Indonesian Government. Of the national Indonesian Army only locally-based troops will remain on Aceh after the last of 24,000 members of the TNI operational command leave on Thursday.
0845 After Condolleezza Rice spoke provocatively in recent days about extending United States-style 'freedoms' to Cuba , long-standing Socialist president Fidel Castro has been forced to issue a warning to the United States that any US attack on Cuba will fail. Irritated as though by a cloud of buzzing insects, Castro derisively described the agenda of the United States and its National Security Advisory Rice as 'mad' after Rice spoke a democratic transition in the Caribbean island.
0815 The British Government has churlishly appealled a ruling by a British court which recognised the British citizenship of Guantanamo bay detainee David Hicks. While some would say the fact that David Hicks mother was born in Britain naturally entitles him to British citizenship, the Home Office in London suggests this reading is simplistic and fails to take into account the peevish annoyance of Tony Blair and Home Secretary Jack Straw over the matter. David Hicks has been held for four years by the United States in the offshore Guantanamo Bay facility since his arrest in Afghanistan and, unless released under US-British diplomacy, will be tried by Pentagon goons in a hastily contrived Military Commission designed to allow the US to prosecute its detractors without difficult legal complications. The British Home Office says charges faced by Hicks mean the citizenship application can be overturned. But a London-based lawyer for Hicks, suggests that two or three of the UK citizens the British Government had released from Guantanamo Bay faced almost identical charges, although these charges had not been technically filed.
0715 There have been Sunni-organised demonstrations in Iraqi cities in protest against recent allegedly fraudulent Parliamentary elections. Preliminary results indicate religious Shi'ite and Kurdish groups dominated the poll. Over 1000 complaints of voting irregularities on election day have been recorded, with a few dozen considered serious enough to have had an impact on the outcome. A United Nations adviser says the election need not be re-run despite inconsistencies. December 28th 2005
Packer Dead
According to breaking reports confirmed by Channel Nine, Australian media mogul Kerry Frank Bullmore Packer has reportedly shuffled off the mortal coil. The imposing figure, held responsible for most of the appalling content on modern Australian television screens in recent decades, died peacefully in his bed attended by his family. The body of Australia's wealthiest man had been badly poisoned over the decades by the leaking of toxic material from his black and twisted soul. Cancer was eating him, and heart problems and a kidney transplant had contributed to ill-health in recent years. PBL chairman James Packer, who will now steer the company through the imminent death of free-to-air television, may find himself before long shedding more tears of frustration and despair in Lachlan Murdoch's kitchen. December 27th 2005 0915
The
Heavy Lean of President George W Bush
The Washington Post reports today on further attempts by United States President George W Bush to apply effective tourniquets to address his bleeding credibility. Executive editors of major publications, including The Washington Post and The New York Times have been summoned to the White House and subjected to a critique by the President of their critique of the President and his tactics in Iraq and more generally in the United States' Fatuous War on Terror.
While both sides apparently agreed to keep the meetings , the presidential lean has proven an ineffective remedy to the rapidly falling credibility of the United States and its executive arm of Government. The Washington Post's executive editor Leonard Downie Jr published articles from November the second this year, several days after his meeting with Bush, that confirmed the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. And less than two weeks after a meeting between the President, New York Times executive editor Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, reporters from that august publication revealed in mid-December that the President had authorised secret wire taps of US citizens without court approval. December 27th 2005 0815
Russians
sickened by Capitalism
More than 80 Russians have been admitted to hospital in St Petersberg after a poison gas was released from canisters planted in the Hypermarket Maxidom, a homewares shop. Although Chechyen rebels are active throughout the region once controlled by the Soviet Union, authorities have ruled out terrorism in this instance. Instead, it is thought the poisoning of civilians was the result of commercial conflict between competing business interests. December 27th 2005 0730
December
23rd 2005
0800 Greenpeace activists have attempted for a second day to interrupt the harvesting of Minky whales by Japanese whaling ships currently operating off the coast of Antarctica. The protestors efforts to shield whales from harpoons in small boats were effectively disrupted with large water cannon. Footage taken by Greenpeace shows a whale being scientifically harpooned and dragged aboard one of the whaling vessels without interference from the protestors.
While it is recognised in Japan that only a humane scientific programme can properly control numbers of marine mammals, many critics of whaling around the world point to the whale meat on sale in Japanese markets as evidence of an underlying commercial imperative.
As part of measures aimed at addressing the difficult problem posed by negative publicity about whaling, Japanese authorities have now announced an expansion to their culling programme. From 2006 a quota of Greenpeace activists will be scientifically culled from the sea in addition to the hundreds of whales taken annually by Japanese researchers for the long-term benefit of the marine environment.
December
22nd 2005
0800 There are concerns today that progress in marine science could be set back years with reports Greenpeace activists are interrupting whaling experiments now underway in waters south of Tasmania. Japan's newly increased whaling quota allows 1000 of the sentient animals to be harpooned and carved up on the spot for the advancement of biological science. But water cannon had to be used by whalers yesterday to deter Greenpeace activists attempting to stop the carefully planned scientific expedition.
0730 As the show-trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein continues before lackeys of the United States in a Baghdad court-room, those who suffered at Saddam's hands during his decades of rule have continued to give evidence of horrific torture, murder, and carnage practised by the Iraqi State.
Hussein retained his composure while a witness gave a statement containing accusations of torture and murder. Most witnesses have chosen to speak incognito in order to protect themselves. But as accusations molten plastic was poured onto victims' skin allowed to dry, and then pulled off with skin and flesh still attached were put to the court, the witness turned repeatedly to look at Hussein.
Saddam made further attempts to divert the attention of the court from the vast misdeeds of his regime, at one point saying he wanted proceedings stopped so that he could pray. When the request was refused and Saddam began praying in court, the effect the trial is having on the former dictator was in evidence.
While Saddam's claims he has been abused at the hands of his American captors are very likely legitimate, the former ally of the United States will not be heard sympathetically. It has been suggested the substantiation of the allegations could result in Saddam being handed over to the new Iraqi authorities, who may prove even less generous as hosts.
0700 Oil prices rose overnight following the reported sabotage of a pipeline in Nigeria. Shell has reduced production in response to the incident. Since the sabotage is likely to improve revenues for all the oil majors in coming weeks, shareholders now say executives are legally obliged to regularly organise attacks on oil infrastructure in order to maximise returns.
0615 An Australian teacher in Gaza has been released after his kidnappers realised he was not a US citizen. The teacher, Brian Ambrosio, together with the Dutch principal of the American school where Ambrosio works, were kidnapped at gun point and held for several hours. The pair say they were well looked after, but were forced to make a statement calling for the release of Palestinian militants held by Israel.
Following the Federal Government's decision to ban universities from charging fees to students for services such as legal aid, health, food subsidisation, and counselling, Vice-chancellors have fwof-fwoffed, and taken a meeting at which (the minutes show) they declared themselves unanimously grumpy.
It's tricky because universities remain unwilling to provide gratis the essential services that high-paying students currently enjoy via specific, bracketed student services fees. But the disappearance of these services likely to follow Education Minister Brendan Nelson's legislative changes could prove unprofitable and unpopular with students paying ludicrously high fees of all kinds to attend the institutions.
I think a considerable number of the services currently offered will no longer exist because students will not pay, or won't be able to pay upfront for those services, because it'll have to be on a purely users-pay basis.
John Mullarvey, chief executive officer, Vice Chancellor's Committee quoted from AM on the ABC (full transcript on ABC site here)
If the fees are voluntary, or the services provided on a user pays basis, they may vanish altogether. This will undermine the value of the university and the Australian tertiary sector to the lucrative international students increasingly coveted by vice-chancellors. But nothing can be done, because the idea that universities might themselves put up the money is out of the question.
Many vice-chancellors were pleased to increase their universities' fees following the Federal Government's changes to tertiary sector fee structures in 2004. Most of Australia's fine and altruistic tertiary institutions took the opportunity to hike students imposts', not a few by the full amount allowable - twenty-five per cent. However, the new Federal Government decision has not met with the fickle vice-chancellors' approval.
One problem related to the funding of health, legal, and counselling services provided by through the fees is that the services have always been chronically under-funded, and run on a shoe-string . If universities or governments were to provide the same services to students in an uncapped capacity, they might be forced to implement them in the more expensive and expansive style to which the tertiary sector is accustomed, and pay those that provide them more substantial wages, although significantly less inflated than those the tubby vice-chancellors enjoy.
The Government will in any case apparently, and conveniently, make it difficult for vice-chancellors to provide anything to students at all except purely academic services. The National Union of Students, which has also enjoyed a degree of cash flow from the compulsory fee structure, is expected to make a desperate attempt to convince students it's worth funding their continued existence voluntarily.
To the person sitting in darkness
The recent rhetoric of US President of George W Bush, at his triumphant inauguration speech after winning a second term in office (text here), and in the traditional 2005 State of the Union Address (text here), has either cemented his reputation as a wit and satirist of note, or reinforced a foreign affairs doctrine that calls for rapid economic, cultural, and/or military conquest of the remainder of the globe by the United States and its tributaries during the coming century.
Whichever is the case, George W Bush's recent speeches bear an uncanny resemblance to some of those delivered by that other powerful orator and Great American, Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain.
Like Bush, Clemens was also a champion of world-wide liberty and freedom. At the beginning of the last century, after war between United States and Spain over territories in Mexico and in The Philippines had been recently concluded (Remember the Maine!) , and during the 'war' the US waged against the people of The Philippines prior to its occupation of the islands, he was the president of the Anti-Imperialists' League of New York, and a vocal critic of powerful Americans with an eye to joining the colonial race.
It was in this capacity, and as a result of this passionate conviction, that Clemens delivered, in 1901, the quasi-famous speech entitled 'To the Person Sitting In Darkness'. While many American students are required to read Twain's literary works, this cynical century-old rhetorical treatise on globalisation and exploitation is a less well-celebrated piece, little featured in public education curricula.
However, the clear similarities in style and substance between the rhetoric of President Bush, in 2005, in recent ceremonial presidential speeches, and Twain, in the construction in 1901 of an eloquent anti-Imperialist sneer may revive awareness of the iconic satirist's more piquant works. At the very least, even today this short piece stands as an ideal complement to the moving and persuasive rhetoric delivered in recent times by George W Bush.
To the person sitting in darkness - Samuel Clemens
