Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt – Part Two.

So how do we have an honest discourse? How are all positions to be heard? Not though the media as it stands; with an ever-decreasing amount of companies running the show, and bearing in mind that they are not, by any means, altruistic organizations committed to the well-being of the grazing herd, the divergence of stories in the MSM is minimal.

Of course, Nutbags Athletic are not playing on a level pitch with their elected overlords. Establishment United can only harness the entire fire-power of the Western media – Rupert Murdoch alone can reach 4.5 billion souls – while the Nutbags are clearly have the upper hand as they coax broadband connections into life and lock their wheezing PCs on ‘Argue’.

However, there is no surprise that although the mainstream media are always on the side of truth, that truth is always on the side of the status quo. Be they laying down the Official Word for good and loyal patriots or fighting a rear guard action against wild-eyed anarchists, the MSM can always, up to a point, be relied upon to do Establishment United’s heavy lifting; even the multitude of balls-ups by the Bush administration have been given not much more than a cursory glance but that might just be, considering the multitude of sins they have to choose from, because there simply isn’t room.

The whole situation could change tomorrow if it suited the vested interests for it to do so, but it doesn’t, so the show goes on, and given the unstoppable force of the global media it is no great shock that Establishment United is ahead of the game; they have most of the star strikers and they not only own the rule book they rewrite it daily, and if they don’t like the referee’s decision, hey! They just ignore it!

But as these are the defining issues of our times and they must not be off limits for discussion and debate. Is the Iraq War going to explode exponentially and turn into a global conflagration, or is it the victory for democracy that the Coalition says it is? How can the voters of a liberal democracy be confident in the claims of the government if the tales coming out of the war zone are so diametrically opposed?

The Iraq war could be fought because the powers that be knew that their rationale for it was bollocks, and because of this they could change it around at will. They could never be upfront about the real reason, but fake reasons? Hey, they got them! How many do you want?

The logic that allowed the Iraq War to go ahead – the overwhelming threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing, the immediacy of the threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing about the immediacy of the threat – was shouted long and loud from every rooftop, and printed on the pulp of every tree.

It was inescapable, and those that argued were fools, cretins, appeasers – if we don’t face the threat head on, cried our rulers, we shall surely rue the day. Those that said we must be careful were brushed aside with a brute force that only the most determined can muster because, shrilled the western warlords, its all so obvious.

Of course we now know otherwise, but at the time, well… The thing is that many, many people at the time knew that the intelligence was dodgy, and it was proved to be; now, however, we have a new enemy, and once again we are face with the overwhelming threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing, the immediacy of the threat of annihilation and the cost of doing nothing about the immediacy of the threat, but this time Establishment United are not so gung-ho about its amelioration.

Now, careful is the watchword. Now, they want to make sure that the intelligence is absolutely perfect before we engage the foe. Now, they say, we really need to talk about it, and talk about it some more, because it really wouldn’t do if someone got hurt. 'Histroy' sniffed Australian John Howard just today, 'is littered with examples of where nation have over-reacted to presumed threats, only to their great long-term disadvantage', without it occuring to him for a nanosecond that this comment pertains just as happily to his government's Iraq excursion.

All good lawyers never ask a question if they don’t know the answer. However, the global warmists have asked a new question of Establishment United, and because they don't have an answer they like, our Dear Leaders control the damage by ridiculing the question, but neither Q or A will go away. However, no matter whether you run hot or cold on the subject, at least we are having the debate and the effect of the solar on the polar, once the exclusive preserve of dreadlocked enviro-vegies, is now on the dining table of every household on the planet.

Coming Soon – Part Three – How to clear it all up!

And Off To Liberal La-La Land!

Oh ho! Game on! As previously noted here on Let’s Ask Elroy! ™, The Liberal Party of Australia (Our Right ruling pro-corporate elite), have swung into an ersatz election campaign where the blood is flowing freely; unfortunately for them the wounds that are a-gushing out the red corpsuckles are largely the result of the Liberals’ being kneecapped by their own WMD, but never mind – they have more important things to worry about.

The news for Liberals has only worsened since Elroy last gloated on the subject. The conflict-of-interest that wearied the Minister for Aging got very old very quickly for Prime Minister ‘Honest’ John Howard, and so Honest John indulged in a little involuntary euthanasia, but that did not staunch the flood of vital fluids the Libs are experiencing.

The poor old Libs just don’t seem to get it. The electorate is not entirely stupid, they know what is right and wrong, and they see Honest John’s elastic parliamentary ethics standards as further evidence of the Liberals’ blind hubris. The polls have the Australian Labor Party attaching 3,000,000 weather balloons to their electoral banana lounge while the Libs scrape gum off the tarmac with their teeth, and things just keep getting worse.

The LPA is out of office in all six states and two territories. Yesterday they lost the New South Wales state election to an ALP government who are next to useless because somehow the LPA manage to portray themselves as worse. That makes twenty-four state election losses on the trot since 1997, and there is no indication that they are going to get their state houses in order anytime soon. Indeed, the NSW branch seems to have be invaded by fundamentalist Christian body snatchers and other extreme right-wing nutbags, but unlike our pan-pacific pals the USA, the Australian voter views this kind of infiltration with great suspicion.

In another blow for the Libs this week, Kevin ‘That Nice man Mr.’ Rudd, leader of the ALP, has announced a decision to spend some dosh on a broadband roll out to make Australia’s broadband faster than that of Slovenia, but the knee-jerk reaction by the Libs has seen them on the losing end of that debate. Broadband 40 times faster? Everyone likes that – business, mums and dads, the kids – but the` LPA are left yelling ‘We need that money to fund civil service superannuation in 2020!” which is not the sexiest of looks, and boom! Suddenly the Liberals are no longer the party of capital investment.

Business and the middle-class (or more importantly those that aspire to be middle-class) are supposed to be the Libs mainstay – lose them and out go the lights – but they are starting to think, ‘Well, with all this cash that’s supposedly pouring from the China, why not buy something new?’ All those years of Treasurer Peter Costello comparing the national economy to a shopping list have backfired for the Libs, as the great unwashed now think ‘So if I need a fridge, and I can afford the fridge, I will buy the fridge’.

Actually. now they think “If I want a fridge, but can’t afford a fridge, I’m going to buy the fridge anyway", so if the money is in the bank, "I'm quids in – gimme a fucking fridge" is not that great a stretch. The population at large have never been encouraged to save; on the contrary, in order to maintain Honest John’s illusion of a happenin’ economy they been encouraged to borrow and spend like a dotcom in 1999, so their overall reaction to splashing out on shiny new broadband is ‘Cool!’.

So the Libs reign of error is soon to be over; the punters are in the mood for a bit of nation building and they are never going to vote for a PM that has professed his intention to quit after the fireworks, no matter what. Furthermore, the workplace relations laws that the LPA were never going to enact have been the last straw, education is a shambles, health is worse and, quite frankly, the people know that the Libs are only trying to hang onto Federal power because its all they have left.

So who will lead the Liberal Party into the wilderness? Costello, boy-wonder heir apparent? Nope. His time passed. He had an opportunity to stab Honest John in the back and squibbed it; forever tainted by the electoral demolition heading the Liberals’ way in 2007, he will be a victim of the bloodbath that occurs when the lid of the party room pressure cooker blows off after Honest John loses his seat of Bennelong.

Abbot will be gone for the same reason, so who? Julie Bishop? Brendan Nelson? In the short term it doesn’t really matter; Elroy thinks Honest John has a small dog that could do the job while the Libs rip each other apart, crawl to casualty and spend some years in rehab because when they go trotting off to Liberal la-la land they won’t be back for a while.

However, when they do return to power, which they will, some day, sadly, Elroy knows who will be at the helm. It is debatable whether they will even still be called the Liberal Party of Australia, so savage will be the pogrom of purge and self-flagellation, but the identity of their leader is in no doubt. The man Honest John keeps closer than his bestest friend, the man that tried to buy the Presidency, the man that bought a seat in Parliament and the man that will buy to the keys to Kirribilli, the bankers’ buddy, the corporate confidante, ladies and gentlemen…presenting the first Prime Minister for the Australian Republican Party…I give you Mr. Malcolm Turnbull and may God, whatever it is, have mercy on our wretched souls.

STOP PRESS*STOP PRESS*STOP PRESS*STOP PRESS*STOP PRESS*STOP PRESS*STOP PR

It seems that the Liberals have just found bigger, brighter, quicker, cheaper, faster Broadband policy down the back off the couch! Stay tuned for more!

Happy Easter! War Is Over!

Happy Easter! War Is Over!

Hoorah! Hooray! Yes, the War On Terror is over! Yippee! There has been much jubilation and dancing in the streets across the planet after the White House announced that they had secured a confession from the man responsible for all Islamic terror attacks across the globe for past twenty years. Yay! So y’all nabbed OBL? Whoopee!

Well, WE all nabbed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Oh. Is he the one wot dunnit?

Sure was! He’s put his hand up for, ooh, well, everything really! How handy is that?

It’s certainly convenient. So what, exactly, did KSM do?

Well, it’s not only what he did; it’s what he didn’t do! Got a minute? Grab a beer and sit down, son – actually, you might wanna order a pizza – 'cause this could take a while.

See, he’s up for buckets of stuff; the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York City, that nutbag shoe bomber guy, the Filka Island operation in Kuwait and the Bali nightclub bombing. Seriously, he planned a second wave of attacks on major US landmarks after 9/11 like the Library Tower in California, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank building in Washington state and the Empire State Building in New York. He had every intention of destroying US military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and Singapore!

Really, this guy was, um, on fire! He wanted to blow up the Panama Canal, thought hard about an assassination attempt against former US President Jimmy Carter (we kinda liked that one) and other former presidents, really, really, really wanted to blow up suspension bridges in New York and thought he might even get away with a cunning scheme to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago by burning fuel trucks beneath it!

He sure had vision! What about that whimsical notion to destroy targets in London like Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben? And how he floated the idea of mounting attacks on night clubs in Thailand frequented by Americans and Britons? Genius! He also thought he might do something about targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other US finance industry targets post 9/11 and dreamt about using airplanes flying from Saudi Arabia to attack and destroy buildings in Elat, Israel.

What a busy boy! Crikey! Thirsty work, this. Now, deep breath, what else did he cop to? Ah! He reckoned he had a go at planning some attacks to destroy American embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan, he mooted having a crack at Israel’s embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia, and an Israeli El-Al Airlines flight from Bangkok. He sent several of his closest Mujahidin buddies into Israel to survey some ace strategic targets, he was the dude behind the suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa and a failed attempt to down an Israeli jet taking off from an airport in Mombasa with an SA-7 surface-to-air missile.

I mean, can you believe this guy? Really, he seriously considered attacking American military bases and nightclubs frequented by US soldiers in South Korea, he charitably provided the financial support to attack US, British and Jewish targets in Turkey, in his down time he undertook surveillance for a plan to hit US nuclear power plants, came up with the nifty idea of attacking Nato headquarters in Europe over a lengthy lunch, had a hand in the 1995 Bojinka Operation to down 12 American planes and was to his neck in monitoring a round-trip from Manila to Seoul on Pan Am Airlines!

Damn! How's that Muslim work ethic! On his days off he planned an assassination attempt against the Pope and former US President Bill Clinton during his visit to the Philippines (y'know, maybe the guy isn't all bad), ran a plan to assassinate Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf up the flagpole, actively encouraged an attempt to destroy Henry Kissinger’s oil company in Sumatra and here's the kicker: he reckons he rounded up some of his homies and got them to fly airplanes into the WTC on 9/11! As if!

Wow! What a guy! So is that all?

Is what all? Ain’t that enough? What, do y’wanna nail him for Kennedy and WW2? (Memo to self: ‘ask’ KSM about Kennedy and WW2).

What about Osama?

Who?

The other guy, the guy that used to have done it. Is he off the hook now?

I have no idea who you’re talking about. We got the guy. KSM. Game over.

So, er, that’s it then? We can all go home?

Um, no. Although we’ve got the guy that did everything, that War On Terror™ ain’t nowhere near finished; there are plenty of types out there who might do something later so we’re going after them too.

Oh. Well, who are they then?

They are the unknown unknowns. We think they might be sorta swarthy looking. Or not. Whatever. Can’t be too careful.

But the War On Terror was about catching the terrorists and we did. You did. And it turns out there was only one of ‘em, so…

Ah. But now there’s more than one. Now there’s lots.

Why? How come?

Because of the War On Terror! Dur!

So why are we so mad at Iraq?

Because Iranians Hate Our Freedoms™! They torture people! They have no justice!

Hmm. So how did you get this confession from KSM?

Yeah. Well. We coerced him a little. Finessed. Played him a few records, y’know, kept him up past his bedtime, generally gave him ample opportunity to engage in a conversation regarding his various activities, hobbies, pastimes and that, y’ know, usual stuff.

Coerced. Would that be coerced as in the PATRIOT Act’s ‘coercive measures’ coerced?

Probably.

Torture, then?

No. Coercion.

Right. And so where exactly were y'all when he spilt the beans?

In court.

Oh, okay. So what kind of court? Federal? Supreme?

Um, Cuban. Sorta. Ever been? S'lovely this time of year.

Oh. Gee, picking a jury must have been hard.

Yeah, well, there wasn’t a jury as such…

Oh. I see. Well, the judges…

Nope. Weren’t none of them either.

Then what…

It was a military tribunal.

But his lawyer…

Uh uh. Sorry.

Then how did he call witnesses?

Witnesses? He did 9/11! He said so!

But he must have been allowed to defend himself somehow.

Bzzzt! Wrong again!

But that’s not justice.

He doesn’t deserve justice.

So you can never give him a fair trial?

Depends on what you call fair.

Well, I'd say defence lawyers, jury of peers, the right to see the evidence against you, hearsay evidence being inadmissable, that sort of thing. The odd judge wouldn't hurt either.

Oh. That kind of fair.

Yes. So, how about it?

No, it's way too fair. There's no way he can have one of them.

Why?

Because we coerced him.

But now you’ll have to let him go.

Not so fast, buddy.

But you can’t keep him indefinitely without a trial.

Oh no? Watch us!

But what about Habeas Corpus?

Who?

The right to challenge one’s detention.

He did 9/11! He’s got no right to anything!

So how do you know he’s not lying?

Why would he lie?

Would you believe him if he said he didn’t do it?

No.

Would you let him go if he didn’t do it?

No.

So what has he got to lose? You’re not going to let him go either way, so he might as well have some fun.

What do you mean?

I mean that he’s messing with you.

Oh. Y'think so? Gee. We never thought of that. So he’s lying about not lying?

Yup.

What a liar! Stick him in Git’mo!

He’s there already.

Oh yeah. So he is. Oops!

Didn’t you think that it was all a bit too easy?

Certainly saved us some work. Now we don’t have to catch, um, wassisname, er…

Osama?

Who?

Hey, here’s an idea – maybe he never said any of it. Maybe the military made it all up. Maybe he said it and he gets to disappear to Argentina…

Aha! A conspiracy fucking theorist. This interview is over.

Mr. Cheney, thank you very much.

Go fuck yourself.

Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt – Part One.

Denial is an interesting business; it is a phenomenon which has ensnared the modern human and one which threatens, one way or another, to kill us all, and so here at Let’s Ask Elroy™ we say maybe it’s time to dip our tootsies in the water and see what it is we do and don’t believe, and who do and don’t believe it.

The denial industry is thriving at the moment; we have Iraq War denial, climate change denial, 9/11 denial and, shock horror, holocaust denial. Opposing tribes are at war and unfortunately, like all wars, truth is the first casualty, and it seems that whoever controls the truth gets to say who is in denial and who is being full, frank and honest with the population at large.

Lets take the Iraq War. Without the support of one Rupert Murdoch, the Iraq war would be over; in fact, it would never have been started and the War On Terror wouldn’t exit either. They were both predicated on intelligence now known to be suspect, and there were many voices at the time crying out the same message, but those voices were exiled to the wilderness. They were, we were assured, lone nuts and Internet partisans, heretics and traitors, maniacal deniers who had not left their bedrooms since 1996 and not anyone to take seriously.

Well, it looks like the lone nuts were right, but not for everyone. The war’s cheerleaders still believe that WMD are down there somewhere and that the USA will create Geneva-on-the-Tigris, and those that want to believe that do. The White House doesn’t, they know what’s going on, that’s why they have returned to funding Sunni extremists in order to fight the Shiites they came to save, but although the true believers keep on keepin’ on, the tide is turning on them; they are themselves becoming the one in denial.

However, the catastrophe in Iraq is, in some way finite, provable in the most gruesome of terms – refugees, body counts, blood n’ guts, collapsing infrastructure – but global warming is far more fertile ground for obfuscation. The concept of global warming has been around for a while, but as it is only now that it has reached some sort of critical mass, so it is only now that we see criticism of it ramped up to the point hysteria.

But this time the flipper is on the other foot as the establishment finds itself cast as the denier. Oops! Did I say denier? I meant realist! This time deniers are not nutbag partisans hell bent on nobbling the opposition because they are, well, the opposition, this time the deniers are noble crusaders for truth and justice. They are still heretics but more of your ‘Joan Of Arc’ stylee, and those that oppose them are but closed-minded zealots deaf to legitimate arguments and terrified of real debate.

Yes! Behold the brave forces of the Establishment as they dare to take on that mighty army of socialist radicals who hate industry, gasp with admiration as they toil against anti-capitalist commies who want nothing more to than take down the system and reduce us all to serfs whose very lives are dependent on five-year tractor quotas!

And thanks to the Murdoch noise machine this stuff is cutting through, but the next on the list of controversies has not been so favoured. The story of 9/11 is one of The Greatest Ever Told, and for this tale no dissent is to be tolerated. Far from being applauded for seeking honest discussion, those worried that the Legend Of September 11 might be tad iffy are maligned, marginalized and vilified to within an inch of their laptops; suddenly, heretics are back to being burned at the stake and any idea that they may have anything to add to the debate is spat upon. Funny that, eh?

The powers-that-be are also in no mood to be messin’ with the holocaust either. One of Western civilization’s last great taboos, to be accused of denying that the holocaust happened is one of the most potent pejoratives in the arsenal of political insults available to man; it is so serious a smear that all other ‘deniers’ are damned by implication, except for global warming ones who manage to use this association as proof of their victim hood while simultaneously employing it to mitigate their position (‘It’s not’, they whine, ‘as if we’re holocaust deniers!’).

If 9/11 deniers are heretics to be burned at the stake, then holocaust deniers are Satan incarnate. So foul are the connotations of being called a holocaust denier that historians who class themselves as holocaust revisionists are tarred with the same putrid bush; however, the revisionists merely claim that they are, with the benefit of sixty years’ worth of hindsight and technological advances, just trying to work out the truth of what happened.

So just as truth is relative, so is the search for it. You are either a champion of veracity and actuality, or you are an evil subversive heading for a detention camp for enemy-enablers nowhere near you depending on which, or whose, truth you seek. It would appear that the inside running for the truth is with whoever gets their story in first; the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and White House with Iraq, the Greenies and environmentalists on global warming, the White House et al again with 9/11 and the Allies, better known now as the UN Security Council, with the holocaust. Establishment United 3; Nutbags Athletic 1.

Watch out for Part 2 – The rest of the mess!

The Sport Of Would-be Kings

Here at Let’s Ask Elroy!, sport is not that high on our agenda of obsessions, but every few years we understand that its time to break out the rosettes and root for our team! And this is the sport of sports, a no-holds-barred, whack-‘em’down-and-drag-‘em-out, take-no-prisoners blood-fest guaranteed to curdle the veins of the most hardened offender. Yup, it’s election time down under!

We don’t know when exactly, but we can tell it’s in the air as that air, around Canberra, our fair nation’s capital, is thicker n’ the mud flying across the Great Void that is Parliament house.

Y'see, Honest John Howard, Australian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Australia (for those of youse overseas, the Liberal Party are, paradoxically, the local neo-cons), is rattled, and Honest John doesn't get rattled. He's as cunning as a swarm of gold-toothed rats at the best of times and as this is, for him, the worst of times, I would be expecting him to become slipp'rier still, but he's been caught flat-footed more times than a squad of Plod.

He splutters, he makes mistakes, he talks total nonsense (no change there then) as he attempts to go Kevin 'That Nice Mr.' Rudd, the brand new leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party, and try to convince the Great Unwashed the Kev is a scurrilous, no-good lying protoplasm, that is, a politician, that is, just like the Liberals.

Their latest ploy is the time-honoured pants-on-fire approach to his, ahem, honesty via champion mudslingers Abbott and Costello (foreign readers ahoy, I kid you not, Tony Abbott is our Health Minister and Peter Costello the Treasurer, and how they ever get taken seriously is a constant mystery to us all).

But sadly for Honest John, the mud ain't sticking. In their latest attempt to make That Nice Mr. Rudd look shonky, the Libs sent the Foreign Minister, Little Master Alex (not even Abbott and Costello were going to touch this one) on the telly to claim that something That Nice Mr. Rudd said happened to him and his family in 1968 MIGHT NOT BE ENTIRLY TRUE!

Forget that That Nice Mr. Rudd's dad had just died in a horrific car crash, forget that he was going on what his mum had told him at the time, what's important to remember here is that someone else has CALLED THAT NICE MR. RUDD A LIAR!

Now, we all know that memories are fallible, God knows the government has a chronic amnesia that will, we say, in time prove terminal, but some are obviously more fallible than others. So, when discussing an event that happened forty, count 'em, forty years ago, whom are you going to believe? That Nice Mr. Rudd? Or the mob who have chosen right now to all of a sudden dispute his version of events?

The voters seem to understand that politics is, at times, a murky business, that politicians are going to occasionally meet the odd unsavoury character in the course of their activities and possibly indulge in the occasional terminological inexactitude; furthermore, they remember that during the republic referrendum it was Abbott reminding punters of this very fact as he yelled 'Don't trust politicians!' to whoever might care, and so placed himself ever so neatly in the epicentre of an 'Everything I say is lie!' conundrum. And it looks like the good citizens took Tony's advice, but with particular reference to, um, Tony.

That the Libs are trying so desperately to assassinate the character of That Nice Mr. Rudd based what happened when he was a newly bereaved eleven-year-old is merely indicative of the trouble the Liberal Party know they are in and, what’s more, such behavior will not tolerated by the family-friendly Australian electorate.

To compound our schadenfreude, the Liberals wail and gnash their teeth while that Nice Mr. Rudd just seems to rise above it all; he may not walk on water, but neither is he about to wallow in Liberal-generated mire, and the Liberals have plenty of mire to go around.

Having raised the bar of propriety to a grand new altitude, adding to the hilarity is the sight of Honest John’s ministers failing to clamber over it; they are falling like nine pins in an avalanche of petty financial frauds and conflicts of interests at such a rate that it is debatable whether Honest John will have any politicians to contest the next election with. It couldn’t happen to nicer Government.

Anything else you want to know? Just tell the kids – Let's Ask Elroy!

Cheers!

And welcome to the most bloviatin' blog that the internets ever did! Now, when we're not a-solving mid-life crisisis we're giving unsolicted advice to just about any innocent bystander that
hoves within the periferal vision and you, dear reader, are no exception.

Also, and as well, we thrive on political debating, so if there's anyone out there wants to take us on – we're more than ready. One rule: you can use as many personal insults as you care to dredge up, but be aware that will mean that you have lost the argument. And we'll be taking score. Stay tuned for more.


Cheers

Elroy