greens
APEC spouses urged to go on sex strike
Never ever try to tell me that The Greens are light on real solutions.
Apparently, last Sunday while the rest of us were at church or passed out on a sticky floor or what have you, intrepid Greens MLC Ian Cohen was hard at work delivering a cryptic yet potent message via the medium of surfboard.
In an action directed at APEC spouses to withhold sex until their husbands stop all war and commit to binding greenhouse targets, Ian Cohen MLC paddled amongst jet skiing police and a 5 foot break today at Bondi Beach to reveal a novel but historically proven message…
In keeping with the universal concept of survival - ‘Make Love Not War’ - Ian Cohen painted one word onto his surfboard and paddled through the waves.
Spouses of APEC heads of state lunching at the Icebergs were invited to consider this simple but potent word, displayed by Ian from the water:‘LYSISTRATA’
Let us pause for a moment here to consider the strange sight of hairy Ian Cohen flashing his surfboard bravely from among the peaking waves while surrounded by pasty be-wetsuited cops, giving the lunching spouses pause in a discussion of the size of their partners’ warheads.
Thinking it through, though, I wonder how many of the APEC spouses are classically educated in the British tradition? Many of the APEC spouses had neither Classical Greek nor English as their first language, so this would seem to me to be a little far-fetched, but I shouldn’t like to rule it out. Difficult then to know whether the message would have got across even if one was able to read a surfboard from a distance of 100 metres.
I would like to point out, however, that Lysistrata is an oft-cited source for academic discussions about women’s grooming customs in ancient Greece, most particularly the singing off of pubic hair by sitting on a brazier containing hot coals. As such, were the spouses to be a) classically educated, b) looking out the window, and c) posessed of superhuman eyesight, they may find it a confusing message.
Vote green if you like, but only Labor can fix the problem
I thought I’d open a new thread to outline my views on Kim’s post at LP that got me so hot under the collar.
Voting green bothers me less (far less) than the defeatism of ‘The Rudd Labor Party deserves to lose this election’ and the following line ‘If it hadn’t been for WorkChoices, buddy, you couldn’t even count on a preference from me now.’
And the thing i find most stupid of all is the quote she’s got such a huge problem with:
“Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says a Labor Government would create a bi-partisan ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the national emergency in indigenous communities.”
Er… so what’s the problem? I think that’s a fantastic idea. I mean really, the thing with this issue is that it’s too big to let political point-scoring determine your actions. The last thing that anybody needs is one party using indigenous people as a wedge…
Oh, wait, we’ve got that already.
But Rudd’s plan is different. Running a war cabinet, bringing the opposition to the table and simply saying ‘we’re going to fix this together, damn the credit and the critics, let’s work something out’ also leaves open the opportunity to go out and listen to ideas coming from the grassroots, and you can take them on board and implement them without fear of the ‘other side’ kicking you for it. It means they’re actually free to act. To do something!
And with a Labor Government, the whole idea wouldn’t be tied up in silly ‘we’ll take your land so you look after your kids’ games either.
It was a Labor Government that created the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody. It was the Labor party that first took seriously the issue of reconciliation and moved the wheels of government to address it. It was a Labor politician who poured sand into Charles Lingiari’s hand and it was the Labor Party who passed the original Native Title Act.
Labor actually did these things. They didn’t ask from the sidelines and complain when rebuffed, they did them. You can only ever do these things from government. That’s why it’s important to make sure Labor gets elected this year.
Four months of hell?
Well four months of my life has gone into securing 4 more years of a Morris Iemma Government. Let’s hope they can do something to justify my time, not that I did not enjoy it on some levels. I had an amazingly energetic candidate who seems to believe in many of the same ideals I hold dear. I also gained such a wealth of experience in organising and campaigning that has got to become useful at some stage I guess.
Time really flies when your sleeping a mximum of 5 hours a night, handing out at railway stations at 6am, door-knocking in heat that reached 37 degrees and 100% humidity, writing direct mails, fundraising, responding to constituent reps, receiving hate mail and love letters, replacing corflutes that have been knocked off, etc, etc.
Just to celebrate a return to normalacy I thought I’d take 5 minutes to post on the much neglected Stoush.
A few points for any readers left here to ponder before I go to help scrutineer in a marginal.
- Why did the libs find it neccesary to scan in our letterhead and send out letters to voters with false election campaign events?
- Why did the Greens not bother to staff more than 3 booths after getting a preference deal out of us in exchange for their #2’s?
- Why are voters so fricking STUPID? Ours, theirs, and in between?
- Getting a letter in your mailbox is NOT an invasion of privacy MR FREAKSHOW VOTER and the ‘mailing list’ is the electoral roll so F*CK OFF!
- No ma’am, Jack Lang is not running in this election sorry.
- You want to vote for Rudd? Of course we’re on his team, for sure! Vote here…
- You want to vote for Howard? Of course we’re on his team, for sure! Vote here…
and lastly
- WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE THE STATE ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN AN AUSTRALIAN SUMMER???? MUTHAFCKING CRACKSMOKING ARSEHOLE!!!!!!
Greens prove they want to keep the "crazy" tag
After a week or so of sustained, serious debate about climate change, water and energy, the Greens have decided to get some free media… by suggesting a 3-year phase-out of coal mining in Australia.
Senator Brown said the tobacco industry was being phased out because its fumes ruined people’s health.
“The coal industry must be phased out because its fumes are wrecking the planet’s health,” he said.
This policy, cooked up with Dr Tim Flannery, shows two things:
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The Greens are desperate to get into the “environmental” media debate, and will say almost anything to get air time; and
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The Greens are afraid of losing their status as the “environmental” party to Labor, and are willing to go to “the extreme” in order to make it seem that they are better on the environment than anyone else.
The reality is that no Australian government is going to phase out coal mining. Furthermore, it would not decrease coal use globally.
Of course, Australia should move to genuinely renewable energy, such as solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro and wind (etc). Our reliance on coal should be reduced, and reduced quickly. The money that Howard would use to introduce nuclear power stations should instead be used to invest in renewable energy technology.
With this policy however, the Greens have merely added a shrill, unconvincing and attention seeking media grab to the national debate on renewable energy and climate change.
Ignore Him For The Good Of Australian Pop
Ignore Him! Don’t vote for the successful, potentially world-changing candidate! He’s ungeniune! He’s not standing for the careers of the bureaucrats we’re hoping to get elected! He’s part of the machine, a cog, a gear in the box, a strip of fan belt, a timing shaft, perhaps even (shock!) a sparkplug!
Dear Voter
During the twenty years I knew him, Peter Garrett opposed uranium mining, the Pine Gap spy facility, logging of native forests and nuclear powered ships being allowed into Australian ports.
Not any more. He is now part of the Labor machine. This week in Melbourne Labor rolled out Peter to attack the Greens. That’s because in this age of climate change the Greens’ environment policies are rapidly attracting Labor and Liberal voters.
The Greens remain strong on the principles Peter once sang about.
In Victoria the Greens have preferenced Labor in 60 seats and the Liberals is none. In the others we are leaving it to the voters by having split tickets favouring neither Labor nor Liberal.
But now Labor’s Peter Garrett has written to voters in key Melbourne seats falsely indicating that the Greens pro-Labor preference decision is in fact pro Liberal. This is brutal, Labor machine politics. Don’t fall for it.
Labor’s Peter Garrett is not Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett or the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Peter Garrett. He is now an anti-Greens campaigner.
Ignore him. Vote Green.
Bob Brown
Australian Greens Leader
For the history of 1980s pop, progressive-minded shit-sheeting, upper house preference anorakkery, and the lost causes of the Cold War, vote Green! Neunzig-und-neuf red balloons count on you!
Stop Pretending
Green supporters, such as Mr Lefty need to stop pretending.
The Greens are a party like any other. They are as progressive as the ALP, and have done a deal with the devil (Liberal Party) to try to score plumb inner-city seats of ALP-Left MPs.
There is nothing wrong with this. The ALP and Liberals (and all serious parties) do preference deals to try to maximise their electoral chances.
However, the Greens want to play dirty but still shout from the high moral ground that they are still ideologically pure.
There is nothing wrong with running a split ticket. Just don’t pretend it is anything other than a deal with the Liberal Party.
Grubby Greens
Some enterprising elector has put together a nice little graphic:
