And Jabba the Rinehart can shut up an' all

This brilliant piece of work done by Darrin in London.

This all started for me on Friday night when I was watching TV.
I did what I think is the functional thing to do and scanned through the TV guide early, round six pm, to see what was on that evening, thence to decide what was worth watching, and turn the TV off at other times.
As I went through I came to a clattering halt on one of the channels where I saw with astonishment that the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships (the Pan Pacs) were being sponsored by Hancock Prospecting, Gina Rinehart's company.
Now there were so many things about this that jumped out at me that I hardly now where to start, but I'll begin with ecology.
Gina Rinehart's company, Hancock Prospecting, are involved with Indian Company GVK, and thus are two of the F$%^-ing eco-bastard companies who wish to expand the coal loader port at Abbot Point on the north Queensland coast.
The expansion of this port involves dumping three million cubic metres of dredge spoil on the Great Barrier Reef.
I've written about this extensively, as have almost every environmental journo in the country.
Everyone in the damn country who is not actually mining coal, doesn't want this to go ahead, feeling, perfectly correctly, that the Reef is slightly more important than a few bucks from coal.
So this sponsorship of the swimming is obviously a latent attempt by Jabba the Rinehart to gain some popularity, to get us to see her company as a good thing, and not what it is, an environmentally destructive force of pure evil.
Incensed beyond belief, I put this on the Pan Pacs facebook page.

Apart from the ecological consequences of Rinehart trying to buy some popularity, there then came the unholy irony of a tournament featuring Australia's fittest athletes being sponsored by a woman so overweight her arse has its own postcode.
If anyone could use a few laps up  and down the pool, it is certainly Gina Bloody Rinehart.
What's more, if she is going to sponsor a TV program, then she should look no further than that bloody weight loss show on Channel Ten.
I have described that show elsewhere as, "a show whose title accurately reflects anyone who watches it".
And now that I think about it, not only should she sponsor it, but go on it as well.

I have no doubt that this is going to bring down a firestorm of attacks from the politically-correct lobby indicating that I can't attack a woman for being fat.
Well to that I say, I wouldn't be having a dig at Jabba is she hadn't started the war by attacking the rest of us for being poor.
So what's that all about?
This screen grab from The Australian tells part of the story.
basically she outlines in lurid, virulent detail that the reason we are poor is because we all spend our time drinking and goofing off.
The staggering hypocrisy of this took my, and I suspect, your, breath away.
For you see the reason that she is Australia's richest person is that she inherited the company from her father, Lang Hancock.
Lang stumbled upon the world's richest iron ore deposit one day while flying his plane over the Kimberleys in Western Australia.
Jabba duly ascended to the throne, and then seemed to be infused by an almost palpable aura of holier-than-thou.
She seemed, and still seems to think that, she has all this money because she is a sharp business person with a great work ethic.
No, no, no Jabba.
You got lucky, or even then, your dad got lucky.
So then to come out and start telling the rest of us how to work and get rich is beyond the scale for hypocrisy.
Now as to her being fat, my work colleague Susanna, said she "has much more control over her being fat, than the rest of us have over being poor".
The fatness though is not really the issue, it's more a outward manifestation of the grossness of Gina Rinehart's soul.

And I would to draw a comparison with a Oprah Whinfrey.

Oprah before.

Oprah for those of you who don't know, wages a life long battle with her weight.
When she first realised she had a problem, a reflectivity that Gina could well do with, she, Oprah, set out to lose weight.
She duly did so, and was then attacked for it.
The attackers saying that things along the lines of, 'yeah, it's easy for Oprah to lose weight, she's got all that money, so she can employ personal trainers, and buy expensive gym equipment'.
Well maybe so, but Oprah returned serve by pointing out that while that was true, she still had to show a modicum of discipline.
She, with all her money, could of course order a five star-meal any time of the day or night.
She could order a five star meal every hour.
She could order one every five minutes.
But she didn't, she knew that eating all the time was a one-way downhill spiral.
Also, as she pointed out, she still had to get on the treadmill and do the five k running each day.
While her no-doubt, high-priced personal trainer was there to motivate her, the trainer can't do the kilometres for you.
Oprah got on the treadmill and did it each day.

Oprah after.

Now Oprah is not anyone I would watch, but I have to state that I admire her for showing some discipline.
Something that Gina Rinehart would do well to emulate.
And since we're here, here are the wealth figures that most have a minor curiousity about.
The richest woman in the world is American Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton, who, with her family, is worth $US37.7 billion.
Jabba is on track to overtake her with a current personal wealth of nearly US$19 billion.
That is, with every new coal mine she opens her personal wealth goes up, while the health of this planet's biosphere goes down.
Oprah is rated at $US2.9 billion dollars.
Mexican telco giant Carlos Slim is the richest person on Earth at $US81.7 billion, while probably the best known billionaire, Bill Gates is currently second at $US80.6 billion.
But even here the comparison does well to be brought between Oprah and Gina.
While Rinehart had to do nothing except fight tooth and nail to stop her father's second wife, Rose Porteous absconding back to the Philippines with all his money.
Oprah was born into poverty in rural America.
She worked hard in the media and when her talk show went national when she was aged 32, she became a millionaire.
What's more, Oprah is of course black, and that is still a handicap to being rich in the States.
The odds against a woman becoming rich are big enough, but a black woman who came from nothing, are in the realms of stratospheric.
Oprah is the highest placed African-Amercan at 184 of 400.
And please note further, I've had a look and there is still no Indigenous person on the Australian millionaires list, the closest seems to be an Australian Rules Footballer, Lance "Buddy" Franklin.
His transfer from Melbourne Aussie rules club Hawthorn to Sydney was rated as $10 million deal, and his yearly income is rated at $760,000.
For the record, Gina is at the top of the Australian Top Fifty Richest, Clive Palmer is at the bottom with 0.55 billion next to his name.
I wonder how Gina would have got on if she had been indigenous, growing up outside Karratha with no education or adequate health care?
So let me now regress a bit.
When I was writing this and conversing with Susanna as we went, I was making the point that I've made many a time, which is, 'how much is enough?'
Why does Gina Rinehart still want to go on making more money?
And there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to make money, I'm no marxist, but in Gina's case making even more money always involves destroying more of the environment.
Isn't twenty damn billion dollars enough to buy her a nice house, and then employ a personal trainer and go on a diet?
Apparently not.
She is currently, while the Abbot Point destruction is being pushed forward, setting up a new mine at Roy Hill in WA.
This Roy Hill mine will destroy more of the coast, and will net her a projected ten billion and take her up to the 19 billion figure stated.
So why does she keep doing it?
Well it seems that she sees herself as a great benefactor.
This foray into grossly deluded lunacy started with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, John Fairfax media's two biggest mastheads.
Gina bought a share in the company, at a time when it was going downhill financially, and was quoted at the time as saying that the journalists at Fairfax should see her as 'a white knight'.
In a written response to ABC TV on behalf of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd (HPPL), Ms Rinehart said she had hoped to be a saviour to Fairfax, which had witnessed the declining circulation of its three major mastheads for the past five years.
"Fairfax share price has also declined significantly, some approximately 90 per cent," Ms Rinehart said.
"HPPL had hoped that Mrs Rinehart may be viewed by the (Fairfax) Board as a successful business person and a necessary "white knight" with mutual interest in a sustainable Fairfax."
What?! Excuse, bloody me!
The reason this tub of lard wished to take over Fairfax was to control what they wrote about her, no other reason.
Now this white-knight-ism on behalf of Rinehart is also how she sustains her vision of herself the rest of the time.
By doing all these mining projects all over the country she is trying to hopelessly delude herself that she is loved for providing jobs.
She may be by those who work in the mining industry, but that is only 1.9 per cent of Australian workers.
And since all of Rinehart's employment projects involve destroying 100% of the environment for the rest of us, then I think that may highlight why she is anything but loved by 98.1% of Australians.
And so I'll come to the end of this with a not-so-surprising fact that I came across in my researches for this.
The reason the Pan Pacs are being sponsored by Gina is because she is now trying to buy up channel Ten.
This is another obvious grab for a media outlet so she can control the message.
So if you do watch channel Ten, and I do for The Simpsons, look forward to an increasing number of stories on this channel saying how great mining is for this country, and how terrific Jabba the Rinehart is for providing all these jobs.
Stories indicating that mining may, even slightly, be having a less than beneficial affect on the environment, will be conspicuously absent.
When Gina starts giving some of her money away, as Bill Gates does, and starts providing greater support for the environment, and starts improving the conditions for her workers, then I'll stop making the Jabba the Hut comparison.