in which our redheaded PM is shown wrapped in the flag to have sex on the floor of her office with her partner Tim Mathieson.
Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph tried to insinuate that using the flag in the scene was “inappropriate”. Stiff with disapproval, the Tele had to acknowledge that “there is no law against desecrating the Australian flag”, but only a fanatic would think the scene did that anyway.
Not to be deterred, the Tele wheeled out “constitutional monarchist” Professor David Flint who, in the sycophantic manner of monarchists everywhere, thought the scene showed a lack of respect. “This is probably going a bit far”, the delicate Prof said.
It seems amazing to think that today, in the 21st century, over 200 years since the French and American revolutions and the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, that there are people who actually reject the idea that “all men are created equal”, who actually yearn for the opportunity to bend the knee to someone else by virtue of that person’s birth .
What must be lacking in their confidence in themselves and in their confidence in the rest of society that they feel better not being free but prefer to be subjects of someone who is not even chosen by merit or universal suffrage but holds that position by “right of birth”?
The irony is the way these monarchists, who are so dismissive of their freedom are at the same time such enthusiastic patriots. Or at least enthusiastic about looking patriotic. Tugging your forelock and genuflecting while wrapped in the flag must be frightfully uncomfortable.
In the same issue of the Tele , the debate on the carbon tax was reported, under the headline “Green MP’s carbon rant ridiculed”. In the accompanying story we learned that “Greens MP Adam Bandt warned [that] every person was threatened by climate change and that ‘we are running out of time to prevent a catastrophe’.”
Hardly a rant: lots of scientists are saying the same thing. But of course there was more. Bandt added more things the global warming sceptics don’t like to hear: “Ice caps are melting and the seas are rising. The hit to the Australian economy if we are not able to prevent runaway climate change is going to be enormous.”
Giving climate change some specific Australian relevance, Bandt warned that in Queensland 67,000 workers directly dependent on tourism and the Great Barrier Reef could be “turfed out of a job” if the reef were to be irreversibly damaged. Mr Bandt’s speech provoked a response from the next speaker, NSW Nationals MHR Mark Coulton who said he had “never heard so much emotional claptrap”. That was apparently the “ridicule” the Tele ’s headline referred to.
Mr Coulton then went on to have a weirdly incoherent rant of his own that was apparently meant to be a response to Bandt and the Greens: “It seems to me”, said Coulton, “that there’s a lot of houses, a lot of buildings in the middle of Melbourne made out of concrete and it seems to me that while the good folk of Melbourne might have a desire to improve the environment they don’t appear to be doing too much of it themselves.”
Say what?
Did you see where last month the extreme right-wing US Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (she’s a member of the reactionary Tea Party movement) chose the date of Elvis Presley’s death – August 16 – to shout “Happy Birthday Elvis!” during a campaign stop at a drive-in restaurant in South Carolina?
Ms Bachmann tried to make amends later, telling a group of reporters she was happy to be in South Carolina “on the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death”, which was not quite the sentiment that Elvis fans wanted. Even a British Tory MP, Louise Mensch, was moved to comment: “I don’t blame Michele Bachmann for not believing in evolution. It’s really let her down.”
NASA has some of the brightest brains in the US scientific community (including quite a few from countries other than the USA, of course). Unfortunately, living and working in the heartland of capitalism, their thinking is inevitably influenced by that warped society.
NASA’s scientists have been compiling a list of plausible outcomes if humans should make contact with alien life. Unfortunately, I doubt that some of their speculations will stand us in good stead. For example, NASA thinks that if extraterrestrials viewing Earth from far away observe the changes in our atmosphere associated with global warming, they might conclude that our civilisation is out of control and launch a pre-emptive attack on us to stop us from becoming “more of a threat”.
In other words, NASA’s speculation assumes that aliens will think and act just like the leaders of US Imperialism. The aliens will get out of their space-ship, ray-gun in hand (or tentacle) and say: “Greetings Earthlings – we come in peace – do not resist and you will not be harmed. Now hand over everything of value!”
Fortunately, we have a fair way to go yet before we will be able to undertake journeys to other star systems and their accompanying planets. During that time our science will advance and so too will our social development (driving our science in fact).
By the time we actually are in a position to meet up with alien civilisations, imperialism and the paranoia associated with it should be a thing of the past – the recent past perhaps, but still the past.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment