There are so many brilliant photos of the Sydney Dust Storm on Flickr, Twitter and dozens of blogs I haven't got around to seeing much of what the professional photographers of the mainstream media have come up with yet. But for me, it's going to be hard to beat TomHide's Flickr portfollio of incredible, apocalyptic images of the Harbour Bridge and Luna Park.

How Much Will It Cost To Stick Our Cool New Sunglasses On Those Old Digger Statues?

The Australian War Memorial, the Last Post and the Eternal Flame are now brought to you by BHP, Boeing, Qantas, BAE Systems, Rio Tinto, Fosters, the Australian Gas Association, News Limited and some 80 other corporate sponsors.

The Full Story Is Here

I suppose it makes sense that the manufacturers of weapons and bombs kick back something (if only a minuscule amount), from the billions of dollars they've reaped off Australia's century of foreign war fighting, to the memorials that honour the hundreds of thousands of Australians killed and maimed fighting those wars.

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Just Blame A Typing Cat

Hold the presses, associate editor of The Daily Telegraph, and hilarious failed litigant, Tim Blair, finds a spelling mistake on Twitter!

Deep thinking from Antony Loewenstein:

The thought of telling Israel what to do is plesant and necessary

Antony Loewenstein failed to insert the letter 'a' into the word 'pleasant'. Yes, isn't that exciting?

In part due to the very restrictive 140 character limit per post, Twitter is often a correct spelling, good grammar and even basic punctuation free zone. The information, the link, the joke, the snark, the insight, the trivial detail, the content of the brief comment, is all that matters, as all the established rules of the English language can be, and most often are, casually cast aside so as to fit the comment inside that tight character limit. Finding spelling mistakes on Twitter is piss easy. Too easy.  

Almost as easy as finding a spelling mistake on the Daily Telegraph website.

So while Tim Blair was busy stalk-trawling Antony Loewenstein for inconsequential spelling mistakes on Twitter (where Blair doesn't have an active account, at least not one under his own name) this doozy appeared in the first line of the first story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, where Blair is, of course, an editor :

The Hurt of being "knocked bledding to the ground", you'd have to imagine, would be Immeasurable.

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Rupert Murdoch's UK Sun, where nothing is beyond the pun, even terrorism :

(via Reddit)

He Had Himself Nailed To A Cross For Your Entertainment

John Safran's new eight part series on love beyond your tribe, Race Relations, is only a few weeks away. It looks hilarious, thoughtful and very timely :



More detail from The Age :

John Safran's Race Relations will see the comic examine cross-cultural, interracial and interfaith love in a series that features scenes shot in Israel, Palestine, Togo, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Other crazy stunts will see Safran talk to his dead mother, become a ladyboy and an Elephant man, and even turn black and go undercover in Chicago.

Pilger : The War On Afghanistan "Is A Fraud"

Australian journalist John Pilger was awarded the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize in August :

The jury made the decision on the basis of Pilger's “courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard”. It also praised his “commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form”.

On November 4, he will receive the award at a lecture at the Opera House. On November 6, Pilger will speak to some 1500 students at a peace festival hosted by Cabramatta High School.

John Pilger's work is not published in any Australian city daily papers, despite being our most famous, internationally recognised journalist. Nor is Pilger published on supposedly "edgy" comment and opinion sites like The Punch or The National Times.

Why?

This is why :

The Afghan war is a fraud.

It began as an American vendetta for domestic consumption in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which not a single Afghan was involved. The Taliban, who are Afghans, had no quarrel with the United States and were dealing secretly with the Clinton administration over a strategic pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over to a clerical court, but this was rejected.

The establishment of a permanent US/NATO presence in a resource-rich, strategic region is the principal reason for the war.

Too Much Truth

Germaine Greer, in the recent documentary on Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, describes seeing the show while living in England in 1968 :

"It was one of those dead moments and I kicked on the television and there was Skippy. And I watched it absolutely hypnotised, because it was very sunny and there was a cobalt blue sky, grey vegetation and ruddy brown rocks, and that was what I was staring at. Just staring at, because I don't think I even realised how homesick I was until I saw those tree shapes. There was all kinds of things about it that were totally unbearable, but the landscape, and the light!"

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd : "You Can Get Fucked!"

Prime Minister Kevin "Strippers & Booze" Rudd listens to the latest string of complaints from Labor factional bosses, and replies, curtly :

"I don't care what you fuckers think!"

"Don't you fucking understand?"

"You can get fucked!"

Rudd's swearapalooza was unleashed on Labor faction leaders when they apparently kept whining about the slashing of MPs' printing allowances from $100,000 to $75,000 a year.

You can't say Rudd's response was altogether inappropriate.

UPDATE : The story above was reported by Glenn Milne, who Kevin Rudd called "the Liberal Party journalist of choice" when asked about his swearing this morning. Rudd didn't deny he unleashed as quoted, saying :

"I think it's fair to say that consistent with the traditions of the Australian Labor Party, we're given to robust conversations. I made my point of view absolutely clear, and that is these entitlements needed to be cut back, and I make no apologies for either the content of my conversation or the robustness with which I expressed my views."

Fair enough.

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That's Not A Name, It's A Thrash/Speed Metal Trademark

Somewhere in Australia, there is a child legally named Metallica.

However, according to this story, it is illegal to call your child 'Ned Kelly.'

Sir Lady Chief Maximus Duke Seven is also out.

"I've Not Felt This Well For Ages", Then Death

The last meal of legendary British TV chef Keith Floyd, stricken with bowel cancer, was as follows :

A Hix Fix cocktail - "a morello cherry soaked in Somerset apple eau de vie topped up with champagne"

Cigarettes

A glass of white burgundy

A plate of oysters, plus potted Morecambe Bay shrimps.

Red-legged partridge and bread sauce for the main, washed down with a bottle of Côtes du Rhone red

Apple pie and perry jelly

Floyd's personal motto was to enjoy good food and wine to the full. A few hours after the meal, he died in his sleep.

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You Drive Me Insane, In The Nicest Possible Way

Nick Barker's back on the road in October. Always an excellent show, from one of Australia's greatest live performers.

This is his song about his grandmother, who suffered from senile dementia. She came to believe that she lived in two homes, and wanted to know when her family would take her to "the other house". A song from the heart. Sad, but beautiful.

Murdoch Media Reports Murdoch Media Plans Won't Work



It was there on the front page of Rupert Murdoch's news.com.au for a few hours, then it was gone. A story featuring Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, explaining why Murdoch's plans to charge people to read digital news is doomed to fail :

Publishers of general news will find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, (Eric Schmidt) the chief executive of Google says.

Mr Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online.

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity," he said.

The story was open for comments, all of whom agreed with Schmidt. One example :

Gone are the days of people getting all of their news from the one source. People get their news from a variety of sources now. There is absolutely no reason to confine oneself to a singular edition of news on a single web site. I wonder why Murdoch doesn't understand this?

No doubt the automated publication of that news wire story on news.com.au must have caused a few palpitations.

What Would Jesus Do...If He Took Control Of Your TV Remote?


image from the Orlando Weekly

The Australian Christian Lobby is sending out 'Stop The TV Smut' press releases again :

With standards governing on-screen content being reviewed for the first time in six years, the Australian Christian Lobby launched the "Tame the Tube" campaign to combat what it says are industry attempts to weaken TV standards.

"Sex, violence and foul language are normal fare these days as TV networks push the boundaries," ACL managing director Jim Wallace said.

ACL said it had about 10,000 registered supporters, mainly from orthodox and evangelical churches.

They don't like Underbelly much.

There should be a suburban crime show based around the jaw-dropping Biblical tale of Lot and his two daughters. Then we could have a God-fearers friendly TV drama where a stranger wanders into a new town, say St Kilda, pursued by a gang of locals intent on raping him, the stranger takes shelter in the home of Mr Lot, who then volunteers his underage daughters to the rape gang when they drop by to attack his house guest. The town explodes, killing just about everybody. Mr Lot flees with his two daughters, who then get their father drunk and seduce him. But no swearing, butts or tits, of course. The ACL thinks that would be going too far.

@ClubWah provides a provocative retort to the lobby group the Daily Telegraph has, curiously, branded the 'Wrath Of God' :

"fuck off you fucking shit-eating fundi cunts!"

In answer to the question posed in the headline, I'm sure Jesus would be regularly tuning into Top Gear, if only to marvel at how far transport has come since the days of the donkey express.

The Dan Brown Code

The secret is out. Outraged connoisseurs of fine literature, formal sentence structure and the holiness of the Queen's English crack the secret to Dan Brown's success :

(In every book, the) attractive protagonist gets called unexpectedly to help in a case where he/she is an expert. There's an obvious antagonist, physically unattractive, who's clearly out to get the protagonist. There's also the trustworthy mentor, who helps out the protagonist. At about three quarters of the book, the antagonist gets killed and turns out to be actually been helping the protagonist, whilst the mentor is the evil one. Meanwhile, the protagonist and his/her attractive helper of the opposite gender run all over the place to collect hints and clues, they persevere in the end, and in the final chapter they have intercourse. Oh, and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger.

Sounds great, fast-paced, a few twists, but easy on work-depleted brains. No wonder he's sold so many books.

Another commenter to the hilariously tweed-draped Dan Brown's Top 20 Worst Sentences rams through this observation, bursting with snark for the grammar nannies :

Proper grammar exists only to keep snobz in jobz.

It's all about getting yer message over, Innit? If yer message is much more interesting than the crap that some people write in t'fish wrapper, then everyone's happy except those who got battered as kids by sadists in public schools for splitting infinitives.

For many millions who buy and read Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, it will be the only book they read this year, or will have read in years. But They're Still Reading A Book where they otherwise would read nothing. How anyone can see a massive, if brief, enthusiastic increase in novel reading as a bad thing, as something destructive, because the writer often beats the English language out of shape for the purposes of page-turning entertainment, is beyond me.

Move Over, Kevin, We Have A New Contender

Our prime minister is probably the world's most famous living picker of head-located orifices.



Well, not anymore.

While President Obama was posing for what will easily become one of the most legendary presidential photos ever taken (at least for the Star Wars generation)....




This guy went for a dig....



It's too late for Photoshop.



(h/t - Reddit)

Murdoch Celebrates Death Of Newspapers : "It's Going To Be Great"

By Darryl Mason

It's not just smirking bloggers and feisty independent New Media snarking over the Death Of Newspapers. Now Rupert Murdoch, who convinced a generation of British fathers in the 1970s and 1980s that they should be proud to see their 18 year old daughter's tits on Page 3 of The Sun, is joining in the newsprint grave dancing :

"I do certainly see the day when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees.

“Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great.”

But the monopoly of distribution and political influence he once enjoyed, and exploited, with newspapers is gone forever. Now Murdoch's news has to compete in the ultimate free market, as he tries to force readers to pay for news that they will (soon after it breaks) also be able to find elsewhere on the internet for free.

Murdoch has also announced plans to increase prices for the cable sports programming he controls. He believes News Corp. has been “undercharging". Australian subscribers to premium Fox Sports channels will be surprised to hear that.

The first example of how Murdoch's YouWillPay! system will work, as far as news and opinion content is concerned, comes with the announcement that :

The Wall Street Journal...will start charging non-subscribers $2 a week to access content on mobile devices such as the BlackBerry, he said. Current subscribers will be charged $1.

So even if you already pay a few hundred dollars a year, or more, to access The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch's going to hit you up for another $52 a years minimum to read it all on your hand screen.

The headline on this Financial Times story reads :

Murdoch Hails E-Readers

Like he has a choice now.

How Can We Sleep While The Earth Is Weeping?

By Darryl Mason

I don't know about you, but this is one of the stupidest fucking things I've heard this year :

A Midnight Oil hit advocating Aboriginal land rights in the '80s is being used in the noughties to mobilise nations to combat climate change.

The band's former frontman and now Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, helped write new lyrics to Beds Are Burning, as part of the celebrity-led initiative.

Yes, Bob Geldof is involved. So is Duran Duran. Nothing in music is sacred, not even a Midnight Oil song that helped to bring the idea of Aboriginal reconciliation to a new, more open-minded, less bigoted generation. The only consolation I suppose is that Bono isn't involved.

Well, not yet anyway.

The original Beds Are Burning lyrics....

''Out where the river broke/The blood wood and the desert oak/Holden wrecks and boiling diesels/Steam in 45 degrees''.

....have become :

''Down at the river bed/The earth is cracked and dry instead/Farms a failing, cities baking/Steam in 45 degrees.''

This :

"The time has come/A fact's a fact/It belongs to them/Let's give it back."

Has become this :

''The time has come/A fact's a fact/The heat is on/No turning back.''

"The Heat Is On"? Someone call Glenn Frey!

Garrett won't be singing on the rebake, and it will be given away online.

In a few years time, if global warming doesn't turn out to be the "clear, catastrophic threat" that Rupert Murdoch predicted, and the Earth turns more icy than melty, Midnight Oil could always rewrite the lyrics to Cold Cold Change.



Great fucking song. By the way, Cold Cold Change is now 30 years old.

Impossible Fiction

By Darryl Mason

Found this on Twitter last night : 'Enter The Times Cheltenham Twitter Competition'. The task is to write "a story" in less than 140 characters. Fucking hard. Infuriatingly hard. Which, of course, is what makes it such a fun and 'must try this now!' writing challenge.

So here's a few of my post-midnight entries :

* "Run! the voice in her head yelled. "Run NOW!" She got up from the table and ran outside. A car mounted the curb and killed her instantly.

* The plane exploded. She counted the stars as she fell, ready for death. Then she saw her house far below. She aimed for her pool....

* "How much do you love me?" "More than life itself." She handed him a knife, "Prove it." "Okay," he said, "you're number two on my Love List."

* "I can't marry you," she sighed. "I'm not real. You made me up." The moment he realised this was true, she vanished. He picked up his pen, again.

* "One day you will invent a time machine," the visitor said. "I'm here to show you how." The visitor was decades older than my reflection

* When he left Earth, he was an astronaut. When he arrived on The Moon they told him he was, in fact, a soldier, and he would never go home again.

Note, these stories as they exist here are slightly longer than 140 characters, but only because I removed the Twitter shorthand which renders 'about' as 'abt', 'you're' as 'yr', 'realised' as 'realsd' and so on, for easier reading.

You can look at the other entries to the comp. here.

I'm still up in the air about Twitter as a vehicle for fiction, incredibly short fiction as above, or very well structured serial fiction told 140 characters at a time, over God knows how long. It's like trying to stuff a fat old reluctant dog through a tiny cat door.

Turning, or translating, a finished novel into a Twovel seems an equally impossible task. I've been working my way through a novel of mine that was published in 1996, Max & Murray, converting it into a twovel, as you can see if you look to the right of this page and down. But so far it feels pretty much like a total fucking disaster. Which makes me want to both abandon it and finish it as quickly as possible so this ridiculous experiment is done with.

Anyway, I'll get into all that in a longer post, later, with some examples of paragraphs from Max & Murray the printed novel versus the twovel posts I've done so far here.

Yes, I know, thrilling stuff.

@darrylmason

Professor Blainey : TV Has Taught Footy Players To Speak Proper

From the Herald Sun :

Prof Geoffrey Blainey said one of the biggest changes over the past 50 years was the astonishing improvement in pronunciation and grammar.

"That clearly has come from television and radio and films, not from what's been taught in schools," he told the Herald Sun.

Prof Blainey said earlier generations used to say things like "them days" and "all of youses".

"I'm not criticising them, that's what they learned in childhood, but that old grammar has virtually vanished," he said. "Even when you listen to the footballers today, they all speak well."

It Was A Stupid Waste Of Time, Until I Started Using It

In May, Tony Wright, national affairs editor for Fairfax media, unloaded a tirade of anti-Twitter bitterness, claiming "much of the chatter is less substantial than air" (excerpts) :

Twitter, for those free souls who have avoided contact with modernity, is a method of shooting your latest thought (a term used loosely) into that disembodied world inhabited by the millions who operate a computer or a mobile phone. You have precisely 149 characters, including spaces, to type each thought, which boils down to the sad question: "What are you doing now?"

The result, almost universally, is banal communication almost beneath description.

It is the current equivalent of citizens' band (CB) radio, where the poor sad sods who drove trucks up and down the highway shouted "breaker, breaker" into their hand-held mikes, followed by inane fantasies that rarely amounted to more than the truth that here was a bored person sitting isolated on his bum, watching the traffic go by.

A recent Nielsen survey that found 60 per cent of Twits quit in the first month is cause for hope that we have not all lost our minds. Dross is dross, even if it spins in the enchanting cosmos of cyberspace.

Tony Wright joined Twitter on August 15. He now uses Twitter prolifically, primarily to cover Question Time.

"Look! They're Reading! Books!"

Australia's media, including Channel 9 News, Channel 10 News, Live News, News.com.au, SMH and the Daily Telegraph, according to Mumbrella. gathered this morning in a Sydney bookstore to watch people speed-read Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

Freemasonry, and its role in shaping George Washington's revolution against England and the building of the city that bares his name, including the often downright bizarre architecture of Washington DC, plays a key role in Brown's new book.

The Sydney Museum of Freemasonry, only a few blocks away from where dedicated journalists reported stoically on people reading books, must be wondering why they didn't get a call.

It's not like the MoF is trying to distance itself from The Lost Symbol. They're now selling it in the museum's bookshop, with big posters in the foyer.

BTW, freemasons' run the country. At least, they did between 1923 and 1941.

Mungo MacCallum On The Legacy Wars

From Crikey :

It’s all Kevin Rudd’s fault. Here we are, nearly two years out of the Howard years and happily consigning them to well-deserved oblivion.

And then Rudd has to mention the war; and of course John Howard and Peter Costello lurch out of the political cemetery to boast about the size and quality of their tombstones and pretend they are not really dead after all, and Malcolm Turnbull feels that he has to join in and defend the two people in the world he most wants to forget. Such is the level of discussion in contemporary Australia.

The trigger, of course, was Paul Kelly’s latest blockbuster, a weighty, indeed ponderous, attempt to spin the 24 years of government by Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard with (in alphabetical order) Peter Costello into one seamless thread of economic reform.

Launching the book, Rudd predictably dismissed the Howard-Costello period as a mere hiatus; he and only he was the true bearer of the flame kindled in 1983. This admittedly partisan view was derided as mean-spirited and mendacious, but it did invite a critical appraisal of Howard’s legacy and what, if anything it has left us. And on close examination it is not a legacy which can be dismissed lightly. It can, however, be dismissed heavily, so here goes.

The proudest boast of Howard and Costello was that they handed over a robust and vibrant economy, free of debt and sizzling with growth. It was indeed free of government debt; on the other hand private debt, vigorously encouraged by government policy, was through the roof and still climbing. And certainly Australia’s economy was growing and had been for many years.

The problem was that the growth had been squandered on election bribes to middle class voters. Vast quantities of tax had been collected only to be handed back, although the hand outs disproportionately favoured the top end of town. Very little was invested in infrastructure and still less set aside for the inevitable downturn – thus Rudd’s need to borrow large amounts, which is now the target of coalition outrage.

Indeed, so extreme had been Howard’s profligacy that if all his 2007 election promises had been honoured, the budget would have gone into structural deficit even if the boom had continued. Not much of a bequest after all.

*************

Rudd’s principal charge against them is that they did almost nothing to boost productivity against the inevitable time when the mining boom came to an end. Education, research and innovation were all allowed to run down, almost to the point of stagnation. This is where the bonanza should have gone and this will be the priority in the years ahead.

In other words, economic reform will certainly continue, but not as an end in itself: it will henceforth be a means towards social reform. And it is by this criterion that Rudd’s own legacy will be judged.

Read The Full Story Here

Malcolm Turnbull On Death Of Newspapers

Turnbull writing on the fall of newspapers, and the controversy over mainstream media charging readers for news content, in The National Times :

It was Rupert Murdoch who shrewdly, if gloomily, predicted: "The internet will destroy more profitable businesses than it will create."

And there are few businesses more vulnerable to the internet than newspapers, especially those dependent on revenues from classified advertisements.

It is hard to imagine many people poring through hard copy classifieds if they have access, as most do, to the speed, functionality and comprehensiveness of online classified sites.

While the demise of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated, the trend is certainly against them.

As an avid consumer of news, I can say that I only buy hard copy newspapers nowadays out of habit.

The vast bulk of the news and opinion I read I have received electronically – much of it before the newspaper itself actually finds itself to my front door.

We all understand that the circulation revenue of most publications, and certainly all newspapers, was always woefully inadequate. The newspaper was a cheap, on occasions free, platform upon which to sell advertisements both display and classified.

A similar observation could be made of free to air television, although there the oligopoly was a function of regulation.

The internet has changed all that. As broadband, especially wireless broadband, becomes more and more ubiquitous the barriers to entry to compete against free to air television, newspapers and magazines are evaporating.

From the consumer's viewpoint there is the prospect of almost infinite abundance of information and opinion. Our son in Hong Kong reads the Australian media online with the same ease as he, and we, are able to read the New York Times, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal - not to speak of the South China Morning Post.

And the access to opinion is not limited to those big names. Increasingly opinion leaders have their own online blogs. If you want to get an expert, often contrarian, insight into the Chinese economy for example you can go to www.mpettis.com a specialist blog by a professor at Peking University and enjoy not just Michael Pettis' views but also a vigorous debate and commentary on every post.

The days when only a handful of media companies controlled access to the media megaphone are fading from view.

There are four main players in this game and it is interesting to consider each of their positions in the old and new worlds.

The author of the content – the journalist for example – faces the challenge of news organisations with diminishing revenues. But he or she still has a valuable and important contribution to offer. People want to read Annabel Crabb or listen to Alan Jones. But what about the humble news reporter whose byline is less memorable or compelling? The advertiser has it made. The avenues for spruiking their wares gets wider and cheaper all the time. The internet offers the opportunity of very precise targeting too – so its all upside for the advertiser.

The consumer too has it made – content is becoming more and more diverse and almost all of it is free. Those sites which try to charge big money run the risk that they drive down traffic which then reduces their attractiveness to advertisers who after all are only interested in eyeballs.

The publisher, the big, established media company, has the most to lose. It is all downside. The reason the Sydney Morning Herald could charge a premium for its classifieds (or indeed its display advertising) was because it had a large number of dedicated readers for whom there was no, or very few, alternative mediums – now there is an enormous range of alternatives most of them offering vastly superior functionality.

Many traditional hard copy publishers have sought to move into online publishing, but in doing so they have arguably only hastened their own demise. Because they assumed the hard copy publication was paying for the content, the marginal cost of repurposing it for the internet was negligible. Hence access to online newspaper websites is almost invariably free. They therefore offered advertisers the opportunity to access the readers who were interested in the content offered in hard copy for a tiny fraction of the price of an advertisement in the newspaper itself.

And you can see this decline in the share price of Fairfax. When the Tourang consortium took over Fairfax in 1992 the shares listed at $1.20. Today – seventeen years later – the stock price is $1.64.

So who wins out of all this? Certainly the advertisers and the consumers, that's a no brainer.

The established newspaper companies will struggle to build enough additional value in their online businesses to offset the loss of value in their declining hard copy businesses.

But what about the writers and journalists? Are they to face an anarchic brave new world where they have to try to sell their wares on line as Alan Kohler and Bob Gottliebsen are trying to do?

And what happens to investigative journalism?

Opinion is relatively cheap to acquire or produce. But who now can pay for a team of reporters to work diligently away at government or corporate misconduct?

This era of profitless abundance should give us cause for concern – it raises real issues for our democracy. Will newsrooms deprived of the resources to do their own sleuthing become more and more dependent on packages of information prepared and presented to them by the growing army of government media advisers and spinmeisters?

How independent can the media be if it lacks the financial resources to do its work?

Good question.

The answer will become clear over the next two years.

Just Another Journalist Who Wants 9/11 Victims' Families To Shut Up

By Darryl Mason

President George W. Bush, November 10, 2001 :

“Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September 11.”

Daily Telegraph associate editor, Tim Blair, marked the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Washington DC and New York City with this remarkably weak and predictably puerile smearing of those who hold doubts about the official Bush White House 9/11 conspiracy theory :

When someone starts in on that stuff, it's time to leave the room. "Truthers", as they are known, hold two mutually-exclusive beliefs: That the Bush administration was run by morons and that it pulled off the greatest conspiracy of all time. Truthers are spectacular idiots.

Here are some of the people utterly incurious journalists like Tim Blair think are "spectacular idiots" for demanding a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, and for those in the Bush administration who failed to protect Americans that day to be held to account :



Ten Australians died in the 9/11 attacks. Some of those victims' friends and relatives have their doubts about the Bush White House official version of events. Considering the abuse dished out by journalists like Tim Blair towards other 9/11 victims' family members, you can understand their reluctance in going public with their doubts.


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On Twitter, The Chaser's Chas Licciardello picks his favourite protest sign from the massive anti-Obama rallies in Washington :



(via @ChasLicc)

Digital Dinosaur Boomers Alert : Rudd Begs YouTubed Video Game Brainwashed Online Youth To Help Him Save The Country

Why can't I write Fox News-style headlines and stories on an Australian blog? I can, and I will.

By Darryl Mason

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, or Krudd as he is covertly known by the 'wired-up' generation who are champing at the bit to sit on death panels to weed and cull the ranks of future national wealth-absorbing Baby Boomers (unless a Liberal Party government wins the early 2010 elections and John Howard returns, Menzies-style, to shepherd them into senility) is now inviting the digitally-enhanced hordes of Generation Y to help him design future Labor policy.

It's true! The most nightmarish future fear of all Baby Boomers has already come spine-chillingly true. Goths & Emos are deciding how to run the country.

If you were Prime Minister for a day - what would you do to :

• help our young people grow up safe, happy and resililient
• give young people the skills they need to learn, work and fully engage in community life ?
• reduce the physical and mental health risks facing young Australians, including negative body image, anxiety and depression, obesity and alcohol-fuelled violence?
• enable young people to accept responsibility for their actions and their behaviours?
• help young people to negotiate the challenges of today's society?

Wait....resililient? R-E-S-I-L-I-L-I-L-I-E-N-T?

Yes.


How can Kevin Rudd run the country when he can't even master SpellCheck? If what the Liberal Party is saying is true about what the K Rudd Krew is doing to this nation (and let's face it, when have The Liberals ever lied [?]), the Goths & Emos probably can't do any worse.

But maybe the prime minister himself didn't write that piece on his blog today. Maybe it was a staffer? Maybe Krudd's emo-advisor?

Nope.



The prime minister is already sending people scurrying for their dictionaries (or as the digital youth call them "those word things") on a near daily basis without him going and making up words.

Even quite catchy words like Resililient.

UPDATE : On Twitter, I tried to blackmail the prime minister using the screencap of his misspelling of 'resilient'....



...but I decided instead to go pubilc with it fro the glood of th natoin.




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Once Were (Political) Warriors

Prime minister Kevin Rudd has succeeded, once again, in getting the past and present stars of the Liberal Party to waffle on defending decisions made one, two and three decades ago. Just as he intended.

Dennis Shanahan in The Australian :

John Howard and Peter Costello have struck back politically and personally at Kevin Rudd's characterisation of their government as indolent and uncaring neo-liberals, declaring the Prime Minister has reached "new heights of political mendacity".

Stirred from his sick bed, Australia's second-longest-serving prime minister has accused his successor of politicising and demeaning 30 years of continuing Australian government reforms, including those of the Hawke-Keating era, for partisan benefit.

On Monday, Mr Rudd, at the launch of The March of Patriots, by The Australian's Paul Kelly, said the Howard government had been "indolent" and the Coalition could not claim to be partners with Labor in Australia's economic reforms of the past 30 years.

"The Liberals' failure to advance a framework for increasing national productivity is not a minor blemish on their economic record," Mr Rudd said.

"It reflects a fundamental failure of long-term economic reform and casts legitimate doubt over the extent to which the Liberal Party can be regarded as partners with Labor in the great project of economic modernisation."

Even social reforms that "endured through long periods of Liberal rule" survived, according to the Prime Minister, only because of political expediency and not because of any genuine support or belief.

Rudd has effectively pulled off this kind of caper, of forcing Liberals to go on the defensive about their most important claims to economic success and major reform, from the very first week of his leadership of the Labor Party. Rudd's strategy of getting the Liberals all hackled up succeeded all the way through the 2007 election campaign. And it's still working now for Rudd.

As John Howard proves, as he desperately seeks to remind Rudd that he used to be someone important :

In one fashion or another we are all political warriors, but we have a superior obligation to the national interest. That obligation obtains in opposition as well as in government.

No side of Australian politics has a monopoly of either virtue or merit. Each according to its own value system has attempted to improve the lot of Australians.

In failing to acknowledge this last Monday, my successor diminished himself, and not the Liberal and National Parties.

This 24 hour wonder must have been worth a few good laughs for Rudd.

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Fire Dancers, Fiji, August 2009 :











Photos By Darryl Mason


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Stop Whingeing, Go Make Some Money, Murdoch Readers Tell Jews

Tabloid media content provider, and DJ, Kyle Sandilands said :

"That's what all fat people say. You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall, like she could be skinny."

Jeremy Jones, Jewish Affairs spokesman, said :

"To joke about the experience of people who are being starved to death or murdered ... is quite horrendous."

The Murdoch media said :

Shock jock Kyle Sandilands has been suspended again after insulting Holocaust survivors and their families...

Which means 'Kyle Sandilands Insults Holocaust Survivors' is locked into Google search results of his name, presumably forever :



Murdoch media online readers said :

"Why do these Jews complain about every thing? Every little chance to be in the news and they gas bag away...yes little Fritz and Josef was evil and Kyle's a rancid motormouth bla bla bla..BUT...This was not about Jews! Go make some money! Yeeesh!...LOL"

"Concentration camps existed in Bosnia as well. Haven't heard a complaint from a Bosnian like you do from a Jew."

"How sad that Jewish leaders are so precious .... stop whinging!"

"maybe Kyle's comments would have been ok with the jewish/israeli lobby if he'd said "put magda in gaza"?"

"Do these jews ever stop whinging about anything and everything?"

And Murdoch media online readers also said :

"The Jewish community should back off...it certainly seems that the Jewish community still insists that any mention of concentration camps is a direct attack upon them. Jews weren't the only ones who suffered and/or died in concentration camps throughout history, but certainly seek to make the most mileage out of it."

"...what gives Jewish people the right to supress ANYONE'S freedom of speech including topics (jokes, fact or fiction) regarding concentration camps??"

"...why are we all so affraid of upsetting the Jews? They are not the only people to be persecuted. Anyway, they run the world economy and their imaginary invisible God is apparently the best one!"

"In many European countries you can deny that God exists. But you deny holocaust and you go to prison. Examples are Austria, Switzerland, Germany etc. Jews run this world. I can assure you that just because some jews raised concerns, Kyle will be banned."

"...the nazis killed alot more orthodox russians then jews, you don't hear the russians complain, why is that, oh yeah because they dont have any lobby/ interest groups with their hands in everything"

"do we have to go through never ending rounds of jewish outrage ?? The Jewish people do not own terms like genocide and holocaust and concentration camps, so why are they acting like it is always about them ? Ive lived for 30 years and every single year of that life, sometimes every week, I have outraged jewish people thrust down my throat via endless chain rattling of some sort.Yes, we know you were victims and so were many of us, now lets get on with life in 2009!! It is NOT 1940 anymore."

"Notice how its turned into a Jewish debate again, I think they just love making everyone feel sorry for them all the time! Its like they have little radars that pop up when they hear concentration camp or anything that will link to them."

"As the so called "holocaust" was itself an event hyped and used for political gain, I don't see why Kyle is subject to such abuse. There are serious doubts about the numbers and events of the "holocaust" as we know"

All of the above Murdoch media reader opinions, from Murdoch's news.com.au and Herald Sun sites, were only published after moderation.

Once again, the words of Kyle Sandilands that sparked all this :

"You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall"

Would Kyle Sandilands be sacked and fined if he read the opinions of Murdoch media online readers live on air?

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Children Of The Bong


Children in Jamaica sharing cannabis (photo source)

News.com.au runs this story and opens it up for debate in comments. The story :

Parents in an impoverished western Sydney suburb are plying children as young as six with cannabis to "keep them quiet", a leading children's charity has revealed.

Counsellors at the Mount Druitt branch of the renowned Ted Noffs Foundation say the disturbing practice is becoming a trend.

"We are seeing six-year-olds being given bongs by their families to keep them quiet, stop them crying, or put them to sleep," clinical psychologist Michael Kirton said.

The debate :

"I'm staggered to read this. Humankind is surely becoming the scourge of this planet and the sooner humans become extinct, the better off the world we be."

"You might as well just hand them over to the drug-dealer."

"....thats great...grow your children up with a drug addiction. It may calm them down, but wait 10 years and they will be bouncing off the walls if they dont have it constantly. Mt Druitt, what do you expect."

That's downright Westist.

"...find the suggestion of a 6-y-o smoking a bong to be highly doubtful. It's not as easy as it sounds; believe it or not, smoking a bong requires coordination to make it work at all."

"seriously, no way a six year old could smoke a bong. They'd be parachuting it and burning holes in the carpet."

"....that's my tax you're getting your kids stoned with."

"Ban Orchy bottles!!"

Everyone's a comedian when six year olds are allegedly punching cones in Mt Druitt.

It's Only Biased Reporting If You're A Rotten Lefty Blogger

Dennis Shanahan at The Australian reports on the latest poll results :

Kevin Rudd's personal popularity has lifted to a six-month high....

Followed by the standard dose of Shanahan lemon-sucking :

....despite problems with the economic stimulus spending, rising unemployment and fears of interest rate rises.

Every news story hand-crafted to fit the tastes of the majority of The Australian's readers.

But Shanahan doesn't go far enough in listing the problems Rudd still faces. I would have added, "(and fears of interest rates) and soaring pet care costs and the eating of nearby star systems by the Adromeda Galaxy...."

Shanahan's up to his old poll massaging tricks of 2007, yet again.


(click to enlarge)

The federal election will be held in the first quarter of 2010. Perhaps it takes a good six months for Shanahan to get back up to speed?

The only surprising thing is that Shanahan hasn't started talking up a Churchillian return from John Howard.

(via@timdunlop)

November 2007 : On Eve Of Shattering Howard Election Defeat, Shanahan Declares 'Our Polls Must Be Wrong!'


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National Times To Launch Monday

For an online-only entity, the promotion online for The National Times has been all but non-existent, less than one week out from its official launch.

Google News, for example, has only one current story about the National Times (at the time of this posting). Just the one. And it isn't even from the Fairfax media, it's from Mumbrella :



The announcement released today by Fairfax for to start some hype for The National Times is snoreful :

“Fairfax Media is set to unveil the anticipated online version of its revered National Times masthead next Monday, September 14. Carrying on the National Times legacy, the site will bring together the best opinions, commentary and analysis from leading Fairfax columnists and opinion leaders from around the world on the biggest issues in Australia.

“Watch out for more information, including the announcement of high-profile contributors later this week.”

They probably mean Mike Carlton and whoever the goanna is :


The launch of The National Times, twelve weeks after the launch of Murdoch's The Punch, completes Australia's Old Media absorption of New Media formats like blogging, embedded video and reader-generated content via comments and Twitter feeds.

The National Times has at least 45 opinionists weighing in on a rainbow of subjects and issues. Combined with The Punch, there will, by the end of next week, be more than 70 professional "opinion makers" (were they tempted to use "opinion shapers"?) trying to draw in the massive online audiences already enjoyed by the Sydney Morninng Herald, The Age, The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and the Northern Territory News (crocodile attacks are always popular). A few million online daily readers at least.

I don't think it's a question of whether The National Times and The Punch can both find large audiences. Whether that audience hangs around in healthy numbers when they have to pay to read Mike Carlton or, err, Peter Costello, is something we'll learn next year.

Going by the below ad from Fairfax for the National Times....




.....they're aiming for the Digital Baby Boomers, a massive market in the next few decades, as the millions-strong generation that was going to change the world, but invented ultra-consuming instead, crams into Ruddnet-enabled nursing homes, set adrift into thousands of days of retirement with little to do but mournfully play old Doors albums and get online to agree with everyone else at the National Times that getting old is shitty and the Alex Hawke-led Liberal-Greens coalition government of the 2020s is Still Not Doing Enough for elderly boomers.

Akerman's Big Fat Libelous Mouth Nearly Sucked ABC Into Expensive Lawsuit

Not happy with costing his boss, Rupert Murdoch, more than $1 million in defamation payouts over the years, Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman tried to get the ABC sued on Sunday morning's Insiders by naming federal Labor minister Anthony Albanese as being possibly somehow connected to a murder still being investigated by police :

Appearing as a panellist on ABC-TV's Insiders program, News Limited's rotund reactionary began putting the case for a federal inquiry into the bribery allegations emanating from the murder of property developer Michael McGurk. When Insiders host Barry Cassidy questioned Akerman's logic, given the allegations were about ministers in the NSW Government, Akerman began spreading the web of suspicion, in the process mentioning a certain cabinet minister in the Rudd Government. The program was forced to scramble to delete any record of the comments from its website to avoid the possibility of a rather messy lawsuit.

If anyone knows, from repeated lawsuits, what they can and can't say on TV or in a newspaper, it's Piers Akerman.

Akerman was ignored by the clearly furious host, Brian Cassidy, for most of the rest of the show. At its close, Akerman trundled through a trifecta of lies and distortions :

Three broken promises reminded this week. Not one house built for Aborigines. Not not one boat turned back, and of course workers to lose out under the industrial award modernisation.

Akerman's blog post the next morning was called :

Who Will Pay For The Tragedy Of Dementia?

Akerman's had a great run sucking up ABC appearance fees and expenses as the most absurdly biased pro-Liberal hack in Australia. We know from recent studies that the Lefty Green Nazi Socialist Pagan Bias at the ABC is a myth, just another Conservative Blubbering Point, something for mostly Murdoch opinionists to stuff column space with. There's no need anymore to stack ABC shows like Insiders with 66% Murdoch media hacks. There are plenty of other journalists, bloggers and commentators with just as much so-called 'insider' information on Canberra and the workings of Australian politics as Akerman is supposed to possess but rarely reveals.


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Skippy The Bush Kangaroo : 'Dumb As A Sheep'

A great piece from David Dale in the Sun Herald about Skippy exposes the shocking fakery behind the kangaroo who I'd been led to believe was embarrassingly smarter than that kid he kept rescuing, Sonny.

...various animal wranglers reveal that kangaroos are impossible to train, because they are "dumber than sheep". Their acting range is limited to sitting still, looking around and hopping away, so the producers filmed 14 different animals in the hope of capturing enough variety of movement to fit with script needs. Before any scene, the chosen roo was kept in a hessian bag, so that she (yes, Skippy was female) would emerge dazed and compliant for a couple of minutes before making her escape.

It's a technique for controlling the talent that has sadly gone out of fashion in Australian TV production. Kind of.

300 million people around the world ended up seeing Skippy, but Sweden wouldn't show it. Why?

...it might give children "a misleading impression of an animal's abilities". What? Just because Skippy can make phone calls, open a safe, handle the controls of a helicopter, play the piano and the drums, and communicate at a level of sophistication rarely achieved by a 12 year old human being?

I remain convinced that I once saw Skippy spinning a tyre iron as he changed a wheel on the ranger's four wheel drive and cooking an omelette. But then, I can also recall Skippy surfing, but the cast rarely left the national park. Allergy medication in the early 1970s was very, very strong.

I didn't know this :

(Skippy was)....Australia's first venture into international program-making....Skippy paved the way for more versatile actresses such as Nicole Kidman, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett and Rachel Griffiths.

A dazed kangaroo paved the way for Australian actresses internationally?

Add Skippy to our list of National Treasures.

The Spirit Of Derek & Clive Lives On

Wah, of Club Wah, comes across a motherlode in his Fucktard Hunt :

Why is it whenever someone is lost necessitating a search and rescue operation the fucktards come out and question how much it costs the tax payer with the sort of concern showed as if the money was being ripped out of their own unwashed arses using a pair of multigrips, a can of WD-40 and a fucking tow rope?

Good question.

Another good question :

If I had 25 rounds in the magazine of my SLR rifle and shot 25 fucktards like you at a rate of one every 1.3 seconds. How long would it take me to make the world a slightly better place?

A Club Wah commenter :

You take cursing to a new level.

It's an ever evolving slanguage :

Go and get your head fucked by a front-end loader.

More Here

The Symbolism Of Howardism



The Australian's 'editor-at-large' (does this mean he works from home?) Paul Kelly is, curiously, trying to perfume up the wretched stink of The Howard Era with a new book, but Howard's love of the Easiest Option Loaded With Symbolism keeps blasting through the quiet-dignity renovation work from Kelly, continually exposing the phoniness of his 11 years in power :

With John Howard facing political oblivion in September 2007, Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson delivered him a potential re-election strategy in an unprecedented letter.

He suggested three ideas for Howard's election agenda: a referendum to deliver "recognition of indigenous people within a reconciled, indivisible nation", a referendum for an Australian republic based on an affirmation of the British heritage, and a paradigm shift from a "welfare state" to an "opportunity state".

Howard embraced the first proposal but rejected the other two.

You don't get a knighthood if you try to make Australia mature enough to do away with the monarchy.

Meanwhile, a dash of drama in the countdown to John Howard's state funeral :

Former Australian prime minister John Howard was hospitalised over the weekend after a severe allergic reaction to an anaesthetic, it was reported Sunday.Howard, whose conservative administration ruled Australia from 1996 to 2007, spent two nights in hospital after suffering an anaphylactic reaction to anaesthetic during a visit to the dentist...

Perhaps the kangaroo bone effect takes a while to come on.

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Law Changed

Blair's Law used to mean :

"the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."

But according to the Urban Dictionary, Blair's Law now means :

As a blog war intensifies, the probability of lawyers being called in to protect the glass jaw of the more cowardly party approaches 1.

– Inspired by the precedent set by the aborted 2009 defamation case of (Australian journalist/blogger) Tim Blair vs Teh Left.

Aborted? Must be why I only got the one letter demanding compensation for causing "immeasurable hurt". I was hoping to collect the whole set.

More from the Urban Dictionary on Blair's Law :

TB: “My girlfriend’s been fighting all my battles for me under a pseudonym, but we got caught out and now my tough-guy reputation is in tatters. How am I going to weasel my way out of this one?”

JB: “Only Blair's law can save you now, my chinless friend.”

WB: “Jeez!”

And that's enough of all that.

The Bullet That May Bring Down The NSW Government

Reality, always so much more WTF? than fiction can ever be.

From today's Sydney Morning Herald :

The Neutral Bay property developer and loan shark Michael McGurk may have been killed because he was in possession of a tape that had potential to bring down the NSW Government.

The audio tape is understood to contain revelations about the bribing of senior government figures.

The head of the homicide squad, Superintendent Geoff Beresford, described the killing as ''very targeted''.

Police said Mr McGurk had died as a result of a single bullet wound to the head while his son Luke sat in the passenger seat of his black Mercedes-Benz saloon.

One bullet. It certainly sounds professional.

A week before his death, McGurk told Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont (excerpts) :

...he had reason to believe that a person, whom he named, was planning to have him killed.

...he confessed to making recordings, which he claimed to have made legally, with a well-known Sydney man. When pressed he hinted at corruption involving Labor politicians, both state and federal.

McGurk later became expansive, providing the Herald with a detailed list of names to investigate.

...he had been told there was a plan to have him killed and he was extremely anxious as he believed the person had the means to carry out such a threat.

He concluded by saying that by the end of the week he hoped to be able to hand something over to the Herald, which would enable us to see the ''whole picture''.

He was killed before he could hand over to the Herald what he had.

These events will obviously plunge the NSW Labor government into further chaos, as they vault from Melrose Place shenanigans to being linked to something grimly reminiscent of The Sopranos.

The obvious question, besides who ordered the hit and who carried it out, is : Where Is The Tape?

And did McGurk make copies of the allegedly incriminating tape and distribute them to trusted friends or lawyers to make public if the threats against his life were carried out?

The Sydney Morning Herald sounds like it's sitting on one hell of a story, one that could bring down the NSW government. Or more accurately, finish it off.

Cannabis Causes Schizophrenia....Just More Drug War Propaganda?

By Darryl Mason

The reality has been set for millions of parents, by a steady stream of Reefer Madness-style tabloid headlines and talkback radio fearmongering, that their 15 year old kid occasionally sharing a joint with friends is running a very dangerous risk of triggering the onset of schizophrenia, suicidal downward spirals or an even worse range of psychoses that will inevitably, irrevocably, tear families and lives apart.

The Smoking Pot Leads To More Dangerous Drugs myth was dismissed years ago, but the Will My Cannabis Smoking Daughter Go Psycho? replacement has proven to be a very powerful PR tool for the cannabis prohibitionists.

But just how true are those original claims that cannabis = schizophrenia/psychosis?

A new study in the UK has cast doubt on the supposed link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.

But at least one Australian researcher says the study needs more evidence.

Professor Joseph Rey of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, whose previous research has identified a link between cannabis and schizophrenia, is sceptical of the study's results.

"Not showing that there is a link does not mean there is no link," he says.

.........okay.

"...the evidence suggesting that cannabis use does increase the risk of schizophrenia is quite strong. We need more evidence to counteract what we already know."

More evidence.....

This latest study, led by Dr Martin Frisher of Keele University, examined the records of 600,000 patients aged between 16 and 44, but failed to find a similar link.

(The authors) point out that "although using cannabis is associated with a greater risk of developing psychosis, there is also evidence of increased cannabis use following psychosis onset."

According to the study, cannabis use in the UK between 1972 and 2002 has increased four-fold in the general population, and 18-fold among under-18s.

....the researchers found no increase in the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis diagnosis during that period. In fact, some of the data suggested the incidence of these conditions had decreased.

"This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence."

The Full Story Is Worth A Read

Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital, wrote in the Melbourne Age, that the 'War On Drugs' has, ultimately proved to be a failure, and a full and proper debate about drug prohibition in Australia is now overdue :

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing.

Wodak turns back to the century old origin of the 'War On Drugs' :

One hundred years ago, the US convened the International Opium Conference. This meeting of 13 nations in Shanghai was the beginning of global drug prohibition.

Prohibition slowly became one of the most universally applied policies in the world. But a century on, international support for this blanket drug policy is slowly but inexorably unravelling.

Wodak cites the rapidly changing attitudes across the world towards drug prohibition, as a new generation of leaders with less hysterical attitudes towards drug use, probably because so many have used them in the past with no lasting side effects, begin winding back the tired old propaganda.

In January, Barack Obama became the third US president in a row to admit to consumption of cannabis. Bill Clinton had admitted using cannabis but denied ever inhaling it. George Bush was taped saying in private he would never admit in public to having used cannabis. When Obama was asked whether he had inhaled cannabis, he said: ''Of course. That was the whole point.''

Obama has candidly discussed his drug use. ''Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it.'' He has also admitted the ''war on drugs is an utter failure'' and called for more focus on a public health approach.

In February, a Latin American drug policy commission similarly concluded that the ''drug war is a failure''. It recommended breaking the ''taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalisation''. The same month, an American diplomat said the US supported needle-exchange programs to help reduce the transmission of HIV and other blood-borne diseases, and supported using medication to treat those addicted to opiates.

A few more example of the changing attitudes to drug prohibition, cited by Wodak :

....a national Zogby poll in the US provided evidence of changing opinion on the legalisation of cannabis: 52 per cent supported cannabis becoming legal, taxed and regulated.

In Germany, the federal parliament voted 63 per cent in favour to allow heroin prescription treatment.

In July, the Economic and Social Council, a UN body more senior than the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, approved a resolution requiring national governments to provide ''services for injecting drug users in all settings, including prisons'' and harm reduction programs such as needle syringe programs and substitution treatment for heroin users. This month, Mexico removed criminal sanctions for possessing any illicit drug in small quantities while Argentina is making similar changes for cannabis.

Portugal, Spain and Italy had earlier dropped criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of any illicit drug, while the Netherlands and Germany have achieved the same effect by changing policing policy.

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing. Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

The real debate will begin here, and soon, but we will first have to endure the blathering of the usual old cliche-spouting, fear-churning gatekeepers of drug prohibition in the Australian media, who will cite a handful of cases where drug use has destroyed lives while ignoring the many millions who have experimented with drugs of all kinds and suffered no long-lasting damage, to their health, their family lives, or their careers. Well, those who didn't get arrested anyway.

The winding back of drug prohibition in Australia is likely to be an occasionally ugly and misinformation-plagued debate, but a necessary, long-overdue one.

I'd imagine that cannabis, at least, will be all but legalised in Australia within a few years, if only because so many Baby Boomers already prefer it as an alternative to side effect-heavy pharmaceuticals when it comes to tamping down all those aches and pains of growing old, and vote-powerful Boomers simply won't tolerate being hassled, or fined, by the police for blowing scuds on the back lawn of their nursing homes.