My latest Carlo's Corner column on the smug bastards ending the world and how I won everything!

My latest "Carlo's Corner" column for Green Left Weekly, fuelled by booze, despair and fury, in no particular order.

Destroying the world is bad enough but do they have to be so smug about it?

It is bad enough that our rulers insist on pushing ahead on a course so disastrous that when a new report says human civilisation could end by 2050, you think “that’s optimistic” as you just saw another report saying the Arctic is melting so rapidly the scientists trying to measure it keep losing their tools, but, honestly, do they need to be so fucking smug about it?

“How good is Australia!,” leers our prime minister, a grown man known as “ScoMo”, who grins like a psychopath who has just caught a fresh victim in a B-grade horror flick.

Defying grammar and Amnesty International reports alike, this is a statement, not a question... read the full rant

 Contemplating the report mentioned in my column, that human civilisation is likely to end in 2050, I got very worried and posed The Big Question on Facebook: "If human civilisation collapses in 30 years, what will happen to all our blogs?"

Of all the responses I got, the most reassuring said: "The blogs will remain, dormant in the datasphere, awaiting the rise of a new civilisation or alien archaeologists."

I thought thank fuck, coz I was getting really worried that this might all be in vain, and I've got some awesome drinking stories buried among the wild rants on here!

However, one other comment simply read: "The hottest take."

I asked, obviously, "Does this mean I win?" and got the reply, "Only if you blog it."

Now I have. I WIN!

I have about three decades, max, to enjoy my victory. I think I'll get another beer.



The weather's been funny thirty years or so
the winters got warm, not as much snow
hear the big cats comin 'cause there's nowhere left to go...
Canadian county singer Corb Lund, in 2007, makes some obvious points.

First blog post of the year! So here are random thoughts on drugs in sport and a song featuring Ronnie Drew, The Mighty Stef *and* Flogging Molly's Dave King. Fuck yeah. Buy me a beer sometime.

Well, so it seems it has somehow gotten to February and I have not posted *even once* so far in 2013. So I figured I'd better give my multitude of fans something pretty special... and what could be more special than a song featuring pretty highly specialised acts that I am obsessed with but almost no one else I know really gives a fuck about? HUH? HOW ABOUT THAT?

I mean, I shouldn't have to apologise really, as I have been *pretty fucking busy* this year. Destroying a liver takes more time and effort than maost people realise. Plus I got my Green Left Weekly Carlo's Corner columns to write, like once a fucking week! Like seriously, my latest column -- taking up the key issues facing this country of climate change, corporate profiteering and David "Kochie" Koch -- was more than *840 words long*! Fucking exhausting.

And then in what little spare time I have, I have been singing for the Western Sydney Wanderers, as all decent human beings do, and crying for the Essendon Bombers. The best thing that can be said about the drugs scandal that Essendon may find itself at the centre of is it has the potential to also bring down Manly. It might not stop there either, given the release of a damning ACC report. So let me start very clearly: *should* the scandal of drugs in sport limit itself to the destruction of CARLTON, MANLY and SYDNEY FC, I for one welcome it. (Essendon, however, should be off limits on grounds of... um... being Essendon.)

Regardless of these entirely understandable reasons, I am only too away of just how painful and distressing my multitude of fans find the absence of blog posts. So while I am in the midst of preparing my magnus opus on the issue of our times (Tom Waits), I nonetheless offer you all this wonderful gem of a song -- in which Irish singer-songwriter The Mighty Stef teams up with the legendary Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners and Dave King and Bridget Regan from the Irish American celtic punk band Flogging Molly.





The song is The Mero, written by Pete St John, who has written many Irish folk classics (most notably Fields of Athenry). The song is about Dublin and growing violence plaguing the city. You can read a little bit about the slang and characters that feature in it (and the lyrics) here.

I am not sure when this filmed, but it was clearly right at the very end of Ronnie Drew's life (he died in 2008). Ronnie Drew is a genuine legend of Irish music, his ability to use his voice (once described as "the sound of coke being crushed under a door") giving emotional potency to the songs he sings. Below, he sings another Pete St John classic about Dublin.




"The years have made me bitter, the gargle dims my brain." Tell me about it Ronnie...



The Mighty Stef? Well, he is a seriously underrated performer (at least in Australia, where "not rated at all" would be more accurate). He has three studio albums under his belt and has also recorded with Shane MacGowan. Check the bastard out, in a track that speaks to me deeply...




"It's getting the stage I guess I always knew it would, where I can't walk down my street. I'm getting death threats here and death threats there from every one that I meet..." The man is singing my song.



And Flogging Molly... are just one of my all-time favourite bands. They don't miss. Their songs cuts a lot deeper than some of the drunken bravado that makes up some of the Celtic punk genre (*cough*Dropkick Murphys*cough*). There is a real weariness to their songs -- a sigh that says "Well life pretty much has me beaten, but fuck it, I can still raise my pint glass and sing." I rate their song The Worst Day Since Yesterday one of my absolute top songs of all time. To see them in full flight doing their stuff... see the clip below.





"You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout..." So very true.



So, no need to thank me. Just buy me a beer -- via the PayPal button on the right-hand side. Or... hell, why not also check out my stand up clip at Five Minutes Live and click "like" if you like to help me win the online comp, based on the most "likes", and FIVE THOUSAND BUCKS. Then I'll buy *you* a beer!*

* Offer only eligible to people called "Carlo Sands".

Behind the scenes at Green Left TV -- how DO these "reports" get made?

Well, my fans will be well aware that this blog has, of late, been somewhat underused. I have been so busy jet-setting all around Sydney's inner-west from one seedy pub to another in a non-stop series of open mic comedy gigs (speaking of which you *can* sign in and watch my clip at Five Minutes Live, an online comedy competition, and click like). And then there is the RANTING AND RANTING I have to do with my written and filmed Carlo's Corner for Green Left... It is all so draining...

But I thought, well, it is has been a while. What would my many fans want to know about? It it occurred to me, something of a "behind the scenes" kinda look at Green Left TV and its famous fortnightly "Green Left TV Report"!

How does the magic actually HAPPEN? How does the glory of "Carlo's Corner" come together? Do hosts Mel and Simon *really* find it amusing? Do they ever want to smile more during the show? Who the fuck designed that back drop? The questions are many.

So I thought I'd try and give you a bit of a special "insiders" look into the "making of" Green Left TV's final report for the year, filmed just this very Monday!

* * *

Well, let us start at the start!

On an evening like Monday's, which has been especially "set aside" as a night to "record" a fresh Green Left TV Report, the first task, of course, is to ACTUALLY GET TO THE STUDIOS.

Simple, you may well say, why I am sure you just GET A BUS to the famed Actively Radical Studios in the Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville here in ol' Sydney Town!

Now those of you who have watched my clip on the Five Minutes Live online comedy competition, will know full well that catching a bus in Sydney is not as easy as it sounds in theory.

But as I set off in the midst of peak hour at about 5.30pm on Monday, keen as mustard to just get to the Marrickville studios and GET CRACKING WITH MY RANTING, this proved not a problem at all. I had but just goten to the bus stop on Broadway when the very bus I wanted, the 428, arrived at the stop.

And I was just about to board it when it dawned on me... I didn't actually have a FUCKING "travel ten" multi-pass FUCKING ticket and, until 7pm, you need a FUCKING GODDAMN pre-paid FUCKING GODAMN TICKET.

OK NOW FUCK... I mean REALLY. My well-laid plans of not being really late and holding up filming LIKE USUAL have already started coming unstuck. I have to miss this bus, go find a place that sells pre-paid tickets and then come back and wait for the next bus. And, as this is peak hour and many people want a 428, Sydney bus logic says there won't be one for a FUCKING LONG TIME...

So I turned my back on the bus I need, waited for what seems forever to pass *back* across Broadway and go to the newsagent to get a ticket. I told the bored bloke behind the counter I wanted a one zone ticket and he looked confused and eventually sold me the cheapest possible concession ticket, which costs $1. This means I save money, but also means he thinks I look like a student. Which, OK, I do -- but I am FUCKING 35-YEARS-OLD! I save money but lose dignity. And anyone who knows me knows just how important *dignity* is to Carlo Sands.

I made it back across the road and before too long, to my surprise and utter joy, the L28 came, which I am pretty sure is more or less the same as the 428 only a bit more express or some shit!

I now experienced a rare moment of happiness, because I will actually be more or less on time! But as we made our way down King Street in Newtown, a loud argument broke out at the back. Someone, a young, aggro lumpen bloke who just doesn’t want to take any shit, was yelling at some other guy: “What the FUCK are you looking at cunt? STOP LOOKING AT ME CUNT!”

This was met with equally loud yelling in response of “JUST TURN YOUR MUSIC DOWN! YOUR MUSIC IS TOO LOUD!” and “DON’T YOU THREATEN ME!”

This was met with the strident counter-argument of: “DO YOU FUCKING WANT TO FUCKING GO ME YOU CUNT? STOP FUCKING STARING AT ME!”

As the bus drive on, this get more and more heated and the young lumpen threatens to “FUCKING TAKE YOU, YOU CUNT!”, met with “there are a dozen witnesses SO GO ON PUNCH ME! I’LL CALL THE COPS GO ON PUNCH ME!”, itself met with “then where are you getting off you CUNT?!?” met with “STOP THREATENING ME!” met with “THEN STOP STARING AT ME YOU FUCKING CUNT!”

The louder and more aggressive this conversation gets, and the more extreme the threats of physical violence, the more intently everyone else looks stonily ahead or engages in their own quiet conversations, every other passenger committed to a united front strategy of pretending this is not happening while praying that one, or preferably both, get the FUCK OFF THE BUS ASAP.

The bus pulls up at Newtown train station amid mutual, screamed recriminations about who was going to punch who and who was going to call the cops. And before the bus driver can pull out again, down storms the man upset about loud music who just would not stop staring at that angrily young lumpen man.

And this bloke, a weedy, pathetic looking creature, started *insisting* the driver calls “THE POLICE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN *ABUSED* JUST *ABUSED* IN TERRIBLE LANGUAGE AND THREATENED WITH PHYSICAL VIOLENCE AND I *DO NOT NEED TO TAKE THIS*!”

And, like I am sure everyone else on the bus, I am thinking “seriously, how fucking pathetic is your life that you need to deliberately provoke and then KEEP provoking some random aggro lumpen young man just so you can storm down the bus all in a fluster and claim the high moral ground?”

Like, get yourself a more useful hobby, like finding sleeping Grisly Bears to poke. Just don’t get on a bus, stare at some aggro young bloke playing loud music, and then when he calls you a “FUCKING CUNT” and threatens to beat the shit out of you, YELL BACK AT HIM. For Christ sake, they invented FLOORS for buses so you have something to stare out in such circumstances.

The driver clearly thought the same and, for a minute or two, put up an argument about why he had no desire to call the fucking cops. But eventually he cracked, in the face of the flustering insistence that this man JUST DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE THREATENED IN SUCH A TERRIBLE WAY and reached to a phone next to his chair, and called the fucking cops.

I watched with a sinking heart thinking the same thing as everyone else on that bus: “But surely this won’t hold up the bus... surely, you can’t hold up a bus in peak hour just coz two dickheads have been screaming at each other... I mean... SURELY...”

It turns out you can.

In the middle of peak hour, the driver sat there, the bus idle, not moving while the police failed to arrive.

The entire bus was getting increasingly agitated and the quiet mutterings starting growing into a generalised “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” when down came the young lumpen bloke, who has had enough himself. “Look, alright, look just let me off! I’ll go!” he says.

But no. The driver, having now called the cops, won’t open the doors to let the key source of the entire hostility OUT so the bus can move on.

“LOOK THE CUNT WAS STARING AT ME!" the young bloke tried helpfully to explain. "ALL I WANTED WAS HIM TO NOT FUCKING STARE AT ME FOR FUCK’S SAKE! JUST LET ME OUT!”

I went up and started begging the driver to move on. “Just let him out so we can move! It is PEAK HOUR! I am running late! I gottta be somewhere! Come on!”

The driver said “So do I! I gotta be somewhere too!” and would not open the doors.

I thought of telling him: “But you *don’t understand*, I am *Carlo Sands*! *Carlo* Sands*! You know, Green Left TV? We have a show to record and the last one had literally *hundreds* of viewers...” but I got the sense he wouldn’t grasp the importance of what I was saying.

The driver, facing growing hysteria from passengers, kept going back to the phone to call the cops again and again. Still the cops were nowhere to be seen, still the young lumpen insisted with greater and greater aggressiveness that he just wanted to GET OFF and the only problem was “THAT CUNT JUST WOULDN’T STOP STARING AT ME” and still the bus wouldn’t move.

A pissed-off middle aged bloke in a suit, infuriated that the bus was being held up by this bullshit, came down to ask the driver: “Well then just let ME off!” And the driver refused. “YOU WON’T LET ME OFF?” No, he wouldn’t.

This guy tried pleading, he tried insisting, he tried emphasising that he had to go pick his kid up from school and just let him out so he could go catch ANOTHER FUCKING BUS... and still the bus driver refused to open the doors.

By this stage, as the driver tried calling the cops *again*, there was generalised “WHAT THE FUCK?” atmosphere growing among the passengers. Like a serious disbelief that we appeared to be prisoners... and all because two dickheads no one knew or gave a flying fuck about had started yelling at each other.

The young lumpen was now pacing up and down the bus, and when he complained a woman near me said “Well this is *your* fault” and he started shouting at her to “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Because “YOU DON’T KNOW ME! I COULD HURT YOU! I COULD BE AN ICE ADDICT WITH A KNIFE! I COULD KILL EVERYONE! YOU DON’T KNOW! IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE HURT JUST SHUT UP!”

At which point this has become a FUCKING SAFETY issue for everyone on the bus AND STILL THE DRIVER WOULD NOT OPEN THE DOORS, meaning no one could ESCAPE this ranting lunatic who just raised the prospect of killing us all and STILL NO SIGN OF THE FUCKING COPS...

Another bloke in a suit from the back comes down the aisle and puts his arm around the young lumpen and tells him he understands but we just gotta get through this, don’t worry about all these people, relax... and it has an effect... someone talking nicely to him calms him down and he starts saying “I know, I know, you just don’t know the DAY I’ve had! It has been a terrible day and then this CUNT WAS JUST STARING AT ME!”

“I know mate, I know.”

And then... screaming across King Street, scattering peak hour traffic to make room, came a police wagon and cop car with sirens blazing... causing groans from the passengers at the extreme overkill at cops who turned up to a case of two people yelling at each other with multiple vehicles and a good handful-plus of TASER-and-gun-toting cops ... and you could see in all our eyes the question: what fresh hell will these fucking cops unleash on us?

The young lumpen bloke, however, just looked relieved that FINALLY he can get off the FUCKING BUS and waited at the still-closed front door with his hands in the air in front of him, ready to be cuffed for the crime of shouting at a CUNT WHO WOULDN’T STOP STARING AT HIM.

Cops came on, dragged him off and the passengers all shout in unison at the cops that they must ALSO TAKE THAT OTHER BASTARD TOO, the one who made the driver call the cops and was fundamentally responsible for this horror because he couldn't just IGNORE the young lumpen like any one else would.

And so the cops take him off too, while he tried to tell his story. The young lumpen, meanwhile, has been pushed, spreadeagled, against a wall, cops searching him.

And still we dodn't move. By this time, myself and the other passengers were on the verge of a riot.

STILL nothing happened. A cop stood on the steps next to the front door asking the driver questions. I was hoping the cops started asking the passengers about what happened so I could a) tell them I hoped that fucker who provoked the lumpen by staring at him rots in jail and they throw away the key, and while I am steadfastly against police brutality, if they wanted to whack him a couple of times I for one would swear to any jury I never saw a thing and b) I DON’T GIVE A FUCK I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY JUST TELL THAT FUCKING DRIVER TO FUCKING DRIVE.

But no, the cop just stood there, asking the driver questions, everyone of us unable to get off. Then he went off to ask his superior questions, and then back to the driver for more questions, then back to his superior. Then he asked the driver for his phone number. This took at least five minutes. I have never seen someone give a phone number so slowly, nor the number be accepted at such a snail’s pace.

My hopes of making it on time to record my "Carlo's Corner" were history.

The cops were by now searching the young lumpen's shoes, and still had found nothing. And a random person waiting for an entirely different bus had taken umbrage at this police harassment and started yelling at the cops to leave the spreadeagled, shoeless young man alone.

THEN FINALLY... the cops told the driver he could go. And the middle-aged bloke with a suit and a son waiting to be picked up jumped off as fast as he could. The rest of us passengers put down our pitchforks and machetes and took our seats. And the bus... peak hour traffic racing around it... finally started to move...

And as the passengers muttered curses to each other... the bus turned right too early off Enmore Road, and it dawned on me. I don’t *actually* want the L28 at all. The L28 is THE WRONG FUCKING BUS!

The L28, you see, doesn’t go down Addison Road. I HAD SAT THERE FOR HALF AN HOUR AND QUITE DECENTLY REFRAINED FROM KILLING ANYONE AND I WAS ON THE WRONG FUCKING BUS!

I eventually managed to get off at the Livingstone Hotel in Petersham, a pub that says open pretty much 24-hours and which I happen to be reasonably well acquainted with -- but that is a WHOLE OTHER story.

I trudged the long walk up to Addison Road and the venue, fielding the invevitible call as to my whereabouts. I finally made it. The rest of the Green Left TV crew were hanging around, chatting and waiting for me, so they could get the last thing done and fucking go home.

I opened the beer that is a permanent prop in my Green Left TV rants -- because as I always say, if you are going to have a prop, make it one that feeds your alcoholism. And I fucking drank deeply.

Then they pointed a camera at me and I started yelling. I took my anger out on Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who deserves it. But, really, I was still just pissed off at that sad desperate pathetic git who tried to make himself feel important by getting into a yelling match with a young lumpen who had a bad day and "WILL NOT TURN MY FUCKING MUSIC DOWN YOU CUNT! WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT YOU CUNT! FUCK YOU CUNT!"

And then, that done, we went to the pub. And so that is pretty much the story of how the Green Left TV Report is made! Obviously there is a bit more to it than that. Some other people have to actually do a shit load of "editing" and what have you. Obviously *they* didn't go to the pub! They had work to do!

But in essence that is it! I hoped you enjoyed this little "insight" into the whole process. Here is a song by Hayes Carll! It doesn't really relate to the story, I just really like Hayes Carll.





'The cops all got your number, the bars all know your name...' Hayes Carll is singing my song. Interesting Hayes Carll-related fact -- I am actually *wearing* a Hayes Carll T-shirt in that clip of my doing stand up on Five Minutes Live! You know, that competition you can sign in, watch me and click "like" in! TRUE STORY!


UPDATE: You can now watch the episode of Green Left TV Report mentioned in this post below... Watch the whole thing, but shuold you really just wanna bit of Carlo Yelling Action, I start the angriness at 17.07.

Come on spring, do your thing

Yes, my last post was actually in winter and it struck me I have to get a post in sometime during spring and spring is nearly over.

So, you know, what better opportunity for a post than to bring to your attention THIS EXTREMELY EXCITING PIECE OF NEWS!!! Yes! It is true! The great film clip to Australian supergroup/side project from the 1990s Antenna's great 1998 song "Come on Spring" is back up on YouTube after being so cruelly removed!!!!

IKR?* Super cool.

Antenna was a brief collaboration between two giants of Australian rock, Kim Salmon (The Scientists, Beasts of Bourbon, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists) and Dave Faulkner (Hoodoo Gurus). They released one album in 1998, and off that came this near-forgotten gem.

I love the clip coz Kim Salmon just looks so seedy, to say nothing of sleazy when the couple kiss on the park bench next to him. The frustrated lust that is just, barely, under the surface breaks out through the song and the clip as it goes on.

Story-wise and thematically, it feels a bit like Sunday Morning Coming Down, only even grubbier. And more filled with promise, like the protagonist is finally rising from drunken slumber and now wants his due.

(You can read Kim Salmon discussing the song's lyrics, and also here is Mick Harvey's cover version just to prove once again how wasted Harvey was all those years as Nick fucking Cave's side kick.)




'Come on Spring, do your thing... have you got something for me?'


So, I hear the frustrated legions of Carlo Sands fans, is that fucking it? I return to this blog for the first time since *AUGUST FUCKING 5* (and *even that* was pretty much just an extended plug to a handful of forgettable stand up gigs in suburban pubs) and I just talk about some long-forgotten, obscure song from the margins of Australian music no one GIVES A FUCK ABOUT???

Jesus, fuck you! I am a busy guy! I have to write my Carlo's Corner column for Green Left Weekly, like, once a fucking week! Seriously, that is, like, 500 words and, sometimes *even more*, EVERY WEEK!

And as if that is not bad enough, once a fortnight, I gotta then do a four or five minute rant in front of a camera for the Green Left Report. And yes, sure, most of the time it is just a verbal version of my column, *sure*. And *yes* I get to drink while I record it... but still... it is quite stressful coz I gotta make sure I am sober enough to still speak by the "5pm-ish on a Monday" recording time. LIKE *FUCK* talk about slave drivers.

NO WONDER I FUCKING DRINK SO MUCH WITH STRESS LIKE THIS!

Anyway, at least I have done a post that is not some pathetic plug for some stand-up thing. Though, if you are in Sydney and want to help me rig an audience-voting comedy competition on November 28 ... well... details are here.




'You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout!' Yes, here is a SECOND song for you in the same blog post! AND BY FLOGGING MOLLY! Don't worry about it, buy me a beer sometime.


* If you don't know what "IKR" stands for, then I don't *even want to know you*, you out-of-touch, uncool person who probably has a "life" and therefore knows little of the social network jargon.

Labor's power squabble an empty show

Another week has come and gone and I have failed to produce something specific for this blog. I'd hang my head in shame, if I couldn't account for my all my evenings: basically, pub; pub; pub; pub; pub; Conehead's going away party (bastard is escaping to Melbourne); collapse in front of Midsomer Murders. Or something like that, I could *just possibly* be exaggerating, but it is a bit of a blur.

Regardless, this is the piece I wrote for last'week's "Carlo's Corner" column for Green Left Weekly. It is sadly, pathetically even more relevant now than when I wrote it over a week ago.


* * *

Carlo's corner: Labor’s power squabble an empty show

Now that both Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry's marriages are over, and things seem quiet on the Brangelina front, the corporate media have been reduced to feverish speculation over another B-Grade celebrity circus: who will lead the seemingly doomed Labor government?

Will the skittish Labor caucus, freaked by polling data, stick with Julia Gillard or execute a dramatic reverse coup and bring back Kevin Rudd? Or will it be Wayne Swan or maybe that Simon someone-or-other who looks kinda familiar?

Strangely, the media appear to be ignoring the big question in all of this: what is Paul Howes doing? The Australian Workers Union national secretary, the least faceless of faceless men, the highest profile politician who sits in no parliament, the man with his hand on the knife in Rudd's back two years ago — he has been unusually absent from the media amid the latest frenzy.

Has Howes been kidnapped? Or is he quietly sharpening his knife and waiting for another call from Bill Shorten?

The most noticeable feature of the Labor leadership spectacle is how empty the whole show is. Given that it centres on a political party, it is hard not to notice that it is totally devoid of any politics.

The entire thing centres on the fluctuating polling data of the key personalities. No issues of policy or principle are raised by anyone involved. It is about how to hold power for power’s sake.

And yet, the coup against Rudd in 2010 was political. It was Labor capitulating to the powerful mining corporations campaigning against Rudd’s proposed “super tax” on their profits. Gillard immediately moved to water down the already very mild proposal.

But there is no hint that reverting to Rudd would mean seeking to impose a modicum of social responsibility on these huge corporations.

Nor is there any discussion of Rudd's statement, after he was dumped, that he would resist a “race to the right” over the treatment of asylum seekers (despite, as PM, having raced as far to the right as he could).

The only thing that matters is which individual is less likely to lose the next election — and which one will best serve which section of the power-hungry blocs within the party.

The irony is that this has a lot to do with Labor’s polling woes in the first place. It is hard to get excited about a party that stands for nothing.

If racist populism is your thing, the Coalition is your best bet. Labor is giving it a fair crack, but it just can’t compete with Tony Abbott’s natural flair for it.

On the other hand, if you want more humane treatment for asylum seekers, more public spending on health and education, or greater environmental protection, the Greens provide an electoral alternative.

(Of course, The Greens are also filled with wacko extremists and KGB agents — one of the few questions on which I agree with the Murdoch press. As soon as I read their proposal for a universal dental scheme, I realised the spirit of Stalin was alive and well. If history has taught us one thing, it is first decent dental care, then gulags.)

With no principle but power, Labor can’t please anyone. Worst of all, it can’t even satisfy the real power in the land — the big corporations. It is not that it doesn’t try, but whatever it gives, the corporations want more.

Labor won government on the back of anti-Work Choices campaign, and so was obliged to appear to kill it off. Labor’s replacement, the Fair Work Act, is Work Choices with some minor trimmings cut away, and still the bosses whine it is unfair.

Labor’s industrial relations laws are so rigged against workers that it allowed Qantas, legally, to lock-out its entire workforce without warning, stranding thousands of passengers, and then forced unions to end low-level industrial action meant to secure safety, job security and a wage deal that didn’t go backwards.

The big corporations are profit junkies — more is never enough. Labor is in no way threatening their supply, but the Liberals offer a purer cut.

I mean, two years ago Labor offered Kevin Rudd's head on a platter to the mining giants and how do they repay the favour? They get caught on film meeting with climate denier Lord Monckton plotting to further their control over the media to drag politics even further to the right.

Labor’s climate trading scheme doesn’t threaten their profits, but even admitting climate change is real is a step too far for those raking in record profits from industries destroying the planet.

Greater media power in the hands of mining giants is a truly frightening thought when you consider this is already a media in which Andrew Bolt has a column in a major paper and his own TV show.

The mining corporations' influence over the media is so great it even extends to altering the English language. The mainstream media, seemingly caring not a jot for dictionaries, refer, repeatedly, to the owners of these giant corporations as “miners”.

I am sorry, but Gina Rinehart is not a miner. I don't believe Twiggy Forrest actually mines. I am pretty sure they have people to do that for them.

Have you seen Mineralogy owner and “billionaire miner” Clive Palmer? I don't think he could even fit down a mine. It is a pretty safe bet the only thing Clive Palmer has ever fossicked for in his life was a hors d'oeuvre that fell under the table at a cocktail party.

It seems even the power to alter language is not enough.

Without any guiding principles but power, all Labor can do is keep caving in only to discover, every time, the interests that actually run the country still want more. In the meantime, pleasing no one, Labor is left to squabble over who sits at the front of a train that looks headed straight into the side of a mountain.




'Did you hear there's a natural order? The most deserving will end up with the most. That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top. Well, I say -- shit floats.' Whoever wins the sordid power squabble in the Labor Party...

Forget the race card, the bastard are playing the whole fucking pack

This was my rant in Green Left Weekly last week, that I never got around to posting here last week. There is a new one out, which you can read here.

Also, I know have an official, proper column in Green Left. It is called "The Machete"*.

* * *

Forget the race card, they're playing the whole deck

Well, it is only February and one thing is certain: a federal election doesn’t have to be called until as late as November 2013, but the Tony Abbott-led Coalition smells blood and, as far as they are concerned, they are in election mode.

This means if you are dark-skinned, downtrodden or desperate, you had better look out. You are right in the Coalition’s firing line, and just behind them is a desperate Labor government (led, for now, by Julia Gillard) eager to play the futile game of blunting attacks from the right by joining in.

Abbott is in election mode. If you are dark-skinned, downtrodden or desperate, watch out.


This is such a well-worn path. If you had just come out of a coma you’d been in since 2001 and seen the headlines, you’d think: “Shit, when's the vote? I can’t afford any more AEC fines.”

The farcical hysteria around an Aboriginal protest at the Tent Embassy in Canberra on “Australia Day” shows the big party politicians will leap on any opportunity to stoke racist prejudices and fears.

The protest by a small number of Aboriginal people and supporters outside a restaurant, which was asking Abbott to come out and address them over his comments the embassy should “move on”, somehow got spun into a full-blown “riot” after police panicked and dramatically dragged Gillard and Abbott out of the restaurant and bundled them into a car.

No one was arrested, there were some scuffles with police (who violently attacked the protesters) and nothing was broken. If that was a riot, how they hell are they going to respond if, at some point in the future, a single rock gets thrown or one window broken?

The shock jocks would have Abbott on air, insisting this was far worse than the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution, which, as anyone who's read history knows, was also initiated by Gillard's office.

Abbott even took the opportunity to denounce the protesters as “unAustralian”. This has got to win an award for redundancy.

On January 26, a day which marks the start of the invasion of Australia in which Aboriginal people faced systemic extermination, Aboriginal people were protesting the racist polices they are still systematically subjected to.

In other words, they were protesting to reject Australia as it exists.

After all, the next day, some of them went to Parliament House and burned the Australian flag. That is surely a clue that the people Abbott directed his “unAustralian” jibe at were never exactly aspiring to win any “fair dinkum Aussie” award.

These are people who have had enough of the Australia that exists — one in which 25% of the prison population are Aboriginal despite making up only 2% of the population. An Australia in which more than 400 Aboriginal people have died in police custody since 1980, without one police officer ever being brought to justice.

The obvious response would surely be: “If we are unAustralian, can we go to unAustralia now please?”

The Coalition is bent on exploiting prejudices, fears and insecurities in the community in the hope we’ll forget that the last time they were in power they introduced polices such as WorkChoices that screwed all working people, wherever they were from or whatever the colour of their skin.

Buckle in for a year in which the major parties try to avoid talking about real solutions to problems such as rising housing prices and job cuts by playing race card after race card.




'You're just some racist who can't tie my laces, your point of view is medieval.'


* This is a lie. I would like it to be true, but my column is called "Carlo's Corner". Better a corner than no corner, I guess.

Racist cartoon reveals denial problem

My article first published in this week's Green Left Weekly.


Racist cartoon reveals denial problem


The day after the January 26 protests by Aboriginal people and supporters gave the media the sensationalist images of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Liberal leader Tony Abbott fleeing under police protection, the Herald Sun's Mark Knight captured the image with a truly hilarious cartoon.

Gillard is being led into a car by police, chased by an angry mob of Aboriginal people, faces contorted with rage, waving their fists in fury. The PM quips: “Geez, if the Aboriginals had've put up a fight like this in 1788, we might not be bloody well here celebrating Australia Day…!”

It is one of life's truisms: jokes about genocide just never get old. I don't think I've laughed so hard since I read that famous comedic tract Mein Kempf.

Aboriginal people failed to stop an invasion that resulted in the extermination of possibly 90% of the original Indigenous population, and now they get angry? It is really quite funny if you stop and think about it.

Fucking hilarious.



The cartoon says a lot about the systemic denial at the heart of any discussion about Aboriginal people in Australia.

First is the denial of what occurred at the protest outside The Lobby in Canberra.

The cartoon shows an angry mob surrounding Gillard and Abbott, protected only by police. But look at the pictures and footage depicting their dramatic exit.

How many angry protesters, bearing down on them, do you actually see? In most you can, at best, spot a couple of protesters in the background, looking on.

It is a long way from the scene painted by Herald Sun attack dog Andrew Bolt, who wrote on January 27 that Gillard was forced to “run for her life”.

The protesters were actually calling on Abbott to come out and address them over his comments that the Tent Embassy was no longer needed. Abbott and Gillard refused to talk with the protesters.

I just hope I never face any threat to my life more serious than Gillard did on January 26. I am yet to hear of a single case of anyone being killed by a robust discussion.

More significantly, the cartoon denies the very real Aboriginal resistance to European invasion that, in many places, lasted decades. In the wars fought across the continent from the late 18th century and well into the 19th, the invaders lost a bit more than one shoe.

Denying this resistance strips Aboriginal people of their real history and reduces them to passive victims.

But there is a very revealing twist to the question of denial. This cartoon, by making a joke of the invasion, actually acknowledges it took place.

Even this racist cartoon in a Murdoch tabloid is forced to accept that Aboriginal people had cause to resist invasion, even as it mocks their failure to defeat it.

This is a product of modern Aboriginal resistance, which has forced White Australia, however reluctantly, to confront the fact the nation was founded on dispossession and genocide.

The only reason this point is even acknowledged — amid self-congratulatory celebrations of how “unique” we are because, unlike anywhere else in the world, we have beaches, enjoy cooking food on hotplates, are fond of sport and don't mind specially brewed drinks with intoxicating properties — is because of the ongoing Aboriginal protest.

And a key symbol of Aboriginal resistance and demands for sovereignty is that institution Abbott is so keen to consign to history's dustbin: The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which celebrated a remarkable 40 years of existence on January 26.

The argument is resounding loudly through the media that the images from the January 26 protest have “damaged the Aboriginal cause”. But the only reason the media is even discussing the Aboriginal cause is because of the protest.

The Tent Embassy confronts denial with the reality of ongoing dispossession and systemic oppression Aboriginal people face — and the determination to resist.





"Terrorists dressed in uniform under the protection of their law. Terrorise blacks in dawns of fear, they come smashin’ through your door". The Drones cover Kev Carmody's true story of the cold-blooded murder of Davi Gundy, a 32-year-old Aboriginal man shot in his own home.

New year, new examples of Western values

Slaughtering the natives is one thing, but for FUCK's SAKE show some decorum.


This is an article I wrote that was first published in Green Left Weekly.



It wasn't long into 2012 before fresh evidence emerged of a democratic, free West's civilising mission, providing a sterling example to backward barbarians as the march towards global liberation continues apace.

All in one day, January 13, the media carried three reports shining a spotlight on the higher values and morality of the democratic West: the footage of United States soldiers urinating on the corpses of three Afghan men, the fallout of the murder of an Iranian scientist most likely committed by Israel and the recommendation by a US military tribunal to court martial alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.

The stories coincided with the 10th anniversary of the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp opening. It is still going strong, holding an estimated 171 detainees without charge — who marked the anniversary by announcing a hunger strike on January 10.

The leader of the free world, US President Barack Obama, marked the occasion by signing into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Democracy Now! said on January 10 that “some legal experts say [the law] would authorize the military to indefinitely jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect — without charge or trial”.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the show this made Obama “the first president ever ... to sign into law indefinite detention as part of the policy of the United States”.

US officials tried to portray the footage of US soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses while cracking jokes as an isolated incident that does not reflect the true nature of US-led occupations.

Just like the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq; the US army “kill team” that collected the body parts of dead Afghans; the British soldiers who tortured an Iraqi man to death in 2003 (using methods a public inquiry in Britain in 2009 heard was “official policy”); the killing of five Afghan children by Australian soldiers in 2009; and the 2005 massacre of Iraqi civilians by US marines in Haditha, gruesome evidence of which emerged last month.

Isolated incidents, all of them.

As were, no doubt, the much larger number of accounts of abuse, torture and murder by the democratic liberators occupying Iraq and Afghanistan revealed by WikiLeaks.

Manning, the alleged source of this material, is now facing court martial after being held in US military prisons without trial since May 2010. This included months in solitary confinement and being forced to stand to attention while naked every morning.

In an isolated incident, the United States military entirely destroyed the city of Fallujah in 2004, completely destroying more than three quarters of all buildings and slaughtering more than 1200 civilians.


But the most revealing thing about the latest scandal has been the way military figures have responded.

Retired US General Spider Marks, for instance, was quoted by ABC.net.au on January 13 as saying: "They may have slaughtered those guys and that's fine. You move off to your next mission. You don't do what we just saw."

No, clearly not. Slaughter is one thing — the civilised liberator knows that once you slaughter the natives you move on to your next mission, presumably slaughtering more natives. But pissing on the corpses of the natives you have just slaughtered is just not the done thing.

By all means, invade a sovereign nation, replace the brutal fundamentalist regime with a brutal fundamentalist regime, subject the population to a fresh decade of constant warfare, further destroy the poorest nation on Earth already ravaged by two decades of constant war, then slaughter those who fight back. But, for Christ’s sake, show some decorum.

ABC.net.au reported that, for his part, retired Australian Army officer Jim Molan insisted the incident “must be seen in proportion”. He said: “It’s wrong but this is nothing like Abu Ghraib.”

Trying to minimise an incident of abuse by comparing it with an even worse example by the same forces is not overly reassuring. He may as well have said: “You think this one is bad, hell, you should have seen 'em at Abu Ghraib! Woah, now that was some crazy shit!”

Meanwhile, key Western ally The Only Democracy in the Middle East (TM) proved its terrorist credentials with appears to be its latest assassination in Iran of an Iranian scientist (though the Iranian regime has also pointed the finger at the United States). Chemistry expert Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed on January 11 in central Iran by a magnetic bomb placed under his car.

The US denies any role. After Israel first refused to confirm or deny its involvement, Israeli President Shimon Peres said it was not involved "to the best of my knowledge". But, really, if you were accused of blowing up some poor bastard with a car bomb, and you were innocent, would you respond to questions of your involvement by saying: “Well, I can’t really say for sure either way, but I don't think so, as far as I can tell.”

Actually, you would probably not be saying anything — chances are you'd be too busy being tortured in Guantanamo.

I am surprised democratic Israel even found the time to kill Ahmadi Roshan, busy as it's been reinforcing its apartheid-like social structures. Already in the new year, Israeli courts upheld a 2003 ruling that bans “most Palestinians who marry Israelis from obtaining either citizenship or residency” in Israel, AlJazeera.net said on January 12.

Of course there is a lot more happening in the world than just these atrocities. Last year was marked, above all else, by the explosion onto the political scene of ordinary people standing up against oppressive and unjust rulers — from Cairo to Madrid to New York and beyond.

It is worth remembering that when former dictator Hosni Mubarak's thugs fired tear gas on protesters in Egypt, people showed the cameras what was written on the side of the canisters: “Made in the USA.” It's a pretty safe bet the same thing was printed on the side of the tear gas canisters fired on peaceful protesters at Occupy Oakland in October — including the one that nearly killed Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen.

As we enter a new year, it is clear ordinary people share a common enemy — even if the enemy tries in vain to present a democratic, civilised face.





"What's best for the Western and the greed? Kill 'em all? Let 'em breed?" I include this song by The Drones about the horrors of war because I fucking can -- until the United States' government introduces its online censorship laws and destroys the internet as we know it.