It is reasonably clear what Abbott and Pyne are up to. It is to torture Thomson and Slipper into madness and suicidal thoughts and drive them out of politics so their seats can be captured in by-elections and an election brought on early.
It is very much the tactic of the dorm bully — isolate, humiliate, jeer, put the victim’s head down the toilet, convince him he’s worthless and useless till his parents take him out of there, to another school.
It nearly worked with Slipper on Tuesday last. If not he, then some family member was contemplating suicide if Tony Windsor’s careful account of it is to be correctly deciphered.
What a pair of criminals they are.
If this is not workplace harassment, what is?
Name:
Absolutely it is workplace harassment.
Furthermore, it is irrefutable evidence of the unfitness of Abbott and his rag tag collection of misfits for government.
It is so transparent as to be laughable; and it is virtually the only “game” for this disgraceful opposition over the last two years, seeking as it has to force an early election.
Appalling.
Storms in teacups is what the opposition are good at. Miserable opportune and pathetic, but enough storms in teacups act like the dripping tap. Some psyches are weaker than others, and Slipper has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him by the Murdoch Press and its running dogs.
I have no love for Slipper, and he has revealed a rather miserable character as well – hardly surprising, he was a Liberal member for 20 years or so – but he was a quite effective Speaker when he presided.
This opposition is so transparent as to be laughable, a Pirates of Penzance opposition, seeking to drive certain members of parliament out of parliament in any way it can manage.
Time is not Abbott’s friend, and it is fast running out. I still am of the belief Turnbull is the annointed one.
The real movers and shakers of this party in Vaucluse and Toorak must be sick of Abbotts excuses by now.
You can hear them now.
Tony you promised us an election, that Slipper would commit suicide, and Thomson was supposed to be like Jimmy Hoffa sleeping with the fish.
This play is better than Shakespears stuff.
I’m a bit confused Bob. On one hand you say Abbott is a bully. Then Gillard comes out and calls him a coward. Which is it to be? Regardless, if Abbott can get Slipper, Windsor and Oakeshott to suicide, then we old school Conservatives will be popping champagne and celebrating his win. What a brilliant trifecta! If only it was possible…
A bully is a coward, Frank.
A bully will pick on someone weaker than themselves in some way and seek to exploit the victim’s weaknesses for their own amusement and gratification.
No self-respecting bully will attack a stronger opponent.
The entire Labor/Greens Party has joined forces in an out and out onslaught against Abbott, including Windsor, the media and the likes of Burnside & Ellis. I wonder, has anybody stopped to think about the effect this might be having on Abbott, or his family! So stop all the boo hooing over Slipper and Thomson, did the wrong thing, they were found out, they should have resigned. How the hell anyone can defend these two is beyond me, they deserve everything they get and they can end the so called ‘bullying’ by resigning ! PS. I am sure if the Speaker thought there was any BULLYING, she would call it !
I would call it correcting the record. Have a look at :
http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-r-rated/
and then tell me who is being bullied.
You two must live in a different universe to the rest of Australia if you can see these two scumbags as victims.
Would you feel differently if you were a lowly-paid hospital worker whose $660 pa went to finance Craig Thomson’s brothel-creeping?
Have you actually read the thoughts of Peter Slipper as expressed in his messages? Or considered the damage he has done to the image of our most important institution?
If they do commit suicide, they can blame themselves for their corrupt lifestyles. They are not victims.
quoting Craig Thomsons lawyer this morning in the SMH.
”
“It is a series of false allegations,” Mr McArdle said, adding his client did not use union funds for any improper purpose at all.
“He is particularly innocent of having paid people to have sex with him by using other people’s money or using his own money.”
Mr McArdle warned others not to repeat the allegations, raising the prospect the MP may take defamation action.
”
Potentially defamatory, what you have said.
Aren’t you banned?
They may not be victims, but their wives are.
Funny that you mention Guantanamo… didn’t Obama say he was going to close it? Oh, right after he was going to slow the rise of the oceans. What does the autocue say now?
Anyhow, the truth will out – and of course Bob is on the side of the rorting fuckwits.
He tried to close Guantanamo. The Congress wouldn’t let him.
He did well without the autocue on Tuesday.
Or do you think he did badly?
It is indeed of concern Bob, this bullying and harrasment, which as you rightly say, can only affect their mental health. Very similar to what some have done to Ms Gillard and others with their constant undermining and chipping away at character and family.
A good call on this and one can only hope Mr Slipper and Mr Thomson are being looked after and seeking help if they need it.
Another “Tony Windsor’s careful account”….
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/21/1100972259749.html
Any Slipper persecution predictions by these evil people is premature.
As Robert Ray said, Mal Colston would be persued to the grave – and he was.
Balloons for the pricking of…
Mention of Guantanamo arises again this morning with the announcement that David Hicks may have the charges against him dropped and his name cleared after a US court ruling. Those people who have accused him of being a traitor; the Australian governments that sold him out; and any other persecutors; I just hope they take a good look in their mirrors this morning. Better still that they read Guantanamo My Journey, and transport themselves inside Hick’s thoughts and experiences.
But they won’t. Instead to excuse themselves of their own ignorance and indifference to injustice they will just call him a liar. How easy it easy. Just look at Slipper.
I believe the charges of being a deadbeat dad and a dickhead still stand.
Have you read Guantanamo My Journey? If not where is your knowledge regarding Hicks coming from? Instead of dealing with the matter of an Australian spending five and a half years in Guantanamo, most of that time in solitary confinement or a cage, beaten, tortured, without being formally charged of any crime, the best you can come up with is a throw-away line about his intelligence or suitability as a father. Do you know anything at all about his family circumstances [his is a remarkable story of childhood, both in initiative and courage] or are you just a neutralised parrot squawking lines provided by governments and media. Why would you want to cast yourself in such a meaningless role of spreading prejudices and lies?
He was kidnapped and thrown into Gitmo for 5 years, you can hardly call him a dead beat dad for that.
Hicks trained with a terrorist organisation and vowed to overthrow democratic governments.
Now he wants the government he fought against to protect him? Sheesh Marilyn, that’s a bit rich isn’t it.
So, Pleb, what laws in existence in 2002 did Hicks break in doing that stuff before he was thrown in Gitmo?
Hicks’ Book may have literary merit :
“The media has long proposed that one of the many questions I should publicly address is, “What was I doing in Afghanistan?” To those who would ask such a question, I would first answer with a few questions of my own……What could i have done to make the treatment I endured acceptable? Is there any situation that would warrant such treatment> …..Can selected people be treated harshly ….because of the allegations aimed at them, based on their actions, intentions beliefs or any other excuses?’
In a review by Mr Walker (google it) :
“Reading these words I realised a number of things, which David’s autobiography tend to confirm. Here is a person who believes he has a right to act as he wills. Who had not learned that actions have consequences, and doesnt see the connection between what he chose and how he was treated. In essence, a man who believes in the rights of an individual above that of his society (or as David might see it, his state.) ”
Hicks’ book may have merit, but is it as a true account or as fiction, that is the question.
No-one has come forward as a ghost-writer, so far as I know; the merits or otherwise appear to be Hicks’ own.
BTW, he would hardly be unique in having a rather fictionalised autobiography; most (all?) of them are.
That’s right, everyone who writes an autobiography is a liar. Jesus Fucking Christ! Travelling to the NT; a swagman and roustabout sleeping in cars there when still just a kid; father to 2 children when still just a kid; travelling to Kosovo to help fight against the rape and murder of women; constantly travelling and exploring religions and ideas; breaking in horses in Japan; then eventually to Aghanistan as a result of wanting to fight against Indian injustices in Kashmir; taken by the USA at the age of 26. “Here is a person who believes he has a right to act as he wills. Who had not learned that actions have consequences.” Well fuck me, that just about eliminates every human being who has refused the large imprint of a boot embedded in their back. What a facile comment to make.
PS. Give me a person who acts on their beliefs any day to a reviewist.
I didn’t see anything in Mr Walker’s choice of books or English usage to encourage me to put any weight on his opinion.
I am depressed by the thought that he may actually be an English teacher, as he claims.
This deserves wider coverage :
“Larry Pickering has suddenly become very famous – if not infamous – after being identified by the CEO in her press conference on Thursday 23 August as someone who publishes “a vile and sexist website”. Gillard said: “for many, many months now I have been the subject of a very sexist smear campaign from people for whom I have no respect”.
What she did not say is that for many months now Pickering has bombarded not just her but every member of federal parliament and every senator on almost a daily basis with emails containing hate-filled commentary about Gillard. Often these commentaries have been accompanied by cartoons, many of which – like the one I have shown – depict Gillard naked and wearing a huge strap-on dildo.
Pickering was infamous back in the days when he was cartoonist for The Australian for producing annual calendars in which all the (then all male) politicians had extremely long penises that were used to supposedly entertaining effect. It seems that Pickering cannot envisage a prime minister without a penis – so he had to give Gillard a strap-on. When Facebook (where he publishes some of his material), forced him to stop drawing her this way, be started depicting her with a dildo thrown over her shoulder.[19]
I have seen many examples of these emails – shown to me by MPs – and I know (1) that they go to every member and senator and (2) they contain vile and disgusting images of our political leaders, most often Julia Gillard and, until his resignation from Parliament, Bob Brown.
Yet no Member of Parliament has denounced them, not in public at least. I find this almost beyond comprehension. Nor, before Gillard mentioned them at her press conference, had they been written about by anyone in the parliamentary press gallery. Surely it is newsworthy that Australia’s first female prime minister is under such constant illustrated attack. Surely it is noteworthy that the portrayals of her are obscene and indisputably sexist.
Surely it would merit a report somewhere in the media by one of the journalists who churn out stories daily from Canberra.
Instead we have had what one might almost call a conspiracy of silence.”
I hope Anne Summers won’t mind this slab being reproduced; it needs and deserves to be broadcast.
@ Doug Q
thanks for that excerpt.
allow me to add the link to Ms Summer’s whole article – it really is dynamite. quite scary.
http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-r-rated/
So how come the press never reports things like Sophie Mirabella calling out, “Here comes the weather girl” when the attractive Kate Ellis, Minister for Employment Participation and Early Childhood and Childcare, goes to answer a question.
And was there any fuss made in the press about Tony Abbott lying in the house? A capital offence I recall.
Seeing dictionaries have now become such touchstones – a liar is defined as a person who knowingly utters falsehood.
For a product of Jesuit education, Rhodes scholar and law graduate, Mr Abbott seems blithely uninterested in the principle of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
And yet, he tables an electricity bill which had increased from $736 to $1,564 as proof that the carbon tax subjects pensioners to the risk of heart attack; only he didn’t tell the house that the user had doubled her consumption for the period.
Caught red-handed, me old mate.
As a one-off, or used occasionally, the sort of cartoons we are discussing and as set out in Anne Summers’ article are humorous.
But there comes a point where humour a more destructive thing, ridicule and denigration, and then becomes harassment and criminal defamation.
If the Federal Police are not looking very seriously at Pickering and his fellow travellers, they ought to be.
Freedom of speech is one thing, but there are limits; and these limits have been well and truly crossed.
The campaign as detailed by Ms Summers is disgraceful, appalling and criminal.
I totally agree, DQ. I also feel enraged. So what are we going to do about it?
To quote Obama and a long line of thinkers the best response to hate speech is more speech. To answer back and to engage in more speech to discuss and counteract the hate speakers’ messages.
If our media weren’t so supine they would have denounced the crap that Abbott and his rag tag appear to approve of, at least tacitly.
Speak out.
Or…Put together an email from concerned citizens posted to all MPs plus the Canberra media pack asking them 4 simple questions:
1. Were they are aware of the Anne Summers article?
2. If not, will they read it ASAP?
3. If they have read it, do they believe the article to represent the truth?
4. If so, as elected MPs or representative of the prinicples of journalism why didn’t they take action publicly against this relentless and misogynistic material generated over a long period of time to both denigrate and harm the Prime Minister of Australia .
Good one FW, thanks for volunteering!
Okay, I designed a campaign through GET UP. First wall I hit is: Don’t have a Facebook account; I have never twittered; and don’t have any friends to share it [the camapaign notice] as an email. I assume Pickering won’t give me access to his Canberra listings in his email address book, and not being the one to stand on a street corner shoving a petition under peoples’ noses, I am disadvantaged. To cut through the problem using the social media it seems I am required to submit to its organisations, which I will not do. Any ideas?
You’re already doing it. Gerard writes all his articles in response to this blog and he’s not the only one. We’ve made it into last week’s episode of The Chaser and The Australian has been running a campaign for months just to speak out against Bob’s use of the phrase “girly tears”, which the foreign minister, the same foreign minister who was only appointed as a way to shut Ellis up, was made to defend on Lateline. You don’t get better publicity than this. Pickering is dead. Not only that he is as dodgy as hell with a string of failed businesses designed only to rip people off way in excess of anything Peter Foster ever did. Plus, he’s put his wife through the courts for years suing for custody and yet has never paid a cent in child support despite being extremely wealthy. I think he’s also been convicted of assaulting that same wife. Gerard has disowned him. It’s all over. Pickering is arsenal for our side now.
Nasty pigs.
I think its interesting that Obama and the Democrats have had to soak up similar obstructionist pressure to Gillard and Labor here and then hit back in the same way, at the same time.
Hard day’s yakka this politics stuff, but..