It's, mostly, still good advice today, even if it comes from the pages of the London Times, in October, 1918, as the Spanish Flu pandemic unfolded across the world :




200,000 Brits were killed by H1N1 influenza in the nine months after that editorial was published.

The Chaser On Location

Circular Quay, July 16











(click any of the above for a larger image)

Photos By Darryl Mason

Some Smirking Nine Year Old : "Your Paper Plane Looks Shitty"

By Darryl Mason

The Defence Force, now recruiting in Martin Place, with mega-chunky sound system pumping The Angels and Chisel and promising video games, or 'defence simulations', after "a short chat".



A 30-something businessman (not in this photo) strode up to one of the soldiers and said something like, "I just lost my fucking job. How soon can I go to a warzone?" The soldier said, "I don't think that's the right question to start with, sir."



There were paper plane competitions for the kids, with prizes, to test their basic engineering skills.



The distance achieved by my somewhat radical paper unmanned Predator design was beaten by a smug little three year old with an extremely basic Concord-like configuration. Well, anybody can make those. I thought we were supposed to be pushing our limits. That kid probably had help, too.

When Australia Sold Datura Cigars Were Sold As A Remedy For Bronchitis, Hay Fever and Asthma

 

  The Ipswitch Journal, May 8, 1886 :

One of these cigarettes gives immediate relief in the worst attack of Asthma, Cough, Bronchitis, Hay Fever and Shortness of Breath. Persons who suffer at night with coughing, phlegm and short breath, find them invaluable as they instantly check the spasms, promote sleep and allow the patient to pass a good night. Are perfectly harmless, and may be smoked by ladies, children, and most delicate patients. In Boxes of 35.

That's quite a sales pitch. They were popular, for those who could afford them.

So what was the active ingredient? While 'Joy' cigars and cigarettes often contained cannabis, the prime ingredient for those advertised here was Datura stramonium and its accomplice, Datura tatula.

Datura can be a powerful hallucinogenic, but fatal in overdose, which is why you don't hear much about it these days. The stories, probably myths, of 1980s parties where the drug was cooked up and everybody in the room overdosed, became baked into Australian drug culture. "Don't touch that shit!" was a common refrain when the drug was mentioned. 

But after looking at those claims of what could be 'cured' with datura, I wonder if these Cigarese De Joy, which were legally available for sale in Australia during the 1880s and 1890s, would help us cope with modern day influenza or COVID19 infections? 

The cigars may not have lived up to all their claims, and could've been dangerous, but they obviously worked to some degree, being in production for more than 20 years and popular. There was something in there that gave some kind of relief to those who read the claims and then used the product. 

Blog Breaks News Through Conspiratorial Speculation

Outside of repeated warnings about the monkey revolt where all the monkey and apes and baboons escape from all the zoos and join up with dissident military robots and then all the monkeys and apes and robots start a war against humanity (the earliest stages of this war, where monkey meets robot, have already begun), it's not often I get the actual headline news right a few weeks ahead of the rest of the media. But It seemed pretty obvious from the day after Michael Jackson's instantly suspicious death that a homicide investigation would eventually begin :

Did Michael Jackson Put Up A Fight When It Came Time For Him To Take His Drugs?

"Anyone Here From Wagga Wagga?"

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the Jerry Seinfeld ad for Newcastle's Greater Building Society :



How did a small financial institution in Newie manage to get Jerry Seinfeld to star in their ad?

They simply called and asked his manager and Seinfeld liked the concept. The reaction in some of the international media to Seinfeld doing this ad, which obviously didn't earn him a pile of money, is mostly one of 'downright mystified', which is probably exactly why Seinfeld did the ad in the first place.

Sometimes you just have to ask and the seemingly impossible can come true.

I really like that they got Seinfeld to set up his own gear, before the street performance. It must have reminded him of his early days in stand-up comedy, another reason why he probably decided to do it.

Mumbrella has a great slab of other very creative, downright clever, recent Australian ads for bursts of 60 second enjoyment.

UPDATE : Jerry Seinfeld explains to the Newcastle Herald why he did the ad :

...the star whose agent reputedly knocks back 50 commercial overtures a week, hinted it was more about "feel" than fiscal reward.

"We don't think about money too much these days," he said. "I like to do things because they feel right."

Yesterday, he suggested Australia's affection for the show might have predisposed him to the cheeky approach from a financial institution he never knew existed.

"I was down there in '98 right after the show went off the air and the response from the people I met on the street, in the restaurants, everywhere was so special I felt kinda close to them."

The ad wasn't filmed in Newcastle. It was shot in Cedarhurst, New York. Had me fooled.

I wonder how many people in Newcastle didn't notice it wasn't local?

Father Bob's response, on Twitter, to this story.



No problem, Father Bob.

Old Media Already Suing Bloggers For Linking

By Darryl Mason

If a Daily Telegraph blogger allowed the following violence soaked comment to remain on his personal blog site for a couple of years, all of it posted under your name, even when that blogger knows you didn't write it, and even when asked nicely that blogger refuses to remove it or post an apology, what would you do?

Would you try to take legal action to get compensation for any "immeasurable hurt" that might be caused by this filth remaining online under your name?

Killing Howard is laudable. Killing his cabinet got to be OK too. Killing members of the Liberal party - that has to be a plus, surely. And what about the Nationals? We’ll kill them too. They helped keep Howard in power. And Family First, slit their throats. And what about other Christians, they are conservative and probably voted Liberal. Best kill all them along with small businessmen. There is a real hotbed of Liberal sentiment among these fascist businessmen. Don’t forget the Jews, the money grubbing bastards. They have to be next. Then there are those class traitors, the workers who voted Liberal. Kill them all. Purge the public service of suspected Liberal sympathisers too. That teacher over there. He’s wearing a tie so he must be a conservative. String him up. Hey, that guy’s got an American accent. Slaughter him and his baby too. It’s in their genes, you know. It’s a lot of people to be massacred but it will reduce greehouse gases in the long run.
Darryl Mason

The rest of the story explaining the headline, and the necessary sockpuppetry-related context, is here :

A Long Overdue Update To An Earlier Post About Online Fakery And Cats That Can Type (And Sushi Chefs That Don't Exist)


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"No Worries, Mr Chairman"

A Celebrity Spying Scandal The Australian Murdoch Media Is Pretending Simply Does Not Exist


Cartoon by Steve Bell

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch interrupts one of his own journalists, seconds into an interview, because the journalist dared to ask "The Chairman" a question with actual substance, unlike the rest of the pap that fills the other four or more minutes of Here's What Our Boss Thinks About Obama & Stuff. You only need to watch the first 45 seconds :

Fox Hack : The story that's really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain used --

Rupert Murdoch : I'm not talking about that issue at all today. I'm sorry.

Fox Hack : No worries, Mr. Chairman. That's fine with me.

Rupert Murdoch: I'm sorry.

Fox Hack : OK. That's all right, sir.

Didn't the Fox Business journo get the 'To All Editors' memo warning this subject is off limits? That's right, Rupert doesn't have to send memos, because most Murdoch journalists already know which stories and questions will upset the boss.

If you're a Murdoch journo, the Murdoch Spying Scandal does not exist.

The Murdoch Spying Scandal, where it is alleged that Murdoch tabloid hacks were involved in the spying on of hundreds of people, and paying millions to victims who found out and said 'Fuck You!' and sued, is simply not up for discussion in Murdoch newspapers, the world over, including Australia.

The one exception to the 'This Story Doesn't Exist' rule for Murdoch journalists is to run brief stories that allow Murdoch or a News Int. rep to deny everything, while ignoring the larger story of how corrupt this style has become and its implications for the future of tabloid journalism.

Despite the expected, and wafer-thin, denials from Murdoch executives, the UK Guardian stands by its original story that Murdoch journalists were involved in dodgy intelligence gathering operations, which included surveillance, the hacking of private phone messages and allegedly buying stolen private financial documents of the celebrities Murdoch tabloids were/are obsessed with, and paying off those who found out what Murdoch journalists were doing to them and sued.

What have we heard about all this from the corporate media entity that controls more than 70% of Australia's newspapers? Fuck all.

And even though the bad behaviour of journalists, corporate media skullduggery and all things Guardian newspaper, are content staples of Australian Murdoch bloggers, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, both have found nothing to say at all about it.

They don't need to get a memo, they know they shouldn't write anything that might upset the boss, particularly now he's planning staff cuts across his media empire of at least 30%.

A former Murdoch editor called the Murdoch Spying Scandal "one of the most significant media stories of our time."

Not if you work for Murdoch, it ain't.

As it is when it comes to finally acknowledging that Rupert Murdoch is a committed backer of a global carbon tax, a true believer disciple of Al Gore and a chief propagandist of what they call "global warming hysteria", Blair and Bolt are silent.

What does it cost Rupert Murdoch to buy such comprehensive silence from two of Australia's most well-read bloggers?

Whatever Murdoch's paying these gatekeepers, it's clearly worth it.


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A Natural Master Of Radio And Comic Timing Shows An Amateur How It's Done


Father Bob : If you only see one Catholic Church service in your lifetime, see Father Bob's

The Professional Idiot holds court on John Safran & Father Bob's JJJ show, while Safran and Father Bob struggle to keep it entertaining, or even just a little bit fun.

The Professional Idiot first tries to steer the conversation away from who paid for his recent trip to Israel, where he declared his mate Peter Costello "The Messiah", The Idiot then waffles non-critically about Israel and then expresses surprise that the Palestinian politicians he met were well educated, one was even a pediatrician. Imagine that.

Then this :

The Idiot : "I’ve always tended to be on the side of people who are democratic, who respect, to as much as is consistent with their safety, human rights, and freedom of speech. And by that measure there’s only one party that would make me feel comfortable..…"

Father Bob times his moment of interjection perfectly.

Father Bob : "The Palestinians."

Silence for a few seconds, radio dead air, then you can actually hear The Idiot's jaw clench hard.

The Idiot : "..............you seriously think that or are you just being a fool?"

Father Bob : "No, I’m having a go back."

The Idiot is overwhelmed by such petulance and the standard whining and hilariously prissy outrage kicks in :

The Idiot : "Well, if you say something like that, there’s obviously no room for us to engage because what you’ve said is clearly nonsense....It’s clearly nonsense! Because it is nonsense! So what’s the point in arguing?"

Father Bob : "A conversation? No, this is not the time or the place..."

So much for The Professional Idiot's alleged love of a rousing debate.

You can hear it here. Jump to 41mins 30secs.

If this isn't a piece of surreal, Gary Larson inspired outdoor installation art, it damn well should be. Spotted at the University of Sydney by Kate LeMay :


Photo by Kate LeMay

It Really Does Get In

By Darryl Mason

As I've said here before, the Rudd government has to be very careful when it comes to censoring what Australians can read, see and buy online. No Australian election has yet seen Internet Censorship become a Major Election Issue, and if Rudd & Friends keep pushing this Censor The Net stupidity, they are going to find most Australians online are against them. And when it comes to a federal election, that could be extremely bad news.

GetUp! is planning to run the below ad as part of its fight against online censorship.



The message is clear enough, but a parody ad won't really hit home about what Online Censorship really means, and how a constantly expanding blacklist open to undue influence and corporate vendettas will change our online lives. Yes, many "hate sites" will make the list, but soon enough torrent and peer-to-peer file sharing sites will also get blocked. Well, the blacklist will attempt to block such sites, but there are many ways around even mandatory web filters, which you'll learn a bit more about here when the time is right. Obviously, you can already such info online.

The GetUp! anti-censorship ad is a good start, and the line about Iran and Online Censorship should be the ignition point for whatever ad they make next.

Stephen Conroy's Net Filter Will Block Access To eBay And Amazon

Kevin Rudd Reaches For SuperDag Status

From Twitter :


I do like that he took the nickname used by his critics (KRudd- krudd - crud) and now signs that as his name.

"Mr Jagger, I've Been A Great Fan Of Yours Ever Since You Were With The Beatles"

Three decades before Borat and Bruno, we had Norman Gunston :



And even better. Norman Gunston interviews KISS at an hilarious press conference.

Paul Stanley : "That would work wonderfully, we could bounce laser beams off your head."

Eric Carr : "Have you ever considered a career as a satellite?"

Norman Gunston : "Come on, guys, these people here respect me. Don't make fun of me in front of them."

Brilliant.

One more Norman. How cute. TV channels used to promote the fact they were in colour. Imagine trying to have to convince people to switch to colour TV? I remember some old locals when I was a kid in the mid-1970s saying they preferred black and white and colour TV was a fad, so they would not be "making the switch."



How catchy is that jingle? I don't think I've seen this ad since 1976, but immediately I knew all the words. How deeply those ads you see repeatedly as a kid embed themselves in your memory.

I'm Only Swearing At You Because My Dealer Went On Holiday

By Darryl Mason

Here's a surprise for just about nobody, swearing can make you feel better, particularly if you're in pain :

Swearing can lessen the feeling of physical pain, scientists have discovered.

Volunteers withstood pain for longer when they swore than when they used anodyne words, in a study at Keele University in the English Midlands.

Richard Stephens, who led the study, believes it may explain why most languages contain swear words.

He said: "The volunteers who swore had an elevated heart rate, so it could be increasing their aggression levels.

"Increased aggression has been shown to reduce sensitivity to pain, so it could be that swearing helps this process."

The idea that we developed swear words, hundreds or thousands of generations ago, to cope with the effects of pain is fascinating. Perhaps our very first words spluttered from our lips because hooting and roaring and grunting simply did not encapsulate our true feelings about how it felt to be kicked square in the cags by a mammoth. Then again, perhaps those very first swear words came from women during childbirth, a far more common occurence of extreme pain than getting stomped by hairy tusked elephants.

This commenter at RWDB Beck uses the above story to finally crack open the explanation for why Evil Pagan Lefties are, apparently, so full of bitter, swears-laden vitriol and abuse for the delicate pro-war, pro-occupation nice polite people that used to control Australia back in the days when newsreaders could say "John Howard" and "visionary" in the same sentence, without laughing :

An answer to why we see the abuse we conservatives get from lefties.

It would seem that they are using us to get a narcotic effect from their own bodies.

That's right. Lefties let fly against conservatives only because it gets them high.

Hey, it's cheaper than scoring on the streets. And it's legal.

For now.

Games Within Games

A commenter on this ABC News story about PM Rudd's presumed inaction when it comes to pressuring China to handover Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, who they accuse of espionage, spying, takes a plausible theory on what might have happened out for a run :

It's an interesting game that people are playing

Hu buys a state secret from someone - the secret? that's easy: the Chinese position on where commodity prices are going (ie Up)

Hu passes that secret information to his RIO bosses and consequently RIO does not need to negotiate on lower prices

Then China anounces prices for the next year hooray.

But because of Hu's actions China has been damaged financially.

But consider that there are games within games. Maybe Hu was allowed to buy the state secrets from someone allowed to sell them (either overtly or covertly).

Now we have China sitting in a pretty position - it has secured a hedge against dropping prices. With no financial outlay for doing so.

If prices drop then RIO (who acted on insider information by not acting in the absence of that info) could be sued by the Chinese and Australia would have to step in and back RIO. And of course if anyone ends up out of pocket it will be the Australian tax payer.

It's a brilliant game.

While Stern Hu may be, and hopefully is, innocent, and will be allowed to return to Australia, corporate and industrial spying and espionage runs rampant across the global business world.

Of course it does.

If Rio Tinto has never knowingly engaged in such activities, however many levels removed from the executives so plausible deniability can be maintained, they've been putting themselves at a distinct corporate disadvantage, because most, if not all, of their minor and major international competitors engage in such activitites, to some extent, as simply a way of doing business. An acceptable, if not expected, way of doing business.

One 'Janet' Unit Of Time Measurement = About Four Years

By Darryl Mason

Time moves at a curiously different speed on Planet Janet :

Almost the moment David Hicks was being measured up for his orange Gitmo jump suit, Get Up was up and running a very vocal campaign, castigating the evil Yanks for incarcerating one of our own and demanding that his rights be protected.

Almost the moment....Right.

David Hicks was captured in Afghanistan and sold to the US military and transported to Guantanamo Bay in December, 2001.

GetUp! was founded in August, 2005.

Janet Albrechtsen isn't even trying anymore.

How much does News Limited CEO John Hartigan expect us to pay read her trundling Talking Points For Desperate Howard-Era Liberals online next year?

Janet's so desperate for anything of substance she even resorts to quoting The Greens' Bob Brown, however reluctantly, with approval. W0w.

Tony Abbott is seriously being discussed as the next leader of the Liberal Party and Janet Albrechtsen thinks Bob Brown is right. These are politically hallucinogenic days.

The short version of this week's transmission from Planet Janet is that Evil Pagan Lefties should be out protesting against the Chinese regime, like they do a lot already about Tibet and human rights, but they should have shut the fuck up when it came to the Bush regime, and though she usually thinks protests are useless at effective change they should now all shout "You Bastards!" at the Chinese regime and protest and write letters, because....and this may shock you....the Chinese Communist regime plucks people, including foreign nationals, off the streets and detains them and interrogates them and doesn't give them access to lawyers and fucks around with the detainee's home government diplomats when they try to get access to the prisoners.

By imprisoning Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu for a week, so far, without charge, the Chinese communist regime is acting like, I don't know....a bunch of bloody communists or something.

Or like Americans.

Obviously, we all expect better behaviour from communist regimes. Regardless of how much coal they buy from us.

I'm not quite sure Janet Albrechtsen is aware that she has successfully compared the violation of the human rights of Stern Hu by the Chinese Communist Regime to the violation of the human rights of David Hicks by the United States under the Bush Warparty Regime. But good on her for finally recognising the truth. All these years later.

Just don't expect to see Janet Albrechtsen at the barricades outside the Chinese embassy.

As she so often told us during the Bush War For (Our) God Years, as so many opinionists and editors of the Murdoch Old Media railed so effervescently back then, protests don't work. Protests are pointless, usually misguided, often offensive and utterly meaningless.

Unless the protests are against the actions of a communist regime who doesn't recognise the democratic right to protest, of course, then they can really make a difference.

Something like that.

You try and make sense of it.

Planet Janet Classic : Obama Wins Presidency, This Confirms America Is "A Racist Nation"

Planet Janet Classic : Rudd Wins Election, "Conservatism Has Triumphed!"

Planet Janet Classic : Before She Wrote Her 'Howard Must Go' 2007 Column, She Rang Howard's Office To Tip Him Off

What If You Decide It Tastes Like Shit Halfway Through?

A fantastic series of photos here, of a black-headed python consuming a big fat goanna, near the Cloudbreak mine in the Pilbara.

Can python do it?



Yes python can.



It took five hours for the python to finish its lunch.

The whole series of photos is here.

Real Journalists, Not Bloggers, Break The Big, Important Stories...Particularly Those Big Stories About Other Journalists

Murdoch Spying Scandal Erupts, Thousands Had Phones Hacked, Millions Paid Out To Hush It All Up

By Darryl Mason

I got a bit carried away last weekend bagging out ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's News Limited chairman, John Hartigan, for his attack on bloggers, and independent online news media.

John Hartigan said that bloggers and independent news sites, like Crikey and Mumbrella, can't really compete with the Old Media because they can't afford to pay investigative journalists to break the stories that matter :

Our job is to tell many people what few people know. That takes lots of resources – newsrooms of two and three hundred people. If we can’t afford them, important stories won’t get told.

It might mean that those in power and those with influence can avoid the scrutiny and accountability that keeps them in check.

Hartigan cited the recent UK MP Expenses Scandal as a big story that could only be properly uncovered and investigated by paid journalists working for a professional news operation.

John Hartigan is 100% right. We do need well-paid professional journalists to break the big stories that keep the powerful in check and to hold "those with influence" to account.

After all, look at the amazing, huge, monumental story that the professional investigative journalist Nick Davies, working for the UK Guardian, has uncovered (excerpts) :

What we've uncovered is systematic activity by Rupert Murdoch's journalists....using illegal techniques of one kind or another to uncover information.

One bunch of illegal techniques is to do with using private investigators to do what's called "blagging" - that's conning their way into confidential databases, things like your bank statements, credit card statements, itemised telephone bills, tax records, all that kind of stuff.

That's all illegal and they've been doing it. And the second kind of illegal activity is using private investigators to do what's called "phone hacking", which just means that they can get into other people's mobile telephone networks and hear messages which have been left on the target's mobile phone.

....there was clear evidence of News of the World journalists, including a middle ranking executive, handling the raw material that was coming through from these intercepts.

....my understanding is that that paperwork shows us that the News of the World were hacking the phones of 2,000 or 3,000 public figures of one kind or another.

(the police) didn't pursue charges against the Murdoch journalists. And I don't know the answers to these questions, but it raises the worrying possibility....that the police at New Scotland Yard didn't want to get into a fight with powerful Rupert Murdoch...he's politically very powerful.

.....you begin to get this alarming picture of the newspaper groups drifting beyond the reach of the law because they're just too powerful.

The above quotes from Nick Davies are from an interview by Mark Colvin, of ABC's PM. You can listen to the interview here (full transcript as well). Davies is very excited, because he knows just how big this story is going to become. Already has become.

In a particularly bad piece of news for Rupert Murdoch, the story has already been picked up by the financial media, who are reporting that police are now investigating his journalists in the UK.

While that kind of news grabbing headlines in the financial media might seem bad enough, there are Wall Street brokers right now trying to find out the exact size of the payouts Murdoch's UK tabloids have already been forced to hand over to only a few victims of this corrupt, rotten-to-the-core corporate spying scandal.

The figure for payouts to victims, so far, is a couple of million in total, meaning some received at least a few hundred thousand dollars to shut the fuck up and go away. A few million already paid out to a few victims. But brokers will be touting up what this scandal may ultimately cost Murdoch if all the 2000 to 3000 victims of his journalists' hacking and spying all decide to sue for payouts at least the size of those already awarded in out of court settlements.

What figure are those brokers and stock analysts coming up with? $US800 million? $US1 billion? More?

Below is a screen grab of how Rupert Murdoch's Australian media portal, news.com.au, first ran with the story, yesterday. It'll be interesting to see how Murdoch's Australian journos cover this story as it continues to unfold. This scandal will, and should, shake the Murdoch empire to its core, particularly since Rupert Murdoch himself has denied knowing anything about the millions already paid out to victims of this corrupt, outrageous spying scandal :



Like most of the bloggers so despised by John Hartigan, I sure can't afford to hire private investigators to hack into the phones of thousands of people and supply me with transcripts of their private lives so I can provide all of you with 'Breaking News' and 'Exclusives' of the kind that some Murdoch journalists are able to come up with.

So yeah, Hartigan was right, and I was wrong. Independent bloggers can't compete with the kind of journalists that Murdoch likes to employ, because we sure as fuck don't have the dollars to compile files of the private conversations and personal messages and financial details of thousands of people.

Then again, who would want to compete, or even be compared to, corrupt, intelligence gathering scumbags like that?

The Old Media Eats Itself Alive

NOTE : This story will get a whole lot more interesting, devastatingly so, if it turns out that Rupert Murdoch himself was being fed details of what was uncovered in all that hacking and surveillance by his journalists, considering one of those many thousands being spied upon was then UK deputy prime minister John Prescott.


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Andrew Bolt : God Doesn't Exist

The Professional Idiot :

Man who says sorry to people who don’t exist meets man who prays to god that doesn’t exist, either

Now you know. There is no God, and the Pope is a liar and a fraud.

It's strange, though. The Idiot was only recently prattling on about his belief in 'The Messiah', during a cosy little trip to Israel to attend a meeting along with Peter Costello, Julia Gillard and Christopher Pyne, a meeting he tells us he isn't actually allowed to report on.

Then there's this, from July 1 :

"....a Sistine Chapel makes a worshipper of even a pagan like me."

The Professional Idiot sounds like he's rolling with a bit of cognitive dissonance since his return from the Holy Land.

On Friday I Will Shout "Follow Me Friday" On A City Street And See Who Follows Me

Charles Purcell finds brilliant inspiration in the idea of testing out his online social networking skils in the flesh and blood reality of Sydney's CBD :

As one final Facebook-related gesture, I surprise hug one of my Facebook friends in real life. "You probably looked more uncomfortable than I did," he laughs. The tech editor described the status-updating feature of Twitter as like "standing in George Street and shouting out what you had for lunch". So I stand in Pitt Street Mall during lunch hour.

"I'm going to have Hungry Jack's for lunch today smiley face," I bellow. A few people look on in contempt. The lunchtime crowd walks around me as if there is an invisible bubble of shame around me. I wait an awful 30 seconds, then scream: "I polished my corns last night." (I have no corns.)

People continue to stare at the Twitter-based freak show I have become but none come near or talk to me. "I'm looking forward to Terminator 4," I cry. Despite my sharing of information, I have clearly become a social outcast. "Am I the only one who thinks the Beatles are overrated? Lol," I shout. But I'm not really laughing out loud more like crying on the inside. It's safe to say Twitter updates are the social kiss of death in the real world.

The whole Purcell piece, where he also tries to Facebook-style poke strangers to become their friends, is fantastic. Read it now.

If only he'd vid'd it.

The Chaser must be kicking themselves that they didn't think of doing this first.

Photos By Darryl Mason

Murdoch Media Jumps The Bullshit Shark In Michael Jackson Cash-In Frenzy

By Darryl Mason

News Ltd CEO John Hartigan defines the kind of quality journalism that he believes Australians will soon be paying to read online at Murdoch media sites :

It will have to be well researched, brilliantly written, perceptive and intelligent, professionally edited, accurate and reliable.

Quality will be defined as content that is original, useful, unavailable elsewhere and relevant.

I'm guessing then that in the Pay To Read future of Murdoch news sites that a story like this, from news.com.au yesterday, will be a freebie :



Media Watch takes a closer look at some of the Hartigan-praised Murdoch media "well researched, brilliantly written, perceptive and intelligent, professionally edited, accurate and reliable" stories that flowed across nearly all of Murdoch's Australian news sites, including the Daily Telegraph and the supposedly far more reputable The Australian, in the wake of Michael Jackson's death. All three stories have since been debunked by bloggers and not by the newspapers that originally published them :

Deborah Rowe Said Michael Jackson Children Aren't His
(The Daily Telegraph online, 29th June, 2009)

Jacko's Autopsy Results - Bald and a Skeleton
(The Daily Telegraph online, 29th June, 2009)

Jackson 'Overdosed Regularly'
(The Australian online, 29th June, 2009)

This is what the nanny, Grace Rwaramba, who a Murdoch fire starter falsely claimed regularly pumped Michael Jackson's stomach due to drug overdoses, had to say about the fabricated quotes published alongside her name on numerous Murdoch news sites and in just about every newspaper in the doom-speckled empire :

"The statements attributed to me confirm the worst in human tendencies to sensationalize tragedy and smear reputations for profit."

She'll never get a book deal with Harper Collins with that kind of talk.

But Grace Rwaramba was right, she nailed the truth, acutely. Tragedy was sensationalised and the profits are vast (if brief). As always. As has been the Golden Rule in the Murdoch media for almost 50 years.

For all of John Hartigan's pipe-and-tweeds aroma-soaked talk of the important role that "real journalists" and "quality journalism" plays in democratic society (and I couldn't agree more), making up shit to cash in on tragedy and horror and grief will always remain the essential core of Rupert Murdoch's profit margin.

"Well researched, brilliantly written, perceptive and intelligent, professionally edited, accurate and reliable" news stories....Well, who doesn't want all that in the newspapers we buy? And why does he need to point it out as some kind of aspirational? Shouldn't that already be the standard for all journalism?

The big problem for Hartigan is he knows better than most that it's the sensationalized tragedy and smearing of reputations-type stories that really shifts the newspaper bundles.

Used to shift those bundles, anyway.

Before the old business models of how to run a hugely, consistently profitable news corporation that maintained a semi-visible facade of self-respect, for the most part, turned to dust in the hands of Murdoch executives like John Hartigan.

But Hartigan would rather blame "the bloggers" than his own corporation's debasement of society for all those lost readers, and fast-fading profits.

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"They Had The Courage To Come When No-One Else Did"

Balibo is the new movie from director Robert Connolly (Three Dollars, The Bank) about the "no witnesses" slaughter of Australian journalists in East Timor :

A tense political thriller, BALIBO recreates events surrounding the shooting of five Australian journalists during Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975. BALIBO is told through the eyes of a sixth Australian, Roger East, who is lured to East Timor by Jose Ramos-Horta to investigate the truth behind the death of the five men, who were supposedly "caught in cross-fire" during the invasion.

Can't wait to see it. Balibo hits cinemas in mid-August.

Some recent stories of mine up at Your New Reality :

The Most Incredible Air Disaster Survival Story You Will Ever Read

Osama Bin Laden In America

Shit Monster Lives

Iraq PM Declares Victory Over US Occupation

The Moon : One Day, We May Have To Bomb The Hell Out Of It

If Only We Could Mine And Export 'Having A Go'

PM Kevin Rudd gets a decent, fairly serious profile in the US Time Magazine.

It's often interesting to read how American, UK or European media portray Australia in its feature stories. The perspective, obviously, is greatly different from anyone living here, and what may seem common knowledge to us, or to Australian journalists, often seems fascinating to outsiders. It's also curious to read a feature story in corporate media that makes Australia sound so damned triumphant, so successful, with the potential of being a major player on the world stage through the rest of the 21st century.

This Australia? Here? Really?

If Time Magazine is right, Kevin Rudd cuts a much more impressive figure on the world stage than the local media has led us to believe.

Grabs from the Time Story :

As Rudd reveals his foreign exploits, the crowd shifts; attentions wander. The Aboriginal elder who kicked off the event with a traditional welcome ceremony lets his eyelids droop....Rudd, 51, doesn't fit the typical mold of an Australian man of action....Rudd is the consummate globalized citizen....,"(Rudd will) put in a full day in the Parliament and then, because of the time difference, call world leaders way into the night".... Its geographic remoteness notwithstanding, Australia deserves watching.... (Australia) has a chance to show the rest of the world the importance of maintaining good relations with both the new century's superpowers....If Rudd can navigate warm and friendly relations with both the U.S. and China, he will turn out to be a politician of more than local significance.... "I'm in the business of making a difference"....After more than 17 years of sustained growth, Australia is flirting with recession....Rudd comes across as more buttoned-up than many of his predecessors.... In moments of crisis, his emotions resonate.....the global financial crisis underlines how individual countries, even supremely powerful ones, cannot rely on go-it-alone approaches...."I am acutely conscious of what happens when you simply allow things to drift to unrestrained nationalism".... "friends of all, enemy of none"....as a child avoiding work in the cowshed, he would retire to the farthest reaches of the farm with a book on Asian archaeology.....For the better part of two centuries, Australia's self-perception was that of a chunk of the West that unaccountably found itself floating in the South Pacific....Until the 1970s, an exclusionist White Australia Policy kept out most Asian immigrants. But today, around 8% of Australians are of Asian descent...."At last," says the Prime Minister, "we have some decent food to eat"....Some Asian, Middle Eastern and African Australians complain that they are somehow considered less truly Australian than those who came from, say, Italy, Greece or Croatia....the specter of a communist country of 1.3 billion people can spook even close economic partners.....In Taipei, where Rudd studied Mandarin, his home was the wonderfully named Republic of China Anti-Communist Recover the Mainland International Youth Activity Center...in a speech in Mandarin to students at Peking University last year, he infuriated his Chinese government minders by highlighting human-rights abuses in Tibet....can a nation really welcome being economically yoked to China if it also sees Beijing's ambitions as a threat?.... "America has a great history of reinventing itself".... at the dawn of this new century, as a country and a continent unto itself, Australia has to define its security on its own terms...."You can sit around quietly on the global diplomatic circuit and get nowhere," he says, "or you can ball up a few ideas, some of which have some prospects".... Makes you wonder whether Australia couldn't export that having-a-go spirit along with its iron ore, coal and gas. The world might be better for it.

Read The Time Magazine Profile Of Kevin Rudd Here

John Hartigan : The Uastralian iS Stell Aa Qaultiy Newpaper

By Darryl Mason

I'm absolutely loving how many blog posts the speech by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan, is producing for this blog. All that free content courtesy of Harto himself. Brilliant. And all from a speech where he berated bloggers and independent online news sites for taking a free ride on "original content" produced by News Limited.

So many stories already, and I haven't even gotten into all the marvelous data he revealed in his speech about how unprofitable online news is unless you can get people to pay to read it, and I haven't yet listed the carnival of Old Media cliches that peppered his News Limited Still Roolz speech at the National Press Club, broadcast by Sky and the ABC.

So here's John Hartigan explaining why newspapers are not dead, and why people will pay to read quality journalism that is "brilliantly written" and "professionally edited" :

This is not the territory in which aggregator sites or amateur bloggers will do well.

This is the natural terrain of the well-trained, professional, experienced, clever journalist.

Inspiring.

And here's how Hartigan's words were turned into yet another "professionally edited" cross-promotional puff piece weeping defiantly for the future of quality newspapers, in The Australian, all under this gloriously typotastic headline :




Mumbrella, who was dabbed with the smirking flint of Hartigan during his press club speech for being "not wrong for long", tries not to laugh too hard :

So let’s do some role playing. You’re a sub on The Australian.

Your boss has just given a speech about the health of newspapers.

You’ve got to put a headline on the speech.

Do you a) Check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline or b) Not check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline?

Clearly the answer is b). Then again, Hartigan has been sacking journos and sub-editors across News Limited, so...maybe it was an intern's fault.

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When Murdoch Newspapers Do It, It's Journalism, When Bloggers Do It, They're Stealing "Original Content"

By Darryl Mason

John Hartigan, CEO of News Limited, publisher of The Australian, is very upset with independent online news sites like Crikey and Mumbrella because they take "original content" from Murdoch publications and run excerpts of it on their sites, for free. They are using Murdoch content to create content for their websites. They disguise this 'theft', you see, as media commentary, but they're not fooling Hartigan. No way.

Most of the content on these sites is commentary and opinion on media coverage produced by the major outlets.

These sites are covered in links to wire stories or mainstream mastheads. Typically, less than 10% of their content is original reporting.

And they won't survive. Quality, Original Journalism will, says Hartigan :

If you want to attract readers, break stories people want to read.

Give them something they can’t get anywhere else....

Most online news and comment sites don’t generate enough revenue to pay for good journalism.

Good journalism is expensive.

Hartigan is upset with blogs that feed on Murdoch content like Crikey and Mumbrella sometimes do, taking a story published at a News Limited website, like The Daily Telegraph or The Australian, and quoting extensively from it. Filling, say, 90% of a blog post not with original opinion or original journalism, but with heavy, fat slabs cut and pasted from Murdoch journalism that is "expensive", according to Hartigan.

This is wrong, claims Hartigan. Unfair.

But this is just as bizarre as his claim that bloggers don't go to jail, and aren't held accountable for the things they write.

John Hartigan is, of course, full of shit.

The Australian, Daily Telegraph, all News Limited newspapers and websites, rewrite stories published in non-News Limited newspapers and magazines and print them, or post them online, as "original content".

The New York Times gets an exclusive about Saddam Hussein moving forward with plans to launch his own nuclear-missile equipped space station? Some barely heard of young actress admits to a dildo addiction in Vanity Fair? There's a couple of non-Murdoch media originated stories that can be quickly republished as "original content" in all the Murdoch tabloids, from Australia to New York To London and Manchester.

This rewriting, and heavy quoting, of other stories, essay, letters and articles originally published elsewhere, fills Murdoch publications with news, features, breaking news, entertainment, sport and 'WTF' type stories that they never paid for, or spent any more money on 'creating' than it cost for one journalist to quickly lift the best bits and write a few lines like "She revealed to Vanity Fair magazine" or "The New York Times has claimed" to dash some original half sentences around all that furious cutting and pasting, to add 10% original content to the republishing of someone else's work.

This method of taking stories published elsewhere to fill some of that space in its publications is by no means a Murdoch speciality. It's centuries old, and all newspapers, TV news, cable news, magazines, radio stations do it. They feed off each other, and republish each other's work for free, constantly.

Where do you think all the bloggers and the independent online Australian media, now so despised by the heavily populated ranks of the Murdoch executive class, learned how to do it?

As but one example, here's a piece of "original content", as John Hartigan would call it, from The Australian, published shortly after his speech at the National Press Club where he moaned about bloggers taking content from News Limited and using it to fill their own publications.

Cameron Stewart, associate editor of The Australian, takes a 7000 word essay written by Robert Manne and fills more than 90% of a 1700 word story published in his newspaper's print and online with fat slabs of quotes from Manne's essay. Cameron adds the prerequisite "Manne says" and "Manne writes". The essay was published at the independent online magazine The Monthly. The Australian's cut and paste of the Manne essay did not include a link to the full essay.

The Robert Manne essay is, in part, about the tragedy of the bureaucratic responses to the Victorian Fires in Fenruary, where 8 out of 10 phone calls to emergency services from towns like Kingslake and Marysville went unanswered that awful Saturday.

The Australian tastefully titles Cameron's cut and paste effort of this essay on the events that led to the appalling deaths of more than 170 people : 'Manne On Fire'.


The hypocrisy of John Hartigan railing against bloggers and independent online media for doing exactly what his own newspapers do constantly, have done for decades, is hilarious, gagging, mind-frying. You have to have a lot of gall and front to be a Murdoch CEO, obviously.

Try this :

People will pay for it if it is good enough. By good enough I mean that it will have to be: well researched; brilliantly written; perceptive and intelligent; professionally edited; accurate and reliable.

This is not the territory in which aggregator sites or amateur bloggers will do well.

This is the natural terrain of the well-trained, professional, experienced, clever journalist.

Clever journalism obviously also includes building a lengthy story for your online and print newspaper out of a brilliantly written essay originally published elsewhere.

But questions remain.

When News Limited begins charging to read 'prime' or 'premium' content from The Australian online, will we have to pay to read the stories where associate editors rustle up a cutandpaster filled with slabs of other peoples' work? And how much will John Hartigan charge us to read a story in The Australian almost entirely composed of an essay published at its online competitor, The Monthly?

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News Ltd CEO's Idiotic Claim "Bloggers Don't Go To Jail" Becomes International News



By Darryl Mason

Raw Story has picked up on the absurd, misinformed claims about bloggers aired yesterday by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan :

The difference, he says, between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.

This is now running as a major headline story on Raw Story, which pulls more online readers than many Murdoch news sites. So this must be particularly irritating.



Raw Story corrects the News Limited CEO for his ignorance:

Even in America, bloggers have been jailed for various reasons.

It is amusing to see that John Hartigan, who seemed so angry that bloggers and independent news sites were using Murdoch journalists' work as "free content" has now provided so much more "free content" for those independent news sites and bloggers.

This story, and all the other "free content" stories to be found in Hartigan's speech about Why Bloggers Are Shit, will now start taking flight through that despised blogosphere, and provide a feast of "free content" for independent online media.

UPDATE : Hartigan's attack on bloggers and stunning disinformation that bloggers don't go to jail, and are not held accountable, has been cut from the column-stuffing reprints of his speech, here and here, running in today's copies of The Australian.

John Hartigan : Blogs Are Shit And My Bloggers Are Too Scared To Tell Me I'm Full Of It

By Darryl Mason

Yesterday, I wrote about the 'Blogs Are Shit' speech by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan. News Limited has dozens of blogs across its websites and online newspapers, including very popular blogs by Piers Akerman, Tim Blair and The Professional Idiot. Here's a reminder of what Hartigan had to say :

"Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we've paid for. Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance."

"It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights."

"Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialise in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common."

Yeah, he sounds like a fucking wanker, and Mumbrella and Pure Poison have already returned some fire, but what about reactions from some of News Limited's own bloggers? Bloggers who, amongst their ranks, pull in more than 4 million hits a month to News Limited websites? Surely Hartigan's snarky, smirking, dismissive anti-blog rant must have ruffled a few feathers amongst News Limited bloggers?

Here's The Professional Idiot's reaction to his boss labelling his '1 million hits a month!' blog "barely discernible from massive ignorance" :

He’s also confident that our own internet sites and blogs...can beat off the challenge of other blogs and news aggregators...

Err, right, Hartigan was talking about those "other blogs", was he?

Not in the speech transcript released to the media by Hartigan, or in the double-teleprompter speech he gave at the National Press Club yesterday.

John Hartigan said bloggers were full of "radical sweeping statements without evidence", and the Professional Idiot deemed his words "informed and provocative".

Even when John Hartigan spits in The Professional Idiot's face, insults his many readers who devote many hours to writing comments and providing free content for News Limited, he still curtsies and puckers up.

Surely Tim Blair, at the Daily Telegraph, will have the guts and self-respect to take Hartigan to task for dissing a blog like his that pulls more than 600,000 hits a month for News Limited?

Go hard, Tim, tear the boss the new one he deserves :



Oh.

Tim Blair pretends he hasn't heard or read his boss's complete dismissal of the Australian blogosphere and all the years he spent blogging and giving the new medium some spark and fire.

So if you're the CEO of News Limited and you pay your 'Tell It Like It Is' bloggers enough, you can not only buy their silence on Rupert Murdoch's promotion of corporate greenism, carbon taxes and global warming fearmongery (even in The Simpsons), but you can give a speech to a roomful of professional journalists and call your own bloggers' work meaningless shit in front of them all and your bloggers won't dare raise the slightest harsh word in their own defence. Or their readers defence.

How fucking embarrassing.

How shameful.


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Murdoch Boss Viciously Attacks Murdoch Bloggers For "Political Extremism" And "Radical Sweeping Statements"

By Darryl Mason

This is shocking. Digitally nervous News Limited CEO John Hartigan has launched a brutal, vicious attack on bloggers, all bloggers, including his own Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph bloggers : Piers Akerman, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt :

"Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we've paid for. Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance."

"Bloggers don't go to jail for their work. They simply aren't held accountable like real reporters....It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights."

"In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart."

Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt's boss has obviously been keeping an eye on their blogs for a while now :

"Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialise in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common."

That's a bit hardcore, isn't it? Doesn't Hartigan know how much traffic blogs that specialise in personal vilification and political extremism generate for News Limited?

After using most of an hour of a live ABC TV broadcast to pump and hype the success of the Murdoch media online, News Limited CEO John Hartigan didn't have time to explain how New Limited lawyers acting for two journalists have tried to shut down independent blogs; desired to find out anonymous blogggers' real names; demanded payments for "immeasurable hurt" allegedly caused by bloggers to News Limited journalists, all fit into his high-profile 'Right To Know' campaign to protect sources, shield whistleblowers and demand greater freedom for the media.

Maybe next time.


Note : Seeing as John Hartigan didn't single out certain bloggers for criticism, we have to assume that when he says "And there are the bloggers" he is referring to all bloggers, including Akerman, Blair and Bolt.

He Said 'Mate' But He Meant 'Messiah'

The Professional Idiot goes to Israel and comes home with a fever :

Peter Costello was in Jerusalem last week, just a few metres from where Christ rose from the dead, when he heard a voice.

"Mate," it said.

"Mate, ya gotta take over the leadership."

It was just another tourist who'd recognised the former treasurer as the Messiah....

The Professional Idiot closes his declaration of religiously-fevered brolove for Peter Costello with an Old Testament translation of what the tourist said, but didn't :

...even more would have added their voices to the one Costello heard a few days later by the hill of Golgotha.

Peter, rise again. Your people await their Messiah.

The Professional Idiot is now beyond parody.

Jeremy Clarkson Defends Hapless Druid Hippies Against Police State UK

Hairy people in a field in England after midnight, trying to have some fun, and forge a link with their ancient cultural past, are harassed by the relentless buzzing of the unmanned spy planes that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan now know all too well. Spy planes circling religious ritualists in a field.

When powerful, influential writers like Jeremy Clarkson start taking the sides of hairy, dope-smoking old Druid hippies against the constant WTF? impositions of a rapidly expanding British police state, it's clear the cops have gone too far, for just about all Brits :

Last week (the Druids) were at Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice. Apparently, 36,500 poor souls got up in the middle of the night and were dragged by their beliefs and their little Citroëns to a field in Wiltshire where they were forced by custom to mark the disappointingly cloudy dawn by chanting and pretending to be King Arthur.

....I have every sympathy with these people and I wish them well. I like having hippies in the world. They bring a richness and a calm, and while they like to wear hoods, they do not beat up old ladies.

What in the name of whatever god you hold dear were the police doing using an unmanned spy drone to fly around, taking pictures of these people as they swayed gently in stillness of morning?

I can see why the army might need a spy drone in Afghanistan. But how on earth could the Wiltshire constabulary justify the purchase of such a thing? To catch crop circlists? It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Why send sniffer dogs to their annual summer get-together? We know there will have been some dope and we know, because they’d stayed up all night, that some of the morris men will have got some marching powder up their schnozzers. But if it’s busts they’re after, Plod would probably have had a higher success rate if they’d had a snout about in their own locker rooms.

Read it all, it's excellent, and Clarkson's riff about saluting magpies is hilarious.