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We Own It Because We Took It

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 5 Sep 2019 01:18:00 +1000

We Own It Because We Took It from Ratbag Media

We Need More Coal

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 16:38:00 +1000

We Need More Coal from Ratbag Media

Austrlia:Bullying Coal Mumcher

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 11:29:00 +1000

I've was on a run with graphics about Australia's disdain for the crisis facing the island nations of the Pacific.
The arrogance! The crude spin! The bullying!
The brutal perversity....
So here are 3 collages:

Keeping us safe from marauding queue jumpers

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sat, 3 Aug 2019 23:21:00 +1000

Didyahavagoodone?
We sure did — me, the partner and sprogs. Made all the right moves and spent the preceding period stretched out like a lizard drinking. On a beach no less. Happy little vegemites doing our all to catch the rays of the sun through our 15+ slop and all the slip and slap we could muster.
The world could have gone to the dogs as far as we were concerned.

03:17 mp3

Our Mutual Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 23:17:00 +1000

Pray cast your eye across the street. Our mutual friend with the cap. Going down to lay a little something on the TAB unless I'm very much mistaken. I have often seen you chatting with him. And I'll bet you a dollar he talks about the government because there's nothing else he can talk about. Is he a personal friend?

No. I would call him an acquaintance.

Well, I am real glad to hear that, because I'd advise you to make it your business to be on the other side of the street whenever you see him approaching.

Is that so?

Why, yes. He's not the simple man he makes himself out to be. Not on your nelly, mate. That acquaintance of yours is a One Nation supporter!

He's not, is he?

02:35 Mp3

Blogging: I'm back -- although I actually did not leave.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 19:47:00 +1000

While I was a back-in-them-days blogger, when blogging was a rarely pursued obsession, my activity like that of so many others suffered the impact of the facebook juggernaut.

The focus and the 'hits' soon shifted to www.facebook.com.

Certainly it was there that the 'discussion' exploded.

As we all know.

More discussion amounting to even less import.

But while fb may not be Twitter -- it still doesn't offer a lot of opportunity to expound on one's POV.

As fortune and circumstance would have it, I've recently mended my online ways and returned keenly to the blogger-sphere.

That means I've revived my sites that were being neglected because I chose to pontificate on facebook rather than blog.

It may be like riding a bicycle, but now that I'm more keenly back, I appreciate all the wonderful attributes blogging offers.

Whether the peeps will read or watch or listen to what you may want to say is a moot point. But long ago I decided that word processing on computers and posting to the WW web offered me a reliable means to anchor my thinking. Even if I was doing it in a semi alone state.

Most days I entertain myself...thinking.

Writing it down makes it last longer. The voice I hear is my own.

So I'm back -- although I actually did not leave.

The Truth About Newstart

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 21:39:00 +1000

The Little Aussie Battler (™)

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 11:07:00 +1000

There is a funny idea abroad (by which I mean, of course, in this dry brown land in which we all do dwell) that there exists a minor figure of such truthful grit that every attribute of ordinariness is congealed within their being.

This entity, I am led to believe, is now thought to be putting aside a characteristic reticence and a mug of tea, throwing the Akubra into the ring and stepping flat-footed into the political arena.

Their mission? To wake up Australia.

As soon as I heard that such a quintessential creature was out and about, I went to great pains to locate it.

Duration: 03:55 mp3

Back Podcasting -- and then some...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 22:31:00 +1000

I'm currently on an audio rejig now that some of my listening problems have been resolved.

This means that I can -- if I want -- return to podcasting as an adjunct to my other activities.

Aside from the 'Whoopee!' factor -- it is so good to discover that since I last podcasted, the digital world has moved on.

So much better.

More user friendly.

Indeed with the platform I'm using now, Podbeam, you can get yourself a handy podcast app for listening on your phone.

Too easy.

In the same package is an easy to use crowdfunding program.

With that sort of package I can commit --especially at their prices.Including a generous freebie...

In the mix are a few player options like this one below.

Indeed you too can host my 'station' by copying the SHARE embed code from here or from within the player itself.

When I think back to the olden days....

Too easy.
Bear with me as I recover old files and record new ones.

Samuel Beckett.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 9 Jul 2019 20:07:00 +1000

As it happens I was thinking that when I look back on that part of the 20th century with which I cohabited, I ask myself what stands out?

Culturally, I mean.

What can touch us -- what touches me -- today with full on, no holds barred meaning?

I surely had my favs back then. In the day. As one does.

But you know what speaks to me the most? Today. That rambles around my head like a perennial house guest?

Samuel Beckett.

Supposedly Beckett was the high priest of meaningless. Like with all that existential crap.

But for me his words and his 'situations' explore the frustration of being human in a society that discourages us to be who we seek to become.

Like his 'Waiting for Godot', we wait...and wait...and still, things stay the same.

In this age of neoliberal bottom line ledgers, this is no minor point.

Is this all there is?

I suppose, if we were to tweak Beckett for today what we ask to wait for is so horrendous that our words would need to be even more strident and urgent than those deployed by his characters:

“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

A Question of Style

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 8 Jul 2019 14:48:00 +1000

Looking over the output -- and after a few years making with the collaging -- I note that I have style -- 'a' style, anyway.
Black is my default background. A sort of Medievalism on my part.

Best Ratbaggery for 2019 so far... [A personal selection of comics] from Ratbag Media
But then, what I'm gearing up to --still -- is the multi panel and get back to the narrative.
Wish me luck.

Nothing but graphic political satire...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 17:17:00 +1000

More than I know what to do with...pops out every now and then.
Click on image to enlarge/slide show.

More comics...recently made.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 17:02:00 +1000

What with one thing or another, I seem to be on a graphical roll. How good the montages are is not necessary the main game.In a world full of Facebook memes my efforts are players.

My output is registering sometimes...and with practice, I get to skill up.

I house all my graphical business on my punchratbag site...but nowadays the web is where you find it or share it.

So in the main I pump out the stuff from my facebook account.

For those into arty mode, my technique is changing. Rather than be beholden to PhotoShop 'reality' I'm preferring the effect engendered by the old scissors cut and paste techniques of the DADAists.

I'm preferring 'masks' to faces. Despite the photographic sources: 2 D to 3D. Parody to 'new'...

And I love the statements -- even if other folk don't always embrace my POV.

I love 'Aussie Rules' for instance. Too bitter for some, maybe most...and folk objected to 'Baby Throwing: the new national sport' -- when I thought it was absolutely true, and darkly and shockingly funny.
Just click on an image for a slide show.

Blather Vox Pop : the biological farmer

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 20:27:00 +1000

Alan Broughton is a biological agriculture researcher and organic farming teacher based in Eastern Victoria. He has had extensive experience in farm management and setup both here in Australia and overseas. I had a chance to discuss with him some of the assumptions being made about livestock as climate change drivers and how a new approach to grazing animals can impact on the sustainable ecology of agriculture.

[This interview was recorded in March, 2016]

(Duration:29.01 — 31.1MB) mp3.

For more information visit The Soil Alliance
Further Reading

Ruminants and methane: Not the fault of the animals by Alan Broughton
Veggie is the most low-carbon diet, right? Well, it depends where y...

Some recent graphic political satire

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:31:00 +1000

Graphic? Not too many dead bodies I hope. But then the situation does make one bitter. Not much rolling in the ails to be had. I reckon thee game is to grab a thought -- a context -- and try to express it by marrying contradictory elements.
So going down the page: Sumo wrestling, 'Where's Wally?, children's drawings, Black Adder,emigration promotion (ten pound Poms), conference attendance and voting,sleaziness, '80s film comedies(Weekend at Bernie's)...(Click on images to enlarge view.)

The Lucky Country

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 11:28:00 +1000

It is a tragic irony of Australian existence that a country -- a continent -- the size of Europe can be so much the same shore to shining shore.

Among its 23 million peoples there is seemingly very little difference one person from the other.

We speak the same language. Deploying the same accents. Follow the same sports. Watch the same TV channels.

We are Rupert Murdoch’s play things. Hell -- he’s one of ours.Local boy makes good.

The most monopolized media networks in the western world make sure that the political debate doesn’t drift too far to the left.. We may have a national broadcaster -- modeled on the BBC -- but that too is very much under threat today.

In this mix is the long standing national expectation that this is indeed ‘the lucky country’.

Aside from a comparatively buoyant economy sustained by the boom in mining and mineral prices, we have not known civil war, famine, political cataclysm, invasion or relentlessly bad cricket scores.

(Duration: 5:51 — 9.8 MB)

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Stuck in the South Pacific -- a first world country surrounded by various foreign lands we seem blessed. Despite the turmoils to the north over the years, the mass slaughter of at least half a million communists next door in Indonesia in 65/66, the Vietnam War savagery, the long term genocide of the people of East Timor…Australia could go about its capitalistic business as though its marooned in fairyland.

The wee scattering of islands to the east in the South Pacific may be sinking under rising climate-change driven seas but all we see on our shoreline are sandy beaches and an excuse for a suntan.

This sense of containment has been fueled for over 200 years by the overbearing dominance of Anglo Celtic peeps as the root stock of the country’s existence. The keen attempt to wipe out the indigenous population may not have worked as it was intended but for most of its existence the country has had a White Australia policy.

Supposedly ‘we’ know who we are. As the Labor Party immigration minister quipped in the 40s, “Two Wongs don’t make a white’.

This sameness is sustained by xenophobia. Fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’ was utilized as a backbone of Australia’s foreign policy for decades. The nation ignored Asia and preferred to mix it with 'ole Blighty. If anything Asia was seen as a series of land masses that only served as potential stepping stones for godless communism.The domino effect dominated national consciousness.

To defend the land from the occupation of the REDS -- Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian or Malay -- Australia made a pact with the United States and the ongoing alliance has ensured that there is hardly a bang up shooting war worth fighting that Australian hasn’t got a hand in.

Our government cheer-squaded any and every US invasion. It garages its bases. And defers to its foreign policy interests.

When the country sought to top up its population in the post war years it begrudgingly allowed non English speaking Europeans into the place and later engineered the demographics under cover of the nationalist ideology of multiculturalism. And lo! folk started migrating here from all over. This shift didn't have anything to do with opening up the country to ‘huddled masses yearning to be free’ but it was a gesture to those markets --like Asia, the local bourgeoisie sought to draw their profits from.

Walking through the Central Business District of any Australian state capital today you’d think the place was some melting pot of all the world's peoples. In the street would be people of Chinese, Arab, Slavic, Maori, Italian...or whatever descent. You’d presume that fortress Australia -- the chronic isolationism of the country -- had been drowned in a melting pot of mixed ethnicity.

You’d be very much mistaken.

Australia is much more racist today than it has been for over 50 years. A conscious tag team exercise, sponsored by both the country’s Labor Party and the local Tories, has bought back a xenophobia under sponsorship of the War on Terror.

And in an irony of political manipulation there is a new push to base the national identity on its Anglo Celtic past rather than its ‘multicultural’ present.

Indeed if you were wondering what ever happened to the old South Africa with its apartheid habits and sharply divisive racism -- I tell you: it crossed the Indian Ocean and now resides in Australia.

This country may not have a crudely xenophobic racist outfit like UKIP rising in the polls. We don’t need it. The duopoly of the two main political parties -- the ALP and the LNP -- are doing a fine job of racist bashing and blaming by themselves.

If you check out Australia's standing on human rights -- according to the United Nations -- in the way the country incarcerates asylum seekers, manufacturers and treats ‘terror suspects’, or suppresses the aboriginal population -- we’re up there among some of the most autocratic countries on the planet.

Way to go Australia: Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!.

We’re not just good at sport, making Kylie Minogues or servicing Dame Edna Everidge with anecdotes...Australia has engineered a very nasty attack on civil liberties at a time when the true depth of austerity and economic downturn has not hit.

How smart is that? We have a boss class that thinks ahead.

How lucky can any one country be?

Recent political cartoons about Messrs Abbott and ALP

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 28 May 2015 23:04:00 +1000

To enlarge just click on the image to partake of its message in greater detail.

As it turns out, 'Heroes of Bi-partisanship' may be my most popular political comic so far. It seems pretty sharp and savage and I like that edge immensely. Often my cunical take is lost of many people and they miss the 'joke'. I suspect hardly any one got 'No way'. I guess seeing the consequences of 'Sovereign Borders' through its own obscene POV and spin didn't register. Check out the archive HERE.

Some recent cartoons:Abbott, Queensland elections

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 8 Feb 2015 12:34:00 +1000

What with the Abbott shenanigans and the fall of the LNP from government in Queensland the political universe has been kind to satire.

Click on images to enlarge view...

For my money --since I'm the only one paying -- both my technique and my confidence is improving. I reckon 'We had such big plans ...' is one of the best synthesis I'm assembled. Check out the archive HERE.

The ready conflation of 'freedom of speech' fillip with free-for-all racism

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 10:38:00 +1000

Most satirical cartoonists I follow tend not to agree with Joe Sacco's take on CH.

But I do.

The ready conflation of 'freedom of speech' fillip with free-for-all racism seems to have missed their perspective, at least within the black and white constraints of comic making.

But Sacco attempts to express the complexity of the context and reflect that back on the responsibilities of satirists.

At issue ultimately is calling out CH for what it is and for what it does. That's not the same as advocating that satire be censored.

Unfortunately the whole 'Je suis Charlie' thing will transit a pandemic of public Islamophobia under guise of 'freedom of speech' and the most racist dog in any land will be celebrated for their courage and POV.

Under cover of 'satire' -- more public racism against Moslems, more excuses for rolling back civil liberties and a festering rationale for either killing more of 'them' offshore and xenophobia.

"Freedom of speech" historically is supposedly about empowerment and democracy -- enabling the oppressed and brutalised to articulate their protest.

So how does that stack up with the current fall out?

We'd rather fight Climate Change

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 09:21:00 +1000

Click on image to enlarge view

We'll spend $29.3 billion on defence this year -- at least 1.6 % of the GDP -- but since 2003 the Commonwealth has spent just $8 billion on emergency relief, with only $115 million since 2009 going to mitigation measures.

This is Australia after all... in the stranglehold of Climate Change.

So is this perverted or what?

Terra Australis Proprietary Limited

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 00:18:00 +1000

The Reserve Bank in conjunction with the federal Treasury is making arrangements for turning the whole country into a limited liability company.

And lucky you:every Australian citizen will be offered shares in the float. The new enterprise will take over the country as a going concern, together with all available assets, pre-existing good will, gold reserves and debenture stocks.

This novel initiative is a logical consequence of the currently very popular trend towards privatisation.

We're fast-tracking it, that's all.

The formation of Terra Australis Proprietary Limited and its listing on the nation's stock exchanges is intended to shore up the local share market at a time when investors could do with an injection of confidence.

The present zigging and zagging of the All Ordinaries does no-one any good. Your everyday, run-of-the-mill Aussie battler-type person could do without such uncertainty.

Furthermore, the overbearing pressure of state debt will be a thing of the past. This way we settle up and wipe the slate clean in one swoop without having to put up with all this relentless year in year out budget rigmarole.

Every year the same ole same ole…

(Duration: 2:40 — 2.9MB)

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You can take comfort in my presence

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sat, 3 Jan 2015 00:18:00 +1000

GOOD NEWS! I have survived another year. The smiling dial that marks me out has not changed one smidgin in yonks. I'm ageless, that's what I am. I'm still the same bloke I was way back when ; still my dear old mother's son, the crème de la crème of the Highett Rileys in the prime of his wonderful life.

How can this be, you may ask. Surely one day he must be touched by cruel time?

My resilience from the toll life levies rests on a little-known feature of my existence: I'm the second son of God.

(Duration: 2:45 — 3.0MB)
Music: Hopeful Ambience -- Richard Culver September 9th, 2013 (FreeSound)

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Through my own fault

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 08:34:00 +1000

I am not usually one for public confessions, but I feel that something must be said. You can imagine how difficult this is for me to admit to. I am just an ordinary Joe Blow trying to make their own way in the world. There's nothing special about me. And since there's not, maybe what I have to say many of you can relate to.

I'm different, perhaps, because in this matter I'm more in touch with my feelings than you are (or maybe it's just the way I was bought up). When the consequences of my actions dawned on me I, personally, found the guilt overwhelming.

In order to seek some relief, at least allow me to confess what I have done.

You know that huge budgetary shortfall the new federal government is talking so much about? The one that seems so hard to addres without financial pain and suffering...

I caused that. Little ol' me — through my own carelessness and selfishness — drove this country so deeply into debt.

But how can one person, you ask, be responsible for debts of such a grand scale? I, on my lonesome, of course, wasn't that wasteful. But me and a few million others like me can do a whole lot of damage when we throw caution to the wind.

(Duration: 4:03 — 1.9MB)

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Mr Spermatozoon finds a home

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 08:33:00 +1000

Pick a day — any day — and there is sure to be a lot of human semen entering the world from private parts unknown. What it gets up to — when it gets out there — is anyone's guess.

Each day there's buckets of the stuff discharging forth half a teaspoon at a time. If we were to check the manifest, despite the current trend for low numbers, 200-300 million spermatozoa are on board bravely going where no wriggly thing has gone before. Just imagine how many sperm are sent on a mission each Saturday night! What with one thing and another, most of them are going to be dead by breakfast.

Such is life ... for sperm.

Lest we forget them.

If it wasn't for those few who make it, where would the patriarchy be today. For millennia we just thought milking males for semen was a fun thing to do. We didn't know it could help make babies. And now that we do, every sperm is suddenly so very sacred — so sacred that we are encouraged not to spill a single drop.

(Duration: 2:32 — 1.8MB)

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Meme images

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 08:31:00 +1000

The top image is the most popular I've done. the slogan comes from Alex Bainbridge, the Socialist Alliance national co-convenor -- but I'm dedicated to the graphic as it gave me an opportunity to pay homage to John Heartfield.

Unfortunately some folks don't get it.

Click on images to enlarge view.