Legal Music Downloads Will Be Bigger Than 'Piracy' As Major Labels Slowly Wake Up To Digital Marketplace

By Darryl Mason


Paid digital downloads have exploded in Australian in the past few years, from $100,000 in 2004 to an estimated $100 million this year, about 1 in 5 of all recorded music sales.

By 2013, a new report predicts, digital downloads will be responsible for half of all music sales. But, to no great surprise, record companies are still not prepared for the next stage of the digital music revolution :

...record companies' hip pockets were "seriously hurting" and they were struggling to find ways to fight the rise.

Individual artists were better at handling the changes, benefiting from merchandise sales and touring.

"Having initially fought downloading, rather than looking at ways of legally exploiting and profiting from it, record labels are now finding themselves playing catch up...."

...the report says legal downloads would start to outpace illegal downloads as legal options became cheaper and more available.

There's no mystery why CD sales in Australia are falling.

Charging more than $30 dollars for a CD disc and jewel case is absurd, particularly now teenagers know how much those materials actually cost (less than $1 each), unlike the days of vinyl records.

The vast majority of music lovers who carry their sounds with them use MP3 music players.

When you buy CDs that are blocked from being copied by terrified music corporations, you give up on CDs real fast.

Nearly every song recorded in the past few decades is now in a digital format, somewhere on the web. But options to browse and legally buy vast realms of back catalogue music in MP3 format is limited. Except when you go to the 'piracy' sites that are now showing music corporations how huge the digital marketplace actually is and how to build new digital business plans they should have developed years ago.

The music industry isn't dying, but the long and often times criminal strangle hold the majors had over the marketplace (record stores, distribution) has been broken by the digital music revolution.

The vast, vast majority of Australians now raiding entire discographies of their favourite old bands for free at The Pirate Bay and MiniNova (both sites stay high in the Top 100 most popular websites used by Australians) are not criminals, and they should not be thought of as such by record companies. It is a simple fact of the marketplace that the more music a music lover hears, the more they spend on music.

So-called music 'piracy' has actually broadened the marketplace and audience to which record companies can now pitch their products. But they have to make the products worth buying.

It may well be true that an entire generation of children believe that "music is free", but that doesn't mean they are not buying music, or won't buy music when they've got cash to spend.

They won't buy a $25 CD, but would they buy a $30 CD that had a beautiful poster-sized piece of fold-out art (like an old double vinyl album cover), a couple of nice prints of the musician or band and a memory stick packed with extra tracks, videos, remixes, raw master recordings? Put it this way, they are more likely to buy the $30 pack than the $25 extras-free CD.

The music industry, like the movie industry, has to adapt to the digital marketplace that already exists, not try and bust it apart with legal threats (they can't win that war) or through fan-infuriating levels of control over the digital formats of the music and movies they release.

When people hear something they like, they want to share it with friends and family. It has always been this way with music, as it has been with all story-telling.

There are more music junkies in Australia than ever before, with nearly every one of them carrying their favourite tunes with them in their music players, in car stereos, in their phones.

The music industry should be rejoicing that the digital marketplace is so huge (through little effort of their own) and so incredibly easy to access and to sell music to. But the makers have to offer the buyers something a bit more special now than a plain old CD.

They have to give the customers numerous reasons to pay for the music they want to listen to, and share; a package they cannot download from The Pirate Bay, something physical, unique, beautiful. Something the music fans simply have to own.

Blaming music lovers for not buying products they're not interested in buying is ridiculous, and utterly self-defeating.

Music 'piracy' is not destroying the market for music, it's rapidly expanding it. The explosion in popularity of live rock across Australia owes something to the mostly illegal digital music sharing amongst teenagers in the past five years, particularly through social networking sites.

It's now up to major players of the Australian music industry to find new and innovative ways to sell that music (in various formats and packages) to the customers who want it, and it's time for those same major players to realise that file-sharing will lead to an even bigger audience to sell to, if they are actually selling, at reasonable prices, what the people want to buy.

Welcome To PopeTown

If you're in Sydney and you want to see what sort of show more than $100 million of taxpayers money buys, you're gonna need to show your PopePass.

The Pope isn't here to speak to the common muck, the world's richest corporate exploiter of two thousand year old philosophies is touring for "pilgrim only events". Pilgrims will be able to give alms to the country of Vatican through purchasing the latest Pope-approved Jesus trinkets from an "eight metre high merchandise tent."

Not sure yet how much will be spent on clothing the poor and feeding the hungry while all these dedicated followers of Jesus' anti-poverty, anti-wealth belief system are in town.

Once again, Sydney will be divided by security fences and checkpoints.

Your 'War On Terror' Bill : $20 Billion And Counting...

'War On Terror' Funding Quadrupled Budgets Of Australian Spy, Intelligence Agencies

Fighting "Islamic terrorists" at home has cost Australian taxpayers some $20 billion since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington DC, and the Bali bombings.

But the money fountain for intelligence agencies and defence contractors appears to have
peaked :

New figures show that by 2011 the Federal Government will have invested more than $17 billion in direct measures to beef up national security since the brazen al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against the US.

The national investment has an impact on everyone, from expanding CCTV camera networks to invasive airline security checks and a new army of private security guards.

An analysis of spending shows the big years were 2003-04 with an extra $1.8 billion, 2002-03 $1.3 billion and 2005-06 $1 billion.

Since 9/11, funding to the chief Australian spying agency ASIO has spiralled "a massive 514 per cent."

The 2001-2002 budget was $69 million.

The 2008-2009 is $423 million.

Most Australians have never even heard of "the shadowy overseas spy agency" ASPI. But it's funding was boosted 236 per cent.

The Australian government's "peak intelligence agency", the ONA, has had a budget increase of 441 per cent since 2001.

But those massive increases, primarily to fight "Islamic terrorism", seem almost insignificant compared to the mind-boggling vault in defence funding, post-9/11.

In 2001, the Australian government spent almost $14 billion.

The 2008 budget has rocketed to more than $22 billion. And that's with big cuts by the Rudd government.

The John Howard-implemented role for Australians in the War On Iraq has chewed up more than $2 billion, with another billion or so likely to be needed to help the hundreds of young veterans physically and mentally wounded by the war.

So how will our intelligence agencies spend all that money?

The threat of "Islamic terrorism" to the average Australian was vastly oversold, and spectacularly hyped by the Howard government and its corporate media allies.

But thanks to the mega-hype, the Australian spy agencies that spy on Australians got the funding to build surveillance networks and infrastructure that even China admires.

A Whole Lotta Wombat





Australia 100,000 years ago was a land of remarkable creatures usually called mega-fauna. Scattered hunters back then would have had a bounty of feasting lumbering by. Some new information on one of the biggest of those mega-fauna :

The diprotodon, a 2.5 tonne, wombat-like creature that was the largest marsupial on earth at 1.8 metres tall, above, consisted of a single species when it roamed Australia during the Pleistocene era more than 100,000 years ago, Gilbert Price, of the University of Queensland, has found.

When this land was connected to most of the rest of the world's non-flooded areas, some exceptional evolution took occurred :

Fossilised remains of a dinosaur with a big elbow could rewrite our understanding of how Australian dinosaurs evolved.

Palaeontologist Dr Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and colleagues, say a forearm bone from a meat-eating dinosaur first found in 1989 is likely to be related to a Megaraptor from Argentina.

This is the first evidence linking Australian dinosaurs to those in other Gondwanan continents, rather than from the northern hemisphere...

...Australian dinosaurs have generally been considered an odd breed of their own, descended from northern hemisphere ancestors and evolved in isolation.

Not only were they cut off from the north when Pangea broke up, but they were also cut off from the rest of Gondwana by some means - perhaps the harsh climate of Antarctica or a mountain range.

We produce the world's best actors, many of the world's best directors, studios in Sydney and Melbourne teem with the world's most accomplished special effects technicians and CGI artists, but we have no big-scale movies about our spectacular and very ancient history. Dinosaurs? Who cares? We had Mega-Fauna. Monstrous beasts big enough to ride, then eat.

It's getting easier to become an international star these days, particularly if you are awesomely entertaining.

The Chooky Dancers, from a small island off Arnhem Land, show just how far one great dance routine posted on YouTube can take you. The clip, posted by the lead dancer's dad, is rocketing towards one million views and has already seen the dance group score gigs on TV and offers to take their dance moves on tour across the world.

From the Melbourne Age :

The lead dancer, Lionel Djirrimbilpilwuy, came up with the idea of fusing Yolngu dance with modern music.

"I just dance the way I like," he said. "It's my own style."

"It will be the first time travelling overseas for the boys," said Djirrimbilpilwuy's mother, Margaret, who filmed the famous video.

The Chooky Dancers' repertoire also includes more traditional dances with clapping sticks, and a Bollywood-style number.

Djirrimbilpilwuy, who is responsible for most of the choreography, hopes they will been seen as role models in their community.

"When he hears the music, it just hits his heart and he has to dance," his mother said.

And what dancing. Some Zorba The Greek, a snap of tap, a slicing parody of the traditional drunk white Australian male RSL dance, and what looks like a mash-up of moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller, Peter Garret's jerky spasmodics, and Travolta's Greased Lighting routine from the movie Grease. Awesome.

Ridiculously Satisfying



Go ahead, laugh at those wonky carrots. Couldn't care less, they tasted wonderful last night. So did the snow peas and beans. There would have been more in the mini-harvest, but I kept eating them raw as I picked them. Raw vegetables, straight from the plants, absolutely delicious.

For someone who thought, as a kid, that fresh food was a Chiko Roll that had only spent two days in the local takeaway's warming trays, the supply of greens, herbs, tomatoes and carrots spilling out of tubs and pots on the balcony has been a revelation, blasted through with unexpected nostalgia.

It's stunning just how much food you can grow, in six to ten weeks, on a small balcony and still have room for tables and chairs. As I mulch and dig and plant and pluck, the question keeps returning, why didn't I do this sooner? Because the local veggie shop was always so cheap, it was always easier and quicker to duck in, load up on their produce and head home. Not anymore.

Growing enough carrots, tomatoes, basil, french beans, snow peas, chives, mint, broccoli to reduce veggie shop visits from three times a week to once every two weeks has been remarkably easy. More easy than the gardening shows on TV ever made it seem. Downstairs, a couple of mushroom boxes are turning out more fungus than this household can eat.

The entire venture, so far, has cost about $110, for plants, pots, tubs, fertiliser, soil, seeds. About the same as easily can be spent in one night at the movies, followed by a few hours at the pub. Based on the prices of organic veggies at Coles and Woolworth's, the balcony garden has already turned out about $400 worth of eatables. With Coles charging about $4 for a handful of 'fresh' basil, the basil plants are probably worth $200 alone.

I find myself trying to find things that need to be done in this mini-food garden, but the maintenance is minimal. For the volume of food the tubs and pots turn out, I don't feel like I'm putting in enough time. How can it be this easy? How can it possibly be this satisfying? It just is. Incredibly so.

I hadn't thought of my long dead grandfather in ages until a few days ago, when I was stringing bean vines and delicately replanting half-grown carrots into looser, sandier soil so they wouldn't be so squat and stunted. I realised I was now doing what he used to do, what so many of his generation did, what he tried to get me to do, too, when I was a kid. What I refused. Back then.

I remembered his house near Moorebank, the whole backyard filled with pumpkin patches and bee hives and chicken coups and vegetable gardens that fed him and god knows how many of his poor neighbours. I saw him on that ultra-vivid mind movie screen, plucking fresh beans and holding them out, towering over me, demanding I try them, me refusing. Eat a raw bean? Is he crazy?

He tried to get the grandchildren interested in the veggie garden, but we couldn't have cared less. Gardening? Yeah, right! That's what the shops were for. He saw entire Sydney suburbs feeding themselves from their backyards through the Great Depression and he wanted his grandchildren to understand.

Now I get it, now I understand. He was right.

"This is real food," he used to say, brushing dirt off unearthed potatoes, "not that old garbage in the supermarkets. This will make you strong. This is life."

Extended Drought Shuts Down World's Largest Cattle Station

The drought that won't end continues to wreak economic destruction, and is now so severe in parts of South Australia that desert trees are dying :

Anna Creek station, which is bigger than Israel, encompasses 9,267 square miles of scrub, sand dunes and savannah in the Outback of South Australia.

It is normally capable of supporting 16,000 cattle but the "Big Dry" – the worst drought in a century – has exhausted the land, forcing the herd to be whittled down to less than 2,000.

This is only the third time the ranch has been cleared of cattle since it was established more than a century ago.

"Since the European settlement of this part of Australia, we've only experienced these conditions twice before.

We've had four years of below average rainfall, and last year and the first six months of this year have been particularly savage," said Greg Campbell, managing director of Kidman, which was founded by cattle baron Sir Sidney Kidman in 1899.

"The drought is very severe. Before the weekend, when there were a few millimetres of rain, Anna Creek hadn't had rain since December."

The extreme lack of rain has killed off some of the Outback's hardiest tree species and is even threatening the survival of mulga and bluebush, tough shrubs which can withstand all but the worst dry spells.

The station's managers must now simply sit tight and wait for a decent fall of rain – whenever that might be.

"It's a boom and bust environment," said Mr Omond. "It will come back to life eventually. No drought lasts forever."

Let's hope not.

Excellent Accident



Before the accident (I dropped it down a flight of stairs coming out of an Immortal gig), the relatively cheap Kodak digital camera usually captured pretty decent images. But ever since it took a dive, some of the settings and options have become messed up, sometimes certain functions work, other times they don't. Most photos are now a crap shoot. I couldn't care less. The colours that pour of the viewing screen now are often far more dramatic, vivid and rich than the reality being photographed, a vast improvement on the camera's pre-accident performance. And I have no idea why. I don't want to know why. Yet another in a long stream of most excellent accidents.



Yes, the above explanation (while true) is just an excuse to run sunset photos.

Rudd's Secret 'Management Manual' Exposed

After extensive research (well, reading BoingBoing.net), I've found a 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual published and distributed by the OSS (forerunners to the CIA) that, in part, reads hilariously, and a little disturbingly, like a hitlist of PM KevRudd's management techniques and strategies.

How much of this already sounds gratingly familiar?

* Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.

* To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers...

* Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

* Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

* When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

* Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.

* Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

* Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

* Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.

Chilling stuff. Rudd staffers, you have my sympathy.

Then again, most of these 'sabotage techniques' could equally apply to the decade of mostly grinding farce that was the Howard/Downer era.

But don't worry, we haven't forgotten Opposition leader Brandy Nelson. He's been reading the manual, too :

* Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

* Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

* Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

Actually, it's unfair to simply dump on our political leaders like that. Most workers in large offices, who are forced to endure multi-hour long conferences and strategy meetings, will be wondering how many of their bosses and supervisors have already adopted the tips from this manual. Hell, most of this stuff is the backbone of modern corporate management and government bureaucracy.

Nelson : Boozey Kids More Pissed But Smarter Than You Think

The Rudd government's tax hammer on alcopops was supposed to cut down on teenage binge-drinking. Well, that's what the PM claimed anyway, but we know he is really under the control of the ruthless, heartless Big Wine corporations. Ratchet up the price of alcopops and kids will be forced to turn to Merlot to get their kicks. That was Rudd and Big Wine's conspiratorial plan anyway. But it's backfired.

Opposition leader Brandy Nelson is shocked, stunned, horrified, mortified to discover that teenagers who can no longer afford a six pack of Wild Turkey & Cola have cleverly routed Rudd's cunning tax hike, designed to force youngsters into joining the Chardonnay Set, by....MAKING THEIR OWN ALCOPOPS!

Young people are avoiding buying pre-mixed drinks and are instead mixing their own with more alcohol, Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says.

"The outcome of this so-called alcopop tax is that the punchbowl is back," Dr Nelson said.

Be warned, the fondue set, salmon mouse and stuffed eggs will surely follow the punchbowl's return to teenage parties.

Because teenagers never thought to mix their own drinks to save money before, Brandy Nelson has done extensive research into this utterly new social phenomenon. Here's what he's learned :

"What young people are now doing is buying full bottles of spirits or they're buying hip flasks, they might buy one bottle of coke, they're mixing them up, they're getting a larger dose of alcohol..."

That's done it. It's not enough that this innovative way of making your own alcopops is already spreading like New York City herpes through MySpace and MaggotedKids.com chatrooms, now Brandy Nelson has gone and opened his big mouth to the national media.

You're not allowed to publish recipes for cooking up crystal meth, but Brandy Nelson sees no harm in telling the children of Australia how to homemake alcopops. And he calls himself a doctor! The hypocrisy...

UPDATE : In other Australian booze related news, a Queensland carpenter stopped to take a roadside toilet break. He dropped his pants, squatted down in the bush and let go. The snake he was dumping on wasn't happy, and sank its fangs into his gear :

"I thought I was gone," Cairns carpenter Daryl Zutt said of his now notorious encounter with a brown snake during a roadside toilet stop in remote Far North Queensland."I thought, ‘Maybe, this is it. Maybe, I’m gonna cark it’."

So he did what any red-blooded Australian bloke would do when he finds fang marks on his cock and knows he is staring sudden death in the face. He went for the rum. But he didn't drink it, he used the cold can of rum to ease the pain of the bite, while his mates raced him to hospital :

"I squatted down … I reckon I must’ve nearly sat on his head," he said.

"As soon as I felt it, I yelled. It really hurt. When it happened, I knew in the back of my mind it was a snake. I seen him coming out from between my legs."

Yeah, we've all had that dream. Especially after rum.

Grods got in first with this.

Health minister Nicola Roxon is on Kevin Rudd's version of parole. If she screws up the interview on the 7.30 Report, well, she's already been fitted with half of her punishment.

Like most who saw it, I can't tell you whether or not she blew the interview. That thing around her neck was far too distracting. A new secret Labor strategy? Distract the public with bizarre fashion statements?

Most men don't understand women's fashion. In this case, most men don't want to understand.

Not As Laid Back As We Used To Be

Australians are working harder and taking less holidays. We used to be famed around the world for our sun-drenched, laid back lifestyles. Not anymore. Apparently, Australians are finding it harder and harder to make the time to get away from the workplace. Another vital part of Australian culture and identity lost during the Howard era :

Australians are the least likely in the world to take their entitled annual leave, a global survey has found.

The survey found that one in three Australians say financial pressures have affected their holiday plans this year.

It also found 32 per cent blamed the credit crunch and higher interest rates, while 34 per cent said work commitments were too great to take a break.

Dr Ben Searle, organisational psychologist at Macquarie University, said the survey results were worrying.

"Working for extended periods without taking time off to recharge can affect health and relationships, and in extreme cases has been linked to premature deaths,'' he said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd isn't setting a good example for those who think we should live less busy, less frantic lifestyles.

What do we gain from working so hard? Are we richer, more satisfied? Do we feel our lives are more accomplished when we spend almost as much time at work as we do at home?

Few reach their last days and look back over their lives and think : "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."

Will we become like the Japanese, where death from overwork becomes commonplace?

Murdoch Admits Using His Media To Shape Opinion On Iraq War

Former Australian Rupert Murdoch fesses up, with a laugh, to purposely using his worldwide media empire (including 70% of all newspapers in Australia) to pump pro-Iraq War propaganda.



Partial transcript :

Q: For example, take the war...Have you shaped that agenda at all, in terms of perceptions of the war? In terms of how that war is viewed?

Murdoch : No, I don't think so. We tried...

Q: Tried in what way?

A: Well, we basically supported, our papers, and television...we supported the Bush policy.

No shit.

Here's but one example of the kind of propaganda Murdoch himself pumped pre-war to wash over criticisms that War On Iraq was illegal, extremely reckless, dangerous, would kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and would impact negatively on fuel prices around the world :

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

He was only out by about $110.

More Murdoch lies and propaganda about the Iraq War :

"(Sunni insurgents)...they’re not really trying to kill Americans."

"...things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else."

"There’s tremendous progress in Iraq. All the kids are back at school."

The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq, according to Murdoch, is "quite minute."

"...most of Iraq is doing extremely well."

American Murdoch Whines About Australians Becoming More 'Anti-American'

Sept, 07 : Murdoch Media Launch 'Coup' To Take Down Prime Minister Howard

Rupert Murdoch - Always Wrong On The Iraq War

Murdoch Admits He Tells His Newspapers What To Print

Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy

Hey Rupert! What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil

Hypocrisy Over Hysteria

Blogumists Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have proudly led the charge against hysterical claims about global warming aired on the ABC and in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age.

So why don't they turn their blowtorches on the far more widely read Australian newspapers and websites owned by Rupert Murdoch who do exactly the same thing, often with even more outrageous and unsubstantiated headlines?

Being dedicated advocates of exposing global warming hysteria, surely Blair and Bolt wouldn't let the fact that they are employees of Rupert Murdoch bias their choice of targets. Right?

The fact is that The Daily Telegraph (where Blair is a blogger and a columnist) and The Herald Sun (where Bolt is a blogger and columnist) actively promote the reality of global warming and regularly feature prominent news stories (not columns or blogs) pumping Rupert Murdoch's June 2007 declaration that global warming induced climate change "poses clear catastrophic threats" and that humans are, at least, mostly responsible for it.

It's like being an anti-gun advocate and working for the NRA's magazine.

Here's a prominent story from today's Daily Telegraph :

Thanks Idiot

This warpig helped to add about eight to twelve cents to the price of every litre of petrol you will buy in the second half of June and early May :

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz...,said in a newspaper interview that "if Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it."

"Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme..."

He stressed that such an operation could only be conducted with US support.

The left-leaning Haaretz newspaper published scathing criticism of Mofaz on its front page and cited reports that the minister's remarks caused the price of a barrel of crude oil to rise by 11 dollars.

While Kevin Rudd is going after OPEC nations for high oil prices, he should also be condemning warpigs and oil speculators whose appalling behaviour and psychotic greed is now threatening the health and lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Forcing the price of oil up even higher through abhorrent stock market speculation or by spreading financial terror and unease through promises of greater war in the Middle East ruins economies and fuels price rises all overs supermarket shelves. The poor, as usual, will suffer most because of this idiot's fear mongering.

That threatening/promising war can add about ten cents or so to a litre of petrol makes the plans by Rudd and Brendan Nelson to do little more than shave off a few cents, at the most, seem almost pitiful.

If our allies launch a new front in the expanding world war, FuelWatch will only be good for watching fuel prices bash through $2 a litre, then quickly sprint towards $3.

Obama In Tune With Rudd's Non-Working Family Bias

Kevin Rudd is looking forward to the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America :

US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has an acute understanding of the Asia Pacific region, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says. Senator Obama this week claimed victory in his long battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

Mr Rudd today said he believed Senator Obama had a "considerable understanding" of our part of the world.

So which is it, acute or considerable?

"Remember, he spent part of his time growing up in Indonesia," Mr Rudd told ABC radio.

He went to school in Indonesia for a few years.

"On his way back to the United States from time to time he would drop off in Sydney."

He changed planes in Sydney.

But of course Rudd likes Obama, they're singing from the same hymn book :

"...working families continue to bear the brunt of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain wants to continue for another four years."

Obama has about as much interest in non-working families as Rudd. Unemployment is rising in the US and Australia. If the American dollar continues to tank, and helps push the price of oil even higher, there are going to be a lot more non-working families joining the crowded ranks of the occasionally-working families, the looking-for-work families and the it's-too-expensive-to-
get-to-work families.

In a coming-soon world of $200 a barrel oil and carbon taxes on just about everything, pitching only to "working families" will soon make you sound like some kind of elitist.

The War On Olives

In follow up a recent post about the mysterious disappearance of tons of olives from groves in the Hunter Valley comes this news :

Olive harvests in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales have been demolished by a plague of insects.

The attack by the olive lace bug is a double blow for growers, who are still reeling from a recent spate of thefts that stripped six groves of their olive harvests for the year.

Now an olive shortage is looming across NSW after dozens more growers had their crops wiped out by the bug.

Growers in the Hunter regions of Broke, Pokolbin and Rothbury say the impact from the losses from the thefts and disease will hit state supplies.

Hunter Olive Growers Association secretary Howard Webb said the lace bug was not uncommon but if it was not controlled as soon as it struck it would cripple olive groves and render them unproductive.

"Nearly every grove in the Hunter has been hit, some worse than others," Mr Webb said.

The weather in the past few months had wreaked havoc and was much of the reason for the disease spread, he said.

"It is normally easily controlled, but because of the rain and humidity, it's gotten out of hand," he said.

Mr Webb estimates hundreds of tonnes of olives have been destroyed by the bug.

The Australian native bug chews away at olive tree leaves - it doesn't attack the fruit, but damages the tree and its chances of reproducing next season.

An update on the massive, mysterious olive theft :

More than 800 trees in the Rothbury region were cleaned out over a four-day period, but how is anyone's guess.

"I think it's starlings - they feed off the grape vines and then they make their way to the olive trees," Mr Webb said.

Australian Olive Association president Paul Miller said he was sure it was humans, as animals would have left signs, and that it was astounding how someone overcame 8ft-high barbed-wire fencing to access the 200-strong grove.

"It has obviously been planned," he said.

Who goes to all that trouble to steal $10,000 - $15,000 worth of olives?

Maybe it was starlings after all.

Murdoch Media Helps 'Al Qaeda' Spread Fear And Terror

The Australian Uses Online Game Art As 'Al Qaeda' Post-Nuclear Apocalyptic Imagery

By Darryl Mason

UPDATE : The Australian newspaper has been busted using artwork from an online game to illustrate a 'Al Qaeda Wants WMDs To Blow Away Washington DC' piece of war propaganda.

Go Here For More On That

Thanks to reader NikC who revealed the 'nuked Washington' image The Australian said was from Al Qaeda actually came from a videogame.


A private American intelligence agency, which turns considerable profit off distributing 'Al Qaeda' propaganda videos and Bin Laden speeches, has been hyping a new 'quasi-documentary' where some nobody on a message board says, basically, "Hey, you know what would kill lots of infidels? WMDs. We should try and get some of those."

The 'documentary' has been discredited by the FBI, and widely mocked for days across alternative and independent news sites.

So why is The Australian and News.com.au giving this piece of crap fluff prime placement coverage today, under the headline 'Al Qaeda Urges Use Of WMD'?

A few seconds of Google searching would have revealed that nobody, not even the American agency that releases old Bin Laden videos cobbled together to appear as though they are new speeches, gives any credibility at all to this bullshit video.

The video was roundly dismissed as being called 'fan-made.' That's right. Somebody, somewhere in the world, cut together a whole heap of old Al Qaeda propaganda videos and dumped it onto a website, and now Murdoch media is giving it the star treatment.

Why?

Why is The Australian, of all newspapers, helping to distribute and give exposure to this crap, days after it was dismissed as ridiculous fluff by American and international intelligence agencies?

Anyone got an answer?

UPDATE : As reader NikC points out, The Australian is using artwork not from 'Al Qaeda' but from a video game website to try and ramp up The Fear for its pissweak and thoroughly discredited piece of war propaganda.

Go Here To See The Video Game Art Being Passed Off As Apocalyptic Al Qaeda Imagery By Murdoch Media

Illegal Nipples

UPDATE : I've been advised to remove the uncensored Bill Henson image, sourced from The Age newspaper website. So it's gone. Also I referred to federal police raiding the gallery, it was actually the NSW police.


According to professional idiot Andrew Bolt, the controversial Bill Henson photograph at the centre of a cultural and moral storm is pornography.

(Uncensored image now removed)

Bolt : "Fact is, Henson’s photographs are soft porn."

Really? How disturbing. What kind of pornography does Bolt normally view if he thinks that's soft porn?

But this duplicate, and purposely darkened (you know, to make it more sinister) image is part of a gallery of images featured on various Rupert Murdoch News Limited websites, including Andrew Bolt's own The Herald Sun.



If the first photograph is a "soft porn" image of, according to Bolt, a "stripped 13 year old", and the second photograph is acceptable enough to be featured (without any warnings of nudity) on Bolt's own newspaper website, in a censored form, the entire question of whether or not this is an illegal image seems to come down to the revealing of two nipples. Or the fact that it is a photograph and not a painting or sketch or sculpture.

Now it's 'art', not 'soft porn' :



If Bolt is confused over what is or isn't "soft porn", he can always ask his boss, a renowned pornographer.


The girl in the above images has been identified by police, but has refused to speak to police investigators :

It is understood police have been contacted by a lawyer acting for the girl - believed to be from Victoria - and she wants no part in the inquiry.

It not known how old she is now.

Police had hoped to speak to her and her parents to determine what level of parental permission was granted when she posed for the shoot.

Smart girl, or woman now. Regardless of whether or not a crime has been committed - and so far charges have not even been laid - if her name is revealed, the media will hound her remorselessly, and her parents will cop no end of grief, from the likes of Bolt, for allowing her to be photographed by Henson. Her parents might also face charges, depending on how long ago the photographs were taken, and what kind of consent they gave Henson to photograph their daughter.

The next leader of the Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, refused to label the Henson photographs as "revolting", as PM Rudd did:

"We have a culture of great artistic freedom in this country and I don't believe the vice squad's role is to go into art galleries..."

Here's the relevant laws under which federal police will supposedly lay charges against Henson :

Children not to be used for pornographic purposes

(1) Any person who:

(a) uses a child who is under the age of 14 years for pornographic purposes, or

(b) causes or procures a child of that age to be so used, or

(c) having the care of a child of that age, consents to the child being so used or allows the child to be so used,

is guilty of an offence.

Maximum penalty: imprisonment for 14 years.

(2) Any person who:

(a) uses a child who is of or above the age of 14 years for pornographic purposes, or

(b) causes or procures a child of that age to be so used, or

(c) having the care of a child of that age, consents to the child being so used or allows the child to be so used,

is guilty of an offence.

Maximum penalty: imprisonment for 10 years.

(3) For the purposes of this section, a child is used by a person for pornographic purposes if:

(a) the child is engaged in sexual activity, or

(b) the child is placed in a sexual context, or

(c) the child is subjected to torture, cruelty or physical abuse (whether or not in a sexual context),

for the purposes of the production of pornographic material by that person.

(4) For the purposes of this section, a person may have the care of a child without necessarily being entitled by law to have the custody of the child.

(5) Where on the trial of a person for an offence under subsection (1) the jury is not satisfied that the accused is guilty of the offence charged, but is satisfied on the evidence that the accused is guilty of an offence under subsection (2), it may find the accused not guilty of the offence charged but guilty of the latter offence, and the accused is liable to punishment accordingly.

It sounds like, according to the law, it will all come down to whether or not the 13 year old girl was photographed in "a sexual context".

In all likelihood, Bill Henson will not be charged with anything, and neither will the owners of the Sydney gallery the police raided or the parents of his teenage models. Of course, his art will now sell for even more than it currently does, now he has become the most famous artist in Australia.

But if Henson is not charged, will such controversial images be allowed to be displayed in Australian art galleries again?

Presumably, if this scandal results in no charges being laid, it will require a change in law for such a prohibition to take place.

Would Kevin Rudd have the guts to push for a law change like that?

Doubtful.


UPDATE : Tony Abbott has some questions about whether he can now have this kind of "pornography" on his computer :

"If I had on my computer the kind of images that were in that gallery I'd be interviewed by the police, quite possibly face charges."

"If it's pornography on my computer, why isn't it pornography in the gallery? That's the question that I ask.

"And if it's not pornography in the gallery, it's not pornography on my computer.''

Tony Abbott, the moronic twit, hasn't seen the images for himself. He has, however, heard they are "pretty confronting."

"Shocking people is all very well but I don't think we need to be shocked by everything, I think some things are off limits.''

Not off limits for Tony Abbott is bombing the fuck out of 13 year old children in Iraq, a corpse-soaked war of occupation he has enthusiastically supported. As has Andrew Bolt. Curiously, most of those in the media who are kicking up most of the fuss are also active supporters of the Iraq War, including the Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine.

Non-sexualised images of naked children? Pure evil. Children blown to pieces by American Hellfire missiles? Perfectly acceptable.

Now there's a double standard that drips blood.

Note : The first image (now removed - ed) was sourced from the website of the Melbourne Age newspaper, where it remains archived as of this posting.

Two-Thirds Of Australians Meet Mortgage Payments By Staying Home

A new survey claims that two-thirds of Australian households in our capital cities are "coping easily" with rising mortgage payments. How? By cutting back on spending and toning down their lifestyles (excerpts) :

"Even though people in country areas said they are struggling more, the statistics also show that people living in capital cities are more likely to be paying a greater percentage of their take-home household income on their mortgage repayments," MFAA CEO Phil Naylor said.

On a national level, while most survey respondents across Australia said they were easily meeting their loan obligations, around 31 per cent are struggling to meet repayments.

Of these, 0.5 per cent of respondents were one to three months behind on payments, representing just 27,000 loans out of a possible 5.5 million across the country.

...this showed the majority of Australians had been able to make lifestyle adjustments to help them make ends meet.

"They are eating out less, reducing costs at home, taking their lunch to work and buying food from bulk or lower cost outlets.

"These are all sensible adjustments in response to increases in interest rates to ensure they manage their repayments."

Some good news in there, but still, hard-working Australians left with less disposable income are also left with fewer choices to get out and enjoy themselves, to shake off the hassles and stress of the working week. For too many people, choosing to own the home they live in has become a lifestyle-slackening burden. You may be living the Australian dream by owning your own home, but at what cost to the rest of your life? Should going out to dinner once a week, or once a fortnight, or catching a movie with the family, really be seen as far too expensive luxuries?

UPDATE : The news is not so good for those with property investments. This story claims that one in two property investors will suffer hard if interest rates rise another 1%.

Patients Smoke 'Medical Marijuana' On Grounds Of Sydney Hospital

Will Millions Of Baby Boomers Choose To Fade Away In A Cloud Of Dope Smoke?



In the next two decades there will be more Australians over the age of 60 than under the age of 25. The Baby Boomers are hitting voluntary or forced retirement age, and health resources are likely to be extremely, perhaps dangerously, stretched as millions enter their last years and their physical and mental needs will hammer state and federal health budgets.

Hospitals will only become more overcrowded, publicly-funded pharmaceutical programs will cost billions a year, with most boomers are expected to survive well into their late 80s or early 90s, soaking up more health care resources the longer they live.

There will need to be a much greater revolution in health care in Australia to cope with the demand from Boomers, for prescription medications alone, but what if hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers start demanding access to alternative medicines now deemed illegal?

I've been a regular patient at St Vincent's in recent years and have watched widely varying reactions from doctors when confronted with the reality of patient marijuana use.

There seems to be a "don't ask, don't tell" mentality. But I use marijuana and always want the doctors taking care of me, in and out of hospital, to be aware of it. I wait for the smoking question to tell them.

...younger doctors will much more comfortably share views on cannabis and its uses and are far more inclined to acknowledge its positive effects.

They are becoming aware, too, that baby boomers who first inhaled some 30 years ago are now demanding medical marijuana - and these doctors will have to deal with it. Few boomers want today's hydroponic horrors, the toxic response to prohibition, but rather the milder garden-grown weed of our youth.

It eased period pain back then, will it ease my arthritis pain now?

It works as well as a sleeping pill - which will I choose? And in emotionally traumatic times - valium or a cannabis cookie? And when the cancer pain comes and the surgery pain comes and you're allergic to morphine? Who will stand and refuse us?

Marijuana took the pain away, while morphine made me sick. Other hospital offerings either made me sick or didn't work.

The patients who used cannabis (I was aware of four smokers on the ward) had their own favourite spots in the hospital's garden. I was far from the only criminal in-patient. But I was the oldest. And that's the point. I'm a baby-boomer. And most of us did inhale.

There is no possibility of governments controlling marijuana use among ageing baby boomers. Many of us will choose marijuana over morphine, marijuana over valium, marijuana over blood pressure meds, marijuana for appetite. And, of course, some shameful old boomers will partake for simple pleasure.

We don't need to rake over the efficacy of cannabis yet again - the pros and cons have been articulated ad nauseum. It is a totally unsuitable drug for some people. However, almost unbelievably, few on either side of the marijuana debate are differentiating between the indoor and outdoor grown varieties of the drug. Equating today's hydro to yesterday's home grown is ludicrous. An apples with oranges comparison.

Last week Dr Wodak predicted marijuana use would exceed tobacco use in the next decade. Well, yes. That will be us baby boomers coming home to roost.

Retired Baby Boomers will become one of the most powerful political forces in Australian history, if they unite in the majority behind key issues. The pressure of their voting numbers alone will force politicians to give them just about everything they want, short of far more generous pensions and tax breaks.

If hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers begin demanding the right to use cannabis for medicinal or even recreational purposes, politicians will eventually cave in. It may not be full legalisation, but busting hundreds of old people for anything is always a bad look. They've already proven that their public acts of dissent can shock the hell out of evening news viewers. How many half-naked elderly protests in city centres over anything could younger Australians take?

So in 2018, when your teenage son shows a curious interest in repeatedly visiting grandpa at the Happiest Nursing Home In The World, to "help him out in the garden", you will understand why.

Pssst! Wanna Score Some Fully Heaps Wicked Sea Cucumber?

UnderCrabby : Organised Crime Gangs Now Stealing Fish


"I don't know nothing about no crime gangs, man..."

Sure, there might be lots of money made to be made dealing cocaine and crystal meth, but if you were a gangster would you really want to spend your weekends hanging with all those gacked-out, self-obsessed, motor-mouthed film and fashion industry arseholes?

Hell no.

It might not be as perceivably glamorous as snorting rails off the shuddering chest of a tweaking Kate Moss wannabe in a limo on the way to the Logies, but ripping off oyster racks at 3am and hijacking fresh catches of barramundi, and then selling them to a favoured Chinatown restaurant, or Uncle Maurie's fish n' chip shop, is quickly becoming the new wave in profitable action for crime gangs :

Mud crabs, prawns and barramundi are among prized species being targeted by organised crime groups to fuel an illicit domestic seafood market.

Thieves - including bikie gangs - are moving beyond abalone and shark fin to native and coral fish, oysters, eel, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and seahorses, a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology warns.

The chief targets in NSW are oysters, eels and deep-sea species such as tuna. Aquaculture farms are also victims. The main tactics are sending illicit catch to legitimate processors in Sydney and Queensland, and stealing other people's catches.

Outlaw motorcycle gangs are infiltrating the industry in some states. Bikies are believed to have been involved in pearl theft in Western Australia, the trading of fishing licences in the Northern Territory and abalone poaching in South Australia.

The study was prompted by research showing there had been growth in organised crime involving abalone and rock lobster, and an increase in criminals using the industry to launder money and make drugs at aquaculture farms.

Sydney Awash With Vacant Apartment, Empty Homes

What housing shortage? Sydney has more than 120,000 dwellings, where people could make a home for themselves, currently sitting empty and unused. But if all that housing came on the market, outrageous inner city rental prices would drop.

The number of unoccupied residential dwellings in Sydney...122,211, with the highest number found in the inner city. That does not include the thousands of empty warehouses, pubs, churches and shops.

"It's an amazing figure, isn't it? It begs analysis," said Col James, the director of the Ian Buchan Fell Housing Research Centre, in the University of Sydney's architecture faculty. The number was up from 97,889 a decade ago.

"The numbers would be swelling now there are more mortgage defaulters," he said. "There are empty properties all over the place if you know how to look for them."

Meanwhile, the NSW state government bleats on about how it is riding to the rescue of savagely fleeced young Sydneysiders with a few thousand new rent-controlled apartments, to "ease the rental pain" or whatever twaddle they've come up with recently to whitewash the fact they have failed to provide affordable housing for low-paid, but utterly essential, workers.

Of course, these few thousand apartments to be provided by the NSW government won't be ready for years, as thousands of new families arrive in Sydney to set up home every month.

Maybe squatters have the right idea.

Claiming Someone Is UnAustralian Is UnAustralian

It's been a while since politicians have been heard calling each other "UnAustralian." A 'while' being about the same period of time since the Howard government lost office. But here we go again, and shockhorror, it's a former Howard government minister dealing out the accusations of UnAustralianism :

Former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough has accused the prime minister of being "un-Australian" for not including him in a war cabinet to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage.

"It's putting politics before Aboriginal children," Mr Brough told Sky News. "I think that's very disappointing and very un-Australian."

Not just UnAustralian, but very UnAustralian.

More accurately, it's UnMalBroughian behaviour, but for legitimate reasons.

The former indigenous affairs minister also denied he would have had a conflict of interest if he'd participated in the policy commission.

Mr Brough has a business interest providing services to indigenous communities.

PM Rudd claims that they're more interested in experts for the 'war cabinet', instead of politicians, particularly former politicians, which seems fair enough.

Mal Brough is so upset by even the thought that he could have a conflict of interest by running a business supplying housing to indigenous Australians, while insisting he should be part of a government consultation and policy body dealing with indigenous housing, that he's come over all George Constanza, and has started referring to himself in the third person :

"(We wanted) to tender in a joint venture with the Tiwi islanders to build houses on the Tiwi islands that Mal Brough would not make one cent out of. But we weren't even allowed to tender."

Yeah, that's not a good look.

Senior Liberal : Brendan Nelson Won't Fart Without Permission

If opposition sorta leader Brendan Nelson wants to let rip with a strawberry tart, he has to seek permission from his "Svengali" Nick Minchin.

I read that in a Glenn Milne story, so it must be true.

The same story also reveals that Alexander Downer is planning his return to the front benches of the opposition, throwing away a booming career as a morning radio personality in Adelaide, for starters. It must have been a hard decision for Downer to make, to sacrifice personal wealth and international acclaim so he could drop back into the front lines for the war on Ruddzilla, having turned down all the multi-million dollar executive positions he has been offered with some of Australia's leading corporations. Just like former treasurer Peter Costello.

You know highly respected politicians like Downer and Costello have been fighting to surface from beneath the avalanches of offers of blue chip executive positions since they lost the election. Don't you remember? Downer, Costello and Tony Abbott kept telling us, all through the Howard government's third and fourth term, that supremely talented men like themselves could always make millions in the private sector.

We really are a blessed country to have dedicated servants of the public, like Downer, make such supreme financial sacrifices for the good of the nation.

Please do the right thing and make a run at the leadership of the Liberal Party yourself, Mr Downer. Don't listen to the polls that claim you're as popular as bowel cancer. Your country needs you. And more laughs, too.

At your expense.

UPDATE : Damn, it looks like Downer is going to quit within weeks, instead of providing further, occasionally painful, unintended amusement for the masses. Typical. Selfish bastard, thinking only of himself and not of the needs of financially depressed Australians who could do with a few more laughs. At his expense.

Professional Idiot Andrew Bolt Announces Boycott Against "Global Warming Hypcocrisy"

But Will He Boycott His Own Newspaper?

Dammit, you've got to have standards if you want to be viewed as a credible journalist. Which is why Rupert Murdoch's pitiful Australian Bill O'Reilly clone, the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt has announced he is going to boycott Virgin Airlines over it's "global warming hypcocrisy (sic)".

In order to stay true to his boycott of corporations that undertake hypocritical promotion of global warming, and to avoid accusations of hypocrisy himself, Andrew Bolt will now have to boycott his own newspaper and blog.

Why?

Because his boss, Rupert Murdoch, is a self-admitted true believer in the "dire consequences" posed by global warming induced climate change.

"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue (climate change) into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way."

And keep on a few flacks, like Bolt, to keep those who think Al Gore is the AntiChrist happy, and to sustain the illusion that Murdoch media haven't already chosen a side on the climate change controversy.

Rupert Murdoch announced last June that he was going to use his worldwide media empire, including Bolt's Herald Sun, to 'change peoples' minds' about the "dire consequences" of climate change. In short, Murdoch admitted that he was going to use the 70% of Australian newspapers he controls to ramp up the fear and terror of how global warming will destroy Australia unless we cave in and pay a carbon tax.

Rupert Murdoch is now the world's most powerful and influential promoter of the "dire consequences" of global warming-induced climate change, but Bolt, supreme hypocrite that he is, is quite happy to take Murdoch's money while he rails against the ABC and nobody columnists and non-influential university professors who don't own media for pumping global warming hysteria.

Show just how principled a journalist and man you are, Bolt, and in the process show just how huge your alleged unspoken for mass of Australian conservatives are, by quitting your hypocritical corporate salary and becoming an independent blogger.

Your boss is the world's biggest promoter of the "pagan religion" and "myths" you claim will send us back to the Dark Ages, and your own newspaper refuses to give reasonable coverage to deniers of the global warming theory. You can rant all you like in your own columns, but it doesn't mean zero unless your own newspaper is showing the other side of the story in its news pages. Unless of course, you are just a professional contrarian and entertainer instead of a principled journalist and a man who stands by his beliefs.

Get Away From Me, You Loser


A brilliant piece of photography by The Age's Jason South. I think that's my pick for political photo of 2008, and probably 2009 as well. Unless one turns up of Alexander Downer being mauled by chickens. Or Tony Abbott being assaulted by wombats.

Or Wayne Swan being savaged by, what else?, a swan.

Brendan Nelson is extremely, supremely confident that he will be battling Rudd in the federal trenches next election. He's so there. How confident is he?

“As confident as I can… yes, very confident.”

His confidence is lacking some confidence.

It's comedy genius. Groucho Marx would have been proud.

Grods Corp noticed that the creaking Liberal spin machine is cleaning up Nelson's verbal splutterings in transcripts. To make him sound more confident.

Nelson's Liberals Are The Spinal Tap Of Australian Politics

Shock : Real Questions On Real Issues From The Opposition

While opposition leader Brendan Nelson was trying to rally the weight of the Rudd government to save a rural post office yesterday, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull set about finally dismantling some of the whirling flurry of Rudd rhetoric :

...what we got from the shadow treasurer was something quite novel: a cogent and intelligent critique of the Rudd Government's first budget, coupled with a vigorous defence of the Liberal tradition.

The Rudd Government's first budget isn't bulletproof, by any means - the only reason it might have seemed a bit that way over the past 10 days is that the Opposition has been firing dum-dums directly into its own feet.

But Mr Turnbull yesterday managed to articulate some of the uneasy questions raised by last week's budget, with none of the mawkish sentiment of a Nelson oration.

Questions like: How can a government on one hand claim that climate change is our greatest challenge, then on the other hand remain silent about the budgetary impact of an emissions trading scheme, while simultaneously penalising the solar energy industry?

How can a government carry on about our crumbling public hospital system, while simultaneously making money by tipping hundreds of thousands of new patients into it?

There must be dozens of other simple and powerful questions like these the Turnbull-led opposition (or Nelson led opposition if you insist on dwelling in fantasy) can trumpet to finally get some momentum back on their side. There's a fair bit of confusion for many people on what the first Rudd government budget means for them, and now the Liberals have an opportunity to ramp up the pressure.

Well, maybe. If they can stop stabbing each other in the back. When federal Parliament staff take an inventory of the dining rooms' cutlery, they will only have to take a look at Nelson's spine to find most of the missing sharper implements.

Nelson is probably more unpopular now in his own party than he is with larger Australia. And while Nelson may now be 70% cutlery steel, Turnbull is the focus of bizarre suspicion from within his own ranks. Incredibly, a conspiracy is gaining ground among die-hard Liberals (well, some Andrew Bolt readers anyway, which makes up a fair bit of the Liberals support base, those who aren't Liberal staffers anyway) that Turnbull is a Labor double agent, bent on destroying the big Ls from within. Brilliantly amusing.

Up until Turnbull's sweat-heavy but effective speech yesterday, which should mark a turnaround in political fortune, the Liberals had been far too busy showing why they are the Spinal Tap of federal politics. They were once big, but they've fallen on hard times, the reviews of their new product is mostly terrible (two words : Shit Sandwich) and constant touring (by Nelson) is making them only look more pathetic and out of vogue, regardless of the size of their Stonehenge monument or the number of dwarves they have dancing around it.

And no, I have no idea what that last reference means...at least, not yet.

Psychiatrist : "Australians Excel In Smoking Cannabis"

300,000 Consume Pot Daily

If you smoke dope, apparently you have a "40 per cent increased risk of developing schizophrenia", which would seem to confirm the old adage that, as Kurt Cobain put it, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Or perhaps it means that if a lot of people were asked to describe what being stoned is like, many psychiatrists would define their
wasted state of mind as being like that of a schizophrenic.

If some dope smokers weren't paranoid enough already, now they're being told that if they consume cannabis regularly, they double the risk of becoming schizophrenic :

A new study by psychiatrists has reviewed the latest evidence of links between cannabis use and mental illness, concluding the association is "stronger and clearer than ever".

A pot smoker is 40 per cent more likely to suffer a psychotic episode than a non-smoker, according to the review of major published international research.

And for people who smoke daily over long periods their risk is 200 per cent higher.

"On the world stage, Australians excel in smoking cannabis, so there are very many people who fit into this category," said lead researcher Dr Martin Cohen, a psychiatrist at the Hunter New England Mental Health Service.

"In fact we're number one in the world. We know now more than ever that this bodes badly for our mental health."

But presumably bodes lots of new business for the psychiatric health industry. Will we be getting a new and official branch of mental illness specifically defined as cannabis-induced schizophrenia?

A third of all Australians have smoked at least once in their life, with about 300,000 using daily.

And while all had increased their risk to some degree, there was growing evidence that genetics predisposed some people even more.

Scientists have found a gene called COMT that, when faulty, is unable to break down the brain chemical dopamine.

An overload of dopamine triggers psychosis and, as cannabis produces an excess of the chemical, people with this "fault" are vulnerable.

Between 10 and 25 per cent of the population are believed to have the faulty gene, but as yet there is no way to test for it.

Not yet. But soon. When you're entire genetic ID is databased, you'll be tagged as a potential mental health casualty if you have a faulty COMT gene, and if drug tests show you use cannabis then you'll be marked up as a more likely candidate for schizophrenia. When insurance companies are allowed to demand regular drug testing of clients, through mandatory, say, twice yearly health checks, cannabis users will be seen as far more risky to insure. If, that is, the claims made by the psychiatrists are correct.

A 2007 national drug survey of 14 to 19 year olds showed 20 per cent had ever smoked marijuana and 13.1 per cent had smoked in the last 12 months.

Professor Jan Copeland, director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, said the levels of cannabis use had declined significantly since 1998, especially among school-aged Australians.

The good news about cannabis-using youth is buried in the last paragraphs. Cannabis use in general is down by a significant margin, with the highest drop in usage amongst school students.

That's great news. School students are far less interested in smoking cannabis than they were in 1998. Better video games?

It'd be interesting to see how those statistics of schizophrenic pot users break down. How many smoke joints, how many are punching breakfast cones? How many are diffusing it into cookies or cakes? How many are consuming hydroponic super-strong gear, and how many are imbibing the far more mild strains usually grown in backyards, or an isolated patch of bushland?

While the figures of schizophrenia as a result of dope abuse are frightening, the statistics overall, including the claimed 300,000 daily users, are vague and many questions remain unanswered.

Is the faulty gene more likely to be affected by hydroponic skunk, or a less brain-fuzzing 1970s-strength strain?

Do those who smoke dope regularly suffer more or less general health problems than, say, heavy drinkers?

Do heavy dope smokers drink as much alcohol, or abuse as many pharmaceuticals, as non-cannabis users?

How many consume cannabis because they believe it relieves their arthritis, their glaucoma, their AIDS symptoms, their Parkinson's tremblings, their cancer pain and lack of appetite?

Of course, one of the biggest questions that has never been answered about Australians and their mega-consumption of pot is simply : Why do so many people take it?

Do they smoke a few joints a day because it makes their lives, and minds, more stimulating, or because they're addicted to the tobacco they mix it with?

Do 300,000 Australians smoke pot every day because they are trying to block out reality, or enhance it?

Perhaps most importantly of all, how many of these 300,000 daily smokers experience side effects that make them less satisfied with their existence, reduce their ability to work, to function normally in society, to maintain close relationships with friends and family?

Just Plain Strange

There could be a whole lot of valid, and very interesting, reasons why extraterrestrials might cross the universe to visit Planet Earth and steal water from our lakes, gold from our mountans and people from their cars. But why the hell would they want to steal thousands of kilos of olives?

Thieves have stripped a NSW Hunter Valley olive grove of its fruit in an overnight raid, the latest of a series of such bizarre thefts.

Quentin Von Essen, who runs an olive grove in Lovedale, was alarmed to find that all but two of his 400 trees had been stripped of their olives earlier this month.

Mr Von Essen said he was dumbfounded how the theft of about four tonnes of olives could have happened without anyone noticing.

"It would take approximately six people up to three days to pick our olive grove," he told ABC Radio today.

"It appears that ... a whole lot of people have come into the grove overnight and just stripped the trees.

"The eerie part is ... there is not an olive on any of these trees and not an olive on the ground.

Apparently five other olive plantations in the region have also been stripped bare in recent months.

Actually, aliens with an olive fixation is the more boring, but still kind of fun, explanation for all those missing olives.

Speaking on radio, Mr Von Essen sounded absolutely flabbergasted at how the thieves managed to do their work and not leave one single, solitary olive on the trees or on the ground. Not one. Even olive picking machines leave some of the fruit behind.

Weird.

Flannery : Use Chemtrails To Fight Global Warming

Carbon bad, but sulphur is good?

Scientist Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.

But he says it may be necessary, as the "last barrier to climate collapse."

Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.

The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth's stratosphere to keep out the sun's rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

"It would change the colour of the sky," Prof Flannery told AAP.

"It's the last resort that we have, it's the last barrier to a climate collapse.

"We need to be ready to start doing it in perhaps five years time if we fail to achieve what we're trying to achieve."

Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year, said the sulphur could be dispersed above the earth's surface by adding it to jet fuel.

He conceded there were risks to global dimming via sulphur.

"The consequences of doing that are unknown."

Flannery should come clean. Trials of dumping sulphur and other chemicals into the atmosphere from planes to create a 'sun shield', to encourage global dimming, has been going on for years. Distributing a substance like sulphur from planes is the very definition of a 'chem trail', and these test runs have been on show over Sydney in recent months, for anyone who bothers to look up occasionally.

The 'dimming' that Flannery talks of will be similar to the skies we've come to know well over some Australian cities in recent years. The cloud cover spreads early in the morning, and fills the sky, thin cloud but from horizon to horizon, blocking out much of the direct sunlight, and the cloud cover stays around for days. It's not the miserable grey of London skies, it's just...dim.

You will hear much, much more talk of using chemtrails to fight climate change very soon, if Flannery is speaking of such plans on behalf of international interests, and presumably he is.

ABC's Four Corners current affairs program ran a story on the dangers of global dimming in mid-2005. Despite what Flannery claims, scientists have a pretty good idea of what global dimming will do to the planet :

Noticed less sunshine lately? Scientists have discovered that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has been falling over recent decades.

If the climatologists are right, their discovery holds the potential for powerful disruption to life on our planet. Already it may have contributed to many thousands of deaths through drought and famine.

Global dimming is a product of the fossil fuels that cause global warming. It is the result of tiny airborne pieces of soot, ash and sulphur compounds reflecting back the heat of the sun.

Scientists have also linked global dimming to the failure of rains in sub-Saharan Africa – and the catastrophic droughts that hit Ethiopia in the 1980s. They worry that the same thing will happen again in areas like Asia, home to billions of people.

The overriding concern expressed by climate scientists in this program is that our climate will be radically altered, rendering many parts of the planet uninhabitable - unless concerted action is taken to combat both global dimming and global warming.

So more pollution will counter global warming, as long as it's sulphur pollution, but we need to cut carbon pollution and then increase the amount of sulphur in the atmosphere to encourage global dimming, which masks the full effects of global warming, which will destroy much of the world if it's not stopped, but global dimming is also destructive, but not as destructive as global warming, which is being held in check by current global dimming so we need to increase global dimming with sulphur while cutting down on carbon to stop global warming...or something.

I'm sure it makes perfect sense, if you're a professor.