Bastards: A rumination on the state of Australian politics

Bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards bastards Lee Rhainnon seems alright, she has my solidarity.



Terrorists dressed in uniform
Under the protection of their law
Terrorise blacks in dawns of fear
They come smashin' through your door
You're not safe out there on freedom street
You're not safe inside the "can"
For their shotguns and their stunt gas
They're licenced to drop you where you stand
We say oh oh oh oh oooooh
Sad river of tears
Two hundred years in the river of fear

Panama Papers just proves how right Jarvis Cocker was about who runs this fucking world

"The Panama Papers are a massive and historic leak of confidential documents that reveal how the rich and powerful from many countries around the globe use tax havens to hide their wealth."

So says TeleSUR English, which goes on to note: "About 140 high-level officials and millionaires, and about 113,000 shell companies are exposed in the documents, including at least 12 current or former heads of state."

In other words, the rich and powerful are a bunch of dodgy, greedy pricks whose morally offensive activities strip wealth from whole nations -- many trillions in badly needed revenue. It is almost as if the poverty affecting billions is directly related to the obscene wealth of a tiny minority, while all the while the same system enriching these corrupt fuckers is rendering the planet increasingly uninhabitable at a rapid rate.

Well, who could have guessed they could be so mean? Asides, you know, from Bernie Sanders and any other politician, journalist or just plain straight up human being not in the pocket of these pricks.

One individual exposed by this massive leak is Iceland's prime minister, whose government took over failed banks and was the centre of countless fucking Facebook memes about the heroic acts of the Icelandic government in standing up to the banks and the IMF and probably for slaying all the fucking trolls on the island (with no concern about the Icelandic troll-based tourism industry). Yes, it seems leaving the same corporate, financial and political elite in charge of a country that helped cause a disaster, whatever concessions they may give you, doesn't actually change the nature of that elite or the system they run. A bastard is always a fucking bastard.

The lesson here is two-fold:

1) Facebook books memes are not fucking history or news or fucking anything other than grossly over simplified points aiming to distort facts and/or reinforce the meme sharers pre-existing prejudices. WHO THE FUCK KNEW? WHO THE FUCK KNEW FUCKING SOCIAL MEDIA MEMES WERE JUST EMPTY BULLSHIT AND NOT FACTUAL HISTORY??? WHAT NEXT??? BUZZFEED IS NO ACTUAL SUBSTITUTE FOR FUCKING NEWS?????

2) Jarvis Cocker was right.

Former frontman of 1990s Britpop band Pulp, Jarvis Cocker was right way back in 2005. Watching the G8 summit summit with its smiling politicians and rock stars pledging "debt relief" to African countries, while putting forward a deal that actually worsened the debt slavery of the poorest  African nations, an angry Cocker immediately wrote a song in response. It is especially targetted at the smug grinning "New Labour" clique running Britain's government at the time,

It is below and it remains to the point*.




Well did you hear, there's a natural order
Those 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.

If you thought things had changed
Friend you'd better think again
Bluntly put in the fewest of words
Cunts are still running the world...


* POSTSCRIPT It is worth noting there is a particularly cynical line in the song about the prospect for popular protest to achieve anything.  Just after the glorious line "The free market is perfectly natural -- do you think that I'm some kinda dummy?" Jarvis sings: "if you don't like it then leave or use your right to protest in the streets. Use your rights but don't imagine that it's heard..."

The line is hardly surprising, coming just two years after the largest global protests in human history failed to stop the criminal invasion of Iraq. But Cocker later took the sentiment back and argued popular protest was all we had left, that it was essential to protest against the cunts to have any chance at saving the planet.

In a 2014 op-ed in The Guardian entitled "Climate change is real. Want to live? It's up to people like you":

Remember 15 February 2003? If you’re taking the trouble to read this, then you probably went to an anti-war march that day. Didn’t turn out so well, did it? Nothing really changed. The “largest protest event in human history”, as we remember it today, was effectively ignored. That left a nasty taste. It might even have put you off the idea of protesting forever. The marching boots were thrown to the back of the cupboard and you went into a major sulk. Maybe you even wrote a song about it ...

And you thought: “Yes! Smash the system!” And then ... time passed. Until you got this email [about globally coordinated l climate change protests...

Can you be arsed? Do you risk being disappointed again? Or do you sit this one out?

...

Back in 2008, I sailed the coast of Greenland on a vessel chartered by the organization Cape Farewell and saw the effects of global warming firsthand. It exists. On the way home, we spent a few hours in Reykjavík’s international airport waiting for a connecting flight back to the UK. I bought an ashtray made out of lava. When I got back home, I turned the TV on. It was the morning of the stock market crash and I learned that Iceland, the country I had been visiting not four hours previously, was effectively bankrupt.

That gave me a strange feeling because I hadn’t noticed. The sun had still been shining as I walked through the airport terminal. People had gone about their everyday business as usual, there had been air to breathe and nothing to betray the cataclysm that had befallen the entire country. How could that be? This was a financial crisis! The Big One! THE ECONOMY was at risk! Why was the world still turning?

You whisper now, but could it be that there is a higher power than … THE ECONOMY? I know that sounds a bit sacrilegious, but could it be that THE ECOLOGY is actually the biggie? That maybe having air to breathe, water to drink and land to inhabit could be more important than the fluctuations of the FTSE or the Dow Jones? It’s just a thought – a thought that most people instinctively understanding, but that the political classes have yet to grasp ...

Exactly when did “government for the people” become “government of the people”? When did the function of government change from public service to crowd control? From protector to pimp?

The People’s Climate March this Sunday is important. Because governments won’t put the case for action on climate change too strongly – no, that might be interpreted as being “anti-business”. It might dissuade corporations from building factories in countries that sign on to climate agreements. It might be harmful to THE ECONOMY. So once again it will be left to ordinary people to point out the blindingly obvious fact that destroying the place you live in is not a good idea. It really isn’t. And the powers that be would do well to heed the cold, hard truth that there are more of us than them, that we are heartily sick and tired of being ignored.

That’s not a threat, you understand. I just thought I’d point it out.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Did my Abbott Roast tip Turnbull over? You be the judge.

FACT 1: In a matter of minutes, the #libspill is scheduled to start. Malcolm Turnbull is challenging Tony Abbott for Liberal leader and the right to rule over this wide brown land.

FACT 2: On the opening night of Sydney Fringe Comedy, just a couple of Tuesdays ago on September 1, I took part in the Roast of Tony Abbott -- in which four of us  "roasted" Prime Minster Tony Abbott as represented by the Abbott Impersonator Jonas Holt in an event MC'd by Comedy on Edge's Mark Williamson.

Now full credit to the other three "roasters" -- Julia Wilson (representing 52% of the population), Peter Green (playing windfarmer Trevor Gumboot) and Kevin Rudd (doing a reasonable Nathan Lentern impersonation, or maybe vice versa,  not sure, I'd been on the Coopers Red) -- they were all great, *sure*.
But is it a coincidence that this has happened after my *savage* attacks, representing Green Left Weekly, on our prime minister? Well... I'd been meaning to get around to chucking my comments on the night up on this blog, and the dramatic events tonight have forced me to act decisively.

You be the judge. (Also, whatever happens tonight you can still see Tony "Jonas" Abbott and Kevin "Lentern" Rudd and myself and others at the Green Left comedy debate "Team Australia Should Be Disqualified" at Leichhardt Town Hall on October 17).

***

THE ROAST OF TONY ABBOTT

[Coming out waving Abbott out placard]

“What do we want, Abbott out! When do we want it, now! What do we want Abbott out, when do we want it… [gesturing to audience to finish "now":] Alright, calm down, this is a roast not a revolution! We can start that as soon as this done.

So you’ve probably guessed. I’m the Young Liberal.

Actually, I am from Green Left Weekly and as an environmental busybody, I was going to chain myself to the podium [holds up chain] and refuse to leave until Tony Abbott resigns, but under his new welfare laws, I couldn’t afford a padlock.

Tony Abbott. What can I say about our prime minister that won’t get my citizenship stripped?

Well… they say the left is too negative, always “no” to this, “don’t do” that, so I wanted to focus on the positives. Tony Abbott has been very good for those of us in the community who like getting angry. For us rage addicts, he’s been brilliant. Something new every day, it’s been great.

He’s been great for the left-wing protest sector in general, getting us out of the house and onto streets. For many of the older activists from the ‘60s, all these marches provide some much needed exercise.

Tony’s also been very good for the left’s self-esteem. Because SURE, we might be getting screwed 17 ways by over-entitled over privileged hypocrites… but then again… at least WE’VE never tried to knight a duke! At least WE know how to eat a FUCKING ONION! Next time try using a frying pan, Tony, you useless dingbat.

Tony has also done sterling work providing access to education to those who may otherwise be excluded… true, only for his daughter Frances, but it’s a step in the right direction.

However, I while we all appreciate your efforts, Tony, in securing Melbourne’s borders, I have one suggestion to improve your Border Force tactics. If you are really determined to catch visa violaters, just get Liverpool FC to play another game at the MCG… then round up the 90,000 English visa overstayers who turn up… In fact, just lock the gates and you’ve got yourself a brand new detention centre.

Tony has shown us why we should never trust “inspirational quotes”, you know the sort of Facebook memes with quotes saying “Be yourself. Be who you are, look inside your heart and be the best you you can be”, which is fine… but what if you’re Tony Abbott?

By all appearances you’re an out of touch, poor hating misogynist homophobe! Tony… If you’re being yourself, for god’s sake STOP! Ignore the facebook memes! DO  not be the youest you you can possibly be!

Tony has also taught us that we’ve been reading the Bible wrong all these years. In an appearance on Q&A in the days before it became the propaganda arm of ISIS, Tony was asked what Jesus would do about boat people and he said… “Jesus understood that there was a place for everyone … and that place was not necessarily Australia…”

Tony… are you SURE that’s what Jesus said? I know you’re the proud captain of Team Australia… but I’m not sure we actually MADE it into the Bible.

Or maybe there’s a previously unpublished Gospel According to Tony in which the Sermon on the Mount ends with Jesus saying “and the coal miners shall inherit the Earth… oh before you go, don’t forget… there’s a place for everyone and everyone in their place…but not Australia for the likes of you …they don’t like your kind”.

Presumably in the Gospel according to Tony, in the story of the Good Samaritan, rather than actually helping the injured Jew on the side of the road, the Samaritan just starts KICKING him while shouting “FUCK OFF BACK TO JERUSALEM, JERICHO FULL!”

What IS IT, Tony, with you and torturing innocent people including children? I mean GOD it’s just so… ARRGHH [clutches heart] oh jesus… my doctor warned me not to do this gig… god damn, I’ll stop now for the same of my health… enjoy the rest of Tony Abbott's overlordship.





There you have it. Abbott's has survived a lot, but that savaging was obviously too much many of his Liberal Party colleagues. Whatever happens in about ..ah... 25 minutes time... Come along on October 17... Support a paper that is not in Murdoch's pocket... you can get tickets here.

'May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell' -- Fuck you Maggie

What the media should do, of course, is take all their editorials and op eds about a world famous politican who has died -- with their "authoritarian" and "tyrant" descriptors and their tales of economic destruction and class hatred and rising corruption and society breakdown and support for dictators -- and just do a simple find/replace, removing "Hugo Chavez" and inserting "Margaret Thatcher". Just to save some time.

The two leaders, one who died on March 5 the other on April 8, left rather different legacies -- one, for helping the poor, at home and overseas. The other for waging war on the poor, at home and overseas.

One of these two leaders' deaths sparked widespread mourning, the other street parties. Check out these images and see if you can guess which one was the "tyrant"...

HUGO CHAVEZ DIES



Hundreds of thousands of people accompany Hugo Chavez's coffin onthe streets of Caracas



Venezuela's streets were scenes of outpourings of grief.




Real News report on mourning for Chavez in Venezuela and beyond


MARGARET THATCHER DIES:



Celebrations break out in Glasgow's Green Square after news of Thatcher's death.



Thousands gather outside Belfast's City Hall to celebrate news of Thatcher's death.



A street party in Liverpool with fireworks -- to mark the death of a leader who tried her hardest to destroy the city.


So a murderer and torturer, who denounced Nelson Mandela, befriended the worst dictators like Chile's General Pinochet and gave Pol Pot a helping hand has finally fucked off to Hell.

The corporate media are eulogising her and expressing "disgust" at those who have the gall to be happy at the demise of their greatest tormentor.

But even when they might feel obliged to give some nod of recognition to the savage class war Thatcher waged across Britain, there is one aspect likely to be largely ignored -- on top of Thatcher's infamous assistance to pro-Western dictators all over the world, there was Thatcher's policies of murder and torture in the cause of deepening British control over the six counties in Ireland's north.

It is well known that -- on top of the torture and abuses in prisons and the campaign of killings and repression in Ireland's north -- Thatcher's refusal to compromise in the case of the hunger strike by republican prisoners in the infamous Long Kesh camp lead directly to the death of 10 men.

Under Thatcher, the policies of repression against the Irish struggle extended onto mainland Britain, with the gross violation of the rights of Irish people living in England that included the framing by means of torture of innocent people for bombings they had nothing to do with.

Censorship is a sign of a guilty regime -- the truth cannot be allowed out. And so the censorship in Thatcher's Britain on "the Irish question" went to absurd lengths -- Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' voice was even banned from being broadcast. But it was not just Adams' voice -- a song by a popular band that dared deal with the topic was banned from public broadcast and a TV performance of the song was pulled from the air.

The song was The Pogues "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six". Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan is now better known as an irredeemable drunk, but his lyircs savaged the British state crimes against the Irish people -- in Ireland and Britain. It campaigned for freedom for the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four -- framed for bombings they didn't commit, both before Thatcher came to power, but whose suffering continued under her government while attempts to get out truth were censored.




Thatcher's regime was one that could not even bear to hear about its own crimes in a song...





...There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there's four
That were picked up and tortured
And framed by the law
And the filth got promotion
But they're still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place
And at the wrong time

In Ireland they'll put you away in the Maze
In England they'll keep you for seven long days
God help you if ever you're caught on these shores
The coppers need someone
And they walk through that door

You'll be counting years
First five, then ten
Growing old in a lonely hell
Round the yard and the stinking cell
From wall to wall, and back again

A curse on the judges, the coppers and screws
Who tortured the innocent, wrongly accused
For the price of promotion
And justice to sell
May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell...

May the whores of the empire lie awake in their beds
And sweat as they count out the sins on their heads
While over in Ireland eight more men lie dead
Kicked down and shot in the back of the head ...





'Five simple things we asked of them, five simple things denied. But Thatcher would not compromise...'




Scenes of jubilation in celebration at Thatcher's death on Falls Road in Belfast. You can hear the banging of bin lids -- a highly symbolic gesture as the banging of bin lids was used on Falls Road (and other places in the nationalist community) to announce the death of each of hte 10 young men Margaret Thatcher let starve to death in 1981.


SO HAVE A FUCKING DRINK COZ OUR VICTORIES ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN... BUT WE ARE STILL HERE AND MAGGIE THATCHER IS NOT!!!

We want blood...

"We want blood! (we want blood), We want blood! (we want blood), let the scarlet red river turn our cities into mud..."

Finally, someone has stood up and said what needs to be said. And that someone is the great singer-songwriter from Dublin, The Mighty Stef (born Stefan Murphy).

The Mighty Stef aims his rough-as guts, drunken, impassioned, bluesy musical guns at the Irish government and calls them out for what they are: fucking lying thieves.

Having turned those parts of the Emerald Isle not still occupied by the British into a happy hunting ground for corporate plunderers (corporate tax rate lowered to 12%), when the good ship Corporate Plunder ran aground, the good people in the Irish government gave them 70 billion euros.

I mean, seriously, they gave it to them. It was not a loan. They wont have to pay it back. Just "there you go, you cheeky scamps, don't spend it all on lollys".

And these are the sort of people who wouldn't give a beggar a buck in the snow.

I mean, I was personally a bit strapped for cash a year or two back and I asked Brian Cowan himself if he could lend me a few bucks for a few pints in his nation's lovely pubs.

Well, the reply I got from his personal secretary's staff clerk's assistant's secreatary is not printable even on this blog.

Hell, I was only trying to do the bastard a favour. The economy clearly badly needed a stimulus package to get it back up and running and nothing stimulates an economy like a Carlo Sands' drinking binge.

But no.

But a bunch of goddamn fucking thieves in suits who fucked the economy up in the first place give him a call and next thing you know its 70 billion pounds from the public coffers straight into the veins of the profit junkies.

And it all gets blown on debts and speculation. Soon as they get the cash, it's straight down to their dealer round the stock market and whole sad and pathetic cycle starts again.

With the cash not being spent on anything *actually* productive or useful, far from saving the economy, it drove it further into crisis. Unemployment has tripled since 2007, numbering hundreds of thousands. Wages are 20% lower than three years ago.

Mass migration, that terrible feature of Irish history that has foisted morbid, miserable Irish folk songs on innocent people all over the world, is raising its ugly head once more.

And, after it all, the government has found itself a little strapped for cash.

The solution? Pay for the bailout of the parasites by squeezing the fucking people that *actually* do something useful in society, that actually produce something of social value: brewery workers and bartenders.

And the working class in general, they were just the first that came to mind.

The problem is it wasn't even the government's cash to begin with. It was money provided by taxpayers.

And the rich in Ireland generally don't pay taxes (do they Bono?).

So the government gives the rich the working people's cash. Then, it makes up the balance by making the working people pay even more.

It follwed this up by slashing billions out of social services, cut funds to education and hike up tuition fees, slash public sector jobs, reduce pensions and increase taxes for ordinary people.

But that was still not enough, because the Irish government claims it still can't pay its loans to... the FUCKING BANKS.

The solution? Well, "dear banks, get fucked" is the one understandably that struck most Irish people, who polls say back a default.

Instead, the government went crawling on its knees to the International Monetary Fund and European Union and got 90 billion odd euros in a loan at high interest rates, in order to burden the Irish people minus the six counties claimed by Britain with *even more* debt it never asked for. (But don't worry, the six counties claimed by Britain are having to pay for debts racked up by the British government for handing billions of euros to British banks.)

And in return the cash, the government will lose economic sovereignty and hand the running of the day-to-day economy over to IMF and EU bureacrats *and* commits to implementing *further* savage spending cuts and other neoliberal austerity measures - of the sort that helped cause the fucking crisis in the first place.

This, you might think, may make people angry. Well, the government is on the verge of collapse an some 100,000 protested in Dublin on November 27 at this state of affairs.

The Mighty Stef goes further: "Let the downtrodden rise with a fire in their soul ...how many times do you need to be told? We want blood!"

How to organise such a thing? I made some general suggestions on the issue of how to make the streets run scarlet red with the blood of the ruling class, followed by what may be best described as a "colourful" discussion in the comments section, in my post Could *this* be the wall?

But the practicalities are largely to do with Australia and the Irish people will have to find their own solutions. And, indeed, their own walls.

The Mighty Stef has rightly raised the issue and got the ball (if not yet the heads) rolling. And this from a man whose previous experience of protest songs was this effort in response to Ireland losing a football match to France in the "Hand of Frog" scandal.

But I like the Mighty Stef in general. Rough, raw and drunken... Irish, in other words. If you want to hear some more, here are three song suggestions (though I could list more):

Death Threats: "It's getting to the stage I guess I always knew it would, where I can't walk down my street. I'm getting death threats here, death threats there from everyone I meet..." Carlo Sands can relate, especially to the empty beer glasses in the film clip.

Poisonous Love: "I'll return, your jewelry, I'll return your keys. I'll return your records and your poxy DVDS. I'll give you back your innocence that you blindly gave to me, and I'll sink you to the bottom of the sea..." The Mighty Stef shows the mature way to deal with a relationship break up.

Waitin' round to die: "I came of age and I met a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar, she cleaned me out and hit it on the sly. I tried to kill the pain, I bought some wine, hopped a train..." The Mighty Stef teams up with Shane MacGowan to cover Townes Van Zandt's classic.

Or you could just get on with the task of spilling their blood.



"Coz I've heard all the lies that I'm ever gonna wanna hear... we want blood!" Accoustic fury this time.

And the bastards actually expect us to live in this god forsaken city

Yes, Sydney.

Good god.

"Socialism or barbarism" said Rosa Luxemburg early last century. Well, a quick trip around Sydney will leave you will little doubt who won that particular battle.

Luckily, you don't actually have to do it yourself.

Here is a wonderful blog called
Tetherd Cow that has done that for you.

And summed it all up.

Brace yourself for the Bad Public Art of Sydney,

And keep a special eye out for the "Newtown bins" section.

What scum.

Short of fullscale rioting, the only solution I can see for those of us condemned to this hellhole/"modern metropolis" ends at closing time.

Beware the bastards trying to stop us enjoying a drink

[I have a horrible confession to make. It isn't easy to admit this, but we have to be honest about our mistakes. Not so long ago, the strange and dangerous idea entered my head that perhaps I should "give it a rest", so to speak.

Yes. To stop drinking. At least for a bit, and generally to cut back.

Well, I guess I was sick of severe hangovers, and thinking about all the useful things I could do if I was at home more evenings, and not struggling to avoid falling off a stool in some inner-Sydney dive. Perhaps, without realising it, the constant bombardment of anti-booze propaganda in the media was seeping into my consciousness.

Whatever it was, I was wrong, and I am big enough to admit it. The brutal reality is, I didn't feel any better for not drinking. True, a friend commented that I was "looking a lot better", but really, unless not drinking is going to transform me into Johnny Depp, who really cares?

I still spent large amount of time feeling like crap. I felt more stressed. I didn't get anything more done. In short, I mistakenly blamed booze for the general horrors of life in late monopoly capitalism. Modern life is not nice. In Australia, it is hardly ever even interesting. I recommend a diet of struggle against the status quo, however difficult that seems in Australia. And, in the meantime, a drug like alcohol can be a useful tool to make the seemingly endless rise of barbarism a bit more bearable.

Don't let the propaganda get to you. Below is an article from The Age, called Beware the wowsers trying to stop us enjoying a drink. By James Campbell, it demolishes the myths.