The Australian, quality lead editorial journalism, June 23 (excerpts) :

Kevin Rudd looks safe as leader, but at what price?

Judging by his performance in question time yesterday, the Prime Minister thinks he can win the next election. So, it seems, does the caucus, including the person who has the most to gain by Kevin Rudd's exit from the top job. Julia Gillard is astute, capable and popular - and she is sticking by her boss.

The alternative scenario advanced by many of Ms Gillard's supporters sees her replacing Mr Rudd a few months after a narrow Labor victory. She would indeed make a good prime minister. But like Peter Costello before her, the deputy might find that when it comes to power, timing is everything.

The Rest Is Here

Fair Shake Of The Coup Bottle

One of the final messages from @KevinRuddPM on Twitter :



It should have read : This is still a democracy.

In Australia, coups don't require military assistance. So far.


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Coup D'eRudd

Australia Vs Serbia. Gillard Vs Rudd.

Both events will make great television tonight.


(ABC News graphic)

ABC News :

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's leadership is under siege tonight from some of the Labor Party's most influential factional warlords.

It must be true. ABC managing director Mark Scott said so on Twitter :



UPDATE : ABC News online is now covered in decorations :



Kerry O'Brien closed the 7.30 Report by describing the Rudd leadership challenge as :

"...a fluid situation."

With or without a serious challenge tonight, there will be all sorts of bodily fluids being spilled.


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Downer On Rudd : Studious, Bright, Passionate, Qualities Shine Through

Former Howard government foreign minister and failed Liberal Party leader Alexander Downer sings the praises of prime minister Kevin Rudd :

There is a parliamentary consensus that Kevin Rudd is bright. No one could reasonably doubt his addiction to hard work, his studious attention to detail and his passion to acquire knowledge. His success at university and in his early years as a junior diplomat attests to that.

As prime minister, those qualities have shone through. Kevin Rudd, PM, knows stuff, speaks a foreign language — and a hard one at that — and works day and night with barely a break to sleep.

Downer also has some criticisms. Rudd swears and wants to be on TV a lot, he's conceited and vain, and he works public servants too hard. And that's about it.

Compared to Downer, who ignored numerous memos and intelligence reports telling him there were no WMDs in Iraq, even before the war began, and that an Australian company was bribing Saddam Hussein with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, Rudd's failings and mistakes seem minor, and trivial, despite his profligacy.

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What works for Portugal would also work for Australia. Unless we want to continue making criminals rich, and usually law-abiding citizens into criminals :

Now this? This is Rock. Jason O'Keefe from Airbourne :

Whatever Iran & China Can Do, We Can Do Better

Oh, look. Time Magazine has a big story on Australia!

Ahhh, shit....

The concept of government-backed web censorship is usually associated with nations where human rights and freedom of speech are routinely curtailed. But if Canberra's plans for a mandatory Internet filter go ahead, Australia may soon become the first Western democracy to join the ranks of Iran, China and a handful of other nations where access to the Internet is restricted by the state.

Why not just call it the 'Jesus Filter'?

....only a cluster of Christian groups and child safety advocates have come out as supporting the filter. In a June 5 poll conducted on the web site of the Sydney Morning Herald, 99% of the 88,645 people who responded to the survey said they were against the Internet filter. Nevertheless, (Stephen) Conroy told the Sun-Herald in May that the policy "will be going ahead.'' He also accused groups like GetUp! of deliberately misleading the public. 'We are still consulting on the final details of the scheme. But this policy has been approved by 85% of Australian internet service providers, who have said they would welcome the filter, including Telstra, Optus, iPrimus and iinet.'' Iinet have since denied that it ever approved the scheme.

Many say the biggest problem with the plan is that it simply won't work. "I don¹t see the point of blocking a site that no one would have come across, and making the criminals aware of the fact they are being watched. I am much more interested in seeing the Australian Federal Police work with international law enforcement agencies in tracking the site," Ludham of the Greens Party says.

The Full Story Is Here

The Liberals are making a bit of noise about the Jesus Filter, but they're not going to oppose it,, they just want to 'tweak it' a bit.

Please welcome to the bullfighting ring, Christian Hernandez, the world's smartest bullfighter :



Despite what you may read or hear, Hernandez was not arrested for "cowardice", he was arrested for breaking his contract, and paid a small fine before being released. He then announced his retirement.

Hernandez had previously been gored through the leg, but like all bullfighters, he has no doubt watched the following video and puked in fear and horror :



Sorry if you were eating breakfast.

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Peanut Butter Stings Less Than Vegemite


Helen Coonan : "I have two beautiful Golden Retrievers...."

UPDATE : Video is at the bottom of this post.

Definitely one of the most downright bizarre, and hilarious, panel debates ever seen on Australian TV. The subject? Consensual Sex With Your Pets.

From Monday night's Q &A on your ABC (transcript slightly edited, corrected) :

HOST TONY JONES : We have a web question from Deirdre Baker in NSW. QUOTES: "Peter Singer, in your 2001 article 'Heavy Petting' you state that mutually satisfying sexual activity between humans and animals can develop. Please explain."

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: It is a fact that there is sexual contact between some humans and animals. I was raising the question why we have such a taboo on this. Sometimes it involves cruelty and the infliction of power and dominance on an animal, and clearly I oppose that. There can be occasions, I don't know how much vivid description you want.

TONY JONES: Go ahead.

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: I'm clearly not on American television tonight, because no American host would have said that. An example is a woman has oral sex performed by her dog.

PROFESSOR JAYATHRI KULKARNI: Brings new meaning to doggy style!

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: Women have said this is something that pleases them, the dog is free to do it or walk away, there's no dominance over the dog, that seems harmless.

SENATOR HELEN COONAN: This is a trained dog, obviously?

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: It's her dog who enjoys doing it and the dog gives pleasure to the companion. I don't see why we have a taboo.

PROFESSOR JAYATHRI KULKARNI: Sorry, Peter, this is just weird. It's just weird!

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: It's not common, but is it wrong, is the question?

JOURNALIST DAVID MARR: Jay, this is your territory.

(LAUGHTER)

TONY JONES: Let's get a psychiatrist's perspective on this?

PROFESSOR JAYATHRI KULKARNI: I'm thinking, Freud did say that human beings are polymorphously perverse, which is another way of saying that there are lots of different views. Sometimes you have to draw the line and go, "That's weird."

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: Since I wrote this piece, I've had people, sex therapists come to me, and say they have had patients who were tortured with guilt because they got some sexual satisfaction from contact with their animals, and their lives were miserable. And they gave them the article because it helped them to see other people were doing the same thing, and here was somebody who was saying, "This is not a sign of terrible moral evil."

TONY JONES: Helen Coonan, parliamentary sitting week up coming up, would you like to get on the record on this?

SENATOR HELEN COONAN: Thankfully, I don't answer questions, I ask them. I won't be asking this one, Tony. I agree, that's seriously off. I can't imagine... I have two beautiful golden retrievers, and... (LAUGHTER)

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER : I thought your party stood for individual freedom.

SENATOR HELEN COONAN: I think it's off the wall. Put it this way, I'll continue to find the nice patch under my doggy's ear that he likes, that's all I'll do.

TONY JONES: I'm sorry to say, we have run out of time.

DAVID MARR: I'm not sorry.

The video is here. It's definitely worth whipping through to about the 50 minute mark. Helen Coonan's line about her Golden Retrievers sent the audience, and host Tony Jones, into hysterical laughter, with a fair scattering in the crowd of absolutely shocked, disgusted and "oh, I'm about to wet my pants!' expressions.

I bet they won't be using any of that discussion in the promos for next week's show.

UPDATE : Okay, we have the video here now :




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Beer Not Bought

Why would anyone think the Murdoch media are actively, hysterically campaigning against prime minister Kevin Rudd?

From the front page of today's Daily Telegraph online :



Bombshell.

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Australia played a small role, as the landing zone, in one of the most remarkable episodes of space exploration - the capturing of small pieces of a comet by a Japanese space probe, now successfully returned to Earth for study.



More On Hayabusa Here

In more local Space-related news, Australian astronomer Anthony Wesley snapped this incredible shot of an unidentified impact on the surface of Jupiter :

On June 3rd, 2010, something hit Jupiter. A comet or asteroid descended from the black of space, struck the planet's cloudtops, and disintegrated, producing a flash of light so bright it was visible in backyard telescopes on Earth. Soon, observers around the world were training their optics on the impact site, waiting to monitor the cindery cloud of debris which always seems to accompany a strike of this kind.

"It's as if Jupiter just swallowed the thing whole," says Anthony Wesley of Australia, one of two amateur astronomers who recorded the initial flash.

More Here


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Veteran journalist Andrew Dodd on the shaping of 'quality journalism' at Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper :

I know the culture at The Australian. I worked there for five years. Occasionally, as a reporter you get leant-on to chase things. You can be pushed into prodding a certain side in a certain way in line with the paper's campaign of the day. I know how uncomfortable this is, particularly when the paper is not a disinterested player.

The Australian, owned by a non-Australian, who voluntarily gave up his citizenship to make more money. You can't more un-Australian than that.

The Australian government's latest attempt to scare away asylum seekers.



How effective will it be?

It depends on whether the dangers you're trying to escape are more or less scary than being lost in a stormy ocean,, doesn't it?

Plague Of Locusts? Blame Rudd

It may seem completely irrational to blame what is expected to be the worst locust plague in decades on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but I've been reading plenty of Australian tabloid newspaper columnists recently and I've learned utterly irrational blame-gaming matters not a hoot.

It's Kevin Rudd's fault.

From Bloomberg :

The worst locust plague in more than two decades is threatening to strike Australia, the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter, after rainfall boosted egg-laying by the insects in major crop growing regions.

“There are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops and pastures that are potentially at risk,” Chris Adriaansen, director at the Canberra-based Australian Plague Locust Commission said in an interview by phone.

The forecast plague could cost Victoria’s agriculture sector A$2 billion ($1.7 billion) if left untreated, the state government said today.

“The advice of leading scientists indicates the scale of the coming spring’s outbreak could be as bad as we experienced in 1973 and 1974 when locusts swarmed through much of Victoria,” state premier John Brumby said today in a statement. “Prior to that, the last outbreak of this scale was in 1934, so we could be facing a once-in-a-lifetime locust plague with locusts swarming right across the state.”

Australian farmers have mostly completed planting of winter crops including wheat and canola, with final output depending on favorable weather through the remainder of the year. Aerial pesticide spraying and ground-level controls by agencies and growers is planned to curb the spread of the locusts and reduce damage to crops and pastures, according to the commission

A swarm may contain millions of locusts covering several square kilometers and overnight migrations of as much as several 100 kilometers are not uncommon, it said.

High density swarms, with more than 50 insects in a square meter, can eat 20 metric tons of vegetation a day, according to a South Australian primary industries website.

The Full Story Is Here

Enough Is Enough

Even Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt, who gets free trips to Israel and then 'forgets' to mention so in a Daily Telegraph column where he recited IDF propaganda about the Gaza Flotilla slaughter without question, apparently has had enough of Israel's cruel, internationally condemned trade blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians :




Michael Rivero, who often links 2 or 3 times a week to Andrew Bolt articles on his popular website What Really Happened (contributing greatly to Bolt's claimed "2 Million Hits A Month!"), appears to agree with Bolt in this letter to the New York Times (excerpts) :

While I share the world’s revulsion at Israel’s attack on an unarmed aid flotilla in international waters I take strong exception to the comment made by the authors of this piece in the third paragraph. HAMAS did not stage a coup d’état against the Palestinian authority. HAMAS won the elections, and it was FATAH that tried to forcibly remove HAMAS, but failed.

An official Israel government documented reported by McClatchy news only yesterday confirms that the purpose of the blockade is not Israel’s defense, but to force the Gazans to surrender their elected government and accept Israeli rule via their proxy Fatah. That the list of items banned by Israel in Gaza included potato chips, shaving cream, candy and cookies demonstrates that defense is not the issue here. Israel’s attempt to coerce acceptance of alternate government in Gaza is a mirror of the attempt by the USSR in 1948 and 1949 to blockade West Berlin in order to starve that city into accepting Soviet rule via their proxy East Germany.

The world reacted quite differently back then, mounting the Berlin airlift, flying 13,000 tons of food and necessities into West Berlin daily on the principle that no government has a right to starve another people into changing their political system.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is often accused of being utterly boring and morosely humourless, at least as far as his public persona goes. He's trying to change that perception on Twitter :





Er, yeah. Okay.

Apparently there's some soccer games about to start in South Africa, and an Australian soccer team will be playing, too. Though you'd hardly know it from watching the TV, or reading newspapers. They've barely mentioned it all.

(Yeah, I know, that was even less funny than Kevin Rudd's Friday afternoon attempt at humour).

Crikey's First Dog On The Moon has worried about a lot of things this week. Here's two :



Plenty More At First Dog's 'Highly Strung Week In Review'

Yunupingu Set To Crack The US

Some excellent news for Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu :

Indigenous singer-songwriter Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu has scored a US release for his platinum-selling debut album.

The self-titled record by the blind singer from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory picked up a string of awards following its release in 2008, including an ARIA for best independent album.

It will be released in the US on the Dramatico label in June.

Yunupingu will also go on a promotional concert tour taking in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Toronto, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As part of the promo for the album's release, the song below, Wivathul, will be played in thousands of stores of a major American coffee chain across the United States.

Now, getting your song played in a coffee shop may not sound like a big deal, but literally millions of Americans will hear that song as they line up for their coffees and hang out.

A similar promotion a few years back successfully introduced Bob Dylan to a new generation of fans and helped sell hundreds of thousands of copies of a rare Dylan album.

If a reporter can say it on ABC News, why can't Kerry O'Brien drop it on the 7.30 Report? "For fuck's sake, Kevin Rudd, just answer the question!"





Mumbrella picks up even more accidental profanity on Sky News :



It's not the most inappropriate word to use when discussing the behaviour of Australia's richest mining bosses.

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Attached to this story about Nimbin, by Mandy Sayer in The Australian, is this block of ads :



Who knew you could advertise better ways to grow an illegal crop in such a bastion of conservatism?

Blaze on, Boomers, blaze on.

In case this isn't enough, I've posted a bunch of new stories at :

Your New Reality

And there's a shitload of new story links and random, vacuous, inappropriate and occasionally insightful comments over at Twitter :

Darryl Mason On Twitter

Enjoy.

A remarkable photo by Tim Silverwood of the rotting corpse of a juvenile sperm whale on a Newcastle beach, from ABC News' Reader Submitted Photo Collection :



There's plenty more excellent reader photos here.

I hope the trickle of entertaining #FedElect2010 political ads, by professionals & amateurs (or professionals imitating amateurs), turns into a steady stream. Key word - entertaining :



Via VexNews

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Free Gay Heroin For All

John Birmingham poses a What If? on The Greens, who now command a chunky 16% of the national vote, according to recent polls (excerpts) :

What if Bob Brown's lentil eating slouch bikers and militant anti-military-stuff movement actually got a couple, just a couple, of seats up in the lower house, and forming a government after the next election actually required the eventual victor, be it Abbott or Gillard, to cut a deal with Brown?

What would that government actually do? And more importantly what could it not do, in terms of passing laws and spending money?

They might well be able to leverage their support into seemingly minor but actually significant policies such as, say, a moratorium on the release of genetically-modified organisms into the environment. Or a ban on old growth logging.

They'd almost certainly put a bullet into any xenophobic nonsense about demonizing asylum seekers as mad bombers and child killers waiting to jump our queues and blow up our shopping malls because they hate our precious, precious freedom so much they're willing to spend years in a detention centre just to have a crack at us.

...in actual security policy, even motherhood statements like the party's central principle that "no nuclear armed or powered forces should be deployed within Australia's maritime boundaries" would mean a radical transformation of decades of settled, bipartisan policy, abrogating as it would the entire alliance with US.

A great read.

Read The Full Story Here

Tony Martin on turning 41 :

Most people my age have kids to make them feel old, but my wife and I are part of that somehow suspect group of people standing over at the side, looking at their shoes, whenever some politician starts tossing around the word ‘family’; selfish couples who don’t want children. Other forty-one-year-olds have the blooming sophistication of their own offspring to point out how they’ve become daggy and unfashionable. We have to rely on far subtler signposts.

Until about two years ago, I would read both the local street press publications from cover to cover, down to every last Fred Negro curlicue. Then I started to notice how, when I got to the dance music section in the middle, I’d slide my hand through to the back page and flip the entire silvery supplement over, and make for the live reviews at the back, in the hope that someone I recognised, like You Am I, had done a gig that week.

Read The Rest Here

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Adriana Xenides died today, aged 54 :



Dan Ilic pays an appropriate tribute :



UPDATE : The Daily Telegraph sticks in the knife, one last time :



What the fuck do Holly and Annette think she should have been wearing to the newsagency? A fucking ballgown?

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"We Will Decide Which Cetaceans Enter This Country, And The Manner In Which They Come!"

By Darryl Mason

Peter Garrett strikes out on his own as federal Labor descends into a shambles, offering blue whales free air mattresses if they find their way onto land and don't wish to return to the sea :



Opposition leader Tony Abbott, reveling in his best poll numbers yet against prime minister Kevin Rudd, is expected to mount a furious campaign against what he has already described as the Rudd government's "failed policies to keep whales where they belong, in the sea."

"Peter Garrett wants whales to think that once he's saved them, they should feel free to come on up and make themselves at home. Well, sorry, but that's not an Australia I want to live in. Enough is enough, we need to turn those whales back."

Controversial Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey revealed a surprising knowledge of the breeding habits of marine life when he railed against Peter Garrett during a Canberra doorstop :

"It's time to turn back all Cetaceans who try to enter this country illegally. They're queue jumpers. It's bad enough so many water mammals want to flop up our beaches, but after them comes all the egg layers. Have you seen how many eggs those big turtles can lay? They'd fill a town in a few months!"

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce said it boiled down to one question,, that most of the "politically correct media" are too afraid to ask :

"Do you want to live next door to a family of whales? All that whistling and chirping all night long? They've got songs that take 20 to 30 minutes to sing. Do you want to want to live next door to that?"

@RacistWallaby certainly doesn't :

"Why is it that every convenience store is run by a family of sperm whales?"

If Garrett gets nothing else out of this term of federal Labor, he clearly intends to be remembered for at least saving some whales from Japanese harpoons.

He must be relieved the incredibly sick jokes about his insulation program and him being responsible for houses catching fire have gone quiet at last. Jokes spread by so many politicians and journalists who know that Peter Garrett's mother died in a house fire, when he was in his early 20s, and that he burned himself trying to save her.

If I had to put up with that kind of demented shit from people passing themselves off as adults, I'd want to be be out watching the fucking whales, too.


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Nothing's As Precious As A Hole In The Ground

How many other lies, or 'exaggerations', have flowed from the mega-funded corporate and political opposition to the new mining tax, led by the federal Liberals and the richest of Australia's miners?

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has retreated from his earlier claim that he had scrapped mining projects because of the Federal Government's proposed resource super profits tax.

Mr Palmer owns one of the largest deposits of iron ore in the world, carved out in five separate projects.

The investment for the first development was secured before the super profits tax was announced

Mr Palmer, a Liberal National Party donor, told Lateline last month he had canned two projects in Western Australia's Pilbara region because of the tax.

He said one of those projects would employ about 3,000 people and generate about $2 billion a year in exports.

This 'exaggeration' - the new mining tax will result in the loss of thousands of jobs - became the Big Fear headline and commentary rallying point, promoted by a media drooling over more than $100 million in unexpected mining industry advertising, with another $38 million or so from the federal government for their ad blitz.

Clive Palmer has now told Four Corners, in a report on the new mining industry tax :

"Probably, it should have been, '[I am] slowing them down, waiting to see what happens'," he said.

The Four Corners report and transcript is here

Some recent classic Clive Palmer channeling Fox News' Glenn Beck at his most idiotic, from his National Press Club debate with the AWU's Paul Howes :

"Do you really believe in the late 1800s Paddy Hannan would have walked 600 miles in the hot sun from Perth to Kalgoorlie to discover gold if he had to pay the Wayne Swan resource super tax?"

"I've talked to banks in Hong Kong and New York recently....They think that the tax is an outrageous proposition to nationalise our industries."

"...people like me don't want to pay the workers any more unless we have to. We're the baddies of the debate."

"Okay. We need to return to parliamentary democracy. This tax will rob our children of their future. Thank you."

"Federal Government is destroying state rights, destroying jobs, attacking the constitution."

"Perceptions wise, this means 70% (tax)"

"Resources do not belong to the Australian people."

They clearly belong to Palmer, who only has three corporate jets.

And Clive Palmer, again, declaring the new mining tax will result in the cancellation of Christmas :

"Mums and dads all over Australia will become unemployed," he said. "They won't have the money to buy their Christmas presents for their kids. They will be out on the street."

Having publicly blown the Santa Claus fantasy for all children, it appears most of the rest of Australia's mining industry elite are not too happy about Clive and his flappy mouth. According to this story :

At high-level talks in recent weeks, the biggest names in Australian mining - Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Fortescue Metals Group and Xstrata - belatedly realised that Palmer's eccentric public utterances were harming the cause.

Special agent Barnaby Joyce was sent in to try and quiet Palmer :

Joyce is said to have reported back: "I can't stop him - he's his own man."

Yesterday, Joyce would not be drawn on "private conversations", but did admit that some may see Palmer as "distracting from key messages".

Something Barnaby happens to know quite a lot about.


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It doesn't matter what you think, or what some damned blogger, or one of 900 commenters to a news story, or ten million Twitterers think, or some stunningly biased columnist thinks, or what Kevin Rudd thinks, or Obama, or Putin, or anybody else, what matters most is what the leader of Turkey thinks :

We know, war as well as peace has its laws. In war you do not attack children, in war you do not attack women, old people, in war you do not attack civilians or religious functionaries, in war you do not attack those who are hoisting the white flag, health and rescue personnel; not in wartime, but in peace time, those who do these things not only violate the law, at the same time they trample humanity under their feet, they abandon humanity.

Despots, gangsters even pirates have specific sensitiveness, follow some specific morals. Those who do not follow any morality or ethics, those who do not act with any sensitivity, to call them such names would even be a compliment to them. Israel has, by attacking a ship with volunteers from 32 countries, in fact defied the world. World peace has been deeply wounded. This brazen, irresponsible, reckless government that recognises no law and tramples on any kind of humanitarian virtue, this attack of the Israeli government by all means – but by all means, must be punished.

A government, having made lying its state policy and does not blush on account of the crime it commits, instead of expecting them to open an investigation, the international community must investigate this incident in all its dimensions and must give the legal response.

The State of Turkey won’t be satisfied only by watching this. Turkey is not an adolescent, rootless state. It is in no way a tribal State! No one should attempt to play around with this nation, to test the patience of Turkey. As precious as Turkey’s partnership is, so harsh will be her hostility.

Losing Turkey’s friendship and partnership is a price itself to pay. We have always been in a historical friendship and collaboration with the Israeli and Jewish people. I do so believe, those Israeli people who watched this bloody attack in tears, who strongly criticise it, do understand very well that this incident does not befit human dignity....

The speech is powerful, poignant, aggressive, history-changing, which begs the question why you probably haven't heard about it, or seen extensive quotes from it in the mainstream media.

The old cliche was never more true : This Changes Everything.

It is also one of the few speeches I've ever read where a leader responded to brutal attacks on its unarmed civilians by talking about love.

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Satire always works better at getting the message across than doomery :

Compare. Two tourism ads using scenery, song and smiling, happy people.

The new Australian tourism ad :



The Iceland tourism ad :

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

There's an energy to the Iceland ad that is sorely lacking in the Australian one.


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Hush Little Kevvy, Don't Say A Word....

Annabel Crabb wonders, both seriously and satirically, whether prime minister Kevin Rudd is suffering through advanced insomnia and the effects of intense sleep deprivation :

Mr Rudd's own spouse has confirmed that the PM can get by on just three hours' sleep a night.

This revelation raises some compelling side issues - like: How do you stay married to someone who only sleeps for three hours a night? When do you go through their stuff?

But it also explains some of what we are seeing; the panicky decision-making, the forced bonhomie of yesterday's Canberra press conference (what exactly is a "rolled gold bucket of fear based on myth"? It sounds like a Kings Cross cocktail, the sort of thing that might have got Ricky Ponting into trouble, in loucher days), and the inability to communicate some basic points.

The breaking of the campaign promise on political advertising is one thing.

The more worrying element of the Prime Minister's reversal is that he actually needs to pay someone else $38 million to explain a policy decision because he is having difficulty explaining it himself.

Sleep deprivation can be deadly serious (says me at 2:12am). It not only fucks your head, and clouds your judgment, depriving yourself of sleep bitchslaps your immune system, destroys your libido, causes aural and visual hallucinations and induces intense paranoia.

The Sleep Doctor is in. Here's what you need to do, Kevin.

Take a sick day, check into a hotel, punch a few breakfast billies (Swannie hangs out in the rock scene, he'll be able to fix you up), eat a pizza while getting stuck into the bourbon, run a warm bath, put some mid-1980s Clannad on the stereo (not too loud), sink into the warm water for a solid half hour while thinking only of fluffy sleepy kittens lazily pawing at the air, flop out of the bath, wrap yourself in a warm towel, stagger into the bedroom, drawer the curtains, climb into bed, pull the blankets right up over your head to induce the feeling of being somewhere womb-like and imagine you're in a lift, going down - the top floor is bright light, and each floor you descend when the doors open is a deeper, darker shade of blue. The bottom floor is wonderful, peaceful darkness.

Sleep for ten hours.

Repeat.

Thank me later.

Any Porn To Declare?

Australian Customs officials are now scoring free porn from the hard drives of Australians returning from overseas holidays. Some of the titles from a recently confiscated hard drive :

Adult Pretty Woman, Real Female Orgasm, Asian Babe Moans, My Friend's Hot Mum and Sexy Blond.

The owner of the hard drive said his "rights have been violated" and his life "ruined". He said he will sue Customs if they delete the porn movies, all of which he claims are over-18 and legal in Australia.

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In the headline to a story about NSW premier Keneally's free flight upgrades, the International Business Times gives the premier the biggest upgrade of all :



(via @BabyExPat)

Not A Public Holiday, Yet

Under the watchful eye of the ABC interpretive dance bandicoot, rehearsals are underway for tomorrow's NABIADD :



What Is NABIADD?

UPDATE : More dancing, and this demand to choose a side, or at least a chanty dance style, on the murder of unarmed civilians in international waters :

This in many ways is a battle between civilisation and barbarism, and we are all called upon to choose on which side of the line to stand.

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David Marr sums up just about everything you need to know about the supershouty fiasco of yesterday's, and most of the rest of this week's, Question Time :

One bunch of hypocrites who spent millions on government advertising in the Howard years is brawling with another bunch of hypocrites spending millions on government advertising after denouncing the practice all through the Howard years.

A good average to stage what Marr calls "The Show Nobody's Come To See" is about a couple of million dollars a day.


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Hey Boltadamus! Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

By Darryl Mason

Murdoch tabloid journalist, and Liberal Party Yoda, Andrew Bolt, likes to praise himself when his predictions about Australian politics come true.

He would appear to have a pretty good track record, but it's an illusion.

Bolt makes dozen of predictions a month, so obviously there's a good chance that one or two of them might come true, months or years later.

Here's Andrew Bolt's latest prediction :

My tip is that Rudd is now finished and will be replaced. I’m guessing this could even occur within four weeks

I will bet Andrew Bolt $1000, to the charity of his choice, that prime minister Kevin Rudd will neither quit nor be overthrown by colleagues by June 28.

Will Andrew Bolt take the bet?

Will he announce on his radio show and in his blog that he is so confident in his prediction of Rudd's imminent political demise that he is willing to wager $1000 that Rudd will be gone inside four weeks from today?

No, he won't.

But I wait to be pleasantly surprised.

My own ability to Nostradamus Australian political tremors and earthquakes is, however, disturbingly accurate (kind of) or simply downright obvious (more likely). Here's a bunch of predictions I made before the 2007 Federal Election :

Labor Wins By Five Seats

Howard Loses Bennelong

Liberals Retain Wentworth

Greens Nail 14% Of National Vote

John Howard Brutalised In Media By Liberal Party Colleagues For Losing Election

Peter Costello Announces Retirement

Tony Abbott Announces Retirement

Malcolm Turnbull Fights For Liberal Leadership Against Demented Far Right

John Howard Embarks On $100,000 Per Speech Tour Of American NeoCon Think Tanks

Liberal Party Fractures, Descends Into Savage Infighting

Shelf Full Of New Books Reveal Dark Secrets Behind John Howard's Years As Prime Minister

John Howard To Score Knighthood From Queen

The Shape Of Rudd's 'New Labor Conservatism' Comes Into Focus - Lefties Grow More Nervous By The Day About Future

Peter Garrett Quits Politics, Rejoins Midnight Oil To Fight Rudd's Pro-Logging, Pro-Nuclear New Labor

Philip Ruddock Quits Politics To Take On Role As Mr Burns In Non-Animated Simpsons Movie

Obviously a couple of those were jokes, but I'm totally disappointed Fox never went ahead with the live action movie of The Simpsons. Ruddock would have been absolutely brilliant as Mr Burns.

You can e-mail Andrew Bolt here - bolta@heraldsun.com.au - and challenge him to accept my wager.


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A Dreamtime story :

Still one of the most powerful public health ads ever aired in Australia. It's jarring to see this ad again, 23 years after its was first aired on Australian TV :

How the fashion industry proves that Free Can Equal Profits & Success ;



Fascinating. And inspiring.

(via @MoreOj)

Praying To The Digital Gods

By @DarrylMason

The Australian takes its column inches hogging obsession with the iPad to hilarious extremes:



How obsessed with the iPad is The Australian?

Utterly.

It's almost as if the newspaper's entire existence hangs on trying to convince 50,000 or more Australians to buy, and keep buying, its $4.99 per month (for now) iPad application. Which, of course, it does. Particularly considering owner Rupert Murdoch is planning to phase out the print edition within the next two or three years and shut down the printing presses forever, a Death To Newspapers move Murdoch described in September 2009 as "great" :

“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.”

Mumbrella noticed how obsessed The Australian has been with the iPad, and did some Googling. Since the start of February 2010, The Australian has run more than three dozen stories about the iPad, how absolutely brill it is, why it will save newspapers and how and why you should buy The Australian iPad app.

In just two days (April 12-13) The Australian ran at least six stories on the subject, most shamelessly hawking the digital tablet to readers in pure advertorial speak. On May 24, The Australian broke its own record by running four stories on the iPad.

Good luck to them. If their launch product is anything to go by - thin on content, visually bland - they're going to need it.

More From Mumbrella Here

Stories I've Been Reading :

"The 'Body-Swapping' Effect Was So Convincing That The Men's Sense Of Self Was Transferred Into The Virtual Woman

Man Infects Himself With Computer Virus To Show Vulnerability Of ID Chips & Implants : "If Someone Can Get Online Access To Your Implant, It Could Be Serious"

New British Government Promise To Wind Back DNA Storage, Control CCTV, Cancel Mandatory ID Cards As Budgets Fail Police State Implementation

Why All Politicians Should Have A Twitter Account, And Why They Should Use It

Australian Politician Confirms Australian Intelligence Agencies Use Fake Passports In Interview, Then Retracts Her Claims

9/11 Rescue Workers Were Valuable Political Props For Republicans, But Now Republicans Don't Want To Pay Health Care Costs Of 70,000 Sick & Dying Victims

Australian Prime Minister Unleashes His Infamous Temper On Murdoch Editors & Journos During A Dinner, No Murdoch Newspaper Reports The Incident, 'War On Rudd' Soon Begins At Murdoch Newspapers

Obama Wanted America To "Step Past The Cultural Chasm Of An Earlier Era", But Americans Still Obsessed With Debates On Issues Dating Back To The 1960s

Massive Increase In Number Of Miscarriages In US In The Weeks After 9/11, "Communal Bereavement" Blamed"

Taliban In Kabul Kill NATO Military Elite In Attack, Two Colonels & Two Lieutenant Colonels

Some Secrets Of Pentagon's New Shuttle Mission Exposed By Amateur Sky Watchers - Vehicle Can Launch And Catch Satellites, Stay Aloft For Nine Months

In 1992, Thais Fought Together For Democracy, Now They Fight Each Other

Pakistan : "When Water Stops Running From The Taps, People Blame America"

London Museum Changes Name Of New Permanent Exhibit From 'Climate Change Gallery' To 'Climate Science Gallery' As Skepticism Over AGW Rises

Most Web Users Have No Idea Extent Of Routine Monitoring Of Their Online Behaviour, Scanning E-Mails For Key Words, Crawling Computer's Memory, Remembering Where They've Been, Who They Communicate With The Most

Rush Limbaugh, Self-Styled Hero Of Working Class America, Drinks $4000 Bottles Of Wine, Sleeps In Exact Replica Of Presidential Suite From Paris' Hotel George V

For Hollywood's 10,000 Working Movie Producers, The Glory Days Are Just About Over As Major And Small Studios Slash Production

Cross-Posted From Your New Reality

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RoboPessimism : First Use Of The Word Robot Involved Robots Wiping Out Humanity

A simple but visually compelling, fact-rich example of a modern graphic educational tool. You are more likely to remember distinct facts from this, than from wadding through a 1200 word text book entry.

From OnlineSchools via @rod3000.


Via: Online Schools

Let the historians of the future take note, former police commissioner Mick Keelty tried to warn us of the coming robotic criminal underground when we still had time to do something about it. Did we listen? No, we did not :

Technology such as cloned part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police....

Mr Keelty said the police force would have to use experts from the private sector to fight tech-savvy organised criminals, because it lacked the necessary skills.

...he identified the use of robotics and cloning as future challenges.

"Our environmental scanning tells us that even with some of the cloning of human beings - not necessarily in Australia but in those countries that are going to allow it - you could have potentially a cloned part-person, part-robot," he said.

"You could (also) have technology acting at the direction of a human being, but the human being being distanced considerably from the actual crime scene."

It's only a matter of time before a bank robber gets shot and bleeds blood and battery acid.

Fortunately, Australians are already being trained in how to deal with hordes of RoboBarbarians On Segways :

And the Baby Boomers thought they were the rock n roll generation. Check out some of their mums and dads going off to the Bay City Rollers (with Ann-Margaret) in the mid-1970s.

BAY CITY ROLLERS & ANN MARGERET SATURDAY NIGHT @ Yahoo! Video

Just because she was knitting, doesn't mean she wasn't rocking out.

(via Dangerous Minds and @chaslicc)

"Yeah, I Was Trapped In The Beaconsfield Mine For A Few Weeks"

Brant Webb is running for the seat of Bass in Northern Tasmania and is making his own ads :



Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott can learn plenty from Webb's ad. If you don't see ads during the Federal Election 2010 campaign where Rudd and/or Abbott are bashing in sign posts, you know they don't really want it enough.

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Majority 33% Of People Prefer To Read Awesomely Distorted Polls

Bad news for the Gillard Gushers. A new Daily Telegraph polls reveals only 1/3 of Australians favour Julia Gillard as prime minister, while 2/3 prefer Kevin Rudd.

Whoops, how did I get that so wrong? What I meant to say was :


The Daily Telegraph

An infamous Rupert Murdoch memo must have hit the vacuum tubes a few weeks ago : Get Rudd The Fuck Out Of There, or words forming a similar directive.

It seems like only yesterday the young journos of News Limited's head office were laughing it up over games of pool with Kev's Krazee Krew at a Surry Hills pub, having dealt with Howard through a very effective campaign of near daily photos of him looking all old and bent over and alone. Finished.

You'll know it's really on when the photos begin appearing of Kevin Rudd furtively licking his lips, a habit, a temptation, he is unable to resist even when he knows he's being interviewed on TV and his head will appear two metres high in pubs and bars, while jocular drinkers shout "Fuck me, we've got a lizard running the country!" to much laughter.

Bad enough to see on TV, devastating to have staring up at you from the pages of a newspaper.


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The Chaser on Kevin Rudd, three years ago :



Maybe Kevin needs a theme song? It worked for Gough Whitlam (he was a pre-internet, pre-colour TV Australian prime minister who, by the rapturous, near religious-like, frenzy of dancing, chanting and clapping on display below was seen to be God-like by some of his followers) :



Baby Boomers were so much funnier when they were young.


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The Drum reader Koesonya explains how to be The Opposition :

- Australia didn't sink in the GFC : Thanks to the Howard years.
- Govt carbon trading suggestion : Great Big New Tax
- Govt pointing out that it used to be Oppn policy : that was different!
- Govt being repeatedly defeated in the senate on above : Turncoats, gutless liars
- Oppn suggesting an extra tax on *non polluters* instead of emission trading:
economically sensible solution
- Govt introducing maternity leave : Mickey Mouse solution
- Oppn suggesting a new tax for the same : sensible option
- Govt not taking over hospitals : breaking promises
- Govt taking over hospitals : power grab
- Govt claiming GST for above : money grab
- Govt taxing cigarettes : Great Big ... ummm ... silence
- Govt taxing extraordinary mining profits : Great Big New Tax!
- Govt decreasing corporate tax : ... silence
- Govt presenting the budget: Won't work! Liars! Great Big New Tax! Debt crisis! Armageddon!

That about covers it.

Murdoch's Pot Of News Gold

By Darryl Mason

Front page from the only newspaper in Australia I would pay to read online, The Northern Territory News :



Yesterday's front page was even better :



The story :

Territory victims in large-scale accidents or catastrophes will soon be barcoded at the scene before being sent to hospital.

Experts say it is only a matter of months before Territory emergency services adapt the revolutionary barcode card technology

Card?

The technology is designed for major catastrophes which involve more than 10 victims.

Royal Darwin Hospital director of disaster preparedness Dr Ian Norton said it would put the Territory at the forefront of major emergency responses in Australia.

"It's the holy grail of disaster management," he said.

Disaster or large scale accident victims will be given cards, with barcodes on them.

But I read the whole story. So it worked. The few moments of 'Wait, nobody's going to be forced to get barcodes tattooed on their arms and/or foreheads?' disappointment faded because it turned out to be an interesting story anyway.

Pretty soon the Northern Territory News is going to find a way to combine two of their most popular front page subjects - UFOs and crocodiles. At least I hope they do. I know they can.

UFO and crocodile (sighting, attack, wrestling, death roll, walking upright) stories bring the NTN the kind of international traffic that makes jaws drop across the rest of the 'serious' News Limited newspapers, like The Australian and the Daily Telegraph. Why the rest of Murdoch papers don't raid the NTN mercilessly for stories and headlines is a mystery. Why Fox News, for example, doesn't have a chunk of a show devoted to rounding up a week's worth of NTN's WTF? news and outback wisdom and madness is just bad business.

Anyway, soon the Northern Territory News will run a front page claiming that crocodiles are being abducted by UFOs, or better yet, that crocodiles leaped up and grabbed a low-flying UFO and caused it to crash, and I'll be ordering a copy of that front page, laminated.

No, framed.

To add to the collection :






Crocodiles + Bikini Girl :



I love that a g-string eating dog takes news priority over some guy getting smashed in the head with a television set. As it should :




Still one of my favourite news stories of 2009 :



That's how you sell newspapers.

And by the way, that cat can talk, and if yours doesn't, well, that's probably because you don't love it enough.


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The Late Show, in the early 90s, saw the future :



The state of Australian wogomedy, 2010, international distribution and a chunky location budget



It will be one of the highest grossing Australian movies of the year. Sweeet mate.

(via @ClubWah)

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