Raging Against The Firey Accused Of Killer Arson Challenges Online Freedom Of Speech



By Darryl Mason

When volunteer firefighter Brendan Sokaluk was named by Channel 7 news on the weekend as the person arrested as the key suspect in the arson that started the Churchill fires, which killed as many as 21 people in Victoria, an elderly woman was asked for her opinion as she exited a Churchill supermarket. Without hesitation, the old woman said she wanted to cover him in petrol and set him on fire.

Burning the currently unconvicted man to death for what he may have done is the most popular choice for revenge murder amongst thousands of Australians commenting online at blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.

There hasn't been such a popular public demand for instant death of an accused murderer since the gruesome pack rape and slaughter of Anita Cobby in 1986, when Blacktown locals surrounded the city police station, where the suspects were being held, and waved nooses and screamed for bloody and savage revenge, calls for revenge that were echoed across the country.

Facebook, in particular, has been inundated with thousands joining 'Kill That Sick Fuck Now'-type groups, filled with comments proposing creatively gruesome ways to torture the accused to death :

President of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, says the creators of the Facebook groups, some of which have over 2,000 members, could face charges for being in contempt of court and could put a stop to the accused actually going to trial.

"As far as stopping comments about torture and killing and so on, that's a bit more difficult, I think however Facebook has got to bring their good judgement to bear.

"While people have a right to express an opinion about the person who has been charged, it's got to be kept in mind that this person has to have a fair trial.

"If this person who has been arrested for arson is to face trial before a jury, it makes it very difficult to get a jury pool who is not tainted by the results of these Facebook entries."

Mr O'Gorman says just as media outlets can face prosecution for breaching court orders, so too can individuals.

"The law of suppression, when laid down by a court, applies just as much to individuals who use Facebook as it does to major media outlets," he said.

"I think it's high time that those people who are making these entries on Facebook realise that they are not operating in a legal vacuum."

Membership for the online groups continues to grow, as does the anger (hopefully being) vented in the comments on the Facebook groups :

"let the people get him I say".

"Ya know, I would go to jail myself if I could get my hands on this creep, let me hurt him, burn him, put a bullet and knife in every orrifice of his body," wrote one poster.

"tie the bastard to a post and put a ring of fire around him....let the fire make its way to him and make him suffer like the other 100's of people had to indure...."

"yes thank christ his address was given out, just in case the police din't catch him in time, i had a small chance to go and smash the cunt's knee caps in with a metal pipe..."

"what a fucken sicko yeah?"

"You dirty piece os scumbag shit. how the fuck can you do what you did. your lucky i dont get my hands on you cause i light you on fire then put you out and continue to do it untill you slowly burn to death you low life piece of shit. remember what goes around comes around your fucked..."

"...you fuckn worthless piece of shit… ur a fuckn disgrace to human kind… to any living thing!!!! if i was the magistrate dealing wid ur case i would be giving ur the harshest punishment ever recalled… it wouldnt be putting u in prison it would be putin u in a tidy cell… n one day at a time cut ur limbs the burn them up the put lemon or salt on them n rub it… il make u fuckn suffer like our family and friends did!! u DIRTY, PERVERT FUCKD UP HUMAN BEING……rot in hell u bastard

It shouldn't really come as any surprise that some of those making these kinds of comments are friends or relatives of people who burned to death in the fires Brendan Sokaluk is now accused of lighting.

Obviously there are now serious concerns about whether such an outpouring of public fury and calls for violent revenge will jeopardise the chances of Brendan Sokaluk receiving a fair trial.

While radio commentators, and newspaper opinionists, can't publicly call for the accused to have his fingers cut off, sewn back on and then cut off again (as one Facebook commenter demanded), right now the laws that could stop Facebookers making such threats are mostly untested in the courts and may prove to be extremely difficult to prosecute :

"It's the problem with the internet and particularly internet sites such as Facebook and other chat arrangements, the law really hasn't kept up with internet developments..."

"It's quite clear the major newspaper or radio station can't make those comments.

"Equally people on Facebook can't make them, but the law really hasn't caught up to internet technology to ensure that sort of prohibition can be properly policed."

Here's Mathew Rimmer, lecturer in law at the ANU, on why Facebook should not be seen as any different to any other media organisation :

"Much like a newspaper, Facebook needs to be careful what it publishes because it's not just the author who is liable. Sometimes the publisher is liable ," he said.

Dr Rimmer said Facebook users needed to think carefully before posting. Individuals who posted comments that breach confidentiality, privacy or defamation laws, or any relevant court orders, could be held liable.

This could be all the fuel some need to push for all comments to blogs or social networking sites to be regulated, moderated, with any kind of anonymity wiped away forever.

More on all this here

VEX News broke the Online Vigilantes At Facebook story early on Sunday, February 15.




A reader-submitted image from ABC Online shows a view of the Churchill fires Brendan Sokaluk is accused of lighting




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Quick Draw McIdiot In Spectacular Self-Goosing

The Professional Idiot's team of content providers delivers some more pure Gold :

Me, a Bolt who hates anyone with “a name like Hussein”? Not so, believe me.

The Profesional Idiot, or one of his team, meant to link to this story on sprinter Hussein Bolt to counter claims of Barack Obama related anti-Husseinery, but instead (before a hasty correction) readers were directed for a second time to this post by Irfan Yusuf that reasonably asked if anyone actually reads through the mind vomit of many Andrew Bolt commenters, before publication, and highlighted some of the more insane comments by the most dense of The Professional Idiot's long conga line of absolute fucking morons.

Some of those comments :

"It’s a bit hard to be friends with an invisible enemey. The religion/ideology that is Islam has been at odds with the civilised world for more than a thousand years. It continues today either in the form of wars being faught in Africa and the Middle East or your local town, suburb or capital city where a more subtle form of ideological control is taking place. Gradually they will either kill us or out number us via massive birth rates. It is happening and people are letting it happen."

"Islam is a threat to non Islamic people everywhere ... Given any chance, Muslims will oppress peoples the world over if they resist conversion to Islam....Denying this is like denying the Holocaust, but I guess you think that was propaganda too?"

"We have to consider these things from Obama’s perspective, which is very different from ours. He is the first Arab President, the US has had."

I'm not sure what The Profesional Idiot's intention was here, unless he intended to point out to his own readers how thick-as some of the fellow brethren are, but when you're relying on 'one million hits a month' to make up for the "across the board" cutbacks from the boss that are now taking effect on the mega-paid opinionastra, like himself, you've got to find something Muslimy every day to keep the last dregs of vehemently paranoid Howard-era conservatives coming back for more.

The Myths Of Marysville : They Died In Church, On Their Knees, In Prayer

By Darryl Mason

The London Times doesn't care whether the following story is true or not, it just makes for a dramatic headline :

Estimates vary but up to 80 residents who had taken shelter at the Cumberland hotel, Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church and the Anglican Parish Christ Church lay dead. Some were said to have died on their knees, in prayer.

On Sunday and Monday, after the destruction, stories flew around amongst survivors from Marysville that dozens perished in the local churches, where they'd tried to find shelter from the inferno, but these tales were quickly dismissed. Some people had tried to shelter in at least one of these churches, but were evacuated before the flames ashed it.

I can't find even one news story from the Australian media that still claims people died in those churches, and the claim that people died on their knees in prayer appears to be a complete fabrication.

Why make up stories, or spread myths, when the truth of what happened in Marysville is far more dramatic, and terrible?

UPDATE : I submitted a comment to the London Times story, using the feedback box on the same page, at 2am, Sydney Time, pointing out the claim of many deaths in Marysville's two churches was a rumour dismissed a week ago by locals and officials. Six hours later, the story remains uncorrected, and the headlines remains : 'They Died On Their Knees In Prayer.'

Man Up, Fire Crybabies

Compassionate international YouTube commenters share some love with Australians devastated by the Victorian fires :

"Fucking Australians all think they're the hottest motherfuckers on the planet. Now you're literally hot! BURN FAGGOT CAVEMAN PEOPLE, BURN!"

"Seriously, who cares? Thanks for AC/DC, Mad Max, and INXS - but WTF has Australia been up to lately? You're like a cousin that had so much potential when he was younger, but now sniffs glue in a camaro out in the school parking lot listening to speed metal."

"...fuck you. Thousands of people die every day, thousands of babies are born every day. Its life. Build a bridge and grow a dick. Stupid Australians. They all think they're Crocodile Dundee."

But you don't have to go to YouTube to find hatred of bushfire victims. There's always religion.

Here's whatever the hell 'Al Qaeda' is supposed to be these days :

Senior analyst at SITE Intelligence Group Adam Raisman said they were posting pictures of burnt homes and devastated victims and "taking joy in the scenes".

One jihadist wrote: "It would be an act of revenge for Australian's participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Pretty calm stuff. For the really extreme hatred, you have to turn to American Baptists :

GOD HATES AUSTRALIA.
THANK GOD FOR KILLER FIRES & FLOODS, 100+ DEAD; PRAY FOR MANY MORE...
Yes. It is WBC's sincerely held religious belief that Australia is a land of False Prophets, many of whom are fags or fag-enablers.

Grods has more

And Irfan Yusuf takes a closer look at the claims made by SITE and the Herald Sun, and warns of the threats posed by jihadic koalas.

The (Perhaps) Perfect Crime

Was this rip-off inspired by some crime flick I haven't seen? There doesn't seem to be any news stories archived online where this caper has been pulled before, at least not in the past few years. It's stunningly simple, scarily so.

A car dealership in Liverpool, New South Wales, Saturday morning, before opening time. Thirteen men walk in, confront the three employees, assault them and each man climbs into an unregistered car and drives away. The thirteen cars are believed to be worth as much as half a million :

The thieves' haul included one white and two blue VW Golfs, a black Mitsubishi Lancer, a grey Holden Barina, a white Mitsubishi Triton, a black VW Passat, a black Subaru Impreza, a white Mazda 3 and one black and one green Holden Commodore.

You'd imagine the copycat potential for this, anywhere in the world, is extremely high. Though, rounding up thirteen people to pull a job like that points to very well organised criminals, lots of rehearsal (no crashes as they try to get the cars out of the dealership as quickly as possible) with a way of getting the stolen cars off the street, or out of the country, very quickly.

More Than 10,000 Australians Have Lost Their Homes To Natural Disasters In Two Weeks

Amongst the horror and human carnage of the Victorian fires, the devastation wrought upon thousands in North Queensland has slipped into the background for many, understandably so. But floods and heavy rains that have reached more than two-thirds of Queensland in the past few weeks, more than one million square kilometres, have devastated cane and banana plantations, cut off entire towns, wiped away bridges and major roads and left, according to this story, thousands of people homeless. Combined with the 7000 thousand now homeless from the fires in Victoria, more than 10,000 Australians are urgently looking for somewhere else to live. Just mind-boggling :

In Ingham residents are beginning the clean-up. But the situation remains dire in Queensland's gulf country, which is experiencing the highest river peaks in 35 years.

In Karumba, a remote fishing town in the state's north-west, residents have been asked to cut back on showers because the town had as little as three days' drinking water left after a water pipeline to nearby Normanton burst. Some towns in the area have been without fresh food since early last month.

Many in the gulf expect to be flood-bound for at least another month.

The floods have devastated the state's sugar industry, which was already struggling due to years of poor growing conditions, high costs and low returns. The water has also damaged banana plantations, which were recovering from Cyclone Larry in 2006.

Yesterday heavy rain between Townsville and Mackay continued. Charters Towers, inland from Townsville, and Longreach, central Queensland were still on flood alert.

Hungry Australia

The below figures from FoodBank are stunning. And remember, this is the state of poverty and hunger in Australia today, before a few hundred thousand people lose their jobs in the next two years :

* The aged, 'singles' and the 'working poor' have become the new battlers in Australia
* 13% of Australian adults and 15% of children live in poverty, and the numbers are growing.
* 2.4 million Australians don't have enough money to take care of basic needs such as housing, clothing and food.
* 15% of Australian children live in jobless households and this figure has increased by 30% in the last 20 years.
* In Australia over a million children don't get enough to eat.
* Two million Australians rely on food relief every year and half of them are children.
* These one million children often go to school without breakfast, or to bed without dinner.

FoodBank

If you're not growing some of your own food - in your backyard, in your frontyard, on your balcony, on your window sills - you are not being responsible for yourself, or your family.

The losses of fruit and vegetable crops in the Victorian fires and North Queensland floods this past week are expected to be monumental.

'Citizen Journalist' Photos, Videos, Eyewitness Reports, Dominate Media Coverage Of The Victorian Fires 2009 (Part One)



The Victorian BushFires 2009 (Part One) was the first Australian major news event where the public supplied nearly all of the most spectacular images and video and breaking news. The video and story of Sam The Koala's rescue being the most obvious, world famous example.

The professional news media were kept out of the most fire-savaged towns until it was all over. The images that so shocked and stunned and saddened us have mostly been taken by members of the public, and the quality of many photos and video has been excellent.

It's going to be grim seeing a pack of professional journalists picking up Walkely Awards for the Victorian BushFires 2009 (Part One), if all the 'citizen journalists' who supplied so much of the content get little or no recognition.

From a spectacular Readers Pics photo gallery in The Age :


Photo by Mulheiren Family



Photo By Hannah Phillips


Photo by Tina McCarthy



Photo by Steve Jameison

Let's hope all the major newspapers and TV news shows that have enjoyed huge audiences, and increased ad revenue, are digging deep for the Bushfire Relief charities, as few if any of the networks or daily newspapers paid for their readers pics and videos.

More Coverage Of The Victorian Bushfires From The Orstrahyun Here

Songs About "Fire" And "Burning" Banned Cut Australian Radio Playlists

Religious Extremist : "Baby Cull" Makes Angry God Burn Children To Death

Why Are We Supposed To Be Surprised That Australians Want To Help Each Other?

Mother Nature : Terrorist/Mass Murderer

Songs About "Fire" And "Burning" Banned From Australian Radio

Something very similar happened in the United States after September 11, 2001 - Australian radio stations are purging their playlists of any songs that might remind listeners of last weekend's holocaust in Victoria.

Gone from radio playlists, already, are the following songs :

Talking Heads - Burning Down The House

Bruce Springsteen - (I'm On) Fire

Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning

INXS - Burn For You

Jessica Mauboy - Burn

U2 - Fire


While radio stations are engaged in such rampant fucking stupidity, here's a few they might have missed :

The Doors - Light My Fire

Various - Great Balls Of Fire

Madonna - Burning Up

INXS - Girl On Fire

AC/DC - This House Is On Fire

Olivia Newton-John - Walk Through The Fire

Ben Harper - Burn One Down

Various - Burn Baby Burn (Disco Inferno)

Bob Marley - Burnin' & Lootin'

Cold Chisel - Baby's On Fire

Silverchair - Ana's Song (Open Fire)

Icehouse - Touch The Fire

John Farnham - Burn For You

Bryan Adams - Hearts On Fire

Hunters & Collectors - Everything's On Fire

Peter Gabriel - Walk Through The Fire

Elvis Presley - Burning Love

John Mellencamp - Paper In Fire

John Farnham - Hearts On Fire

Usher - Burn

Jesus & Mary Chain - Catch Fire

Metallica - Jump In The Fire

Nickleback - Burn It To The Ground

Bloodhound Gang - Burn Baby Burn

Johnny Cash - Ring Of Fire

It's fascinating to note just how many great, timeless songs could make the 'You Can't Play That Now!' ban list.

If ridiculously over-sensitive radio stations decide to include all songs that include the words "fire" or "burn" in their lyrics, instead of just the choruses or song titles, they won't have much left to play at all.

Do you know how many U2 and Midnight Oil songs, for example, use words like "fire" and "burn" in their lyrics? I can't be arsed to check, but from the most vague of memory recalls, I know it's a hell of a lot.

If Australia was hit by a tsunami, would we ban all Beach Boys songs?

Definitely one of the most ridiculous fall-outs of the Victoria Fires 2009 (Part One) I've found so far. No doubt, it won't be the last.

Back To The Shed, Ponting

A 10 year old survivor of the Victorian bushfires is basking in a moment of glory, after he took on Ricky Ponting in an improvised cricket game at a relief centre and clean bowled him :

To the crowd's delight, and with a wry smile, Ponting headed for the sheds as the youngster, Koby, took over batting duties.

"I was actually trying today," the Aussie skipper said with a grin.

The kid should be proud. But then again, it was Ricky Ponting at bat. Great story, and probably the most worthwhile thing the Australian cricket team will do this year. I don't know if they knew they were going to have to improvise as counsellers to totally shattered people, and a lot of very upset kids, but they did a magnificent job.

More Here

Video Of Ponting Getting Done Over By A 10 Ten Year Old Is Here

"C'mere, Mate, You Alright, Buddy?"



Correction : apparently the above photo is by John Vickery and the below clip was vidded by CFA volunteer Braydon Groen





Sam The Koala, from the above clip is now recovering from mild to serious burns

10,000 Native Animals Dead, Injured In Fires

Sam became the most famous koala in the world when firefighter David Tree stopped to give him a drink amid the devastation of the Victoria fires.

The image provided a much-needed picture of hope in a week filled with news of despair. Yesterday Sam was recovering in Mountain Ash Wildlife Shelter.

Carer Jenny Shaw said she suffered burns on her paws and was in a lot of pain, but was on the road to recovery.

She was put on an IV drip and is on antibiotics and pain relief treatment.

"She is lovely - very docile - and she has already got an admirer. A male koala keeps putting his arms around her," Ms Shaw said.

"She will need regular attention and it will be a long road to recovery, but she should be able to be released back into the wild in about five months."

Mr Tree said he was surprised by the reaction to the photograph, which was snapped by a fellow CFA volunteer on a mobile phone.

He said he was in the middle of backburning at Mirboo North when he saw the stricken koala.

"I could see she had sore feet and was in trouble, so I pulled over the fire truck. She just plonked herself down, as if to say 'I'm beat'," he said.

"I offered her a drink and she drank three bottles.

"The most amazing part was when she grabbed my hand. I will never forget that."

UPDATE : While the human toll of the Victorian bushfires is now likely to reach 300, with more than 80 remaining missing today, the animal toll has also been revised up. Way, way up :

More than a million native animals may have perished in Victoria's fire inferno, a wildlife expert says.

Ms Chappell is among those working to rescue the animals and says the extent of the devastation may never be known.

"It (the animal death toll) will be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions," Ms Chappell said.

"We are not just talking the animals we are familiar with, there are gliders and all sorts of possums, antechinus (a mouse-like marsupial), bandicoots, birds - there is so much wildlife."

It is feared endangered populations of gliders, owls and lizards may be among the dead.

For those that have survived, the recovery process will be long and slow.

"They have lost their homes too and they are not going to be rebuilt in a year or two years, it is a much longer-term picture," Ms Chappell said.

"You can't reconstruct a forest."

UPDATE : Sam The Koala is reunited with her rescuer, fire fighter David Tree :

"Who knows if she recognised me or not but I would like to think so," Mr Tree said.

"I got a bit choked up because it has been such an emotional week. It was just good to see her doing well.

"This has been a really tough week for everyone so it is good to have one happy ending.

"She was pretty friendly, she gave me a bit of a sniff and we touched noses."

Of course the koala remembered her rescuer. Look at her face, total eye contact.

UPDATE : Sam The Koala is recovering well, and has made a special new friend, Bob :

Colleen Wood from the Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter that is caring for Sam and Bob said both koalas were doing well while other animals like possums, kangaroos, and wallabies were also starting to emerge from the debris.

She said Sam had suffered second degree burns to her paws and would take seven to eight months to recover while Bob had three burned paws with third degree burns and should be well enough to return to the bush in about four months.

"They keep putting their arms around each other and giving each other hugs. They really have made friends and it is quite beautiful to see after all this. It's been horrific," said Wood.

"Sam is probably aged between two to four going by her teeth and Bob is about four so they have a muchness with each other."

Beautiful.



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"Baby Cull" Makes God Burn Children To Death

The Next Prime Minister Of Australia (after Julia Gillard and Brendan Nelson), Peter Costello, has a friend in Jesus. And that friend is named Danny Nalliah of Catch The Fire ministry, for whom Costello delivered these Sunday School level theological musings.

So does Peter Costello agree with Pastor Danny Nalliah that :

....these bushfires have come as a result of the incendiary abortion laws which decimate life in the womb.

He's talking about legalised abortion, or as the ABC's Andrew Bolt calls it "the baby cull."

Here's crazy Pastor Danny, back in November 2008, doing what End Timers do best, spouting off about their dreams of death and destruction :

“I saw a man firing randomly with a weapon at people on the streets and many were falling dead. I was very disturbed and was crying. Then the scene changed and I saw fire everywhere with flames burning very high and uncontrollably. With this I awoke from my dream with the interpretation as the following words came to me in a flash from the Spirit of God, ‘My wrath is about to be released upon Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of the innocent children in the womb. Now, call on My people to repent and pray!’”

What sort of fucked up diety burns so many children to death because the state they live in has legalised abortion?

Victorian fire chiefs issued their own warning of apocalyptic fires for country Victoria on November 2, 2008. Surprisingly, using science and experience, they were far more accurate on the scope and scale of the holocaust to come :



If you click on the above you can see they picked Marysville and Kinglake as ground zero for the destruction they accurately forecasted. Here's the story :

Horror Fire Warning : Water Supplies, Urban Fringe At Risk

Melbourne's urban areas and precious water supplies have been identified as major fire danger zones ahead of an impending horror bushfire season.

Fire chiefs have warned of an extreme season expected to come earlier and last longer following a record dry start to spring and forecasts of a hot summer.

Melbourne's urban fringe has been identified as a particular risk zone, with the Mornington Peninsula, the Dandenongs and the Alexandra and Macedon regions told they should be on high alert.

Far East Gippsland and communities north of Horsham and around Bendigo have also been warned they are at risk of severe bushfires, fuelled by the absence of spring rainfall.

Department of Sustainability and Environment chief fire officer Ewan Waller said the threat was genuine.

"Those areas are rapidly drying out and becoming susceptible to bushfires," he said.

Melbourne experienced its driest September and October on record this year, Victorian Bureau of Meteorology figures reveal.

Statewide, Victoria had its third driest start to spring of all time.

Dave From Albury spotted Catch The Fire's sickening exercise in tragedy porn, and nailed it.

UPDATE : Peter Costello is all so very vague when he gets around to commenting on what his Friend In A Vengeful God Full Of Wraith has to say on the link between abortions and bush
fires :

"To link the death and suffering of bushfire victims to other political events is appalling, heartless and wrong,'' said Mr Costello, who has lost a Christian friend in the fires.

"Those who have suffered deserve ever support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or politcal points out of such a tragedy.''

Fine, but does Costello also believe God burned children to death because Victoria legalised abortion?

Mother Nature : Terrorist Or Mass Murderer?

By Darryl Mason

Whose fault is it that so many died in the Victorian bushfires?

Is the Vic government blaming arsonists because they failed to manage the land and bush?

Is it the fault of Greenies, who opposed the burning of scrub and forests to protect the habitats of our cutest little critters, with a Fuck The Humans attitude that has now cost hundreds of lives?

Were regular burn-offs in and around The Valley Of Death actually dissuaded by local councils and tourist businesses because tourists panic when they see a beautiful little village wreathed with burn off smoke and flee back to the city?

Were 'tree changers' dangerously ignorant about the dangers of living amongst so many highly combustible trees?

Should we just accept that apocalyptic fires have swept back and forth across this land for hundreds of millions of years and sometimes humans get in the way and that's just the way it is?

There's a rising anger and bitterness slowly surfacing all over the media, in letters and comments and talkback about Who We Should Blame. Greenies? Global Warming/Climate Change? Those opposed to GW/CC policies? God? Arsonists? Power lines too close to trees? Outdated evacuation plans and policies? So many choices, it's hard to pick just one.

The liveliest, most outraged comments are coming from the public right now, while few professional opinionists are yet go where this ABC News commenter has. It's bitter, but for some it is bitterly accurate :

Give me a home among the gum-trees
With lots of cinders + exploding gum-trees...
A Greenie or two, a charred kangaroo.....
And a burnt rocking chair... the place that I abhore...
a little bush retreat... where the CFA never call.....

And the National Debate, or National Brawl, will get a whole lot more nasty than that, long before any Royal Commission reports begin to surface.

Maybe it's all part of how we deal with this ongoing, emotionally shattering, horrorshow. Maybe we need all the righteous fury, disgust and Blame Them! opportunism to get through this.


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Haven't They Suffered Enough?

It's a tragedy that never ends.

Eddie McGuire To Host Bushfire Appeal Telethon

It could have been worse. Daryl Somers is itching to return to Channel Nine.

------------------------------

By Darryl Mason

Okay, yes, that was a bit cruel. But if so many of the survivors of the Victorian holocaust are able to shrug their shoulders, smile and even have a laugh about losing everything, then we can ease up on the griefosity a bit, as well.

The Channel Nine Telethon will, hopefully, raise many millions to help the 4000+ homeless people of country Victoria. They're going to need it. They didn't just lose families, friends and their homes, many also lost their jobs in local farming and tourist-related businesses that were also wiped out. And probably gone forever.

The logistics and costs of finding accommodation for all these homeless people is monumental. Where will they all go? Where will they now find jobs and income and community? The scale of death and destruction, probably 200 people gone and more than 1000 houses, farms and local businesses destroyed, is staggering, but the work to come to help and house all the survivors and get them back into somewhat normal lives is of a task load rarely seen in Australia, at least since Cyclone Tracy.

And the good news out of all of this tragedy? That Australians will go out of their way to help fellow Australians, and show incredible generosity and national community when they're in trouble.....But is this really news?

It's great to see it, but the very same media that continually tells us, preaches to us, on how divided we are from each other, and so very often roars and wails about the 'great chasms' that separate us in our society - teenager vs adult, country vs city, immigrant vs born here, rich vs poor, privileged vs unlucky, Sydney vs Melbourne - now reveals that, what a surprise, most Australians are good people and really do care what happens to all the others, like them, who also share this magnificent, and sometimes extremely cruel, island.

Australia's are reportedly donating $1 million an hour to charities to help the Black Sunday survivors, and the people of Melbourne are now being asked to stop donating food and clothes and tents, as there is no room left in the emergency centres to store the kindness of so many.

Apparently, what survivors really need today is mobile phone chargers. So they can get their one means of communication happening again (since you can't find public telephones fucking anywhere anymore), so they can contact those who don't know if they're alive, so they can get back in touch again with those who love them and worry about them the most.

There's so much news, so many stories, from all this horror, it's easy to get numb and to tune out when you hear the 100th tale of 'How I Survived'. But some stories can still make you choke and shudder a few tears. This is just....so fucking Australian :

The flood-affected residents of Ingham in north Queensland are putting their own problems aside the help the victims of the Victorian bushfires.

The clean-up and recovery in Ingham began this morning after one of the worst floods in the region's history.

About 200 residents lined up at the community recovery centre this morning to receive financial assistance from the Queensland Government to replace items lost in the floods.

Many of them have lost everything but say their plight is insignificant compared to the loss of life and damage caused by the Victorian bushfires.

Communities Department spokesman Peter McCarthy says many of them are giving their grants to help bushfire victims.

'I'm going to give this money straight to the Victorian fire appeal so you may as well write this cheque out to them, not to me'.

So how long will the Attention Of The Nation remain focused on the holocaust in country Victoria? West Australian online newspaper readers appear to have overcome at least some of their National Grief, just enough, to worry instead about Miranda Kerr, and sky stuff :

Photo by Andrew Caird, from this extensive gallery of images



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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