True-blue Aussie patriots might prefer not to peek through this keyhole...

Howard the Bully
( Nicholson, in
"The Australian").

Howard the
Colonial Master
( Dyson, in
"The Age")




WARNING: If you prefer to avoid reading uncomfortable news about Australia, read no further. Otherwise, Read on, McBotanyBay Boatpeople...

All the political noise coming from the Pacific about Julian Moti is only a Sprat to catch a Mackerel. Or perhaps a Red Herring.

First - a little background. Ongoing instability and poverty in the Pacific region is largely a by-product of the thoughtlessness of European Colonialism, and subsequent ham-fisted attempts after WW2 to fix the mess. It was a game called Let’s rape them economically then piss off and leave them to fix their own mess. The recent Moti spat is only the smoke from the fire of the latest round in the eternal repair process... superficial re-patching of old patches by government employees who no longer really care. Hey, it's all history, ain't it?

True. Welcome to History - you're standing in it.

As the saying goes, a Camel is a Horse designed by a committee. For instance, after WW2, both Timor and PNG were slashed into halves by a straight line drawn on government maps - regardless of minor details like mountains or rivers. Bougainville was allocated to PNG instead of to the Solomons, in defiance of geography, cultural links or Logic. Many Pacific islands are economically unviable because their traditional solutions and cultures have been swept away by Colonial invaders in the 19th century – and later. For instance, don’t imagine for a moment that post-1987 Fiji is now somehow stable and free from the threat of another coup.

These heal-resistant carbuncles are no different from those in other regions of the post-Colonial aftermath. They are largely the fault of we Europeans - and now that Colonialism has had its wicked way with its victims, we no longer care. Let them eat cake. This was evident yesterday in the dismissive attitude and arrogant smirk of Johnny Dubya Ducklips when he threatened sanctions by withdrawing Australian Aid from the Solomons. Money, of course, is the weapon-of-choice of agents of Globalisation (=code for “Colonialism, Round 2”). Howard is simply ‘joining the dots’ in George Bush’s "How-To" manual… eg., witness the financial suffocation of Palestine.

So - what DOES Australia really want in the Pacific? The first part of the answer is simple. It wants what all Colonialists have always wanted – quick profits via economic exploitation. Look no further than Australia grasping no less than 90% of the Timor Sea revenues from East Timor, the poorest country in the WORLD - and our suffering neighbour. (FunkyPix2 hereby apologises to the East Timorese people).

But in the Pacific region there’s another even more sinister agenda: it's the R-word so hated by "whiter-than-white" Philip Rude-ock: R-E-F-U-G-E-E-S.

It's happening. Sea-levels are rising even more quickly than expected and are already threatening to inundate some lower-lying Pacific nations. Yesterday, not at all co-incidentally, one Pacific politician pointed this fact out - as you too might well do if the sea were overflowing your doorstep. He said he hoped "larger nations" would notice and do the right thing (hint hint), a politely oblique reference to Australia’s shameful approach to the Kyoto Protocol.
(Bush and Howard remain the world’s only two rogue renegades from Kyoto... and don't be sucked in by Howard's "too-little-too-late" band-aid announcement of his pet Solar project. A massive $420 million solar power plant will provide just 154MW of electricity -- about one sixth the power generated by even a modest coal-fired plant.

Obviously, if one cares to listen between the lines of the sound-bites, Australia’s strategy is now to be deliberately "less-than-friendly", to put Pacific nations at arm’s length, not to be so ‘matey’ any more. And Howard is succeeding spectacularly. This policy 'sea-change' is being introduced at this point in order to pre-empt and deflect the looming requests from thousands of environmental refugees who will soon be knocking on Australia’s door. The islanders' requests will hardly be unreasonable in the dire circumstances, but I think we can all predict Howard's cold response. "Siev X2", but with a cast of thousands.

The media-hype currently whipped up over Julian Moti (Downer's convenient Sacrificial Lamb) is merely a circuitous Means to that less-than-savoury End, a dark, un-written xenophobic agenda. Everybody in the Pacific knows it, but most Australians can't see through the Julian Moti smokescreen.

Designer Demonisation is becoming typical of Australia’s racist and un-ashamed revival of the White Australia Policy. White Australia has already refused entry to Tuvaluans. At least there was once a veneer of multi-culturalism. Whatever happened to mateship? ...the fair go?
Fuzzy-wuzzy angels, where are you now?

The next line is not blank - it contains a Vital Secret Message. I invite you to use your Message-Sniffing Mouse to decipher it:

Here's the message ---> Howard SUCKS.

And to conclude... click on this short flash animated cartoon by Nicholson of the Australian’ newspaper. In it, Australia's Great Leader reveals his scientific arguments against the science of Global Warming. Next week, FP2 brings you his arguments in support of the Flat Earth Theory.

Links to a relevant article in climateark.org here,
and Scott Burchill in 'The Age', Oct 25, 2006 here.