A Holocaust Of Fire, Cyclones Of Flames, Burn Hundreds To Death


Photo submitted to a Herald Sun readers gallery by Chris Roche

By Darryl Mason

The scope of the destruction, the scale of human tragedy of the apocalyptic Sunday fires in country Victoria, Australia's worst bushfire disaster, is beyond comprehension.

More than 100 dead, almost 1000 homes, properties and business destroyed, entire towns and villages in country Victoria laid to waste, some 350,000 hectares burned.

Reading through dozens of stories, listening to the stories of remarkably calm and lucid survivors on radio, trying to take in all those images of horror on TV, of entire towns obliterated by fire and cyclonic winds, of lone firefighters taking on five and six story high walls of flames with a single hose, of frantic survivors trying to find missing friends and family members, it's impossible to summarize any of it, all of it.

Again and again survivors describe "firestorms" that barreled in from nowhere and swept through faster than a train killing almost everything they touched. Why didn't they leave sooner? Why wasn't everyone evacuated? How did this appalling horror become reality, here? In this age? With all our technology? How can more than 100 people burn to death like this?

It's like a tragedy from another century. But in some areas the office tower tall walls of cyclonic fire roared through 30 kilometres of bush and scrub in less than an hour. The glow on the horizon, that distant plume of smoke, came and laid waste to a house, a farm, an entire village, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea and a sandwich and watch a few overs of the cricket.

The visuals that haunt and linger now are of all those cars, reduced to grey and black metal husks, some all alone on charred roads, others rammed into each other in piles of six, seven, eight vehicles outside of towns with names that are literally scorched into our national consciousness, three cars almost melted into each other with a power pole slammed down amongst them, and what looks like black strips of melted rubber along some roads which may mean people were trying to outrun the flames when the tires of their cars caught fire and fell apart.



Right now it appears that at least 30 people were burned to death in their cars trying to get away from the flames that, for many, came on them with little warning, or no warning at all. Some were up at home, watching news of fires that must have seemed so far away, until the sky turned almost instantly black with smoke. Some had a few minutes to attempt their escapes, some would have had less than one.

Right now, Australian soldiers who thought they would never see anything worse than scores of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, are helping to recover the corpses from burned out cars, in some vehicles whole families, with their pets and photos and treasured possessions, and digging through the wreckage of hundreds of farms and homes looking for those still missing. What they are seeing is worse than anything insurgents and terrorists in foreign lands unleashed, this is home, Australia, countryside that some of these soldiers have known since their childhood, beautiful Australian country towns and villages once lined with ancient trees and postcard-beautiful old wooden homes that have stood strong for more than a century, all of them gone.

Late yesterday afternoon, the bodies of those who tried to run away from the flames and perhaps found another skin-melting wall of fire instead of escape, were still lying by the sides of black roads that once carried locals and tourists through some of the most picturesque countryside you could ever hope to see. Some of the bodies were covered with blankets pinned down by rocks, a makeshift effort at giving the dead some dignity.

This isn't just, or yet, another Australian bushfire tragedy. Between 20,000 and 30,000 bush fires break out in Australia in an average year, few claim any lives, or burn any homes. Nobody has ever seen anything like this, not here, not the oldest of locals or the most experienced of soldiers or rescue workers or the thousands of incredibly brave fire fighters or the busloads of specialists now streaming in to help recover and deal with all the dead.

And it's not over yet.

One absolutely shocking, jarring example of the holocaust that consumed a small country's worth of Australian bush land on Sunday: it appears more people were killed outright than seriously burned by these fires.

There are more dead than severely injured.


Photo submitted to Herald Sun by Simon Bourke


The fire came in like a 'beast' :

...flames more than 15 metres high leapt through treetops in a seemingly unstoppable advance. Houses burst into flames as gas cylinders ignited, sending fire into the blackened sky.

One Raywood CFA member who helped extinguish a shed and caravan fire off Maiden Gully Road described the fire with its intense heat as the worst he had seen.

"It was pitch black, the heat was enormous, with flames 15 to 20 metres high as it crossed the road," Ian Henley said.

Mr Hanley described the fire as selective in the way it burned towards the more densely populated suburban areas of West Bendigo.

"It was like it came up to something and said, 'No, I don't want you — I'll take you.'

"It had a mind of its own, like a beast," he said.

More survivors talk of the super deadly fires in Kinglake as though the flames were living, thinking entities :

It seemed the fire was hunting the residents of Kinglake, according to survivor Jason Webb.

The survivors, some carrying everything they now own, spoke of an afternoon summer sky blackened by smoke and a giant orange fireball that hung over their town as flames engulfed their homes and killed their neighbours.

"It didn't seem that bad and then the smoke just blacked out the sky and it had a real ominous feel about it," he said.

"Suddenly it just turned really nasty, almost like it was going to walk past us and went 'Hang on there's some houses over there' , and it just turned and came straight at us."

Gary Hughes :

They call it "ember attack".

Those words don't do it justice. It is a fiery hailstorm from hell driving relentlessly at you. The wind and driving embers explore, like claws of a predator, every tiny gap in the house.

Embers blow through the cracks around the closed doors and windows.

We frantically wipe at them with wet towels. We are fighting for all we own.

Patrick Carlyon :

....no one yet could know just how many gruesome revelations awaited.

Of six people dead in a car accident in Kinglake.

Of the badly burned Kinglake man kept alive for six hours by being submerged by friends in a pool.

Of the Marysville firefighter who lost his wife and daughter while fighting the blazes.

Of the motorcyclist burnt alive in St Andrews.

Of the woman who left fighting the fires to save her goats who was found dead by her son in a shed.

A badly burnt man and his daughter turned up at a property where Marie Jones was staying. He had skin hanging "off him everywhere".

The man told her: "Look, I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid, I just need you to save (my daughter)."

As hard as it is may be to comprehend, there are worse ways to die in a bushfire than to be immediately consumed by flames. There are two terms that yesterday were unfamiliar, but are now part of the vocabulary of discussing these fires. One is "ember attack". The other is "radiant heat". And as fire fighter after fire fighter explained in interviews, radiant heat kills :

A University of Melbourne senior lecturer in fire ecology and management, Kevin Tolhurst, said the radiant heat - the heat given off by the fires - would itself have been enough to kill. "When it gets close, you have enormous radiation loads."

The "survivability" distance of Saturday's heat was about four times their height - a 35-metre high fire would directly imperil those within 140 metres.

The body would get over-stressed, the core temperature would get too high and the metabolism would break down in those conditions. He said bushfires produce their own volatile gases which in turn burn - and on a day as hot as Saturday, it does not take much for them to ignite.

Dr Tolhurst said people could be surrounded by a series of spot fires. Breathing would become difficult due to burning gases and the body would dehydrate quickly. Death from a form of asphyxiation was also possible.

And finally, another remarkable tale of survival, thanks to a horse :

Mr Sexton grabbed his horse, Jeune Mark, the offspring of 1995 Melbourne Cup winner Jeune, a cold beer from the fridge and walked out the gate. They started trotting, but just a few hundred metres from home they were confronted by flames.

"As we got up around the corner the flames just went absolutely sick, so I thought we'd turn around and try and race back. But the fire came up behind us, it came down from the hill, and we were just bloody engulfed, and I just thought to myself, 'That's it. This is where I'm going to die,' " he said.

But then something remarkable happened, perhaps by accident, perhaps not. Jeune Mark pushed him over a guard rail, and after a short wrestle with the horse he stumbled and raced down to the Traralgon Creek, on his own, and lay in it.

"I was screwed. I was covered in flames," he said. But after lying there for two or more hours, and after noticing that the flames had past, Mr Sexton emerged from the water and followed the creek towards home.

Jeune Mark....was standing in the paddock, the worse for wear, with burns around his eyes and nose, but still alive.

Dozens of fires are still burning in Victoria and New South Wales. The days ahead will be cooler than the record breaking heat of the past week, but winds are still unpredictable. There could be more to come.

Australia's Worst Bushfire Disaster

The Dead Zone : Dozens Killed In Kinglake, 550 Homes Destroyed

"The Man Up The Road Is On Fire"

John Fergeson : From The Air, It's Like Armageddon

The massive Moon hangs low over Sydney Harbour, sinking into the horizon, shrouded with bushfire smoke, at 3.58am, Saturday night. A truly awesome sight, before the dangerous and no doubt very deadly day ahead.

Dozens Die In Blistering Heat And Firestorms


Screen capture detail from an uncredited photo off the ABC News front page

UPDATED : The death toll of the country Victorian bushfires as of Sunday night are 100 dead, dozens injured, 1000 homes, properties, businesses destroyed. Full Report Is Here.

Previously....

The people of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia were warned the fires and the intense heat on Saturday were going to be deadly, and now terrible headlines hitting around the world confirm the worst.

At least 40 people in the country Victoria bushfires are believed to have burned to death, as of midnight Saturday, and there may be as many as 50 more dead from the effects of the 46-48 Celsius temps in parts of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. At least 100 homes have been lost in country Victoria, but fire crews and rescuers have still not reached a number of towns and villages hit by the fires.

Firecrews are taking on hundreds of blazes and firefronts across Victoria, fighting in what the Victorian premier, John Brumby has called "the worst fire conditions in history". Fires in New South Wales have yet proved to be as deadly, or as widespread, but Sunday is expected to produce record temperatures and high winds across areas already ablaze.

There aren't enough firefighters or fire trucks to deal with the firestorms in Victoria. A terrified man called in to the ABC to report that the Victorian town of Kingslake was "engulfed in flames." Calls for help went unanswered, fire fighters were busy elsewhere battling dozens of blazes.


Screen capture detail from a photo by AAP's Simon Mossman

This is just incredible :

Fires are becoming so big that they are creating their own weather.

Senior weather forecaster, Terry Ryan, says thunderstorms are forming over fire-affected parts of west Gippsland.

"We call it pyrocumulus, where all the ash coming out of the fire causes lifting and convection, and can cause a thunderstorm-looking top," he said.

"You can get thunderstorms and lightning coming out of the top of the fire basically, and that can add to the fire's effect, a bit of a nasty feedback effect that can occasionally happen."

And today - with temperatures in parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Adelaide to be even hotter than Saturday - may prove to be even more tragic, more destructive, more deadly.

* Live streams of emergency broadcasts for Melbourne and country Victoria on ABC Radio here.

* Dedicated ABC News page on the Victorian fires here

UPDATE : More on that ABC News phone in report that the Victorian town of Kinglake has been destroyed in the fires. Six people are now confirmed to have died in the Kinglake fires :

Resident Peter Mitchell told ABC Local Radio the town was at the mercy of fires which swept through it after a wind direction change.

Mr Mitchell said there was no-one to fight the fire because fire crews were already fighting other fires across the state.

He was forced to leave his home to shelter at the local fire station.

"The whole of Kinglake is ablaze, I live a couple of [kilometres] out of town, I heard explosions, by the time I got to the road there were fires everywhere," he said.

"[There is] flame everywhere, trees exploding, gas tanks exploding, buildings on fire, it's very, very, very serious.

"I can't quite see down into the main stretch of town, but there's a lot of flame coming up from there, so I presume most of the town is going up."

Denise was heading home from her mother-in-law's house just outside Kinglake when she was forced to turn back as fires bore down on the town.

She was spared, but others were not so lucky. "The whole town is gone," she said.

She said her mother-in-law's house was surrounded by flames. "Everything around us is burning.

"Trees are burning, things are blowing up, there are a lot of houses burnt to the ground. A lot of houses ... "

UPDATE : Melbourne just experienced it's hottest day on record, according to the Herald Sun : 46.4 degrees. When the heatwave broke, in the late afternoon, temperatures plunged 17 degrees, in one hour.

The Hotalypse

By Darryl Mason

I don't remember seeing lead stories on the evening news, or 'Horror Heatwave' newspaper front pages, when the temp hit the mid-40s in Western Sydney, as it seemed to do every summer, when I was a kid. It was summer, it was always fucking hot, and you got under the sprinkler if you couldn't handle the heat.

I don't even think those days of steaming humidity soaked summer were even called heatwaves by the older locals back then, who could always remember a summer's day "A lot bloody hotter than this I'll tell you". I don't think the Channel Seven or Channel Nine news even mentioned how hot it got out west. But it always seemed to be about ten degrees Celsius above whatever they claimed the temperature hit in the city centre.

We weren't told to stay out of the sun back then, and only weird kids had water bottles on their bike frames, but it was parentally recommended that you ride your pushie through the sprinkler a few times before you set took off on a day hot enough to make the tar road stick like toffee to your pushie's tyres.

So how different is Fucking Hot now, to back then, apart from our inability to function as a society without bottled water?

No doubt there's a fair bit of mediastyria about these days of intense heat. Records have been broken across NSW, Victoria, South Australia, we're told, the longest stretch of over 40 Celsius days ever seen, since 1939, since 1982, since whenever.

It seems so....bizarre. There are so many stories in today's papers warning us all TO STAY INSIDE. Not just kids, or the elderly. Everyone. DON'T GO OUT UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Have we ever been so publicly warned by premiers and health experts not leave the house? To check on elderly neighbours? To keep the kids inside? To watch for blazing trees on the horizon? But above all, to stay calm?

I'm sure there is a certain amount of exaggeration to these dire warnings, but it's clear authorities want as few people on the roads, on the trains, on the streets, as possible, in the cities and towns that will fry today and tomorrow. The less people outside in the heat, the less likely they are going to need help is the way I'm presuming they're thinking. Except for a Squishy run, I'll be sticking to that advice.

The city morgues of Melbourne and Adelaide are full, the refrigerated trucks are ready, and this weekend of 'Horror Heat' could kill another few dozen people, maybe even a few hundred if the firestorms that firefighters are now shitting themselves in expectation of come into reality sometime in the next 36 hours.

If these week and more long stretches of above 40 temperatures really are some kind of preview as to how most summers of the future will unfold - thanks to global warming, or normal (but freakish in the short term) long-term climate change cycles - then it's clear that the infrastructures of our cities and towns are not set up to take what Nature is unleashing on us.

That bitch.

Actually, the premiers of both Victoria and South Australia were heard over the past week or so stating exactly that : our public transport, our electricity grids, our city infrastructure were not built to cope with eight or twelve day long stretches of above 40 temps. I don't know how true those statements are, but its kinda unnerving to be told our cities cannot cope with what could well become a yearly reality.

If we can expect such long bursts of eyeball stinging heat to become a regular part of a Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide summer, a few years on we'll be seeing people bailing on their easterly towns and cities for cooler climes, as some now flee the mild winters for the warmth of Darwin or Perth.


UPDATE : Weird days of a brutal summer. The lingering smoke from local bushfires drifts into the room, here at 3.26am, it's a good smell, familiar of childhood, when local bushland seemed to go up every year, but the smoke now, while light, is also heavy with the possibility of a truly terrible day ahead, if the fires spread, if the winds are worse than expected and firestorms erupt, if some insane, homicidal bastard decides to go for a bush walk with a box of matches.

It's easy enough to get sucked into the mediastyria and expect the worst, but it really does feel like some terrible things are going to happen to too many people in this country in the next two days. Here's hoping Nature surprises us again, by not following through on the threats of a deadly hot weekend.

Anyway, some hopefully helpful advice if you don't already know how to cope with the heat :

* Forget water restrictions. If you want to hose down the kids in the backyard, or fill up that abandoned wading pool, go for it. And if you can find that old lawn sprinkler in the garage, pull it out and plug it in and get under it. And don't forget the pets.

* Bailing on your un-airconditioned house for a cooler shopping mall or cinema is always an option, but consider how you and the passengers in your car will shape up if you get stuck in dead traffic, or if your car shits itself on the way there, or back. Don't expect the NRMA to be able to reach you, or that you'll be able to find water or shelter easily.

* One of the more dramatic (but realistic) warnings that have been sounded in the past couple of days about the Weekend When The Heat Wave (Supposedly) Ends reminds us that we are pretty much fending for ourselves. There aren't enough cops, fire crews, rescue crews or ambulances to cope with what could be some extremely serious heat-related chaos. Except for extreme emergencies, you and your family and your neighbours are on your own.

* A simple anti-heat solution from my own childhood - if you don't have air-con, or if the power shuts off - all you need is a fan and a spray bottle filled with water. It's amazing what a difference misting up the air in a room, or soaking down yourself, cooled only by a fan (a hand fan if neessary) can make. It's better than nothing.

* While it goes without saying you should drink plenty of water, if you're inside and sweating like Wayne Swann working a calculator, you might want to eat a couple of pieces of bread slathered with Vegemite, or eat something else salty. It'll make you feel better.

* If you're a balcony food grower like me, don't forget to move your veggies and herbs out of the full sun for the better part of the day.

* Wherever in your home the cat or dog has decided to shelter, get down there as well. Flat on your back on the floor is much cooler than standing, or even sitting.

That might be it for me this weekend. This laptop has a habit of shutting off when the temperature in here hits 35 or 36.

Goodluck.

Obama : "There Are White Folks, And Then There Are Ignorant Mother Fuckers Like You"

For once, I haven't made up a headline quote. Obama did say this and it's on tape. You can hear Obama cutting loose with the M15+ language here.

Unfortunately, this is not President Obama dealing it out from his podium. It's the author Obama doing a reading from his Dreams Of My Father autobiography, impersonating a high school friend who was full of sage-like advice and wisdom.

My favourite :

"You Ain't My Bitch, Nigga. Buy Your Own Damn Fries!"

This is pretty good, too :

"So what happens when we go out to a party with some sisters? I tell you what happens. Blam! They on us like there's no tomorrow. High school chicks, university chicks, it don't matter..."

How quickly will these Obama lines get mashed up? No doubt, thousands are already hard at work, transforming his recorded lines into a multitude of brilliant, crappy and bizarre ear candy. Can't wait to hear some of it.

The Boston Pheonix scored mightily with this.

They Don't Make A Bad Soup, But The Flesh Is Quite Gummy


These photos have hit just about everyone's e-mail box, and the abandoned baby koala, who climbed into a bucket of water to escape Victoria's extreme heat, is so goddamned cute you could almost cry.

Almost.

Until you see this screengrab from another pic :



Kill It! Kill It!


The rest of the photos by Tracey Young are here.

Rudd Is Still Messing With Their Minds

Most Australians don't care about the nation falling into deficit. Why would they? Why should they? Even $20 or $30 billion in the hole won't affect their lives negatively, it will work to their favour, as long as the money is used to repair and upgrade the schools their children attend and get some real infrastructure rebuilding and modernisation underway.

PM Rudd is actually on fire, just a little, during Question Time right now (2.08pm), as he hammers opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull for "being against fixing the primary schools". It's devastating. The Liberals have allowed themselves to be painted as being anti-public school renovation. Even if it's not true, this is likely the impression most will take away from the evening news reports.

Turnbull's opposition to what Rudd is now calling a $42 billion package to "rebuild the nation" is a masterstroke in self-destruction, as Bernard Keane at Crikey points out (excerpts) :

At about 10.30 this morning in the House of Representatives the Opposition walked into a baseball bat. It caught them flush across the head. BANG. Then they got up and invited the wielder to swing it again.

The wielder -- Kevin Rudd -- won't need to be asked twice.

Refusing to back the Government's stimulus package, which Malcolm Turnbull announced in the chamber this morning, is a truly colossal -- indeed, almost suicidal -- error by the Opposition.

The Coalition and much of the media haven’t worked out that politics has for the moment changed completely. A crisis mindset has taken hold and voters are in no mood for anyone getting in the way of it being addressed with urgency.

Rudd will be delighted with the Opposition's stupidity. But he won't be celebrating. Instead, he'll be flexing his muscles and practising his swing. That mild-mannered, bespectacled bloke will be swinging the baseball bat, hard and without pity. And he's going to hit the Liberals again, and again, and again, and again, and he's not going to stop until they're a bloodied mess.

Who put Turnbull up to coming out against the StimuPak #2? Was it Costello's boys?

By Q2 of Question Time, Turnbull looks shocked, totally rattled, perhaps with the reality dawning across his usually sharp mind that he just got fucked, royally fucked, by some in his own party, who are, presumably, trying to knock Turnbull aside for The Return Of "The World's Greatest Treasurer."

Malcolm Turnbull, in fact nobody in the Liberals, should forget that Rudd promised, in February 2007, that he was going to mess with then PM John Howard's mind, and in turn, the collective mind of the Liberal Party.

Why would they assume that Rudd, particularly with his massively publicised attack on "neo-liberals' and "extreme capitalism" in The Monthly magazine, is not still messing with their minds?

Of course he's still doing it. It worked so well on Howard, why wouldn't Rudd keep messing with the Liberal Mind every moment he gets the chance to do so?

Who will come out of this StimuPak #2 fight looking the best? The Greens, of course. Watch the Liberals poll numbers plunge even further in this wake of this catastrofuck and The Greens favourability numbers rise, perhaps even soar. It gets harder and harder for The Greens to be painted as extremists when both Labor and Liberals are fighting to put their ideas and policies into action.

UPDATE : I don't know how long this re-interest in national politics at The Orstrahyun will last. I can feel myself fading out as I watch a second interview with Turnbull in less than 48 hours, added to what felt like two hours of Costello defying God's laws about Vanity, on Lateline.

The Good Doctor (Nelson) would have been far more apopaleptic and thereby hysterically funny, if he was upfront. But those days are gone....sadly.

I Scrub And I Scrub And I Still Can't Get All The Blood Out



An inspired piece of portraiture from photographer Emma Phillips.

The portrait has been entered in the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize. Here's hoping it wins, it's brilliant work.

Emma Phillips galleries are here.

Too Much Instant Information....

Lachlan Wolfers on the downside of Google-everything :

My licence to engage in mild exaggeration has been put in jeopardy. Recently, I was boasting of my sporting prowess in a triathlon, explaining how I had completed the swim leg as fast as Michael Phelps, then cycled at the speed of Lance Armstrong, and then finished it off with a run that would have made Rob de Castella proud. My (so-called) friend Google-searched my time and discovered I finished in a measly 227th place, and then proceeded to embarrass me in front of a large audience.

Ouch. And here's something that never occurred to me before, probably because it doesn't apply in my case as I'm 1) not single and 2) I'm one of the lucky few whose (rented) home does not appear on Google Street View :

Whereas previously I could explain to prospective girls that I lived in a gigantic house overlooking the beach and drove a sports car, now they can simply Google my address and discover I live in a bedsit at the back of my mother's house and drive a beaten-up old Holden.

Double ouch.

These are a little suburb-ist, and some have been recycled from old jokes I used to hear when, back in the 1980s, I told people in the city that I lived near Blacktown, but they're still funny...unless you live in Campbelltown I suppose :

Q. Two Campbelltown girls jump off a cliff. Who wins?
A. Society.

Q. What does a Campbelltown girl use as protection during sex?
A. A bus shelter.

Q. Why did the Campbelltown girl cross the road?
A. To start a fight with a complete stranger for no reason whatsoever.

Q. What do you call a Campbelltown girl in a white tracksuit?
A. The bride.

Q. What's the first question during a Campbelltown quiz night?
A. "What you looking at?"

Q. What's the difference between a Campbelltown boy and a Campbelltown girl?
A. A Campbelltown girl has a higher sperm count.


(all these jokes were taken from an e-mail doing the rounds of inboxes in the finance industry)

One Entree, Two Main Meals

The drought is breaking in North Queensland, but the flooding is extreme, with areas described as being like "a virtual sea".

One family was forced to travel more than 70km through crocodile infested waters with their two month old baby to get back home. And they did it in a tinnie :

Independent federal MP Bob Katter has told of the family's two-hour plight to get from Normanton to their home at Karumba in north Queensland.

"It was the only way they could get back," Mr Katter said.

"They went through 15km-wide raging floodwaters, with crocodiles, to get back."

Dengue Fever Epidemic Hits Cairns

Major Roads Around Townsville Cut By Floodwaters

Bruce Highway Cut Between Cairns And Townsville, Hundreds Of Trucks Can't Deliver Food Crops

Here's a few stories you might have missed that I put up on Your New Reality :

"Wait A Sec...Are You Telling Me That In The Future I Choose You To Be My Dad And Then Send You Back In Time To Fuck My Mother So I Will Be Born So One Day I Can Send You Back Here?"

"They Bomb Us Because They Don't Want Us To Be Well Educated"

I'm A Missile, I'm Here To Kill You, But I Can Wait

American Troops In WarZones Are Threatened By Flying Killer Robots....But Whose Flying Killer Robots?

'Drug Money Is The Only Liquid Capital Investment'

Your New Reality

Depopulating His Own Brain

Evil Pagan Commo Nazi Green Lefty Enviro guy uses the words :

"contraception and abortion"

So the Professional Idiot translates for his readers :

"baby cull"

And the ABC pays this extremist to spread around his lunacy and intolerance. What an absolute nutter. Fucking funny, though.

We obviously need new safety advice on packets of condoms :

Warning : These prophylactics may kill your unplanned, unconceived child.

We Do Not Seek To Control The Media....Except When We Do

Israel's ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem, January 16 :

"In the same way that the Israeli Government does not seek to control the media in Israel, it does not seek to control the media in Australia."

Yuval Rotem, January 30 :

"...can you turn that camera off please..."

Interesting. It appears the Israeli ambassador tells his small Jewish audience one thing - expect an attack on Iran in a month - when he thinks the media isn't listening, and then tells ABC News something else when it's clear his comments have been caught on camera.

Does the Rudd government back attacks by Israel on Iran? Or will it clam up and go into hiding, as it did when Israel slaughtered hundreds of women and children in Gaza?

No-one in the Australian media ever bothers to explain what Russia, now a close ally and mega-billion dollar business partner of Iran, will do in the event of Israel attacking Iran. Russia has already made it clear, to Israel's government, and Israel-allied governments around the world (including Australia) that an attack on Iran will be viewed as an attack on Russia. And then there's China...

"What's That, Skip? You Want To Go BodySurfing?"

This is for all the people who are stuck in hot houses and hot offices today and can't get to the beach to cool off.







BTW - these photos came to me through an e-mail (thanks Kerry!), so I have no idea who the photographer was. If you know, leave a comment so I can properly give credit for these very cool pics.

Too Much Trurth....

Anti-Americanist Andrew Bolt, aka The Professional Idiot, is indeed one delicate little flower. I decided to Have My Say, as his Herald Sun blog invites readers, on a post where he horns in on supposedly misleading reporting about one of the many schools Israel recently bombed in Gaza - in this case, an Australian-ally-launched bomb attack that killed almost as many innocent people as the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London.

But you can only Have Your Say if it doesn't upset his pro-civilian slaughter regular readers.


(click to enlarge)

"SNIP - YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THREE OR FOUR TIMES BEFORE THAT YOU ARE BANNED. THIS IS THIS YEAR'S REMINDER"

He's lying. Full of shit, as usual. He's never told me that I'm officially banned from commenting on his blog. I've left comments on his blog, here and there, for the past couple of years.

He just didn't like what I had to say this time, which was to point out that defending state terrorist attacks on civilians is just as sick as defending Islamic terrorist attacks on civilians. And that to the people who are being bombed, all bombs feel like terrorist attacks.

Here's a non-banned comment of mine from The Professional Idiot's blog this past Tuesday. This didn't get banned because he agrees with what I said :


(click to enlarge)

By censoring my comment for pointing out that there's not a lot of light between extremist terrorism and state terrorism, the comments section for The Professional Idiot's "Don't Look There! (at all the dead children) Look over there at the Evil UN!" post is filled instead with the usual Megaphone crowd spouting a hundred more excuses why it's okay for an Australian ally in the 'War On Terror' to slaughter hundreds of women and children and bomb schools, hospitals and food warehouses. But that's probably exactly how The Professional Idiot wants it to be.

The Professional Idiot just can't handle The Trurth (sic)

Four Heads Are Better Than One?



It is what you think it is. Kind of.

The Love Train

You Want The Trurth (sic)? You Can't Handle The Trurth (sic)!

Thousands Of Working Families Live Without Electricity, Gas

One of the saddest things, amongst the many, many sad things, I saw during my very short employment with the then Department of Housing, was how many elderly people lived without electricity for extended periods because they couldn't afford to pay their meagre, overdue bills.

It was heartbreaking to sit down for a cup of cold tea with a disabled World War 2 veteran in a dark house, listening to him explain how he was cut off for owing less than $20 and now had to make do with cold water baths. But he knew it what it was all about, and why they were so heartless not to give a fuck about him, or the sacrifices he had made in his lifetime. It wasn't the $20 he owed that they were after, he croaked, it was the reconnection fee.

The eagerness to cut off people from their electricity supply, and other utilities, doesn't seem to have dampened much in the years since, as this story explains :

Homeowners are being disconnected from power, gas and water at twice the rate of four years ago.

And more than 60 per cent of people cut off from utilities are now in paid employment, according to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

Its study, to be released today, has found a new underclass of "working poor" forced to light homes with candles, take cold showers and send their children to stay with relatives.

....about 100 people were disconnected every day.

About 18,000 households are disconnected from electricity every year in NSW, and 23,000 from gas.

When Australians have to start paying their Global Carbon Tax, disconnections will rise, and even more people will have to make do without the very basics of a civilised society.

But if you reduce your carbon output by (forced) living without electricity, will that earn you a few Carbon Credits? Enough Carbon Credits, perhaps, so you can trade them to pay your Carbon Tax debt and get your electricity reconnected?

But if you get the electricity reconnected, then your carbon output rises again, so you don't get as many, or any, Carbon Credits, that you could use to pay off the next hit of Carbon Tax. So your electricity gets shut off again, but now you're once more earning Carbon Credits, so....I expect it will be exactly that kind of confusing.

Adelaide Always Delivers

Adelaidians are sweltering through some good old fashioned Australian summer heat. But the grid can't handle all those air-cons and plasma TVs, they're getting blackouts. Adelaidians are not happy, and are complaining loudly about their discomfort, buckled trainlines and cancelled trams, at Adelaide Now. They get to have a bitch about the heat, everyone's sorta happy, still sweaty. But some locals want the complaining about the heat to stop, that Adelaidians harden the fuck up, take the heat, sweat like real men, and real women, and stop whining like...well, like Adelaidians :

you smally people. all acting like only Adelaide has problems. Perth & Melbourne have their fair share of trainline shutdowns when it gets hot... Stop whingeing and find something else to complain about

Posted by: Small minds of Adelaide

The interstaters invade the Adelaidians online space and deliver outright, downright mockery of South Australians plight :

You people in Adelaide have it so easy, think of all us poor Manly Ferry commuters here in Sydney who have to wait in a que to be served at the Cafe on the Ferry taking us across the harbour!

Posted by: Ron of Sydney - Life is tough on the ferry

Naturally, they don't like these interlopers, not one bit :

Backwater Fishbowl - dont they have papers in Melbourne ?? is there not enough bogans there that can read I assume

Posted by: Vic = bogan city of cant read or write

Do we have to put up with the idiots from the other villages having a spray? We've got enough of our own without the yarping from those in much cooler climes interstate.

Posted by: Peter of Northern Adelaide

There is a bit of confusion about whether some commenters are blaming the Rann government for the rail-buckling, blackout causing, tram-cancelling effects of extreme heat, or for the heat itself. Ant of Adelaide lays out the facts for the confused :

Government cant control the weather no matter who is in power.

The free water for commuters debate hots up :

Why should commuters get a free bottle of water at the expense of non-commuters? If people want water but your own bottle and don't expect us taxpayers to pay for it.

Posted by: Tony of Adelaide

Free water? So i should take my empty bottles to trans adelaide and fill up???

Posted by: Yarz of Ingle Farm

Car Driver of Adelaide commutes home in full gloat mode :

To all the bike riding hippies slagging car drivers - enjoy riding in the heat. To all the Public transport riding hippies, enjoy walking home. To all the "older economical car drivers" enjoy sitting on the side of the road with your radiators boiling. Ill just drive past in my fully imported leather clad 4WD with the airconditioner on low (it gets too cold otherwise) and cruise home without having to get held up by the rail crossings or busses. Pity its hot walking from the office to the car, You Beauty!

Adelaidians are easily distracted by other non-heat related news :

Did any notice the photo of a patient suffering from a heat related illness being wheeled into one of our hospitals, and a nurse walking past with a 'fag' in her mouth........one person maybe fighting for her life.... and another one slowly killing herself.....It makes you think doesn;t it .. dusty

Posted by: Ken Rhodes of Magill.

Kevin Logfellow may or may not be doing some barrel work downstairs as he escapes the heat :

I am sleeping in the cellar and drinking my home brew to keep cool and lubricated. Please let me know when it is safe to come out.

Max of Redlands has weightier issues on his mind :

No matter how many times I read it I can not accept that "impact" is a verb.

I blame the incredible heat in Adelaide for this one :

The government said turn off to save money. ..and the transformer ended up on fire ..and the train tracks melted ..and birds started falling from the trees ..and koala's looked like drowned rats ..and the fish started to boil in the ocean ..and henny penny screamed, "The sky is falling!" I swear, it's ARMAGEDDON. Mike Rann..the third anti-christ perhaps???

John of Warradale casts an eye over the comments and reaches a sound conclusion :

I think the heat's buckled a few brains.

Crikey has an interesting piece on how we dealt with heatwaves in the past, and how newspapers in the 1930s reported city-melting temperatures. It's always fascinating to see how different the style of writing was back then, but an excerpt that Crikey dug up from The Courier Mail, during the height of a March, 1934 eyeball searer, also contains a report of what sounds like an impressive meteor strike :

Costello : Non-Christians Threaten Australia's Future

Peter Costello addresses Catch The Fire religious extremists on Australia Day, which provokes the crazed Nazi-Green-Commo-Pagan-Lefties at Crikey to praise John Howard. Yes, praise John Howard :

John Howard blocked Peter Costello from the Prime Ministership as long as he could, preferring even to take his party to defeat rather than let him run it. Based on this bizarre rant, it looks like Howard’s judgement was absolutely right.

The bizarre Costello rant in full :



Peter Costello, your almost prime minister :

"One of the things that has been absolutely central to the development of Australia and the foundation of our society is that Biblical heritage, the heritage that we have through the Scriptures, and through the Ten Commandments, respect for our Maker, respect for our fellow citizens, respect for property, respect for the laws that God has laid down. That’s been the foundation of our society. It’s been the basis of our peaceful tolerance of each other and of order. It has been the basis of creating opportunity for so many Australian’s. If we forget that tradition, if we walk away from those God given commandments, then we as a society will be threatened with the breakdown of that order, will be threatened with losing our heritage and loosing opportunity. So I want to say to you, those that are praying for Australia today, to pray that this nation will always remember its foundations, and always be true to them, and always live according to those laws.

"There are many people today that are telling us that religion is all a lot of superstition, that the laws that have been laid down, of respect for individuals, property and for our creator are all a load of nonsense, that don’t respect life. If we fall for that trap, if Australia falls for that trap then the very basis of our society and its order will be threatened. That’s why we need Christian people to pray for our country, we will never understand the way in which God moves. But we know that if his people pray, He will hear that they will be a light to the nation and the nation will be covered and protected by Godly people who are giving direction and standing for it in prayer."

That's probably a little too much God in politics for most Australians liking. But hey, once you've 'caught the fire' you gotta keep spreading that message, even if it destroys your political career.

Snake Must Not Eat Snake


Photo by Tony Barton

Isn't this one of signs of the Apocalypse or something?

Mr Barton says it took about 10 to 15 minutes for the black snake to fully consume the brown snake, which he says was about 135 centimetres long.

Then it went off for a snooze.

"It was fairly sluggish after such a huge meal," he said.

Not long after, the snake returned - this time to the back lawn.

"I was having a close look at it when it opened its mouth a little bit and I spotted this beady eye and the head of the brown snake in its mouth!

"....the brown snake came out a few inches, fastened onto the black's lower jaw and pulled itself completely out.

"It had all this mucus all over it. Then the two parted ways."

Maybe brown snakes are the morons of the Serpentes world : "Yo Brownie! I got a mouse for you, but you gotta come in here and get it."

"Fuck Off We're Full"....Of Racist Bogans

The media that helps to ramp up this sort of intolerance, hate and racism also gets to report on some of the fallout :

In the Sydney subrub of Manly, hundreds of youths draped in "Aussie pride" livery wore slogans declaring "f--k off we're full" as they smashed car windows and ran up the famous Corso targeting non-white shop keepers.

A 18-year-old Asian female in one of the cars was showered with shattered glass, giving her numerous cuts to her arms. She was treated on the scene by ambulance officers.

A taxi driven by a Sikh Indian was also targeted while an Asian shopkeeper was reportedly assaulted.

Groups of men jumped up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within, and were heard singing "tits out for the boys" at passing girls and yelled "lets go f--k with these Lebs".

You wonder how they know, without asking, whether the people they're attacking for not being Australian enough (whatever the fuck that means), were born here or not. Of course. those kind of details don't matter to them. It's not about whether you're born here, or whether you fly an Australian flag on your car, or wrap one around yourself like a toga, if you're not bogan white, you're a target.

It only took two and a half hours for police to bring the place under control. By then, of course, the pied pipers who led these kids across the suburbs of Sydney for their Fuckwits Day Out were long gone, just as they melted away at Cronulla.

Hate Australia Day

To celebrate Australia Day, Michael Connor of Quadrant has compiled a checklist of All The True-Blue Aussie Things Evil Pagan Australia-Hating Lefties Love To Hate. Unfortunately, it's not meant to be parody, but it's still bloody funny though :

Australia Day, Anzac Day, people who live in the suburbs, people who live in the country, farmers, fishermen, dams, Quadrant, Australian history, the flag, the constitution, Andrew Bolt’s readers, The Australian, Liberal voters, National Party voters, Family First voters, One Nation supporters, the RSL, McDonald’s, McMansions, plasma TVs, Australian Idol, big business, small business, monolingualists, Christians, our last prime minister, liberal democracy, capitalism, lamingtons, Australians, the national coat of arms, the Samuel Griffith Society, soldiers, conservatives, musicals not about Australian Left politicians, commercial television, non-indigenous trees, dog owners, cats, non-Left talk back radio hosts, timber workers, plastic bags, Howard’s battlers, climate change sceptics, white people, commercial radio, America (pre-Obama), sovereignty (ours), realistic paintings (especially by Albert Namatjira), the Big Banana and other Big Things, cultural dissidents, men, sprinklers, green lawns, cars (other peoples), wood fires, rednecks, Sir John Kerr.

Wow, I bet the most dedicated Australia-hating Evil Pagan Lefty didn't realise just how many things there are that are uniquely Australian (like plasma TVs and McDonalds?) for them to hate.

Happy Hate Australia Day.

Grods continues the Hate Fest.

Tony Abbott : May I Compare John Howard To The Lord, Or Is That Going Too Far?

Below are extracts from a speech that Tony Abbott will give this weekend at the Young Liberals convention. You know, if you think about it, John Howard really is a lot like Victoria Cross winning soldiers, Winston Churchill, John Curtin and Ronald Reagan.

Last week, an Australian was awarded the Victoria Cross for the first time in 40 years. Trooper Mark Donaldson deliberately made himself a target to protect wounded comrades.

Donaldson also scored the appreciation of the nation, and ample popular coverage in the media.

Another Australian received a medal last week. In Washington, then president George W. Bush conferred on former Australian prime minister John Howard the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

John Howard's final money shot with Bush was not exactly popular with Australians.

Reactions to Howard's award, by contrast, ranged from muted compliments to bilious rage.

He's exaggerating. Most Australians who had grown to shudder whenever Howard appeared on the evening news, no longer cared where he was, or what he was doing, and if Bush was involved, then it was more likely to be, "and I'm supposed to give a shit, why?".

Tony parses the arguments for why Bush is not an idiot :

Eighty-two per cent of more than 11,000 respondents to The Age's online poll said he didn't deserve it. My ABC blog, giving credit to Bush and Howard, generated 367 mostly apoplectic responses within two days.

"Only a fool accepts a medal from an idiot," said another respondent. This is the kind of cheap shot that everyone in politics has to get used to. Whatever Bush's faults or mistakes, idiots don't become president of the US.

About 70% of Americans may disagree with you there, Tony.

It's worth pondering, though, in the different reactions to these medals, the different responses people have to courage in battle and to courage in public life.

It never ceases to blow my mind how politicians so freely, and without shame, draw parallels between being under fire in a war zone and sitting around in an air-conditioned parliament trying to think up new ways to outwit Julia Gillard.

Abbott's on about it again, here :

Field marshal William Slim, a fighting soldier who became governor-general of Australia, once said that moral courage was a higher and rarer virtue than physical courage. Moral courage means facing issues and making decisions that every normal human instinct would rather avoid.

Provided you have to answer for the decision, it takes a similar measure of courage to commit soldiers to battle as to face the bullets yourself.

Except for the whole bit where you're actually facing, you know, real bullets.

At least in Western counties, there is no risk of death in the battle of ideas.

Not unless those ideas eat away at the soul of the nation, and then it's just a slow death.

Tony has so many complaints about that which he has devoted his life to.

Public life is not without its satisfactions but they're rarely sustaining.

Tony is finding life in politics, post-being somebody, not so grand. Hopefully, he can draw some comfort from the morbidly obese parliamentary pension and the Super super waiting for him.

But, yes, there are other rewards.

The chief reward is the knowledge that you've tried to serve your country and the hope, often forlorn, that this might be recognised by people who matter.

Forlorn hope must be viewed as some kind of reward if you want to make in Liberal politics now?

Politicians deal with the problems that are too big or too hard for individuals or private organisations to handle on their own.

If that's the core reason why politicians actually exist, you get the feeling they might not be so essential, for much longer.

The difference between a politician and almost every other citizen is his preparedness to take responsibility, not just for his own actions, but for the state of the wider world.

Including, obviously, taking responsibility for the actions you took that fucked up some parts of the wider world.

Here's Tony having a bit of a George W. Bush moment, imagining himself as a voter complaining about politicians :

How dare he change the circumstances of my employment, revise the way I get to work, alter the rules under which I live, or put at risk the reputation of my country.

Yeah, who'd want to ever get fired up about any of those things?

Apparently, some day, we really will think of John Howard as one part of a triple Return Of The Jedi-finale style glowing team, along with Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.

There are only two kinds of popular politicians: those who haven't yet made a tough decision and those who have been vindicated by events. Rudd and, for all his undoubted brilliance and promise, Barack Obama are in the former category. Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan are in the latter. I am sure that Howard too will be one day.

The Politics Is Just Like Fighting In Wars, No Really It Is theme resurfaces as Abbott seeks to honour those who fell in the fields of battle :

There are also all the unknown soldiers of politics who fail at preselection; the backbench MPs, unspectacular ministers, and frontbenchers whose party never made it into government, who are mere footnotes to history.

And on the going down of the sun we shall honour the unknown soldiers who fell at preselection...

Abbott has been caught up in ObamaFever. Feel the call of Change in his words :

At every level, many are called but few are chosen. All of them, at least to some extent, have risked their reputations, livelihoods and personal happiness to try to improve their country.

But he's still talking about politicians.

Abbott gives an apparently miserable, put upon, stressed out, divorce-looming, utterly harassed life in Liberal Party politics the hard sell to the Young Liberals conventioneers :

The hours are long, the responsibilities immense, the exposure relentless, the pay modest, the satisfactions fleeting, and the pressure on families cruel. To the public, travel is a perk of the job. To MPs' spouses, it can be grounds for divorce. Politicians have official and semi-official socialising most days. To the public, it's little more than having fun on taxpayer's time. To MPs' families, it's being married to the job, not them.

And it's an even more shit lifestyle now politicians are not allowed to be raging, or even borderline, alcoholics.

Why would anyone be a politician? It's a fair question. Because there are considerably easier ways to earn a living or to make a name for yourself, the only sustaining reason to be in politics is the determination to make a difference. That's what makes politics a calling rather than just a job.

But compared to a lot of other jobs out there, getting paid good money to be a politician is still a pretty damn fine gig, despite the hours. And most of those there at the Young Liberals convention this weekend, hearing Tony Abbott deliver those words, already know that.

Grods reports that the Young Liberals new plan to unite the nation, following the grand Howard tradition of doing everything possible to piss off the youth vote, involves refusing to give students their university degrees until they've completed nine months of national service.

Why Do They Hate America So Much?

Step forward the new screechers of foam-flecked anti-Americanism :

While it may seem uncharitable to be critical of a new US President on his Inauguration Day...

What the hell, it's never too early to kick off The Great Obama HateFest 2009-2017.

Remember, when Australians were critical of George W. Bush, and refused to believe his deadly lies, and wrote letters and protested about a war they didn't want to be a part of? They were not only Bush Haters, they were damned terrorist-loving anti-Americans as well. Obviously.

Bush Derangement Syndrome, we learned, was just a cover for an all round loathing of Americans and American culture.

If you thought the American president was a dill, or a dangerous fool, you instantly hated all Americans.

So obviously those same rules and labels must also apply now, particularly for those, like Piers Akerman, who can't even wait until Obama sits down at his desk in the West Wing for the first time before he goes after the new American president.

Here another Murdoch journo using sneering mockery to hide his Obama Hating Anti-American extremism :

"...(the inauguration commences) with the ceremonial healing of blind crippled lepers and ending with Obama’s transformation into a single beam of pure light. Let the miracles begin!"

Most of the anti-American extremism in the Australian media today is coming from Murdoch writers like Piers Akerman and Janet Albretchsen and Tim Blair, and Andrew Bolt will of course soon join them, but this core group of anti-American Obama Haters should not forget the warnings from their own boss, Rupert Murdoch, about such easy and tempting hatred :

"The Australian people must not allow their perfectly legitimate doubts about one policy or one American administration to cloud their long-term judgment...Australians must resist and reject the facile, reflexive, unthinking anti-Americanism..."

And they should not forget the warnings of John Howard :

"While anti-Americanism seemingly finds a ready outlet in every age, we should not pretend that it is cost-free. For some, a bit of armchair anti-Americanism may be nothing more than a mild indulgence. But … be careful what you wish for."

The Obama Hating Anti-Americans in the Murdoch media will claim they're only criticising the new American president, and holding him to account, but don't let them fool you : They Hate America.

Obama Wins Presidency : A "Victory For Stupidity"

Reality Has A Hamas-Related Bias

By Darryl Mason

The Australian newspaper reveals there is outrage, from some, that Australians are angered and outraged now they are finally seeing the true horror of what Israel has done to Gaza on the evening news. The outrage that Australians are disgusted by what they see and hear about Gaza on the news is now becoming shrill :

Sure enough, some television programs did invite a token Israeli guest who tried to explain Israel's case. But the answers given seemed to be presented as propaganda, and the implication was that the only story to be believed was the Hamas narrative.

When news finally gets out about how those hundreds of women and children died in Gaza, the news takes on a 'Hamas narrative'. If you believe the stories from the UN, from the Red Cross, from the BBC, from CNN, from ABC, from the Murdoch media, from The Australian itself, about children hiding in UN safe houses and hospital being shelled by Israel, you are believing 'The Hamas Narrative'. It is implied.

Wow.

...the strategy has worked for Hamas: it produced the images that screamed from the front pages of newspapers and TV screens, pushing the buttons of people across the world.

Yes, why would people across the world have their buttons pushed by images like this?



Presumably, the preferred reaction to images of civilian slaughter by an Australian ally is to not have any buttons pushed at all.

It gets a little creepy.

Emotions cloud the context; the result is a circus.

Don't become emotional when you hear and see on the evening news that an Australian ally, an ally in the 'War On Terror', is slaughtering women and children by the hundreds.

By forgetting the context, voluntarily or not, much of the Western commentators have implied this: it is permissible for terror groups to use civilians as human shields, but not for a legitimate country to mistakenly kill civilians in the course of battling enemy.

The latter is being portrayed as a crime against humanity.

It usually is when hundreds of civilians are killed, and when it keeps happening, to UN buildings and schools, when the UN has told the legitimate country that those buildings belong the UN, and have civilians in them.

The worry about 'Western commentators' forgetting "the context" of how missiles tear off children's legs and shred their faces with shrapnel is misplaced concern. Those who have to sell Israel's side of the state terror attacks on Gaza have got far bigger problems than 'Western commentators' nosing around the words "war crimes".

When even the Murdoch media are running news caps like the one below, on News.com.au's main page and the Daily Telegraph online front page, for almost 48 hours, you've got a serious, devastating public relations disaster on your hands :

Apparently the people of Gaza got off lightly, writes Albert Dadon, founder and chairman of the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange :

The only surprise is the low number of civilian casualties in an area where 1.4 million Palestinians live....

1300 dead, more than 5000 wounded, thousands of buildings destroyed, including schools and hospitals, playgrounds bombed....

This is a result of the care with which Israel has operated.

Imagine the death toll if they didn't care?

Israel says 12 per cent of casualties are civilians, Hamas say 40 per cent. Whatever the percentage, it is a tragedy. But citing numbers and showing images while forgetting the context creates one more casualty: the truth.

I think you will find The Truth became a casualty in what Israel is doing to Gaza a long time ago.

The headline for the opinion piece quoted above, published in a newspaper, is extraordinary.

Images Of Bloodshed Obscure Truth

A newspaper is telling you not to trust the usually non-bloody images they allow you to see.

But even those images don't obscure the obvious truth of the bloodshed in Gaza, and who is responsible for it.

You've Got Your Notes, You've Been Briefed, Now Go Write Some Blogaganda

No Rude Words, Please, This Is A Respectable Tabloid Website

Associate Editor for Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Tim Blair, notices the freedom of reader-generated, straight-shooting news and opinion over at the Pakistan Daily :



It doesn't get any more straight-shooting than that. Not even the Daily Telegraph can so boldly and clearly state an opinion in a headline.

Commenters at the Pakistan Daily celebrate the freedom of non-corporate online news :

"Damn straight!! All Lefties are cunts!"

"Brilliant headline, this has to be the headline of the year."

"Loving it. Keep up the good work."

Unfortunately, Tim Blair's not allowed to have rude words at his corporate blogging digs, even from commenters :

Incidentally, naughty words will be ******* cut or edited, so don’t ******* use them. And editing the ******* things takes time, which causes delays...

Not like the old, independent days.

Blair can't use words like cunt, fucker, fuckhead or cockhammer, but at least for now he can still link to places that are allowed use those naughty, naughty words.

Buffoon Explains Why Idiot Was Bad In Front Of The Cameras

Alexander Downer has taken time out from his busy international relations work, as Member for Cyprus, to blame "the media" for ex-President George W. Bush- btw, that's ex-President George W. Bush - talking and performing in ways that convinced billions he was either inherently dim, downright dumb, or somewhat brain damaged from alcohol abuse.

"I think a big function of it is the way he appears in the media as a slightly nervous, unconfident and bumbling Texan," Downer said.

Downer doesn't bother to mention that this son from one of America's most elite families dolloped on the "gee shucks, I'm just a good old boy from Texas" as a part of a cultivated image.

Mr Downer says Mr Bush's performance in front of the cameras has been a major problem for the US government.

"I don't think in the media he was ever good actually, I don't think he improved," he said.

Unlike Alexander Downer, who was an outstanding media performer, even when drunk. Downer is the only politician in the country who made Brendan Nelson look like a natural in front of the cameras. Downer's speciality, of course, was to start whining when the questions got too hard, a whine that became so intensely grating, for the interviewer and just about everybody watching at home, that you wanted Downer sent to bed, immediately, without ice-cream.

"I've not of course said that to (Bush's) face...."

Of course not, Alex.

"...but I've said it to a number of people in the administration."

Who then saw you doing interviews and thought, 'You know, we don't have a lot to work with here....But people really seem to like his Bushisms. We can build on that. But this Downer guy has nothing.'

It's interesting that Alexander Downer is on JJJ's Hack doing interviews. He used to despise the program, and then prime minister John Howard refused to even do one interview with the radio show that reached more than half a million young Australians, in every town and village across the country. Downer always made it sound like he was doing Steve Cannane some huge favour by reducing himself to speaking to Yoof Radio.

Now, of course, Downer has plenty of time for Hack. It's one of the few media outlets that reaches a huge audience in Australia that is still interested in what he has to say.

The Sydney Morning Herald on the no-really? shocking revelation that The Woman Who Fell In Love With A Stranger's Jacket is actually a, very successful, exercise in viral marketing :



You've Been Had? No, I think you'll find it was the Sydney Morning Herald, and every single mainstream news echo chamber in Australia that has been had. Not me, not you, but all of them. They ran the ridiculous story as a factual event, even though most of the journalists who covered it suspected from the start that it was all as dodgy as.

Rupert Murdoch's Mum Goes Where Her Son's Newspapers Fear To Tred

Dame Elizabeth Murdoch says what The Australian newspaper's most glorified columnists still refuse to fully acknowledge, in print :

"I could never quite forgive (John) Howard for insisting on going on and destroying the party and himself"

No doubt during one of her weekly hour or so long calls with her son, Liz expressed her dislike of Howard, probably around the time the Daily Telegraph and other Murdoch papers began an Obama-media like campaign hailing Kevin Rudd as the new leader of Australia.

Liz also reveals that delicate Rupert can't stand the lack of central heating in her old house.

"They get soft," she says in reference to her aubergine-haired son.

Complaining about his mum's places not having central heating isn't the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a climate change alarmist like Rupert.

This interesting Murdoch-related note, considering the past three weeks of Israel's civilian slaughter in Gaza, taken from the new Murdoch worshipping biography, The Man Who Owns The News (already being given away with Crikey subscriptions) :

When father Murdoch attacks the Palestinians, (his son) James says he’s “Talking fucking nonsense. … They were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live.”

September 2007 : Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy To Get Kevin Rudd Elected

The Most Influential Australian Of All Time Is....An American

Murdoch's Billion Dollar Bungle In China

Murdoch Admits Using His Worldwide Media Empire To Shape Opinion On The Iraq War

How Murdoch Influences Politicians : Do What I Tell You Or My Newspapers Will Bury You

The Last Day

"I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I've tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max...

- US President George W. Bush, April 24, 2006

A few more all but forgotten Bushisms here. I'm not sure Bushisms will be funny, at all, in a decade's time. They will probably just seem...sad. Reminders of too many wasted years, wasted lives, wasted opportunities in the life of America.

Obama will not be the Messiah that unrepentent Bush-lovers hope that Americans are praying for (so Bush lovers can point and hoot if Obama fails to be anything less than monumental), but put it this way : Obama will have to work miracles to be any fucking worse for America, and the world, than Bush was.

Here's my sign-off from The Last Days Of President George W. Bush blog.