The Quiet Magpie

Magpie has moved

2011-07-05T21:41:00.003+10:00

For technical reasons I have had to start another blog and will retire this one.

My new blog is Magpie 2.0

I hope to see you there. Thanks.

Americans are being comprehensively screwed

2011-07-01T23:40:00.003+10:00

Check out this report which lays bare the economical betrayal of ordinary Americans in the interests of big business and a merciless plutocracy.
At this rate they will become the working poor of the developed world, there to suffer sub-par services, work till they die, and live in the darkening core of a hollowed-out once-was-a-superpower blighted by greed.

Sources are listed at the bottom.

Religion in Australia

2011-06-23T23:32:00.003+10:00

For years Geelong had been the all-conquering machine in the Australian Football League
And then the league’s greatest club – Collingwood – played like no-one has ever played before.

All these highlights are from just one match.

Addicted by Enrique Iglesias

2011-06-21T20:42:00.005+10:00

I've had a rough day...

Greed as justice, addiction as freedom, law as crime

2011-06-19T16:03:00.006+10:00

Welcome to the warped marketing of Tobacco industry protectionism...

Would you believe that enforced change to packaging of cigarettes would deliver us all to evil?

No I wouldn’t either.

“A short film that appears to be based on a John le Carre spy novel - think people smugglers, prostitutes, terrorists - is the latest salvo in the tobacco industry's battle against federal government plans to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. According to the seven-minute film by British American Tobacco, the proposal will cause organised crime gangs to flourish, encouraging the syndicates to use their networks to flood Australia with smuggled drugs, weapons and cigarettes. Replete with scenes of menacing Russian mobsters, exploding cars, street prostitutes and drug-addled teens, the film is part of a global campaign to block Australian anti-smoking health reforms that could set a commercially damaging precedent for the international tobacco industry.”

Our country, our laws. Deal with it.

It’s not in any way a smoking ban. You can still light up that filth and cost ME tax-money in future treatment for related illnesses. It’s just a control on the packaging – like a control on the advertising. Designed to stop impressionable kids being sucked into the habit.

At the same time of course they have commercials running about nanny statism. Apparently the definition of a nanny state is one that protects the health of its citizens instead of cigarette sales. Go figure.

“British American Tobacco Australia spokeswoman Louise Warburton refused to comment on the film when contacted by The Sunday Age”

Why? Can’t do it without the Russian mobster props?

And to quote Simon Chapman from Crikey.com back on the 9th:

“ With the passage of the government’s bill on plain packaging now assured by the support of the opposition, the Greens and all but one of the independents, an ever-desperate tobacco industry is now concentrating on the legal apocalypse that they say will descend on Australia through the courts.

These arguments are all a paper-thin house of cards, starting with the central problem that plain packaging will not extinguish brand identities. All brands will still carry brand names allowing smokers to clearly exercise their freedom of choice to select between the much-vaunted but mostly non-existent differences in brands. This is critical, because in the highly unlikely event of a ruling by the High Court in favour of the industry, all calculations of compensation will need to take account that branding differences have only been diminished, not extinguished.

Given that some 30-40 nations now have appropriated massive sections of packs with graphic warnings and that not a cent has been claimed or awarded in brand damage anywhere in the world for this egregious assault on brand identity, the prospects of any claim for huge compensation even in the unlikely event of a favourable ruling are vanishingly small. “

related post from January

Backed down again huh?

2011-06-15T23:43:00.004+10:00

"Labor MPs have backed down on a demand that Indonesian abattoirs comply with Australian standards, paving the way for the return of live cattle exports to slaughterhouses that do not require animals be stunned before they are killed."

Of course you have. You spineless jerks.
You and your great moral imperatives that you forget as soon as someone somewhere whinges about them.
Now how are we going to believe you when you tell us you have assurances that refugees sent to Malaysia will not be caned?
Where's your fucking "resolve" now???

Too many out of too few

2011-06-10T23:27:00.003+10:00

Mr and Mrs Politician,

Ours is not a big army. We can't keep losing these guys while hearing about how YOUR resolve is undiminished.

The greatest day of my life

2011-05-22T21:22:00.002+10:00

I know I’ve had a low profile recently and it’ll probably continue.

But if you find your way here, I’d just like to share with you a moment from the greatest day of my life – today – before my body shuts down for the night.

This morning (so long ago…) my instructor/mentor/friend said, to a little group of us:

Today you will discover whether you have something in you that most people never get to discover whether they have or not....
‘Blood, sweat and tears’ is a phrase a lot of people use – without a damned clue what it means.
But you’re not ‘a lot of people’. You’re different.
You truly know what it means.
Make this the culmination of all the work you have put in up to this moment, these next several hours….

No-one fails after someone says that.

Yeah and for the record I’m an atheist, a liberal (in the American sense, not the Australian one), and I will cheerfully pay my taxes to save what’s left of the planet and keep people from starving.

Good night.

Claude Choules

2011-05-05T21:29:00.005+10:00

The world's last known surviving male combatant of World War One died today aged 110.

He was a British born navy man who, like my grandfather, transfered to the Royal Australian Navy and came to live here. He served on the same ship as my grandfather, who died when I was a child but was still younger than Choules, and almost certainly knew him (my grandfather was later head of naval police in Sydney).

Choules leaves behind 13 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren.

Now that's a life.

He vocally loathed war and considered it a waste of lives, time and money - and recommended the politicians be sent to fight the ones they start.

The funeral will be held in St John's Church in Fremantle.

Osama Bin Laden is dead

2011-05-02T23:09:00.004+10:00

I don't cheer at the deaths of my enemies, but I hope this gives some closure to all those who haven't had it.

Full credit to some very gutsy US operatives.
And to the Obama administration. It has to be said, because elements of the American Right have been drooling for an attack to blame on him just as they will now deny that his administration is due any credit for this.

Magpie is not dead

2011-04-28T13:47:00.006+10:00

Well... not after a hot shower and a square meal anyway...

Thanks for coming through and apologies for the lack of new posts or comments on your blogs. I'll be back eventually.

Fox News - Nuclear Egg edition

2011-03-24T00:10:00.007+11:00

Media Matters appears to be the first to pick this up...

Below is a map of Japan that appeared in Fox News - "Your World With Neil Cavuto" from March 14th to be exact.

You will note with no little astonishment that Fox have discovered a nuclear reactor in central Tokyo, in the district called Shibuya, one of my favourite areas. It is called Shibuyaeggman on this map.

Shibuya Eggman is a music venue, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Their site, in its tribute to the victims of the quake now notes - in English - "Shibuya Eggman has no nuclear plant. Our electricity's powered only by music."

By the way, the Sendai represented in this map is not Sendai the city in northern Honshu that was badly hit by the quake. For a moment I thought that too was a mistake but it is not. It is Sendai Nuclear Power Plant (the two Sendai are written with different characters). Not a mistake per se, but... would it not have been more helpful to show the Sendai that was affected rather than the power station that was not?

Japan

2011-03-12T22:00:00.008+11:00

Earthquake. All the news since yesterday... well, you'd already know about that. You've already seen the pictures. It's bad.

Got a message to and from my wife's brother - everyone all right, but no power.

My wife wrote "don't do something dumb like fall down the stairs in the dark'. Sounded funny in Japanese.

Found this... It's good for remembering the best days in Japan, and knowing they will always return. So will we. Wish I was there now.

Instant of destruction

2011-03-10T20:57:00.003+11:00

The moment the earthquake struck the beautiful city of Christchurch on February 22nd and killed (probably) over 200 people.

A fence in Israel...

2011-03-09T23:26:00.004+11:00

... between Jews...

From the Guardian:

" The Jerusalem city authority has erected a fence in a nursery school playground to separate ultra-orthodox Jewish children from a secular Jewish kindergarten that shares the same building and garden. The wire fence is to be covered with sheeting to block visibility from one part of the playground to the other. The nursery schools are in the Kiryat Yovel neighbourhood of Jerusalem, an area that has seen a growing ultra-orthodox population in recent years, to the dismay of many local secular Jews.

The secular kindergarten, Pashosh, opened in September with the aim of attracting more secular families to the area. But ultra-orthodox parents have complained that the female staff of Pashosh are immodestly dressed and that they do not want their children mixing with children from a non-religious background....

Pashosh has about 10 children aged under two. The ultra-orthodox nursery school has about 20 boys and 20 girls, in separate rooms with separate entrances, aged three to four. Staff at the ultra-orthodox kindergarten declined to speak to the Guardian.

One ultra-orthodox parent, picking up her daughter, said she was saddened by the fence but reluctantly accepted its necessity. "I don't want my children to see immodest women," said the mother...

The Jerusalem city authority declined to answer questions about the fence but issued a statement saying that "with the aim of meeting the needs of all of the neighbourhood's pupils, both secular and ultra-orthodox, the [municipality] decided to divide the existing building ... The fence will be built as part of a wider perspective that provides for the quite different needs of the community as a whole." "

How do you keep your community whole when one group of children are not allowed to be with another?

To be clear it's the ultra-orthodox parents who wanted this fence ... But if one Jewish community cannot stand for their children to look upon the wider Jewish community, and this is pandered to ... where to Israel from there?

What does that bode for future generations?

And what kind of statement does that make?

Educating Obama

2011-03-08T23:27:00.004+11:00

Julia Gillard at the White House teaching Barrack Obama about real football.

The assimilation begins. Resistance is futile.

News of the Day

2011-03-08T23:16:00.003+11:00

"A Catholic brother who molested two boys in their beds at a boarding school in Victoria more than 40 years ago has been jailed. Peter Paul Van Ruth was 22 years old and in his first teaching job when he indecently assaulted the boys at Salesian College in Sunbury in 1969. On Tuesday, 42 years later, Van Ruth was jailed for 28 months in the Victorian County Court."

Anguish has a long memory, sport.

"The new leader of the French far right, Marine Le Pen, has sent shockwaves through France after a poll suggested she could win an unprecedented first round victory in presidential elections. Just two weeks before the regional elections known as the cantonales - the last real electoral test before next year's presidential round - the lawyer daughter of National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen has eclipsed President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry, with 23 per cent of the vote."

Just what Europe needs... a neo fascist France.

I'm not too worried, because somehow I don't think it will happen.

''Simply, I've come as a friend to reinforce your best instincts. To say, 'Be bold. Stay optimistic. Yours remains what it has always been, a nation which is exceptional in every way - above all, in your unfailing ability to confound predictions of decline'.''

- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to US Chamber of Commerce.

Death and Blackmail

2011-03-06T21:47:00.002+11:00

The new Coalition (our conservatives, that is) state government swings into action in Victoria...

Item 1
Singer Olivia Newton-John - a cancer survivor - has spent 7 years working on the development of a holistic cancer centre. Six out of eight storeys of the building have already been completed, and the plan is that 2000 Victorians would get oncology and radiotherapy treatment from early 2013.
But new 'Health' minister David Davis has said finding the $45 million needed to finish it would be a "significant challenge" and would not elaborate. Except to blame the previous government, of course.

I bet you could find $45 million for political advertising, party junkets, or getting Tiger Woods to play golf here..
Jerks.

moving on...

Item 2.
"The Baillieu government has been trying to blackmail the University of Melbourne into overseeing its controversial alpine grazing trial by threatening to withdraw millions of dollars in research funding... Ethicist Leslie Cannold said it was wrong for the government to use its fiscal power as a threat. ‘‘You’ve essentially got an academic institution that is being blackmailed,’’ she said."

Now let me guess, you're not planning to withdraw the millions and put them into the cancer centre instead are you?
No? I didn't think so...

all in a days light reading in the local paper...

"Blood Guilt... yeah sorry there was never any such thing."

2011-03-04T22:11:00.001+11:00

"Pope Benedict XVI yesterday became the first Pope to contradict personally the teaching of Jewish ''blood guilt'', releasing excerpts from a book to be published next week. That teaching, used to justify and perpetuate hatred culminating in the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, was formally rebutted by the 1960s Vatican Council, but the Pope's personal endorsement was welcomed yesterday by Jewish leaders as a landmark attack on the foundation of anti-Semitism."

We're living in the year 2011AD, and the Church is still making it's mind up over whether someone born yesterday can be guilty of something that is alleged to have happened two millennia ago....

1971

2011-03-03T22:43:00.005+11:00

Yeah I know I've been quiet... been away a bit collecting bruises. Great fun.

Turn your clock back 40 years and check it out:

You KNOW it was all better then...
Like that bit at 1:25

Update:
The BBC used to have a policy of deleting old programs. Most of the early Top of the Pops episodes have been lost - including THE ONLY live performance on the show by the Beatles!

God's Disasters

2011-02-24T21:19:00.007+11:00

Never let it be said that a natural disaster can go unattributed to an act of revenge of that really loving, wonderful Christian God...

The website ''Christchurch Quake'' - registered in September to an address in Utah - claims the destruction was a result of ''lesbians running loose on the South Island as if they own the place'' and ''amoral'' behaviour.

Presumably these scum in Utah think they own it instead.

Among the victims of the earthquake thus far confirmed are two babies, 5 and 9 months old.

The major religious structures in the city were all critically damaged.... That's God's doing is it?

I have a picture of my kid standing in front of the main cathedral, when we visited Christchurch, because it was an impressive landmark.

16 to 22 people are understood to have died in this cathedral.

Text bites from Christchurch

2011-02-23T23:44:00.003+11:00

New Zealand has announced a national state of emergency.

"Mayor Bob Parker and Prime Minister John Key said this morning at least 75 people were dead following yesterday's quake. They said 55 bodies had been identified and there were a further 20 unidentified bodies. Mr Parker said another 300 people were listed as missing, though not all of them would be trapped in buildings that were being searched for survivors."

"Searchers have flood-lit the CTV site and brought in a digger and more than 20 rescue staff to the still-smoking ruins. Police said more than 100 people may have been lost in the CTV building and the devastation is not survivable so they were concentrating on recovery rather than rescue."

"A mother died with her baby in her arms in Christchurch's shopping district during yesterday's earthquake. Passers-by went to her aid, but the woman was already dead. It was not clear how badly the baby was injured when mother and child were hit by falling debris."

"Rescuers have had to amputate limbs to free survivors from collapsed buildings after the quake, police said this morning."

"Hopes that a Victorian-born woman was about to be pulled from the rubble of a Christchurch building have been dashed this afternoon, with rescuers revealing the woman they have been in contact with is not Ann Voss. Ms Voss has been trapped under her desk in the four-level Pyne Gould building for 24 hours, and overnight spoke to numerous media outlets by mobile phone to detail the harrowing details of being buried alive before her battery died. Rescuers this morning believed that had made contact with the Christchurch resident, after finding a woman trapped beneath a desk who said her name was Anne. But police have told reporters at the scene today that the person trapped was another woman named Anne - not Ms Voss, a former Geelong resident.

Ms Voss earlier said she was convinced she would die in the darkness and called her children in Australia to say goodbye. Her son Robert, 31, who lives in Middle Park, left Melbourne Airport this morning bound for Christchurch. The news comes as Victoria prepares to send 100 police officers to quake-stricken Christchurch as part of a 300-strong Australian policing contingent."

Earthquake

2011-02-22T22:52:00.006+11:00

Christchurch, New Zealand has been smashed by another earthquake. Although this one was weaker than the one 5 months ago at 6.3 as compared to 7.1, it was closer to the surface and the effects are far worse. At least 65 people have lost their lives.

This is just awful. Another tragedy in what feels like the year of natural disasters. I was in Christchurch January before last and was much enamoured of what a beautiful place it is.

Their Prime Minister, John Key, has said "We may be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day". His counterpart here, Julia Gillard, has affirmed that whatever our friends across the Tasman need from us... we will get it to them.

Pictures

Australia - humane or not?

2011-02-20T22:38:00.005+11:00

It might be an exaggeration to say that the case of a 9 year old asylum seeker is probing the conscience of a nation. It is probably a too-optimistic assumption to even think most people are paying attention... but it IS front page news, and people are asking the hard questions.

Last December a shipwreck on the coast of Christmas Island of a boat carrying Iranian asylum seekers killed still undetermined scores of people, among them parents of a boy known to us as 'Seena'.

Illegal arrivals by sea has served as the number one wedge issue for the conservative coalition, now serving in opposition after coming as close to winning an election as is possible without actually gaining government.

It's all smoke and mirrors of course, illegal immigration by plane vastly outnumbers so called "boat people", but like any other population, Australians can be swayed by symbolism and vague atavistic fears exploited by ruthless and - it has to be said - Right-leaning politicians.

Seena among others was flown to Sydney for the funeral of bodies recovered from the shipwreck, and the opposition immediately blithered about the expense, were promptly called out on their lack of compassion, and forced to retreat and, to some extent, recant.

Then the government came under fire for putting Seena back behind barbed wire.... Christmas Island is in the Indian Ocean and is Australia's offshore processing centre for illegal arrivals by sea. It's about as Santa Claus as Alcatraz, with tropical zone malaria to make the place feel homey.

Seena has since been released into the care of relatives residing in Australia - either too quickly or not quickly enough depending on at what stage people want to sledge the Department of Immigration.

But then the scene shifts back to December again when the Liberal Party (the Liberals are our conservatives here in Australia) had a little meeting wherein opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison is alleged to say something to the effect of "hey, let's scare the voters shitless with the spectre of Muslim hordes taking over the country and use it as a wedge issue against the Labor Party!".

That is not exactly what he said nor meant, in all probability... but suspicion is not eased by refusal to discuss the detail of the meeting.

The issue in this then, I think, is not what Morrison said, but the split within the Liberal Party about what he can be interpreted to have said, and - just quietly - how to approach the M word - multiculturalism.

I find the absence of this word in discussions is quite interesting, if one seeks context from Howard's culture wars. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott merely said that the Coalition ''will always have a non-discriminatory immigration policy''. He didn't use the M word either, and Labor knows better than to step that landmine by looking to do anything than get Morrison's scalp.

It's like watching an ideological cold war that neither side has the honesty to admit to nor the will to fight.

Meanwhile, the Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has called for an independent review of the Migration Act, aimed at stopping children being put in detention. Over a thousand are in detention. There is constant talk about ending it, but the wedge issue is too valuable to the coalition and too dangerous to Labor for anything to happen while government and opposition stare across a parliament split with diamond-cutting precision down the exact middle.

Long after Morrison sees his name come off the front page, he may realise that wedge issues are not, ultimately, things you can choose or not choose to have, after all.

Little wedges everywhere... within Labor caucus, within shadow cabinet... everyone trying to look tough and compassionate at the same time (never an easy trick), ambitious Liberals looking to walk over political corpses, leaders looking to define themselves... and a country wondering how the hell we have kids in what can only be called prisons.

Little wedges... like little boats, coming unbidden and testing what it is you really stand for.

The Right feeds on violence again

2011-02-19T23:06:00.010+11:00

Some days ago the reporter Lara Logan, whose interview with Jon Stewart I seem to remember posting somewhere, was beaten in a sexual assault while working in Egypt. She was rescued by some women and elements of the Egyptian army.

On reading about that I felt a bit sick and went about my day. Then the irrational Right started popping up like noxious weeds with opinions about it all.

I thought "What? It's a sickening act of violence perpetrated against someone who was doing her job - what other possible view could there be?"

But they seem to have been titillated into a piranha-like frenzy about it all.

Let's start with Jim Hoft:

CBS Reporter Logan Learns That Political Correctness Is a Killer. Lara Logan is lucky she's alive. Her liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday. This talented reporter will never be the same.

Won't she Jim? Did you personally talk to her? You have an exact idea of her state of mind, do you? And I wasn't aware that professional journalism was a "liberal belief system"... though I guess it is when considering that crass and baseless pseudo-journalism is usually the province of the Right.

Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea?

Oh... it's her fault is it? My... and when have we ever heard THAT before when talking about rape?
Another question... what exactly does "attractive blonde" have to do with anything?

Robert Stacy McCain - of "You buy the ticket. You take the ride" fame - shot his mouth off about it:

Please tell me what I am permitted to say when a gang of Egyptian men celebrates the end of the Mubarak regime by sexually assaulting an American TV news reporter.

I see... you're the victim here are you Robert? Should have known I guess - the loopy Right is always the victim as far as they're concerned. I'll let you know the next time I spill my coffee, because you'll surely be the victim then too.

By the way, Robert, I think Logan is South African.

Pamela Geller:

Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, "Jew! Jew!"...

Ah... now we come to the pseudo-journalism... and it gets worse

Worse still, CBS tried to keep the whole thing quiet and was forced to get in front of the story only when it became widely known that other media outlets were on to it. Who are they covering for?

Oh I don't know... maybe they are being sensitive to the needs of an employee who has been raped? No?

And why? Because the false narrative the media is painting of what is going on in Egypt is patently false, and this brutal sex attack points to something else entirely... Obama should make a statement addressing this horror and condemning the vile Islamic anti-semitism at the heart of Islam.

Because they wouldn't be rapists if only they weren't so horribly anti-semitic?

You're a total moron, Pam.

Nir Rosen apologized and lost his job, though he never blamed Logan for what happened to her. And mainstream media were content to focus on him... for some reason... and not so much on people like...

Debbie Schlussel, who FOX News use as their expert on Islam apparently because she's a film-critic - gee who could knock qualifications like that?

Schlussel is probably the worst of the bunch here. Read what she wrote and I won't have to tell you why:

As I’ve noted before, it bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of how "peaceful" Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart. Still, it’s also a great reminder of just how "civilized" these "people" (or, as I like to call them in Arabic, "Bahai'm (Animals) are...

...Now you know what it’s like, Lara....

"There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time."

I just love it when the people of the profession of “the public’s right to know” suddenly want “privacy.” Tell it to your next interview subject, Lara. Of course CBS has no further comment. Wouldn’t wanna impugn the “peacefulness” of “Religion of Peace” animals, would we? Now, if they were Christians or Jews, well, then there would be comments galore.

So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we’d hope. But in the case of the media vis-a-vis Islam, that’s a hope that’s generally unanswered.

This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled.

Now that’s all gone. How fitting that Lara Logan was “liberated” by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the “liberation.”

Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara! Alhamdilllullah (oraise Allah)

The Internet... isn't quite big enough... for me to write about everything that is hideous in that tirade.

You Weren't In Love With Me

2011-02-17T23:12:00.002+11:00

Classic love song from Billy Field, a Jazz-pop singer from Urana, a small town 578 kilometers southwest of Sydney.

Field is a towering talent. I do not know why we have not heard more from him.

Costello vs the AFL

2011-02-16T23:51:00.006+11:00

Sometimes the wretched cynicism of politicians surprises even me - and I treat the species like they were a particularly poisonous variety of redback spider.

Today the former treasurer and failed wannabe prime-minister, Peter Costello, from the conservative Coalition defeated in 2007 declared:

''Footballers are not chosen for their moral principles. They do not go into a national draft for budding philanthropists. They can run and catch and kick a ball. What are the clubs thinking when they send them to schools to give guidance on life skills? Any right-thinking parent would quake with fear to hear that footballers were coming to their daughter's school to give a little bit of inspiration."

This is the wake of an incident where young players then had a dalliance with a 17 year old girl.

He overlooks of course all the cancer wards they visit, all the times they turn up at junior league training sessions to give kids a chance to meet their heroes, all the charity work they do.

And this guy actually professes to LIKE football.

Now... In response to Costello's massive and grossly unfair slur, and with vastly greater class, someone said this:

"...given Mr Costello's background, I thought he would be a bit more diplomatic with his opinions. It is disappointing to see someone with a great deal of influence make generalisations on all AFL players....(they) aren’t immune to the challenges that society has and (are) just a reflection of society.... But I can confidently say that the vast majority of AFL players are responsible and fantastic role models to society and do amazing work. The amount of people that AFL players are able to reach is amazing,"

Now who said that...?

Someone with Costello's vaunted "moral principles"? A "budding philanthropist"?

Actually an AFL footballer.

One who is incredibly popular among children.

She's 10...

2011-02-15T00:08:00.001+11:00

Contradictions

2011-02-14T23:52:00.003+11:00

At least in how polls are presented....

I read in Crikeydotcom:

"Tony Abbott’s week from hell and the continuing fallout from the floods has delivered a boost to Labor, according to today’s Essential Report. In online polling conducted last week and over the weekend, Labor’s primary vote rose 2 points at the expense of the Liberals (our major conservative party) .... The Prime Minister’s personal numbers fell, with her approval rating falling back below 50% to 48%, and her disapproval rating rising 5 points to 41%. However, they remain much healthier than her end-of-year numbers..."

But the major and usually reliable paper I read says:

"The (conservative) Coalition has opened an emphatic 54-46 per cent two-party lead in an Age/Nielsen poll that shows Labor's primary vote and the Prime Minister's popularity sliding. This is the biggest lead the opposition has had over the Gillard government in Nielsen polls and - depending on preference allocation - probably its best result since early 2005. The Coalition's two-party vote is up 3 percentage points since November, with Labor's down 3 points."

Both these articles are dated today.

Even the normally Right-leaning paper, The Australian, says:

"Gillard has stared down state leaders to deliver $16.4 billion into the health system in return for absolute transparency about how state governments spend the federal money.... Ms Gillard's first major policy victory as prime minister and follows her promise last year to make 2011 'the year of decision and delivery'."

Meanwhile Abbott has got into a fight with his own deputy and has achieved diddly squat.

Magpie's Football Update

2011-02-13T21:50:00.007+11:00

The pre-season competition started this weekend and Collingwood won their round-robin against Richmond and deadly rivals Carlton.
Yeah it's not the season proper, but there's a feeling of beginning to the quest to go back-to-back premiers in the AFL.

Still not keen on this last touch boundary rule and it's rather strange to see three teams go at it in one night... but it's footy.
Glorious Australian Rules football.

I've had this video lined up for a post. If you don't know our game, consider this a sample.
THE most exciting spectator sport in the world.

and this promo from 32 years ago, with that famous anthem... lot of memories here:

Where's Sarah?

2011-02-10T22:15:00.004+11:00

Normally I don't put unpleasant pictures up on my blog... but sometimes you have to show it, so people know what you're talking about....

If this has been around before and has nauseated everyone already, sorry to subject you to it again, but I hadn't seen it:

On THE SAME PAGE that proudly presented this I found the following crap:

"I just do not understand why the Germans(Nazi's ) are hated so much. Really what did Hitler do that was so wrong, other than being a damn Catlik? So they started a war with half the world. First it was the Pollocks and Checks, well know bastions of retards and gypsies. The French, who cares, same goes for Norwegians, Swedes, Hollanders, and the British, all are strong holds of Joo's. The only bad thing that the Nazi's did was pick the Japs and Dago's to be friends with."

"I'd vote for a make-believe SS officer in a heartbeat over a real Communist Muslim homosexual black militant drug addict."

THESE are the thoughts of people who LIKE and ADMIRE Sarah Palin - and believe it or not are off a "Christian Forum" - and is the cesspool that would be thrilled to see her get somewhere...

Cultwatch

2011-02-08T22:26:00.003+11:00

A former Labor Party state planning minister for Victoria, Justin Madden, attended the opening of a new Scientology centre in Melbourne.

He was quoted as saying "Unselfishly, you work to provide ways and means to uplift our society. You have set the standard for the community with your restoration of this building and with your social programs — an example I will point to for others to follow. Your new Church is as Melbourne as Melbourne gets”.

...

"Your new church" is a monument to a greasy money-grubbing fruitcake criminal cult. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the life of our city.

Former conservative state leader and current Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle also showed up - in a mayoral limo - even though he said he was there for a friend, a local entertainment figure who is a Scientologist. He has voiced regret about doing it however.

The man who actually got the job Doyle wanted, Victoria Premier Ted Baillieu, said "I, like many Australians, have concerns about the role Scientology has played in the past and I’m not a fan".

Xemu's chief scumbag David Miscavige is quoted as saying "Having triumphed today in the name of our religion, you just flipped this planet all the way around so that Melbourne now sits on top of the globe. And that’s what it means to build an Ideal Org beneath the Southern Cross"

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon challenged Doyle to meet with the victims of the cult that Xenophon has been representing in his bid to reverse the cult's formal recognition as a religious body.

Related.

Nautical Art - lots of it

2011-02-06T22:05:00.006+11:00

Beautiful stuff by Derek G. M. Gardner, John Michael Groves, Geoff Hunt, Mark R. Myers and Roy Cross. This video deserves wider viewing.

I have an ongoing project of reading all the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian. This sure helps the mood.

Puts one in the mind of Dudley Pope, Alexander Kent (who is also Douglas Reeman) and C. S. Forester. And of Herman Melville too.

Here's another artist I've posted about before

Alan Shearer

2011-02-04T21:30:00.009+11:00

The legend...

After the stunner against Everton on December 1 2002, the commentator bellows "cometh the hour, cometh the man", and for Newcastle United supporters that's pretty much the story.

Nice compilation (but lower volume control - audio is loud...)

Cyclone Baby

2011-02-03T21:00:00.004+11:00

"Amid the chaos and devastation of Cyclone Yasi, a yet-to-be named baby girl has been born at a Cairns evacuation centre. Akiko Pruss went into labour at the evacuation centre at Redlynch State College at 2.45am Australian Eastern Standard Time. The baby girl was delivered healthy at 6.09am after a three-hour labour. Akiko and her German husband Christian, live in Cairns, and the baby will be their second child.... there were no scales equipment at the evacuation centre to weigh the newborn. English midwife Carol and her husband Andrew Weeks, who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary on holidays in Cairns, delivered the baby. Ms Pruss gave birth in the first aid room of the college and was supported by her mother, who had travelled from Japan to be with her."

- The Age

The most life-threatening storm in generations

2011-02-03T00:07:00.005+11:00

As I'm write the front of potentially the most destructive cyclone in Australian history is sweeping in to make landfall between Cairns and Innisfail, Queensland. By mid this afternoon, it was too late to leave the area.

The Bureau of Metereology expects this to be "the most life-threatening storm in generations".

It will not be safe to be outdoors for the next 24 hours, and it is hitting now at high tide, in flood ravaged areas. A surge of 6.5 to 7.0 metres above the normal high tide is possible.

10,680 people are now in evac centres. About that many homes in Townsville are at risk of inundation from 12 metre waves.

I was in this part of the country, albiet briefly, about 5 months ago. It really is beautiful.

We'll see what the night brings.

Some years ago the former Queensland premier prayed for rain after a decade of drought. Now floods...

El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation... happens in cycles, but appears to be getting worse. Alternating warming and cooling in the Pacific Ocean. El Niño in 1998 caused an estimated 16% of the world's reef systems to die.

Elsewhere... India is shivering through sub-zero temperatures, Brazil has the worst flooding in decades, and an epic winter storm is sweeping the central United States.
Where I am the heat is muggy. If I could spend all day in my jocks it'd be great. Summer didn't used to be like this...

What happened?
Dare we suspect... ?

Quoting a scientific paper:

"Observations show that the tropical El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, after removing both the long term trend and decadal change of the background climate, has been enhanced by as much as 60% during the past 50 years. This shift in ENSO amplitude can be related to mean state changes in global climate."

and from The Telegraph:

"Scientists say there is a likely climate change link to the current La Nina through higher sea surface temperatures. The world’s oceans and atmosphere have steadily warmed over recent decades and that warmth could be providing monsoons and storms with an extra kick.
A major global study in 2010, based on complex computer modelling, found that tropical cyclones will become stronger, with the intensity increasing between 2 and 11 percent by 2100.
And while in some regions, such as the western Pacific and around Australia, the average number of storms might decrease, the number of intense storms in the category 4 and 5 range will increase, along with wind speeds and the amount of rainfall. "

Don't tell me you can see Jesus in bread - but we're all just imagining all this...

I got sick of that during the fires.

I hope the sex was good

2011-02-01T23:03:00.003+11:00

I don't want to sound prejudiced here... but....

This is what happens when the modernity of the Internet meets the barbarity of religiously based morality:

"Indonesia's biggest rock star, Nazril ''Ariel'' Irham, has been sentenced to 3½ years in prison after personal sex videos were stolen from his laptop and went viral on the internet."

Yep.
You read that correctly.
Someone else stole HIS property - but HE gets sent to prison, on anti-pornography laws, for something he never distributed.

His privacy has been violated, yet he is the one convicted.

"1000 Islamists staged a rally and pelted Nazril's police van with eggs and tomatoes."

I assume that afterwards they all went home and had a good wank watching the video.

Magpie's Football Update

2011-01-28T22:42:00.011+11:00

The international game (soccer):

Australia against Japan in the Asian Cup final at Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar.
It's the Socceroos sixth game in three weeks. Japan is hot after downing South Korea, though it cost them striker Shinji Kagawa to injury. South Korea will play Uzbekistan, whom Australia defeated 6-0, for third place.

Captain Lucas Neill says everyone is calm. I wish I could believe him.
Either me or my wife is going to be happy. By tomorrow we should know who.

Update January 30th:
Japan won 1-0 in extra time.
"As long the young guys take the hurt from this day and turn it into a positive, I'm sure the future's bright," Neill said.

Political note:

Apparently the Qatari authorities met ticket-holding fans with riot police. Estimates range up to 5000 people being shut out.
These were people from Australia and Japan and elsewhere who were well-behaved and just wanted to see the match, as they had paid for. Rows and rows of empty seats inside Khalifa stadium. People who did get in noted not one person checked tickets and the bar code readers weren't working.

If Qatar can't deal with this properly how the heck are they going to manage the World Cup in 2022?
Tolerance for the host nation just doing it as a investment promo and not taking the game and its fans seriously will be nil... and THOSE fans aren't going to be so calm about it.

Australia Day January 26th

2011-01-26T00:23:00.002+11:00

Australia Day.

Or "Invasion Day" for indigenous Australians, and they have a point.

I don't really see how the date of the arrival of the First Fleet - and Britain annexing the eastern coastline of what was then New Holland - has anything to do with the spirit of modern Australia. Aren't we meant to be the antithesis of empire?

It's a bit of a problem. The obvious alternative - Federation - happened on New Years Day, and ANZAC Day is by far the more emotive national day anyway. If ANZAC Day is the mourning of wars just or dubious... then Australia Day is some sort of vague "fuck aren't we lucky we live here" day.

It is a day of puzzle about how exactly we give prideful national symbolism to a nation that often eschews prideful national symbols. Of watching sport and heading for the beach.

Some feel differently of course (some strenuously so...) but is there not something slightly unAustralian about running the Australian flag up a pole? It's like a loudspeaker proclaiming how peaceful your local park is.

But Australia Day has one redeeming feature... It is in summer. And summer is a beautiful time.

Special thoughts to the people struggling with the floods, and our people serving in Afghanistan.

"Projected to become the number one source of imported oil to the United States"

2011-01-24T00:03:00.003+11:00

The Alberta Tar Sands project....

The splendor of North America being raped and left a grey expanse of filth.

Oh... and a bunch of people having their health destroyed.

Naomi Klein speaks about it from about the 5 minute mark:

The Green and Gold

2011-01-23T19:55:00.004+11:00

The action...

I don't dig cricket but Shane Watson catching England's Ian Bell out off Watson's own bowling is pretty impressive:

Harry Kewell gets the header for Australia to take out Iraq in the Asian Cup 118 minutes into the match:

Magpie patiently awaits his Australian Rules Football, and World Cup Rugby....

Vampire Flying Frogs

2011-01-22T23:24:00.002+11:00

Look out Kermit...

From The Age:

Australian Museum biologist Jodi Rowley found the mysterious frog while exploring an uncharted mountainous region of southern Vietnam.
The distinctive moniker comes from the fact that the tadpole of the species carries unique, Dracula-like fangs. No one knows yet what the fangs are for. ''As far as I know, a tadpole like this hasn't been seen before anywhere,'' Dr Rowley said. ''I didn't notice anything strange about the tadpoles at all, until I looked at them under the microscope and saw these hard, black fangs.''
The fangs, described as ''keratinised hooks'', may possibly be used for hunting or eating. They could also be used as anchor points to help the tadpoles grip the sides of the small ponds in the holes of tree trunks where the frogs breed and live.
Surviving tadpoles grow into adult vampire flying frogs, which seem to spend most of their lives in trees. They sport unusual amounts of webbing between their digits, allowing them to glide from branch to branch in search of food.
Several adult frogs were found in the forests of the Langbian Plateau by Dr Rowley and a team of students between 2008 and 2010.

Religious extremism in Australia

2011-01-22T15:20:00.008+11:00

It exists. It is microscopic, almost without open political representation, and it is loathed. But it exists.

Danny Nalliah is an Australian Christian evangelical pastor, president of Catch the Fire Ministries, and a former candidate for the Family First Party.
He posted the following on the Catch the Fire Ministries website last Thursday, to enlarge on his idea that the floods in Queensland are God's punishment:

" As I was recently getting my hair cut, my barber said to me, “Danny, I cannot understand as to why a loving God is punishing people.” My barber is a Christian, but does not go to church. In fact I led him to the Lord a few months ago.
I promptly responded, “If my daughter or son tell me that they are leaving home because they don’t like all the rules and regulations, but I tell them that the rules and regulations are because we love them and want to protect them from getting into trouble. But if they still choose to go and I hear that they got into some trouble, would it be fair for them to blame me??” "

I see... you would drown your own children and destroy the lives of thousands for not following your weirdo ideas. Thanks, Danny, for clarifying that, you pathetic jerk.

By the way, a number of comments were deleted on his blog, and there was an interesting one allowed to stand: one praising Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

If you're an Australian reading this... the Westboro Baptist Church are the people who picket funerals in America, taunting the grieving families with slogans like "God hates fags", and they assert that Nazi Germany was run by Jewish homosexuals.

That is the level of astoundingly stupid that Danny thinks is quite all right, apparently.

Guns for self-defence

2011-01-21T23:15:00.006+11:00

"An innocent bystander was killed and five others were shot in a shopping mall strip on the 6900 block of Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento today. Sergeant Tim Curran with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department told the Mercury News, two men were in a barber shop when two other men came in and started shooting. Sergeant Curran said the first two men were also armed and returned fire. The gunfight moved into the parking lot, witnesses said. A bullet hit a woman putting her two-year-old into her Chevrolet SUV, killing her"

Great going, guys, so... how did carrying a gun work out for everyone, huh?

Days of Rain

2011-01-20T00:38:00.010+11:00

This isn't Marlboro Country

2011-01-17T23:53:00.014+11:00

Corporate scumbaggery... Not their worst unfortunately.

Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, are trying to insert "investor state" provisions in the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

The background of this is that Australia and the United States signed off on a Free Trade Agreement in 2005. As is normal with our puppy dog desire to be a good mate to our immensely more powerful friend, we rolled over and had our balls scratched on some of that deal.

There was one thing about which, however, that we said "no".

We will NOT sign up for "investor state" provisions, those being provisions that allow corporations to sue governments that happen to legislate in ways that limit their business activities.

So, for example, if it should be found that certain building materials are found to be bad for bushfire prone areas, and those materials are excluded from new safe-building codes, the producer of those materials, who could be a foreign company, cannot sue our government.

Sorry... make better materials. Not "sorry... we'll compensate you because you make crap".

In effect Philip Morris, dedicated as they are to getting my children addicted to their carcinogenic filth, want to take my taxes as recompense for being frustrated in the attempt.

"Negotiations relating to the trade agreement - between the US, Australia, New Zealand and six South American and south-east Asian countries - intensified last year and are expected to be completed in September.

In a submission on the proposed trade agreement last year to the Office of the US Trade Representative, Philip Morris cited Australia's plain packaging laws among ''initiatives of concern''. The company said it supported laws to reduce the harm caused by tobacco (yeah sure...), but opposed, ''extreme and disproportionate regulation … which has the effect of violating international law and expropriating intellectual property rights''.

Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, said the company's stance was consistent with the tobacco industry's history of attempting to use trade agreements to defeat individual countries' health laws.

''It's yet another sign of the degree to which the industry will go to defeat and delay any measure that will actually work to cut smoking rates,'' he said.

He said the World Trade Organisation's Uruguay Round had established the right of countries to put health considerations above international trade considerations.

The laws that Philip Morris are getting stroppy about related to packaging regulations.

"Craig Emerson, the federal Minister for Trade, would not commit to insisting investor state provisions be excluded from the regional trade pact, saying he was not prepared to make policy on the run. But he said Philip Morris would be ''whistling in the wind'' if it tried to undermine national anti-tobacco laws.

''I will not be recommending the empowering of Philip Morris or any other tobacco company to overturn Australian government policy on plain packaging of cigarettes.'' "

Not exactly stone-cold determination.

What if this costs us the treaty...?

"Patricia Ranald, the convener of the Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network, an alliance that advocates on human rights and environmental issues, said Australia would receive little export benefit from the treaty, because it already had AUSFTA and strong trade partnerships in the region."

Screw it then. By the way... Marlboro is the biggest selling cigarette brand in the world, and is made by Philip Morris.

The Laws have Changed

2011-01-16T21:25:00.001+11:00

Great happy song....guaranteed to brighten your Sunday night. Particularly if you're a bloke.
That girl was singing up on stage...? None other than Nicki Clyne - Cally from the new version of Battlestar Galactica.
Fans will know who I mean....

Context for Tucson

2011-01-16T01:05:00.011+11:00

"Gabrielle Giffords was targeted by the Tea Party Right on the basis that she supported the Obama health care plan – a plan that Beck and others like him have regularly explained to millions of Americans as representing totalitarian communism. Indeed, Sarah Palin’s notorious gun site map was only part of the eliminationist rhetoric unleashed against Giffords. For instance, her local Republican opponents held a fundraising event for his campaign that included the following message: ‘Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.’"

Follow the below links to two articles, one post-Tucson recent, and one from August 2009, by Jeff Sparrow, an Australian Left-wing writer:

Have We Got A Show For You!
The Social Significance of the Arizona massacre.

There's a lot to read.
If you believe gun culture is healthy and the Tea Party are just nice people... you will blow a gasket.

"The toxic milieu of the Patriots spawned Timothy McVeigh — and a wave of other domestic terrorists responsible for over 40 violent incidents between 1995 and 2000.
The militias faded after the Clinton years, partly because of the economic recovery, partly because the far right felt less visceral antipathy to George W Bush and partly, perhaps, because the "war on terror" provided an external focus for internal rage. Yet, all through the Bush administration, the conservative infrastructure pushed the same populist message: the president was a swaggering Texan man of the people; his enemies, effete and treacherous intellectuals.
That strategy reached its nadir at the last election with the McCain/Palin ticket. Sarah Palin campaigned on almost nothing other than her anti-elitism: for her supporters, Palin was an ordinary hockey mom coming to clean up Washington, her very inexperience proof of virtue. In that respect, Obama’s victory — the defeat of the oxymoronic "Team Maverick" by a black liberal — was seen as the end of the so-called "Southern strategy", with the Republicans’ preferred talking points decisively rejected by an increasingly young and increasingly multicultural electorate.
In the wake of the Obama landslide, many Republican strategists recognised a need to change course but the populist forces they unleashed now possess their own momentum..."

Getting stuff done

2011-01-15T21:18:00.005+11:00

This is why we can be proud to be Australians:

"As the floodwaters neared their peak yesterday, the people of Brisbane could have been forgiven for panicking. Fortunately, the opposite happened.
Rarely can an emergency mass movement of people have happened so swiftly and with so little fuss. People rolled up their sleeves and got to work...
Thousands sat on street corners until the early hours of yesterday morning, mingling with refugees from nearby suburbs and neighbours they had never met. They watched the sluggish brown tide slowly rise - eerie, a bit frightening, but not the end of the world...
Yesterday volunteers were hard at work - the organisation managing volunteering said 11,000 people had already officially registered for clean-up duties, but the actual figure would be far higher, because most people just turned up and set to the task. Often a person in a sandbagging chain would not know the name of the person next to them."

Queensland

2011-01-13T21:05:00.012+11:00

Toowoomba
Warren McErlean sees a water gauge on a street rise 20 centimetres in 10 seconds on Monday afternoon. He attempts to save the Rice family...

Jordan Rice, 13 years old, insisted his brother Blake, aged 10, be rescued first. He and his mother Donna, 43, do not make it.

''I thought I would push it backwards but by the time I walked 20 metres, it [the water] was up on the bonnet and coming up the windscreen.''
Mr McErlean grabbed a rope, tied one end to a post, the other around his waist and set out to rescue the woman and two boys but the fast-moving water swept him downstream.
Another rescuer, known only as Chris, pulled Mr McErlean to safety before tying the rope to himself and approaching the car to grab Jordan.
But Jordan wanted his brother to go first so Chris took Blake, handing him to Mr McErlean part way across before heading back to the car.
''I had the boy in one hand, the rope in the other. I wasn't going to let go but then the torrent came through and was pulling us down,'' Mr McErlean said.
''Then this great big tall fellow just came out of nowhere, bear hugged us and ripped us out of the water.
''When I got back I turned to look at the guy [Chris]. He looked at me and we knew it was over. The rope snapped and the car just flipped.''
Chris, who had been holding Jordan's hand until it was torn from him, flew metres in the air before locking his legs around a post in the centre of the road, said Mr McErlean.
''The others were just gone, just disappeared,'' he said.

South East Queensland

Clive Palmer, one of Australia's richest men, uses his private helicopter to rescue 60 people from floodwaters in and around his horse stud farm. 80 horses drown in their field.

"This is all very sad and distressing but the welfare of our people must come first. They have been traumatised and it's vital that they are rehabilitated. There will be a cremation and burial for the horses," Mr Palmer said.

Grantham in the Lockyer Valley

"...in "lock down", with police and the coroner going from building to building looking for survivors."

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says "This is a valley that has been completely and utterly devastated".

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on the ground. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wades through water to help his constituents recover property.

15 confirmed dead
61 unaccounted for
4000 in evac centres
75% of Queensland is a natural disaster zone
120,000 homes and businesses without power

Deep Water

2011-01-13T00:02:00.006+11:00

"I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of drought and flooding rains, I love her far horizons, I love her jewel sea, Her beauty and her terror - The wide brown land for me."

- Dorothea MacKellar 1906

Krugman on toxicity

2011-01-12T00:16:00.003+11:00

"Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.
And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will."

A pig is a pig - but gun sights are butterflies

2011-01-11T00:33:00.005+11:00

"Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin, said the images were never meant to evoke violence. Mansour, who has been tweeting in defence of her boss since Saturday's massacre, said the cross-hairs were never intended to be gun sights. "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said. "It was simply cross-hairs like you'd see on maps". "

Oh... like cherubs blowing from the corners and little sea serpents swimming around in unknown oceans. Of course.
Funny thing is I've NEVER seen cross-hairs on maps.
Not on ones that aren't hare-brained anyway.

"She added that "it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent" "

No. You don't see guns as objects of violence...
That and you're fucking stupid, lying, or both.

"Following initial controversy over the target map last year, Palin - who is known for her use of violent language and hunting lexicon - responded with her rallying cry: "Don't retreat. RELOAD." "

Yeah he tried to.

12,400 people were killed in Mexico's narco-wars in 2010.

2011-01-09T20:25:00.002+11:00

36 known criminals were murdered in the gangland wars in Melbourne Australia between 1998 and 2010... and we made a TV miniseries about it.

" I'd love for it, in ten years' time, not to even be an issue in sport "

2011-01-08T23:10:00.015+11:00

I like all codes of football, but Welsh Rugby Union is rather far off and obscure to me.

That said, even I know who Gareth Thomas is. He's the most capped player in Welsh history. A very tough customer in a very hard sport.

What I didn't know - till I was casually scanning for Rugby news today - was that he outed himself as gay in December 2009, although his closest friends and team mates have known for years.

This is the news item.

An interview.

His onfield brilliance.

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea ( and, no, I'm not gay ) but I found it an interesting tale of a man in a very macho world coming to terms with something he's denied all his life.

Very notable is how his team mates reacted. Thomas' worst fears... were not realised.

Gone to Baker Street

2011-01-05T23:27:00.003+11:00

Gerry Rafferty has died.

By most accounts he wasn't easy to get along with, but he gave us an immortal song.

I know the sax is the big deal, but I still love how that strat screams.

Seeya Gezz...

The toxic Glenn Beck

2010-12-29T20:52:00.006+11:00

Christopher Hitchens on something very nasty and tragic unfolding in the United States today:

Beck’s “9/12 Project” is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again. Things that had hidden under stones are being dug up and re-released. And why? So as to teach us anew about the dangers of “spending and deficits”? It’s enough to make a cat laugh. No, a whole new audience has been created, including many impressionable young people, for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less.

Read the whole thing here. Few can say it better.

I have to quote you this bit, however...

Glenn Beck has not even been encouraging his audiences to reread Robert Welch. No, he has been inciting them to read the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a man more insane and nasty than Welch and a figure so extreme that ultimately even the Birch-supporting leadership of the Mormon Church had to distance itself from him. It’s from Skousen’s demented screed The Five Thousand Year Leap (to a new edition of which Beck wrote a foreword, and which he shoved to the position of No. 1 on Amazon) that he takes all his fantasies about a divinely written Constitution, a conspiratorial secret government, and a future apocalypse. To give you a further idea of the man: Skousen’s posthumously published book on the “end times” and the coming day of rapture was charmingly called The Cleansing of America. A book of his with a less repulsive title, The Making of America, turned out to justify slavery and to refer to slave children as “pickaninnies.” And, writing at a time when the Mormon Church was under attack for denying full membership to black people, Skousen defended it from what he described as this “Communist” assault.

Look upon the far Right... and be horrified.
They are slime under the rock of human enlightenment.

Need to chill out?

2010-12-26T23:10:00.004+11:00

Puts me in the memory of being in a coffee shop in Kamakura, Japan, in 1995.

Whatever it does for you... it's gotta be good:

Update: I changed the video here because the previous one is gone from YouTube. Same great song though.

Who's a threat again?

2010-12-25T23:12:00.004+11:00

I happened to be doing a Google search on a British singer and somehow found myself looking at a forum of one of the most infamous white supremacist sites on the net, who were in a flap about the ancestry of said singer, and other well known performers.

One commenter was describing his "heartbreak" that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page is 1/8th Chinese...

Among the vile comments that flowed from this:

"Its disgusting to see a White Male with an Asian Female and the monstrosities they create"

...Lots of bizarre remarks about Jews of course. Endless pseudo-scientific dribble. Frothing rubbish about the white people being at threat...

Now here's an observation:

If these people were embarrassing diplomats with the facts of what they actually said - instead of stirring up genocidal rants - the authorities would have launched cyber attacks on their site, leaned on every associated commercial institution to dump them, Fox News would be calling for their assassination, and various appendages of the US government would be looking for some law somewhere to say the First Amendment doesn't apply.

But they're 'just' Nazis, so why bother huh?

White Supremacists hate Thor

2010-12-18T19:32:00.008+11:00

Apparently a superhero film has attracted Right-wing outrage...
Yeah.... makes you want to put your head in your hands and groan, doesn't it?

This is the story:
Marvel Comics have a character called Thor, who along with his dad and a few friends are aliens from another dimension who are so advanced that their science looks like magic even to them. Oh and they look just like the Norse pantheon because of contact they may have had with us Earthlings far in the past.
Pretty cool character actually, he was always one of my favourite superheroes as a kid.

Anyway... one of the supporting characters in the new film adaptation is played by a black actor.

Now... I get that Thor is based (very loosely) on Norse mythology but...
This is a comic book.

By way of comparison, Spartans did not look or act like they do in the film 300 - also based on a comic book (oh excuse me... I mean "graphic novel") and they were actually real. Somehow I don't remember the far Right getting in a stew about all that.

Provided Thor himself, and perhaps Odin too, looks like he does in the comic book... I don't give a damn about the rest as look as it all looks cool, and the bad guys get shit beaten out of them.

Anyway... leading the charge against this apparent comic book heresy is a bunch of losers called the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I went and checked them out. This is their "statement of principles", with commentary by me:

"(1) We believe the United States is a Christian country."
Yeah and I believe Natalie Portman looks hot in this new movie.
"(2) We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people."
Great. Just watch the rest of far Right get excited about "European Socialism"
"(3) The United States is a sovereign and independent nation."
Astounding... I actually have to agree with this point. I didn't turn into a Right-wing moron while I was asleep last night, did I?
"(4) The United States is a constitutional republic."
My penis is big.
"(5) We believe in States’ Rights, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Bill of Rights."
All of which just means you don't like paying taxes and you have a gun fetish.
"(6) The traditional family is the basic unit of human society."
Surprisingly we Lefties love our wives and children too. I know, you don't believe me.
"(7) Private property and free enterprise are the foundations of our economy."
Sorry jerks but.... is this leading anywhere...?
"(8) Cultural, national, and racial integrity."
Ah now we get to it... you hate people who aren't white. Plus a lot who are.
"(9) A Strong National Defense."
You've never done a day's military service in your life have you? (The Council of Conservative Citizens not only oppose gays in the military, but women too)
"(10) America First Foreign Policy."
No foreign aid.
"(11) America First Trade Policy."
Full advantage to be taken of those countries you do not aid.
"(12) Traditional Education under Local Control."
You want to beat your children half to death if they read Harry Potter.
"(13) Strong and Just Law Enforcement."
Because we Lefties like being murdered and having things stolen from us.
"(14) Protection of the Environment and Natural Heritage."
Oh God... if only you meant that.

At time of writing the Council of Conservative Cretins have written 4 articles about Thor.
One is titled "Marvel has a history of publishing extremist "Black Power" comics"...
What? Like Spiderman? Like Captain America? Like the Fantastic Four?
Another is titled "Marvel Declares War on Norse Mythology".
In that fillip of garbage they write "It seems that Marvel Studios believes that white people should have nothing that is unique to themselves."
IT"S AN AMERICAN COMIC !!! NOT HITLER'S FUCKING DINNER PARTY.

You don't want to see this film? FINE
I'd rather see films with intelligent audiences anyway.

One of the characters in Asgard is played by a Japanese actor.... Oops... You didn't spot that in your race-hate rage did you?

Oh and... by the way jerks.... Thor is played by an Australian actor. We can't rely on Julian Assange to annoy you ALL the time

Here's the trailer:

Update:

Here is a related link:

I don't want to make too much about this because the CCofC are clearly stupid people... but it's in these moments that we see the emotional and moral incapacity of the far Right in all its pathetic inglory.

Excellent comment re WikiLeaks

2010-12-17T21:58:00.002+11:00

By John Birmingham in the Brisbane Times December 7th:

I had dinner once with Salman Rushdie. Meh. Big deal. Everyone in publishing's had dinner at least once with The Rush. Which means that we all had the interesting experience of dining under armed guard because of the fatwa hanging over him.

It's Allah knows how long since that vicious, sex- and death-obsessed old scrote Khomeini dropped a death sentence on Rushdie for having the temerity to commit a thoughtcrime against his barbarous form of religious derangement. And in that time, despite the damnable inconvenience of it all, and a significant lobby both inside and outside government in favor of letting the mad mullah's hitmen have their way, the West as a whole has mobilised the resources of the various states through which Rushdie has passed to safeguard him from mullah-sanctioned murder.

What a long way we've fallen then, to a position where various spokeswhores of the American Right - some of them occupying positions of state power - can call for the assassination or extrajudicial kidnapping of an Australian citizen with nary a word of protest from our own government or dissenting opinion from the opposition.

I speak of Julian Assange, of course. The weirdest Bond villain ever, putative head of the WikiLeaks collective, and possibly the only celebrity Australian not to have an invite from Oprah.

Sure, I have issues with WikiLeaks. I don't buy into the leftist groupthink that Assange's creation is an untrammelled good. The most recent release, the US diplomatic cables, is more embarrassing than threatening to US interests, although even this tranche of documents raises the prospects of unintended consequences. For instance I wouldn't want to be that Aussie businessman the Chinese grabbed up the other day given that Beijing will now be looking for a way to humiliate Kevin Rudd and the Australian government for his advice to Hillary Clinton on handling the rising Chinese superpower. Nor would I want to be one of the military or political actors in the hot seat on the Korean peninsula trying to decide how North Korea will react over the medium- or even short-term to the revelation that China is willing to see the Kim regime collapse.

But in the end Assange remains an Australian citizen and he is due the protection we offer to all our citizens when they are threatened by rogue actors, even states, because their actions have upset somebody in power somewhere. It doesn't mean he gets a free pass on the allegations against him in Sweden, but it should mean that at the very least those moronic politicians and media celebretards in the US who've been calling for his murder should be getting a visit from one of our consular officials, preferably an ex-SAS or Commando Regiment old boy, to have a quiet word in their shell - like about how seriously we take incitement to murder our fellow little Vegemiters (Australians).

After all, as Salman Rushdie knows, anybody anywhere can pull a trigger.

By the way, today the Australian Federal Police have announced their conclusion that neither WikiLeaks nor Julian Assange has committed any crime under Australian law, in spite of our prime minister pronouncing the release of secret cables as "illegal".

You stuffed up there, Julia.

Remember he's an Australian citizen, innocent till proven guilty of a crime under some law that actually makes sense.

An Australian citizen.
That's meant to mean something.
At least to our own government.

Salamat po

2010-12-14T00:21:00.004+11:00

A good thing happened to me today... sort of an achievement. And I haven't posted music here for a while.

You all have a good one too.

Stunning Contradiction

2010-12-10T20:06:00.007+11:00

Eventually I'll get to my view of all this as an Australian citizen and what I consider to be some craven behaviour on the part of the Australian government, however right now I think you NEED to read about this:

On the very day WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was arrested, the U.S. Department of State -- which is waging all-out legal, PR and cyberwar against WikiLeaks for releasing its private cables -- announced it is pleased to host UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day in 2011.

The three-day celebration in may will pay tribute to new media that have made it possible for repressed people around the world to express their opinions and make public information their oppressive governments tried to keep secret.

"We are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age"

- Kevin Fogarty writing for ITworld

The press release for World Press Freedom Day also states:

"Expanding access to the internet and mobile technologies has opened new routes for gathering and sharing news and information. Those same technologies also have provided new tools to regimes that seek to filter and censor information or to silence those who want to express themselves. World Press Freedom Day 2011 will offer a forum for media freedom advocates, journalists, and policymakers to tackle these challenges and keep them on the global agenda. Freedom of the media is a fundamental human right that requires strong support and constant vigilance."

Joseph Lieberman, on the hand, said on Fox News (....) that he believed a newspaper should be investigated alongside WikiLeaks:
"To me, The New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime, I think that bears a very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department.”

The Guardian covers World Press Freedom Day with a very lyrically titled article:
"World Press Freedom Day reminds us that information is democracy's oxygen"

Right-wing bullshit re WikiLeaks.

2010-12-04T19:20:00.015+11:00

Cenk Uygur on the utter hypocrisy of Republicans and their voicebox Fox News regarding WikiLeaks - reminding us also of who REALLY DID endanger the life of an intelligence operative, and what justice was served.

My friends, this is a pivotal event. We are witnessing one of the terrible collisions of our times between our right to know the truth, and the people who - for their own base political purposes - would destroy those who seek to give the truth to us.

Between those who deal in facts, and those who feed us lies.

By the way... Note this post from 6 months ago.

Some other little sound bites:

One indication of the indiscriminate forces being whipped up by the affair surfaced on a website called TOPIX which this week ran the question: Should the Yanks kill Julian Assange? Mr Humbert, from Irvine in California, wrote, ''The US should say to Australia, either you hand this treasonous scum's head on a stick with his ball stuffed in his mouth or we break diplomatic relations.''
Yank Oliver, from Sudbury in Canada, went further: ''That would stand as a good warning for other Aussies not to betray their allies.'' But neither went as far as Dr Zauius from Sudbury in Canada: ''Strike team needs to be dispatched to Sweden. I am wondering why they have not handed him over. Perhaps it is time to examine the Swiss (Right-wing political geography at its best...) in serious detail.''

- Martin Flanagan, journalist (you know... people who tell us stuff) for The Age newspaper

The Old Cattle Dog by Frank Yeats

2010-12-03T22:55:00.004+11:00

A poem from about man's best friend...

The two-hour muster took six, when the old dog slipped his chain,
For a wild and loyal moment he thought he was back working again.
His memories took him back to those days when he dodged the bullock's heels
And how he waited in smoke-filled camps for his share of campfire meals.

He puffed and panted behind the riders, sounding like an old steam train,
But his gleaming brown eyes show he's happy to be on a muster again.
His Cattle Dog senses and courage kept him going when walking alone,
I'm sure he knows he'll get a special welcome when he limps to his master's home.

His working days are now long gone, his black muzzle now turning grey,
And his calloused pads cannot take the miles of the lonely droving way.
No longer can his stiff, sore body hold its own on a brumby chase,
For he is usually left tied to his kennel while the younger dogs take his place

But when the sun draws over the dawning peaks, the riders and dogs get ready,
For today the mountain-top ranges are to be mustered where rider and horse go steady.
The old dog stays, doubled chained now, when the others head off down the track.
Yes, the old dog whiles away the hours, waiting for them to come back.

WikiLeaks

2010-12-02T00:41:00.003+11:00

"Shares in Bank of America, the largest US bank, tumbled more than 3 per cent on Tuesday amid speculation it would be the next target of leaked documents from WikiLeaks."

Interesting... what have they been up to...?

Sarah Palin: "Assange is not a 'journalist', any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'."

False equivalence. Palin, dumb bitch, also calls his actions treasonous, so presumably she didn't even know he was Australian.

Meghan McCain: "creepy rogue Swedish guy"

Oh the boys in Sweden will just love you for that, Meghan.

Now consider:

"In April the website (WikiLeaks) released graphic, classified video footage of an American helicopter gunship firing on and killing Iraqis in a Baghdad street in 2007, apparently in cold blood. The de-encrypted video, which WikiLeaks released on its own sites as well as on YouTube, caused an international uproar.
The Baghdad video has been WikiLeaks' biggest coup to date, although an extraordinary number of unauthorised documents - more than a million - have found their way to the website. These include a previously secret, 110-page draft report by the international investigators Kroll, revealing allegations of huge corruption in Kenya involving the family of the former president Daniel arap Moi; the US government's classified manual of standard operating procedures for Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, which revealed that it was policy to hide some prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; a classified US intelligence report on how to marginalise WikiLeaks; secret Church of Scientology manuals; an internal report by the global oil trader, Trafigura, about dumping toxic waste in the Ivory Coast; a classified US profile of the former Icelandic ambassador to the US in which the ambassador is praised for helping quell publicity about the CIA's activities involving rendition flights; and the emails leaked from the embattled Climate Research Unit at East Anglia in Britain, last November, which triggered the so-called ''climategate'' scandal."

Note the frothing "hunt him down and clip him" cowboys were not so passionately and murderously critical of WikiLeaks when the latter gave them Climategate... hmm?

The Lord's Resistance Army

2010-11-27T22:25:00.003+11:00

Ever heard of the LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army?

They represent a face of violent religious insurgency in Uganda, southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. Apocalyptic Christians, their leader claims he is the spokesman of God, and seeks to establish a theocracy based on the ten commandments, with elements of the mystic traditions of the Acholi ethnic group.

Somehow this translates in practice into sexual slavery, child slave-soldiers, kidnapping, mutilation and murder. And against obvious proof of the contrary, painting a cross on your chest makes you bullet proof, if you believe their current leader, Joseph Kony.

Kony is now thought to be hiding in southern Darfur.

The LRA began in 1986, and since then has been responsible 30,000 abducted children.
Maybe 40,000 - no-one can count them all.
Over 2 million displaced people. One investigation found a child slave-soldier bearing arms at age 5. The second youngest was 6.

Kony has been described, optimistically in my opinion, as "Africa's last warlord". He's been hunted for years.
According to Jendayi Frazer, the then US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Dubbya would rant ""How can this guy call himself a soldier of the Lord? He's just a murderer."

But the hunt for Kony has never gone well....
In 2006, the United Nations did something it doesn't usually do: They sent a hit team. American-trained Guatemalan Special Ops soldiers. They were all killed and the LRA had some new heavy machine guns and grenade launchers to play with.

Then in December 2008 came Operation Lightening Thunder. Reporter Scott Johnson, in an article for Newsweek, writes:

Shortly after dawn last Dec. 14, four Ugandan Mi-24 helicopters banked low over the thick forest canopy of Congo's Garamba National Park. A dense fog had rolled in overnight, and the weather had turned nasty. Earlier that morning at a forward staging area in Uganda, a team of American military advisers equipped with large-scale US government maps and Google Earth technology had shown the helicopter pilots what to look for—four distinct "fishhook shape" camps spread out in cleared areas of the park. In one of these camps, they believed, was Joseph Kony, the professed mystic who leads Africa's longest-lived insurgent group, the Lord's Resistance Army. Find Kony, the pilots' commander had said, and kill him.

Descending through the fog bank and hovering just above the tree line, the pilots spotted what looked like a rebel council meeting in the largest cluster of shelters, code-named Camp K. The gunships immediately unleashed a barrage of rockets and chain-gun fire. Reports from the helicopter crews later stated that several dozen people, including women and children, had been caught in the open. "I saw the helicopters come—they were black, and they were bombing us," recalls George Komagun, 16, one of the hundreds of child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army. "I ran. We tried to fight the helicopters, but could not."

Two days after Operation Lightning Thunder began, Ugandan commandos finally reached Camp K. They found bloody trails heading into the jungle in all directions. Hastily dug graves dotted the site's periphery. Kony had been on the run for more than two decades, but this place had the look of a settled homestead. Acres had been cultivated with sorghum, cassava and maize. Stashes of sugar, rice and water in large plastic containers were buried all around.

....

Eight days later Kony retaliated, as usual by attacking helpless civilians. Within a few days, LRA fighters had slaughtered more than 1,000 Congolese villagers, beating them to death with clubs, rifle butts and machetes, and burning entire villages to the ground. Hundreds of children were kidnapped, and roughly a quarter of a million people fled their homes in Congo and south Sudan.

According to George Komagun, mentioned above, Kony would say 'Now you killed them, you must drink their blood and eat their liver." Komagun claims to have eaten 20 livers. In his dreams the people he has killed come to him begging for mercy.

In Southern Sudan there is a militia called the Arrow Boys who defend their village against the LRA. They fight with anything they have, including bows and poison darts.

On of their fighters, Emmanuel Samuel, joined the Arrow Boys in July.

In a report today by Jason Koutsoukis, a journalist with Fairfax Media, he says "The village elders told me to stay in the village but I wanted to stay and follow my father... I have fired my weapon [a bow and arrow] just once"

Emmanuel Samuel is 10 years old.

Based on Valerie Plame's memoir...

2010-11-27T15:14:00.002+11:00

Has someone not sat her down and TAUGHT HER SOMETHING already....?

2010-11-25T20:08:00.007+11:00

ahem..

Palin: Well, North Korea, this is stemming from a greater problem, when we're all sitting around asking, 'Oh no, what are we going to do,' and we're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do. So this speaks to a bigger picture that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policy. But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies – we're bound to by treaty....

Interviewer: South Korean.

Palin: Yes, and we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.

Even granting it was a slip of the tongue and she meant South Korea all along (questionable at best)... what did she mean by "strong enough policy to sanction"?

Sanction meaning "impose sanctions" or sanction meaning "give approval for"?

What the heck is she on about? Does anyone know? Does SHE know?

As someone commented in The Guardian.... " Yo, my fellow Americans: remember all those Civil War lessons we sat through in history class, learning how the heroic Abraham Lincoln led the Confederate Army in glorious battle against Hitler to free the Jewish slaves in Egypt? Sarah Palin does. "

Two from Leunig

2010-11-24T17:12:00.007+11:00

Last Mile Home

2010-11-21T22:58:00.002+11:00

Song by Australian country music singer Troy Cassar-Daley. Very gentle on the mind.

Hope you like it.

Plutocratic Fascism?

2010-11-21T22:42:00.002+11:00

I was idly poking around the net and found some interesting quotes by people who are extremely concerned about the future of their country. I don't know who wrote them.

Nearly 10 years old, but it hits the mark:

" I'm afraid your suspicions regarding the rise of plutocratic fascism are correct. Southern Conservative Christians are peripheral to the ultimate purpose of this coup, but are essential to provide popular support. The truth is that really big money has coalesced for the purpose of turning back the tide of economic leveling that was quickly destroying the basis of the relative power upon which plutocrats rely. "

this dated to 6 months before 9/11 (and no I'm not one who thinks it was an inside job):

" Republican representatives are almost openly advocating a state religion. A destruction of welfare and social security. A militarized USA and the creation of foreign provocation to set off the need of military action which will facilitate internal police control of dissent. "

and...

" We fear the term fascism because it exists very close to the surface of America's skin. Corporatism, or corporate fascism, is the American form of this disease. It has thrived here unchallenged for several decades. And it has rewritten our language of social discourse at the same time it has taken half the wealth of this nation and concentrated it in the hands of a few. "

Guns... yeah totally worth it...

2010-11-18T20:35:00.003+11:00

"A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin's Dancing with the Stars routine, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn't a very good dancer, according to US court documents.

Steven Cowan, 67, of the town of Vermont, about 15 miles west of Madison, then pointed the gun at his wife, 66-year-old Janice Cowan, who escaped and called police, authorities said. A SWAT team surrounded the couple's farmhouse, and officers were able to talk Cowan out on Tuesday morning after an all-night standoff.

Cowan had been drinking before he sat down to watch Dancing with the Stars and suffers from bipolar disorder, his wife told officers."

BUT.... uncontrolled gun ownership makes society safter from liberals, minorities, gay people, socialists, Martians, and Hollow Earth people.... Right??
Of course it does.

Bittersweet

2010-11-16T22:47:00.004+11:00

Life is a bag of shit sometimes.

At least we have the Hoodoo Gurus.

Hobbies of the far Right

2010-11-13T16:02:00.010+11:00

Some days ago a 17 year old boy, here in Australia, hit his head on the pavement during an altercation and died shortly after. A tribute page was arranged on Facebook. That page was then defaced with hateful messages by one or more unidentified trolls.

In reading about this act of pure malice in the news, I and probably most other people assumed it was likely just some local scumbag who defaced the site, but it turned out to be something far more systematic and further afield than that.

This, my friends, is what lurks in the far Right, and what makes them feel 'powerful', and represents their true nature.

Related

"Boys only please - we're a school for girls"

2010-11-11T00:12:00.003+11:00

A posh girls only school... a dinner dance... the girls are meant to bring a "guest". No-one says "male" or "boy", but everyone takes that to be the meaning.

Almost everyone...

One says she will bring another girl.

She is told "no".
Again and again and again.
She screams "homophobia!". The school claims it was for year 11s and year 10s are not allowed. Someone points out year 10 boys were allowed to be there... THEY just weren't asked for proof of age.

To be fair the school management might not have meant anything overtly homophobic.
The problem is, prejudice is subtle sometimes, and you're not going to get away with it in an educational institution in the most progressive part of the most progressive state in Australia. Not in this day and age.

Seriously anyone could have seen a freight train of potential claims of discrimination coming their way and worked something out, especially when they were having multiple meetings with the girl's parents. But they clearly believed they could bulldoze this.

And now that girl is going to another school where same sex couples at school formals is expressly permitted.

By the way... the taller girl in the photo is actually the one in year 10.

As it happens, if I - lil' ole Magpie - had been born just ONE day later, I would have been in the next grade down at school...
What difference does it make?

Now that school management looks like...
well....

A bunch of dicks.

Just thought you'd like to know...

2010-11-09T22:06:00.004+11:00

... that the Large Hadron Collider has created a mini big bang, unleashing temperatures 1,000,000 times hotter than our sun.

But they say it's all perfectly safe of course...

I mean... when you are riding at the tattered edge of the known laws of physics, what could possibly happen huh?

Walkabout

2010-11-03T23:56:00.004+11:00

A sort of sequel to the last post.

Jenny Agutter when she was beautiful (and I was only about 5 years old). Heck of a film... Definite classic.

"Where the plains forever roll..."

2010-11-02T20:45:00.001+11:00

"Raining On The Rock" by John Williamson.

Animal Kingdom

2010-11-01T21:43:00.004+11:00

A film about the Melbourne underworld, based around a true and horrific event I remember.

Robert Griffing

2010-10-28T23:12:00.005+11:00

You may know of this artist, but I only discovered his work the other evening...

Robert Griffing. His subject is native Americans in the northeast part of the continent around the late 18th century, and their interaction with settlers.

I particularly like this one of a scout with a Scottish soldier. Something about the dazzle of sunlight playing over their clothes and the ground.

More of Griffing to be found here.

One of the best songs ever

2010-10-19T22:20:00.005+11:00

Silverfiddle mentioned this in comment on the last post, and I'd been meaning to post it anyway.
No gimmicks here... just great music.

Ever tell you I LOVE Suzi Quatro?

2010-10-17T20:55:00.003+11:00

Pre-adolescent Magpie's dreamchick.

Murdoch's machine moves against hope in the US

2010-10-16T18:31:00.006+11:00

News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch has been questioned by shareholders about a series of large donations made to right-wing organisations.

Normally a tightly controlled and sober affair, the News AGM was diverted by questions about million-dollar donations to the Chamber of Commerce and Republican Governors Association.

The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organisations representative Laura Shaffer Campos politely but pointedly wanted to know why the donations had been made.

Mr Murdoch said the donations had nothing to do with the editorial opinions of the corporation.

"It has nothing to do with the editorial policies, or the journalism, or the films, or anything else," he told the meeting.

However, he did say the donations were aimed at driving changes in Washington DC.

"It is certainly in the interests of the country ... that there be a fair amount of change in Washington."

He did not elaborate on that comment.

News board member Rod Eddington was also pressed on the donations.

"The board takes advice from the management team and considers it on that basis and also refers it to the company's general counsel," Sir Rod told the meeting.

Source: AAP via The Age newspaper

Before it gets lost again... I'll point out that Rupert Murdoch is a US citizen now, and has been for 25 years.
I doubt the Republican Governors Association was much interested in HIS birth certificate.

Lawyer smokes both Bible and Koran

2010-09-13T15:18:00.004+10:00

Time for one more post after all.

A university lawyer in Brisbane has decided to contribute to the burn-a-Koran craze sweeping approximately 50 total idiots in all of North America.

...by smoking a marijuana joint rolled from both the Koran AND the Bible.

He posted himself doing this online. I haven't seen the video and - since it can't be much to look at - I'm not putting it here. You can find it if you go looking.

He expects to be fired but the police will not be charging him with anything.
I reckon he actually stands a good chance of keeping his job. I reckon he SHOULD keep his job.

I have a split attitude to religion.... I personally think there is probably no God period, definitely no God as is imagined by any of the Abrahamic faiths. I think religion is enormously destructive in the public domain. I want religion to have nothing whatsoever to do with the law, politics or education, but I'm mindful of the vulnerabilities of people who - against my preference - do believe in it.

Do I think there is absolutely any value on someone getting high on the Koran or the Bible...?
No.
Not in any sense at all, if you get my meaning...

I think religion is a load of shit. But I don't say that to timid grannies coming out of Sunday prayer.

I'll make another observation about this guy, however: He wasn't a Joe Average just doing it as a lark. He is an organisational member for the Brisbane Atheists, meaning... This is HIS religious expression. His way of saying how he wants the world to be.
And that's where I get edgy: I don't want an atheist crusade because nothing good will come of that.
I want an end to religiously motivated political acts of ANY stripe whatsoever.

Aivazovsky

2010-09-13T00:19:00.005+10:00

I'm outa here for some more quiet adventures in Japan, my second homeland. I don't know when I'll be posting anything next.

As is my habit, I like to share something of the roads less travelled. Here are some of the works of Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), a Russian Armenian famous for his nautical art.

These paintings have a way of pulling you in and turning you about.

Travel is like that.

September 10th

2010-09-10T23:21:00.002+10:00

I will not be posting anything tomorrow... I think people will be thinking of other things.
Whatever the day finds you doing, whatever the tumult, go gently about it all.

Memo to the Coalition and the media

2010-09-09T23:22:00.001+10:00

"The first cracks have appeared in the Gillard government's alliance with the crossbench MPs, with the Greens signaling they may side with the Coalition on some issues..." says the newspaper.

Funny... what I heard, from the leader of the Greens, from his own lips, was that the Coalition will be judged harshly for being "destructive instead of constructive".

But no... let's have waves of doubt and pessimism and report every little passing conflict because, hey, we're the media and we prefer conflict.

What he was ACTUALLY saying was there is a new "paradigm" where you - the cantankerous conservatives - can initiate legislation and not have it squashed provided you have majority parliamentary support.
Meaning... better "democracy" MORE bi-partisanship - not less.

You're so busy pissing on the Greens out of jaundiced ideological prejudice you can't see they are offering you a measure of 'power'.

And the Coalition have gone from civil to bitter and twisted faster than the Wicked Witch of the West getting in froth about not scoring the red slippers.

Questioning the Gillard government's "legitimacy"?
If you thought you had a leg to stand on with that you'd run with it but you don't - because by every rule of our system Labor has the right of minority government. Gillard got the independents on side. You didn't. Get over it and work towards the next election - which may not be so far away anyhow.

Julia keeps the top job

2010-09-07T20:04:00.022+10:00

Update: I have replaced the image I had here previously, which was the iconic Obama "Yes We Can" with Gillard in it - because it could be taken to mean all sorts of things I wasn't actually saying.
I meant it in good humour.

My commenter Sigil remarked on it, and I decided he had a point. I do take intelligent constructive criticism on board.

This afternoon the three remaining regional independents announced who they join with to form a minority government: Coaltion, Labor, Labor.

Labor wins.
Julia Gillard will remain prime minister.

The key issues which persuaded the affirmative two were the building of the broadband network - that being the country's biggest infrastructure project - and recognition of the issue of climate change.

Although this is a complex and extraordinary political situation in a system not familiar to many of you, I want to just point out what I took away from it, personally...

1/ During the 17 days of negotiation and deliberation, the country continued its business, tranquil and unfazed.

2/ No-one - except for one flaky Right-wing cretin who looks to have lost his senate seat - said "I will block anything you do". Everyone pledged to make things work.

3/ A conservative coalition lost the opportunity to form a government in part over failures of policy regarding climate change. It might have only been in the minds of a handful of men... but when it came to hard business of politics, it mattered. It actually affected the outcome. That's significant.

4/ The much needed parliamentary reform, which everyone agreed was necessary while in opposition then forgotten in government, was finally agreed to.

5/ Gillard was by far the superior negotiator.

6/ Between the leaders it was never personal. There was not one fleeting moment of spite. It was all about the best outcome for the country, as they variously see it. The Coalition were disappointed, but they were civil. There was no fist-pounding. No hysterics. They acted like grown-ups.

7/ I was greatly entertained, and the better team won.

The only home we've ever known

2010-09-06T21:55:00.006+10:00

I think we all need to listen to this from time to time, and think about what 'my' opinions, 'your' opinions, 'his', 'her', 'their' opinions, all, ultimately, add up to...

A quote for all the human ages that have ever been, and perhaps ever will be:

Shades of grey, drab green, dull blue

2010-09-05T17:03:00.007+10:00

Wouldn't be horrible if you walked down the street and one entire gender was forced to wear the same sort of clothing...
A cartoonist's view of the burqa ban ( related post ).

Anti-Gypsy rhetoric on the rise

2010-09-04T12:49:00.003+10:00

The far-Right party in the Hungarian parliament has called for camps detaining Gypsies, "if necessary for life".
This is in the midst of a Europe-wide backlash against Gypsies following population movements, particularly to Italy and France, after Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia joined the European Union.

According to the Telegraph:

" Jobbik party, the third largest in Parliament, proposed that Gypsies considered a threat to public order should be transferred to secure camps outside cities, warning that "civil war" could erupt unless the issue was tackled.

The governing Fidesz party branded the idea "outrageous", saying the solution was "not to set up ghettos, but to have strict laws and a strong police force".

A spokesman for the Hungarian Socialist Party said the call for camps was "reminiscent of the Nazi agenda for concentration camps 65 years ago". "

The latter are referencing ‘Gypsy Clean-up Week’ which took place throughout Germany in June 1938, in which Roma and Sinti men, women and children were targeted for persecution, hatred and imprisonment. The Sinti are another Romani people. Django Reinhardt, the great Jazz guitarist, was Sinti.

As to this case... how like the far-Right to be the ones to set expectations of violence - salivating at the prospect that some thugs will do their thing so they can say "You see? You see? I told ya so... The Gypsies and our opponents only have themselves to blame!".

They're so predictable.

Jobbik means "better and Right", and they describe themselves as a "radically patriotic Christian party" (oh great...) who were founded in 2002 as "the Right-Wing Youth Association", and gained support partly because there was another Right wing mob who are even worse: Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja (MIEP) - Hungarian Justice and Life Party, who are racial Nationalists.
Jobbik's 2009 election slogan was “Hungary belongs to the Hungarians”. They have had co-operative talks with the British National Front.

This cat digs Yvonne Fair

2010-09-03T21:53:00.003+10:00

Like snakes?

2010-09-03T19:22:00.003+10:00

"A Malaysian man pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport"

- The Associated Press

Election deadlock - Thursday update

2010-09-02T21:54:00.007+10:00

Today Andrew Wilkie - who I wrote about here - committed himself to political partnership with the Australian Labor Party (and he was a Young Liberal once...), which gives Gillard 74 seats. To form a minority government she needs two of the three remaining independents to commit. In order for the Coalition to do the same they need all three to commit to them (which can of course still happen, unfortunately...).

Treasury has gone over Coalition costings and found "a black hole" of at least $7 billion and maybe as much as $11 billion. Since the Coalition refused to submit the costings to Treasury review prior to the election (and for a while afterwards)... this has caused suspicion. It's a matter of speculation that if the conservatives had been transparent (read... "honest") up front... then this would have been revealed prior to the election and maybe the ALP would have got a narrow win instead of a hung parliament.

I read the Treasury analysis... dry but interesting. And clear - the coalition have dodgy assumptions. As ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) reports:

"Before the election the Coalition said its promises would add about $11.5 billion to the budget bottom line over the next four years. But Treasury analysis given to Tony Windsor and his fellow independents Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter shows the Coalition's promises would only add between $860 million and $4.5 billion to the bottom line.
The Treasury document shows the Coalition has costings problems with its plans for health, education, infrastructure and its paid parental leave scheme.
The difference in figures also comes down to the Coalition making significant spending promises without saying which projects would be slashed to pay for those promises."

Rob Oakeshott, one of the remaining independents, came out of 14 hours worth of meetings with the Coalition... and expressed disquiet. If he goes to the ALP then the Coalition cannot form a minority government. Either it's 75 each way, in which case it's a matter of constitutional interpretation or one or both of the other two come on board and Gillard has the numbers to form government.

The money behind terror, and Neocon failure

2010-08-30T20:50:00.004+10:00

Loretta Napoleoni is an Italian economist, political analyst and author who is an expert on the financing of terrorism.

She's in Australia at the moment and speaking at the University of Sydney.

Some of her commentary puts an interesting persective on what the so called war on terror has cost us...

Napoleoni writes... " The interdependency between terrorism and the global economy goes well beyond the credit crunch, the recession and the euro crisis. Since September 11 it has been extending the boundaries of a shadow world which threatens to replace our own if we do not break away from the legacy of the ''war on terror''. Bringing the troops home is not enough; we need to focus on the true target of this war, on the lifeline of terrorism - we need to focus on the money. "

Along the way she takes a swipe at some of the Bush administrations more egregious failures and inattentions...

She notes the Patriot Act didn't do a thing to stop terrorist financing, but it did prompt Muslim investors to switch investments worth $US1 trillion from the dollar to the euro. The global demand for the greenback retreated drastically in the wake of this.

Previously too, interest rates were the method of counteracting recurrent economic crises - such the Asian financial crisis. Too-low interest rates only hide problems.
However, for a war-chest going into Iraq, the Bush administration sold billions in treasury bonds, and to make that debt competitive, the Federal Reserve progressively slashed interest rates, which fell from 6% before 9/11 to 1.2% by mid-2003.

Bush and co were asleep at the wheel in the economy, as in everything else, and paid little attention to signs of an overheating globalised economy - the housing boom and growing personal debt.

They also paid too little attention to how terrorism is financed. Perhaps it just wasn't heroic and pyrotechnic enough for neocon tastes.

Others have commented on this neocon attitude that things are only worthwhile if they cost the earth. Or someone's blood.
Dr William Coleman, of the department of Economics at the Australian National University, notes of neocon attitudes: "...heroism is only heroism if it is costly. And the more costly it is, the more valuable it is. Thus a hostility to cost amounts to a hostility to heroism."

That is, it has to be said, a lethal circle.

I'll leave the last word with Napoleoni... " Washington's fixation with military intervention also prevented the formulation of an effective policy to thwart terrorist financing, which nobody ever regarded as a real priority. "

1588

2010-08-29T21:02:00.006+10:00

A bit of an indulgence here... I found this on YouTube.

As our red-haired lass clings onto power but may not keep it... this is the second of two films about another famous red-headed ruler. As a ship nut I love the Spanish Armada scenes. The music is Arirang, which is a Korean folk tune. Strangely, the music and these scenes go perfectly together.

A famous Sci-Fi novel called Pavane decribes an alternate 20th century in a world where Spain had actually conquered England in 1588. It's not a pleasant world.
On the other hand, some of what is bad in ours is not present.

Sunday Cartoon

2010-08-29T14:11:00.005+10:00

The situation in federal parliament at the moment...

Both coalition and Labor have 72 seats. There are 150 in the house of representatives, thus no absolute majority for the first time since 1940, when we were in the middle of a war. Then the independents switched to Labor, and John Curtin was prime minister till 1945.

Either the independents back one side or the other, or we hold another election, or something weird happens.

Probably take at least to the end of the week to see what happens. I don't favour another election because they're a nuisance, even more people would thus vote informal, and we could just end up at square one again anyway.

Brooker's mosque commentary

2010-08-28T22:57:00.009+10:00

Charlie Brooker offers an ultra-precise description of what the so called Ground Zero Mosque will look like...

"The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is."

The rest of his article, as published in The Guardian, is here.

(in case you're a reactionary troll... he's "exaggerating")

Moses the magpie

2010-08-27T23:41:00.003+10:00

Someone's pet magpie, 9 months old. He lived for 4 years and was called Moses.

We are the coolest birds in all creation.