Come On In, Stay The Hell Out

Is Kevin Rudd's flippy stance on asylum seekers a future-focused strategy to make him more popular? Or less?

Kevin Rudd, October 2006 :

"Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst.

"We should never forget that the reason we have a UN convention on the protection of refugees is in large part because of the horror of the Holocaust, when the West (including Australia) turned its back on the Jewish people of Germany and the other occupied countries of Europe who sought asylum during the '30s."

Kevin Rudd, October 2009 :

"I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard-line on illegal immigration to Australia".

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

"...this Government makes no apology whatsoever for the fact that we have a tough line on asylum seekers"

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

"(The Liberal Party) is a party without one skerrick of moral compass when it comes to people smuggling", he said.

As Chris Ulhmann, on ABC OffAir, makes clear, in a crystal clear deconstruction of Rudd's religious politicism :

The Opposition's compass at least has the virtue of pointing, roughly, in one direction.

The Government has softened Australia's stance towards asylum seekers and it is determined to maintain strong border protection. These are not mutually exclusive propositions and there are defensible, reasons for doing both.

But confronted with a rising tide of boat people it panicked because it was scared its policy changes would be blamed for the influx and the electorate would punish it.

Rudd's moral compass on asylum seekers now appears to be spinning crazily, searching for the strongest attraction.

But when RuddGov's poll numbers fall five or six points in the next few weeks, and the TurnOpp stages its biggest poll boost this year, will Kevin Rudd be upset?

Or happy?

I'm going with happy.

Rudd doesn't want to go into the 2010 federal elections with 70% of Australians favouring him as prime minister. Where's the challenge in that?

He'll be even happier when the heated protests by die-hard RuddLabor voters, appalled at his fliporama on asylum seekers, begin.

If they begin....

The Late Show On Violence :

Storm In A Palestinian Sperm Bank Sample Cup

By Darryl Mason

Probably the funniest thing about the debut of John Safran's new series Race Relations was the tailored warning to sensitive viewers from the ABC's Director of Television, Kim Dalton, "urging conservative viewers not to watch the program" :

"If you think you are going to be offended or outraged (or want to be offended or outraged) then don’t tune in," Kim Dalton says.

More bias from the ABC.

Why should conservatives get tailor-made viewer warnings from ABC directors that a show might contain 'liberal' content that may cause them offence? Where are the viewer warnings for Lefties when Piers Akerman makes an appearance on Insiders?

In the end, Safran's Race Relations proved to be wholly uncontroversial, and far milder than most were led to believe by tabloid media hype and a concerted effort to whip up more Chaseresque MoralOutrage! hysteria before the first episode even aired.

According to this story, only five complaints were received by the ABC over Race Relations, even though an audience of more than 700,000 tuned in, mostly people under the age of 30.

It's not that there wasn't challenging content in the show, it's that the public seems well bored by the kind of confected controversy that click-bait hungry online media try to whip up on a nearly daily basis now.

The ruse didn't work this time, Australians refused to play along, and in the end Race Relations debuted with barely a whimper of MoralOutrage!

It will be worth watching to see how the rest of Race Relations unfolds, but it feels like they're giving far too much away in the promos. Burning away at our interest, our curiosity about what Safran is going to get up to next. The constant promos are like spoiler material, killing the surprises to come. Oh look, Safran blacks up next week, and when is the episode on when he goes on dates as a chick, or as the Elephant Man?

Hearing for weeks that John Safran masturbates over a photo of Barack Obama was a lot funnier than actually seeing it done.

It's not enough to simply make us cringe. That's far too easy. Safran's big missions is to challenge our minds, our prejudices and our beliefs with his look at inter-racial love and relationships in a world where the White Man-Dominated 20th Century is already fading fast in the rear-view mirror of history.


The Full First Episode Of Race Relations Is Here

He Loved Your Faces

One of the last clips of the now dead Don Lane, before dementia demolished his mind. What a stunning moment of Australian live TV this Grant Page car hit was :



I still have video-vivid memories of Don Lane trying to interview a thrillingly manic Robin Williams; Evil Kneivel boasting about his abandoned plans to sleep with Elizabeth Taylor and dive out of a airplane without a parachute; Hunter S. Thompson, his coat draped over his shoulder, announcing something like "What The Fuck Am I Doing With This On My Fucking Shoulder" (stunningly, the swear word went to air, excitement!) and Doris Stokes, playing her Other Side medium illusions for all they were worth, but also helping audience members to grieve for those they'd lost, some crying about a dead parent, or child, for the first time.

Fantastic viewing, whether you were 8 or 78.

Does anybody else remember Don Lane calling phone boxes in New York or London and telling the person who answered they were now talking live on Australian TV? Brilliant. How innovative such a simple international phone call seemed back then. And how full of eight- year-old outrage and scorn we were at school the next day when someone who answered in the US had asked "Ahhstroolarn? Where's that?" How could they not know?

Thank you, Mr Lane. You did a great show.

Here's a tribute, of sorts, to Don Lane by Paul Hogan, from the mid-1980s :




.

I Spy An Eye On Mars

By Darryl Mason

In three decades of aerial and ground exploration of the surface of Mars, millions of photographs have been generated and released, with the human mind finding some very familiar things in all those often strange surface details of our closest planetary neighbour.

So far, we've had 'The Young Face' On Mars :



The Not So 'Red Planet' Anymore Mars :



The 'Woman' On Mars :



The 'Human Skull' On Mars :



The 'Doorway' On Mars :



The 'Pyramids' Of Mars :



The 'Lake & Shrubs' On Mars :



And now we have The Eye Of Mars :



More On The Eye On Mars Here

You see what you want to see.


.

'Gullzilla' Invades Melbourne

Fantastic :



I guess this proves the backgrounds on Channel Nine's 6pm News, at least, are live.

Rudd Government Pre-Announces End Of Australia's Involvement In The War On Afghanistan

The short version is this : we are fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, everybody knows it, particularly the Taliban, and US President Obama is unlikely to deploy the tens of thousands of additional soldiers the Pentagon is now demanding.

Unofficially, negotiations with the Taliban have already begun, with a gestating NATO plan to pay its fighters, and warlord aligned allies, not to blow up or shoot foreign troops, as the French had been doing secretly for years. Paying the enemy not to try and kill you is a strategy that proved successful with the Sunni-dominated insurgency in Iraq.

Defence Minister John Faulkner appears to have already gotten the word that Australia's role in the Afghanistan war is set to wind down, fast, and before leaving for a NATO meeting on the war, Faulkner pre-announced the news to the media, and the public, in preparation for the official announcements that will soon follow :

....Faulkner says he is exploring options to get Australian troops out of Afghanistan earlier than expected.

Australia has around 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, where they are mainly focused on training a fourth brigade of the Afghan National Army. No specific date has been set for their return.

More Here

Australia's pre-announce makes international headlines, with the announcement from Faulkner set to feed into heated debate in the US and the UK about their reluctance to commit more troops.

Raw Story :

Barnaby Joyce : "If I'm Not Barnaby Joyce, Then Who Am I?"

The ABC's Virginia Trioli on Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce :



Barnaby Joyce :

"Maybe I am crazy. Maybe this isn't parliament but an asylum. And if I'm not Barnaby, who am I? And then, who is Barnaby? If I am crazy, it would explain a lot about this place."

I'd like to hear more from the Existential Barnaby Joyce.

Virginia Trioli and Barnaby Joyce on Insiders in 2005 :

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Barnaby....Kim Beazley, the Opposition Leader, mentioned to me on Friday that he thinks you're a spent political force, that you've been bought off left, right and centre.... How do you respond?

SENATOR BARNABY JOYCE: I respect that he would have a very good position to make a judgment like that.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: You're learning, mate, you're learning!

They've been sparring, happily, for years.

Barnaby Joyce uses the controversy kicked off by Trioli's unprofessionalism to good effect in this piece published at The Punch :

If You Think I'm Crazy, Take A Look At The ETS

Virginia Trioli apologised to Joyce yesterday (or begged for his forgiveness), and apologised on ABC 2 this morning.

@craigreucassel, on Twitter :

"(I admire) the way Virginia Trioli helps the hearing impaired understand a Barnaby Joyce interview."

.

Advancing Democracy Through Terrorism

The Australian's editor, Chris Mitchell, has a peculiar take on the terrorist attack that targeted and killed military leaders in Iran over the weekend :

"....no matter how destabilising, the suicide bombing may do little to advance democracy in Iran."

Have suicide bombings advanced democracy in other countries of the Middle East?


.

I Can't Remember Saying That I Don't Recall That I Said I Forgot I Can't Recall All I Have Strategically Forgotten

By Darryl Mason

The Sydney Morning Herald claims Bill Clinton was The Master Of The "I Don't Recall" Defence.

I disagree.

He might not be as famous as the ex-president, but Howard government foreign minister minister Alexander Downer was the fucking Yoda of 'total unrecall'. As he fastidiously proved during the hearings into how the Australian Wheat Board ended up bribing the Saddam Hussein regime with hundreds of millions of dollars, and continued to bribe the regime even while Australian soldiers and special forces were fighting in Iraq.

Here's just a sample of Alexander Downer responses, in 2006, to questions about how he didn't notice all those truckloads of AWB cash reaching Saddam Hussein, given all the memos and warnings that streamed across Alexander Downer's desk, for years :

“I don't recall.”

“I don’t recall.”

“I don’t recall.”

“I just don’t recall.”

“No, not that I can recall at all.”

“I can't recall my state of mind when I read the document...”

“I don't recall being given that information.”

“Well, I simply do not recall.”

"I would have thought I'd have remembered it, but I don't recall.”

“No, I don’t recall that.”

“I don't recall them saying that.”

“I don't recall them saying that to me.”

“I could have done, but I don't recall it.”

“I am only in a position to tell you what I recall of the conversation, which is very sketchy....”

“I don't recall it being brought to my attention, but it is possible it could have been.”

“Yes, I don't recall that being discussed, but I simply do not recall it is all I can say.”

“I don't remember precisely...”

“My recollection is of a much more general nature.”

“I have no recollection of it.”

“I just can't recall it at all.”

And the classic :

“I can't, of course, recall.”

I imagine Alexander Downer will give very similar responses when he has to face questioning during the Inquiry Into The Reasons For The Iraq War (or whatever it will be called), which should hopefully get started in early 2011.

.

This Is Local News The Way The World Wants To Read It

Yes, we all know that the Northern Territory News is the best newspaper in Australia, and it's not just because they focus on the stories that really matter :



It's the best newspaper because the Northern Territory has the most interesting and entertaining locals. And journalists who know Local News Gold when they hear it.

The NTN struck Local News Gold twice in recent weeks, with the tale of the $5 Blow Job That Was Most Definitely Not Given and The Cat That Calls Its Owner "Fuck Prick"

Both stories were picked up by aggregators like Reddit and Twitter, and read and enjoyed across the world.

But the NTN has to take a bold stand and stop **** all the swear words in their stories. They're censoring the true character of the Northern Territorians they're quoting in the tales.

For stylistic purposes, The Orstrahyun has uncensored them.

No $5 Blow Job Given :

Allyson White said the standout burn mark left by her seatbelt across her chest was proof the claims of "amorous activities" with the driver were not true.

"I was not sucking his dick - and it's pretty obvious that wasn't the case ... you only have to look at the mark on my chest," she said.

"Clearly I had my seatbelt on, so it's impossible that I'd be leaning over sucking his dick unless he is hung like a donkey or I've got a fucking rubber neck.

"If it was true I'd just cop it sweet and think 'how embarrassing, I got caught sucking someone's dick' - but it is not true and that's what is pissing me off.

"It may have looked bad when police first arrived as my girls were hanging out all over the place. I also had a $5 note wedged between my boobs so they probably just assumed I was a sex worker or something and he'd already paid me.

"But $5 is a bit cheap for a head job."

'Hey Fuck Prick, My Bowl Is Empty' :

A Territory man claims his pet cat can speak English, with a vocabulary of seven different words so far.

"He can say seven words all up: mum, no, now, what, fuck, prick and why.

"In the evening time, if you don't drop whatever you're doing and pay attention to him, he calls you 'fuck prick'. If he really cracks the shits, he'll piss in his drinking water just to let you know he's really shitty."

The foul-mouthed feline doesn't take non-attention kindly. During the Duncans' wedding it swore at guests.

Mr Duncan said the guests were pre-warned, so "they pretty much ignored him".

It's been a long time since I've been to a wedding where we were pre-warned to ignore a swearing cat.

Both stories must be read in full.

I was wrong. I will pay to read online news, but only if it comes from the NTN.

.

Murdoch Media : How To Spot A Global Warming 'Conspiracy Theorist'


image sourced from here

From news.com.au :

Global Warming conspiracy theory

This theory claims the science behind current environmental changes - as popularised by Al Gore in the film An Inconvenient Truth - was created for financial gain.

Some believe that governments are using the global warming "myth" to raise taxes and restrict competitive US businesses in Europe - or that it is a United Nations ploy to create a one-world government.

Now you know.

,

We Only Do Business With Freedom-Hating Communists To Make Them More Free, Or Something

By Darryl Mason

It's taken a while but finally, he's done it. The Professional Idiot is now using Fox News' Glenn Beck as a source of wisdom, and revelation :



Glenn Beck is, of course, the American version of Andrew Bolt, but with more tears, and only slightly more whining.

Bolt's boss, Rupert Murdoch, has bent over backwards (perhaps even frontwards) in recent years trying to do business with the Communists spawned by Mao.

Only a few days ago, Murdoch was literally begging the Communists to save his media empire by allowing him to expand into China. The last time he tried to do that, he lost a few billion.

Unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch didn't have the time to denounce the philosophy of Mao - as The Idiot and Glenn Beck think everyone should do - to his Chinese hosts while he was in Beijing.

Maybe next time.

92% Of Australians Don't Enjoy The Trailor Park Boys And Bacon Dipped In Chocolate

The Daily Telegraph :



"Demon weed"?

This sort of thing was done so much better in the 1940s :

Won't You Be My Friend?

The NSW Liberals have launched a campaign where you can 'join' the party, by paying $15. The first benefit is you don't have to actually attend any meetings. That news alone has NSW Liberal Party supporters (or photo models) leaping for joy :



Look how happy this guy is :



The Liberals have once again found a red-headed woman named Pauline to advocate their policies, but this time she seems far less...intense :



If only Malcolm Turnbull could whip up that level of enthusiasm for the Liberals, federally.

Fade Out



Alleged West Australian blogger 'JF Beck' finds something better to do, and, as is becoming all but standard practice now, closes down comments at his old blog :


Why?

Barring last minute technical hitches, from Monday I'll be blogging from Asian Correspondent. Beck is moving into the mainstream...

The best of luck to JF Beck for his future at Asian Correspondent, regardless of who is funding it.

Correction : the photo above confirms JF Beck is male. Post corrected accordingly.

UPDATE : JF Beck's first post on Asian Correspondent, where he has apparently gone "mainstream", seeks to confuse readers, at best, about who any of these people are. Will anybody care?

Considering that Pure Poison, Ziegler's blog, exists as a lame Lefty response to Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, Australia's gun bloggers, his comment is hilarious (not to mention exceedingly inane).

The Lefty whine-fest that is Pure Poison is never going to be as successful as Blair and Bolt.

"Gun bloggers"?

Like I said, the best of luck.

Kevin Rudd's promise to provide access to a laptop for all primary school students in Australia would have made Australia the first country in the world to do so.

But Uruguay got there first, and went one better :

Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school.

President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October.

Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.

The "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) project has allowed many families access to the world of computers and the internet for the first time.

Now that's an education revolution. And no Windows for these laptops. Free and easy Linux instead.

Rupert Murdoch Is The King Of Climate Change Fearmongery

By Darryl Mason

An excerpt from a Murdoch media corporate video explaining how global warming awareness, 'climate panic' and carbon neutrality, was seeded into some of the most popular, most world-widely watched shows on TV :



The next time you hear someone ranting about kids and youth having been 'brainwashed' by climate change activists, remind them that Rupert Murdoch news media, movies and TV shows have been responsible for most of the Climate Panic overload. And they did it all, because that's what the boss wanted.

Murdoch employs so-called 'Global Warming Deniers' to write Australian newspaper blogs and front (only some) Fox News shows because he knows it is profitable to sometimes play both sides of a majorly controversial debate, and if he doesn't feed that minority of 'deniers', they will go elsewhere to get the news they're looking for.

Rupert Murdoch Wants Earth Hour To Become Earth Month - Tim Blair & Andrew Bolt Pretend Not To Notice

Murdoch Spreads More Eco-Alarmism - 90% Of World's Population Gone Within 100 Years If Global Warming Isn't Stopped

Catherine Deveny at the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas :

"We're in the grip of an epidemic of comfort as the enemy of Art. Painters are jumping out work hoping to become the next Ken Donne. Writers aren't crafting books but churning out self congratulatory blogs which are nothing more than a shrine to their raging narcissism."

More videos from the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas here.

Australian journos, writers and bloggers dive into a Friday afternoon Twitter thread on Medieval Bumper Stickers. Some highlights :

rod_benson : That's not a scythe. THIS is a scythe.

Colvinius : King Harold decides who will come to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

wolfcat: Want to live to 30? Ask me how

Colvinius : I subscribe to the Albigensian Heresy and I vote.

clubwah : A dog is for dinner, not just for Christmas

Colvinius : Save carbon emissions - don't burn heretics, drown them

CristenTilley : Not happy, Joan

Colvinius : My dad went to sack Jerusalem and all I got was this lousy bottle of holy water

rod_benson : No king will live in poverty by 1066.

clubwah : Jesus loves you. But if you love him expect to be burned at the stake

rod3000 : I Support Our Veterans of The Crusades

rod_benson : I crusade and I vote.

zombiemao : Kevin 1507

clubwah : I hunt and I'd vote if it weren't for the feudal system

rod3000 : Hot Oil Disarmament Now!

clubwah : Swords don't kill people, people do

rod3000 : I (heart) Magna Carta

Well, I thought they were pretty funny.

Have a great weekend.

Self-Interest, Reputation, More Important Than Free Speech

Oh, diddums!

Andrew Bolt has another whine about some of the hate-filled violence-threatening homophobic racist arseholes that are drawn to his blog like flies to shit :

Should I really be censoring such opinions? Should it really be an indictment of me that I don’t? Won’t it be said that the more I censor comments, the clearer it is that those I let through are the ones I endorse?

So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time.

You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.

Much there in the way of threats of violence against those you target that you thought you should pass onto any of our intelligence agencies? Or the police?

This is what I’ve been wrestling with in this wretched week.

Of course, it's all about The Idiot. Not about the people, the scientists, activists, journalists, community workers, he continually holds up for vicious ridicule and slandering by the worst of his droogies.

Get over yourself, mate. Your reputation will never leave you.

The internet does not forget.

If they introduced something like this into MasterChef, I'd start tuning in :



Japanese TV, where producers are never told, "No, this time you've gone too far."

Miranda Devine Backs Illegal Immigrants....Well, Christian Ones

Pro-lyncher Miranda Devine points out that Australia is quickly running out of beds for asylum seekers, fleeing war and rape and persecution in Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan, but asks how about it? for a couple of thousand more :

If Rudd really wanted to show compassion he would back the audacious plan of the Christian Democrat Fred Nile and go into the people smuggling business.

Hosting a meeting yesterday at NSW Parliament House for Christians from Egypt, Iran and Iraq, the upper house MP said he was worried about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, who were desperate to come here and make good migrants. In Iraq, says the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, there are only 400,000 Christians left, down from 1.4 million in 1987.

Devine doesn't point out, of course, that the vast majority of the one million Christian who've fled Iraq in the past two decades did so after the start of the War On Iraq, a war Devine so miserably backed, and promoted.

Australia has a special responsibility for the Iraqi people, and from a self-interested viewpoint, Christians are likely to settle more easily into a Christian country than Muslims.

Yes, it's true, young Muslims, particularly the males, hate all the things that many Australians love, like rugby league and fast food and loud cars.

And Devine is right, Australia must be a Christian nation. After all, we're currently fighting in two wars.

"It's a desperate situation," said Nile. "They're being told 'convert or die'."

They are in Iraq, in particular, thanks to the War. Devine :

Seeing how free and easy the Government has become with boat people, Nile has hatched a plan to bring a boat of 2000 Christian asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia. He wants donations and he dares the Government to stop him.

So basically, war-shattered Christians? Come on in. War-shattered Muslims? Eh.

The Walkley Awards announces the finalists for Artwork & Cartoons. They'll have a hard time going past this magnificent work by John Tiedemann from The Week.



In News Photography, Alex Coppel of the Sunday Herald Sun has scored a nomination for this apocalyptic image from the Black Saturday bushfires :



A gallery of the News Photography nominations can be viewed here.

The rest of the Walkley Awards nominations are here.

Murdoch Vs ABC : Empire Falls

ABC boss Mark Scott is expected to return fire on the so-called "mounting criticism" (by Rupert Murdoch, primarily) of free state news media in a speech tonight :

"In newspapers, the Murdoch media empire has responded to the crisis of advertising by proposing to transform the online world in the same way that cable transformed television - by making consumers pay."

But what happens to quality journalism when its reach and audience are limited in this way; and what will Australians expect of the public broadcaster in the next decade?

Dave Gaukroger at Pure Poison :

This speech will be closely scrutinised by the ABC’s commercial rivals who are developing plans to place sections of their content behind paywalls in the hope of replacing revenue lost due to decreasing advertising rates and diminishing circulation. Both James and Rupert Murdoch have singled out public broadcasters as an impediment to their plans, not surprisingly it’s going to be hard for them to charge for content that organisations like the ABC and BBC are giving away for free.

On Twitter, Scott offers this short intro to his speech :

@abcmarkscott - Looking forward to the AN Smith tonight at Melbourne Uni. Here is where we start: http://bit.ly/2m86Ic

The link takes you to the poem, Fall Of Rome, by WH Auden :

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Hey! Not all bloggers live in caves. Some do, yes, but by choice.

At New Matilda, Jason Wilson takes a look at :

Murdoch's Chorus Of Complaint



.

Rudd Vs The Australian....Kind Of

It all seems a bit....staged. It's good for Rudd, and it's good for The Australian :

Kevin Rudd last night attacked The Australian as "right-wing" and less than objective, particularly on the issue of climate change.

"If you cite your source as The Australian newspaper, I simply say this: (It is a) free country; every paper can express their point of view -- the editor of The Australian has said that he edits a right-wing newspaper -- and so he does," Mr Rudd said.

"Let us not pretend that it (The Australian) would seek to present itself as an objective source of information. It opposes the government's actions on climate change, and has done so consistently.

"That's their democratic right; we have a free press. And so they should; that's a matter for them."

The editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, responded last night: "The actual quote referred to The Australian as a centre-right paper but the PM is loose with his verballing these days."

Tepid.

More than anything else, it shows just how unimportant KevinRuddPM and his advisors think The Australian is as a part of the national debate, or as an influential force on the Australian public, at large.

Kevin Rudd reaches more people, directly, on Twitter, than he does when he gets written up in The Australian. Rudd's 'circulation' on Twitter, is many hundreds of thousands higher than the current newsagent, and free-in-the-foyer-many-city-offices, circulation of The Australian.

He doesn't need The Australian to be on his side.

A disregard for 'The Heart Of The Nation' that would been almost incomprehensible a few years ago.

It's Not Comedy If Nobody's Offended

On Twitter, ABC boss Mark Scott points out this piece published at the National Times on how TV comedy is being killed by committees and the easily offended. Excerpts :

....the BBC has decreed that its comedies are not to be ''unduly intimidatory, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory''. John Howard Davies, who used to run BBC comedy, pointed out that this is the sort of absurdity that happens when a committee decides guidelines. An individual exercising editorial judgment is far preferable, especially if that individual has been chosen because of his or her connection with the real world, and what makes people laugh in it.

I have occasionally thought that I used to find programs put out by the BBC funny because I was so much younger when I saw them. However, watching re-runs of old comedy programs, I realise I was wrong: they were, plainly and simply, very funny. The famous Fawlty Towers episode in which Basil insults the Germans fails every one of the new guidelines. It is racist, intimidating, humiliating, mocks Spaniards, Germans, and the mentally ill, and commits other offences too numerous to mention. It is also dementedly funny, even after repeated viewings over 30 years.

After 70 or so years of influencing and shaping the definition of the national sense of humour, the BBC now seems to have forfeited its ability to do that.

I don't know what, indeed, there will be left for us to chortle at.

It makes me realise that my wife is right when she says that once you get past the age of 40, there isn't really anything on the BBC for you. Except Gardeners' World, of course: and we should make the most of that until someone realises how much it discriminates against those who don't have gardens, and who might feel humiliated by the lack of one.

The push for more censorship of Australian comedy and satire does not appear to be coming from the public, but from groups concerned with garnering publicity and profile and tabloid media looking for easy, cheap content to fulfill it's weekly clickbait 'Moral Panic! quota.

Why ABC Boss Mark Scott Should Tell The Daily Telegraph To Get Fucked

The Australian Tries To Stir Up Support For Murdoch's War On Free, State News Media

By Darryl Mason

From The Australian :



Criticism from who exactly?

Let's go to the story and take a look :

ABC managing director Mark Scott will this week attempt to hit back at mounting criticism...

note : "mounting criticism"

....of the public broadcaster's role in the internet space which commercial media companies say is threatening their business models.

So, the mounting criticism is coming from "commercial media companies."

Now there's a surprise.

The debate is heating up...

The debate is heating up in the pages of The Australian, who are now trying to convince an overwhelmingly skeptical public that they should pay to read Murdoch media news stories online.

The debate is heating up after Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation (owner of The Australian), again urged media companies to adopt online payment platforms for news at the World Media Summit in Beijing.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to creating a new model is taxpayer-funded content appearing free on websites such as those of the ABC and BBC.

Taxpayers getting their news for free from news sites that their taxes pay for? Fucking outrageous!

Rupert Murdoch is just plain terrified.

"We find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling," Mr Murdoch said.

Anyone else feeling unsettled by this information revolution, by the greatest free exchange of information, art and knowledge in the history of mankind?

No?

Said Rupert Murdoch, who's now losing billions :

"The presses are now silent at some of the world's most famous newspapers -- they were supposed to report on their societies, but somehow failed to notice that those societies were changing fundamentally."

So this Great Media Visionary is telling us that newspapers are going out of business because they failed to notice the dramatic changes erupting across the societies they are reporting on?

What's the problem here? As Rupert Murdoch said back in 1989 :

"If someone goes bust, too bad."

Back to Digital Rupert 2.0 :

"The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over."

Really? You think so?

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," he said.

But will the Murdoch media pay for all for the content they "plagiarise" from other news media they do not own, along with the reams of content they find for free at Facebook and Twitter, and lift without credit from Digg, Reddit, TMZ and dozens of other independent blogs, aggregators and alternative news sites?

Fuck No.

Mr Murdoch said if media companies "do not take advantage of the current movement towards paid-for content, it will be the content creators....who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph".

I've written ("created") more than 2 million words of free-to-read blog content in the past four years (not including the content I've kleptomaniacised) and the only price I've paid is spending many hours doing something I love, making a whole lot of new friends and developing deep interests in subjects I probably would have never cared much about at all if I hadn't felt the drive to write about them here, and at Your New Reality.

Anyway, enough of Digital Rupert's hilariously 20th century opinions.

Let's get back to evidence of the "mounting criticism" as claimed by The Australian :

Chris Wharton, the chief executive of West Australian Newspapers, which is also examining online charging for its news, said the ABC was "the elephant in the room in this debate".

So, we've got Rupert Murdoch and Chris Wharton. And that's it.

The Murdoch media reports on "mounting criticism" coming mostly from Rupert Murdoch. The criticism is "mounting" because The Australian keeps reporting on Murdoch's criticism of free news media.

That's not a news story. It's corporate media PRganda.

Anyway, the ABC isn't the only Australian news media giant that intends to keep allowing readers and viewers to access its news content for free.

Mumbrella reveals that NineMSN has vowed to keep its news content free, as its hundreds of thousands of daily readers have come to expect.

NineMSN CEO Joe Pollard (excerpts from her blog statement) :

The debate over charging for online news content intensified again last week after a number of independent research studies showed this to be an immensely unfavorable strategy amongst those surveyed.

As Australia’s largest online publisher, ninemsn is frequently asked about our own business strategy when it comes to revenue generating streams for our news product. For the record, we do not intend to charge for our online news content.

As premium, innovative and differentiated as our news product is however, introducing a charge for our audience to consume it is just not part of ninemsn’s game plan…but nor is this really what the “paying for online news content” argument should be about anyway.

At ninemsn, we firmly believe an advertiser-funded model is what Australian audiences expect and accept when it comes to the consumption of online news....it’s a model that’s proven and tested…and if it continues to be available as professionally produced, freely and easily as it is now, audiences will continue to vote with their “feet”.

Charging audiences for online news content they can currently access for free is like putting a toll booth in the ocean…and it’s a big ocean.

And unfortunately for Rupert Murdoch, he's no longer the biggest fish. He's more like a lumbering whale being vigorously pursued by a million little fish, constantly nipping away, slowing him down, diluting his influence, subjugating his once formidable power and control.

Now that's a free media in action right there.

And something to be celebrated.

July 2, 2009 : John Hartigan's Idiotic Claim "Bloggers Don't Go To Jail" Becomes International News

August 2, 2009 : The Orstrahyun Hails Murdoch's 'Death To Free Information'
Movement

August 10, 2009 : Who Just Lost Another Few Billion Trying To Convince You That Celebrities Are Important And That People Who Don't Look Like You Can't Be Trusted?

Murdoch Media Asks : Michael Jackson, Not Dead?

September 17, 2009 : Rupert Murdoch Celebrates Death Of Newspapers : "It's Going To Be Great!"

Apparently, the botox doctor who did this to half of The Chaser's Chas Licciardello's face....



.....is now promoting himself in press releases as the`trusted doctor to Chaser’s Chaz Luciado''!

He should use that photo in his publicity.

More...Chas gets a copy of the press release and responds.

Fantasy Boy Steve Fielding Still Appalled, Mortified By Realisation That Jesus Was The Original Hippy Greenie

By Darryl Mason

Is Senator Steve Fielding outsourcing his press releases to Rupert Murdoch's anti-Greens chief propagandist, Andrew Bolt? Sure reads like it :

The Greens would rather send Australia back to the Stone Age than use common sense....

“I don’t know what planet the Greens are on, but by the look of their ‘Safe Climate Bill’ they look like they’re lost in space,” Senator Fielding said.

“If Bob Brown and his hippy friends really believed in their cause they’d ride their bikes to Parliament House instead of using the Commonwealth’s petrol-guzzling V8s.

“If we did what the Greens propose Australia would no longer exist because there’d be no industries left to drive our economy."

“The Greens’ proposed 40 percent reduction in emissions would cripple our economy and boot thousands of jobs offshore.

“The hypocrisy of the Greens beggars belief with the way they carry on about the environment yet show no evidence of doing anything about it in their personal lives."

“The Greens should either practice what they preach or just shut up and go away.”

Further proof needed? Here's the headline Fielding chose for his press release, in all screaming caps :

GREENS PLAN ECONOMICALLY LAUGHABLE, FOOLISH AND LUDICROUS

Fielding better watch himself. Rupert Murdoch has been ranting like a loon (or like someone who's lost a few billion dollars) about the evils of "content kleptomaniacs" recently. If Fielding's going to lift so much content from Andrew Bolt, he may be in big trouble :

"(the) plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content."

But can you copyright political propaganda?

UPDATE : Earlier today, Andrew Bolt published the key lines for the revived, and rather boring, political strategy for attacking The Greens (they use cars! and planes!) from Fielding's press release, before it went online.

How very similar it is to Andrew Bolt's own favoured "Look! Hypocrisy Over There!" methodology for attacking The Greens. Surely just a coincidence, and not at all groupthink.

Or something more suspicious.

Did Andrew Bolt get a preview of the press release from Fielding by e-mail, or fax? Or did Fielding read it to him over the phone while he was 'putting it together' ?

Family First Senator Steve Fielding is tired of being hectored by hypocrites:

From 1 July to 31 December 2008 Greens Senators spent $164,240 flying around the country.

“The carbon footprint the Greens leave behind jet setting across the country is just another minor detail they forget to include when they campaign about lowering carbon dioxide emissions....”

(No link yet to press release.)

How very, very interesting.

Is 'journalism' now a second job for Andrew Bolt?

Below, David Marr catches up on the Sunday morning papers, during the 'Morning Papers' segment of Insiders, while Bolt waffles about his latest climate change conspiracy theory, that doesn't include the fact that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, is the world's leading promoter of global warming fearmongery and carbon neutral corporatism.

Murdoch Attacks Bloggers, Again, As His Empire Self-Destructs

This is from an Associated Press story, about the Associated Press boss, Tom Curley, and News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch complaining, once again, about search engines and bloggers "stealing" their content. Interestingly, this story is hosted on Google who paid Associated Press to the use the story, and yet the Associated Press boss, Tom Curley, is angry about search engines like Google using their content without paying for it :

The leaders of two of the world's major news organizations said Friday that it is time for search engines and others who use news content for free to pay up.

The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.

"Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers," Curley said. "We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content."

He said content aggregators, such as search engines and bloggers, were also directing audiences and revenue away from content creators.

"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it," Curley said.

Murdoch also told the opening session of the World Media Summit in Beijing's Great Hall of the People that content providers would be demanding to be paid.

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph," the News Corp. chief executive said.

The AP and its member newspapers contend that unauthorized use of their material is costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential advertising revenue at a time when they can least afford it.

The AP's revenue is expected to be around $700 million this year, down from $748 million in 2008, in part because of reductions in the fees it charges newspapers and broadcasters, whose advertising revenue has been dwindling as more marketers shift to less expensive or better-targeted options online.

Murdoch and Curley were speaking to 300 representatives from more than 170 media outlets from 80 countries at a meeting that will look at the challenges and opportunities the media face from the Internet, changes in technology and the world economic crisis.

It'll be interesting to visit this story again in three or four years and see what's happened.

We Told Them Everything!

In 1977, Voyager 1 & 2 were set loose into the solar system. Voyager 1 is now 10 billion miles from home, and sometime in the next few years will reach interstellar space. Both spacecraft contain copies of The Golden Record, gold-plated discs filled with information about where Earth is located in the Milky Way galaxy, how our genitals work, far too much info about human DNA and various images of humanity at play and at work, and a selection of spectacular locations from across the planet.



One of those images is of Heron Island (image 41 in this collection)



Another shows the Sydney Opera House (image 95)



Maybe it's the booze-alternative talking, but I think that is monumentally cool.

It's possible that long after the Earth has been burned to a cinder by the death of our Sun, those images of Australia, and the greetings of Earthlings from more than 100 nations, will still be floating through the galaxy (fuel sources are expected to expire around 2020), waiting for something to find them, to fire up the disc player, push the right button and to learn all about our species, who we were, what we did and how we once dreamed of something bigger than ourselves and our petty squabbles that seem to consume too much of the lives we live on this little blue-green planet.

UPDATE : Carl Sagan says it all so much better :



I'm on a bit of a Carl Sagan jag at the moment, which never fails to refresh the mind and refill the well of wonder that can get a bit dry sometimes.

Carl Sagan On Cannabis : There Is A Religious Aspect To Some Highs

"Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds.

"When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time."

.

Murdoch Journo Declares Allegiance To Taliban

Yesterday I pointed out the shared beliefs of conservative extremist Andrew Bolt and The Taliban.

Today, another Murdoch conservative extremist, Piers Akerman, announces his solidarity with The Taliban :



I thought it was illegal to announce your support for terrorists?

Next thing you know these conservative extremists will be telling us that the Taliban and Hamas are legitimate freedom fighters.

Someone call ASIO. These people are fucking insane.


.

It's a clever way to announce your return. Pick up exactly where you left off, almost mid-sentence, when you were fired :

"The federal parliamentary Liberal Party is consumed by fear and loathing. Barren of anything that might be tricked up as rational policy, its members are stuck together only by a seething stew of grudges and whinges and a gnawing sense of entitlement denied."



.

Laurie Oakes : Hark, Hear The Turnbull Death Rattle

Brendan "Pensioners Eat Cheap Soup! Soup!" Nelson must have to steer clear of most newspapers and TV news these days, lest he risk choking to death on karma laughter.

Laurie Oakes explains why :

Now that Joe Hockey has indicated he would not leave the party in the lurch should Turnbull's leadership become untenable, you can hear the death rattle. No matter what he does, the muttering among Liberal MPs becomes increasingly ominous and the erosion of his authority gathers pace.

The public sees an Opposition racked by internal brawling and a leader lurching from crisis to crisis, so the polls get worse and Turnbull's position deteriorates further. The accepted wisdom is that the Coalition has brought all this on itself through a lack of discipline and Turnbull's ineptitude.

But credit where it is due. Turnbull and the Opposition would not have got into such a disastrous position without a great deal of help from Kevin Rudd.

Rudd has played clever and ruthless politics. Wedge politics. And he learned how to do it from an expert.

John Howard made an art form of using issues such as asylum seekers to divide the Labor Party. Climate change is for Rudd what Tampa and "children overboard" were for Howard. He has used the emissions trading scheme legislation as a wedge to open up a deep ideological fault line in the Coalition.

The only valid reason for Rudd's insistence that the ETS Bill must be passed before the United Nations Copenhagen climate change conference in December is a political one - to wedge his opponents. And the strategy has been spectacularly successful.

Rudd long ago refined the Divide & Inflame techniques used so effectively by John Howard. The prime minister now does pretty much the same thing to Turnbull, month in, month out, that he did to Howard for the entire year leading up to the 2007 elections.

Rudd promised to fuck with the minds of the Liberal Party when he became the Labor opposition leader. Becoming prime minister only meant he got to have more fun breaking their spirit, and sowing confusion and paranoia amongst their ranks. So much so, the Liberal diehards are pulling away, distancing themselves, and have taken to claiming they are "Conservatives" instead of Liberals.


.

Andrew Bolt : The Taliban Are Right

By Darryl Mason

Back home from what one Murdoch colleague has labelled a "typically fascist" European holiday, Herald Sun conservative extremist blogger Andrew Bolt finds himself in almost complete agreement with like-minded conservative extremists The Taliban, over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Bolt :

"Obama did nothing at all to deserve an award once handed out for ending wars"

The Taliban :

"We condemn the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama"

Bolt :

"Where is the peace Obama has brought?"

The Taliban :

"He has done nothing for peace..."

Conservative extremists in Australia, like their comrades in the United States, and Afghanistan, have nothing left to contribute now to plans for a more peaceful world but their endless hate.

Well, It Was A Kind Of Peaceful First Week And A Bit For The Obama Presidency


.

A Political Party Suicides, In Slow Motion

By Darryl Mason

Devastating. What a headline from the ABC :



Is it still dirty, rotten, ABC Lefty Bias when it's also the stone cold truth?

Chris Ulhman :

Mr Hockey has never actively sought the leadership, having made the quite astute decision some time ago that now is not a good time to be leader of the Opposition.

But since Mr Turnbull declared last week that his party should back him or sack him over his push to propose amendments to the Government's emissions trading plan he has completely lost control of events.

A growing group within his party is now desperate to see the back of him, declaring it's time to put an end to what some mockingly dubbed "the Turnbull experiment". For them ETS has become the "eliminate Turnbull scheme".

Yesterday one senior Liberal crystalised the views of many with whom I spoke.

"There is broad consensus in all parts of the party that it's over," he said. "It is just a matter of time. It's just not working."

And all the Liberals I have spoken to about this - even Mr Turnbull's supporters - lay the blame for the unwinding of his position squarely at his feet.

Turnbull will soon be gone. It can't last more than a few weeks. The daily humiliation is clearly eating away at him. When he steps down, presumably due to "health problems", in November, his attempt to lead the Liberal Party out of the 20th century will have cost him (depending on who you believe) $10-50 million out of his own pocket.

Will Joe Hockey step up before Christmas? Losing one election is not an unshakable curse, but if he doesn't take the leadership, Tony Abbott will and once Abbott has done his best to storm up a national vortex of peak-stupidity, by campaigning on a score of Andrew Bolt-approved conspiracy theories, there may not be much of a viable Liberal Party left for Joe Hockey to lead.

But Turnbull's insistence on all but fully agreeing with the Rudd government on the ETS, even as it turns the full force of the Liberal Party backbench against him, and sinks his poll numbers even further, has to make you wonder who Turnbull's political masters really are, and how many more major missions he has other than to get Australia signed on to an ETS and the seemingly inevitable worldwide carbon tax that would follow.

Then again, what the hell would I know? I announced the resignation of Malcolm Turnbull back in early August, while anticipating the return of Brendan Nelson.

And when Turnbull's resignation does come, Brendan Nelson will probably weep tears of laughter.


November 2007 : Listen Up Turnbull, This Is How It's Going To Be

How The Australian's Caroline Overington Tried To Help Malcolm Turnbull Win Wenworth

January 2009 : Turnbull's Problems With Coalition Climate Change Doubters Break Into The Open When Barnaby Joyce Says He Refuses To "Goose Step" Around Liberal Party Offices

July 2009 : In a Monty Python-esque Moment Of Doubt, Turnbull Almost Admits The Liberals Will Lose An Election Fought Over Climate Change Policies.