Will Making The Hobbit Mean Peter Jackson Won't Get To Shoot His Long-Dreamed Of ANZACs Epic?

By Darryl Mason

New Zealand director Peter Jackson has begun shooting his two-part 3D adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, and this set visit video is more interesting, more entertaining, than most of the movies released in cinemas so far this :



The Hobbit is expected to keep Peter Jackson busy until 2014 at least, which raises an important question, for me anyway.

Does this mean Peter Jackson's deeply personal and long dreamed of movie about the ANZACs has now been confined to the dustbin of 'Movies That Almost Were'?

Following is a repost from last year about Peter Jackson's ANZACs project, and why it is so personal to him.

As the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli draws closer, Jackson finds himself thinking about his grandfather, who fought there and won a distinguished service medal, and the numerous cinematically untold stories of Australians and New Zealand teenagers fighting together so far away, on the other side of the world.

Here's Peter Jackson on The 7.30 Report :

"I went to Gallipoli in 1990 for the 75th anniversary. That was the amazing year where 50 diggers were taken along, 50 of the original diggers were there. And so, you know, watching the dawn parade with 50 of these old men - the youngest was 92, the oldest was 103 and they were all sitting in these chairs as light came up....

"As the sun rose or the sky started to get light...thee old guys...they weren't interested in the speeches, they were all turning round looking at the hills. And it was an amazing experience to see them all looking at this landscape that most of them hadn't seen since 1915, hadn't seen it for 75 years.

"And I was standing right beside them as they were all turning around and looking behind and up at the sphinx and all the ridges....

"....to me (Gallipoli has) been a remarkable part of our history. And Peter Weir obviously made a great movie, but Peter's movie was set around events of August 7th, August 8th, 1915. I mean, you know, the Gallipoli was a seven or eight-month-long campaign. And that story is yet to be told on film. So I'd like to do that."

You Can Watch The Interview With Peter Jackson Here

The following is rare footage restored by Peter Jackson & WETA colleagues of the ANZACS fighting at Gallipoli :



And if you're wondering what a Peter Jackson World War I movie might look like, here's the captivating trailer for a short film by Jackson and Neill Blomkamp called Crossing The Line. It was shot on March 30 and 31, 2009, as a test for the Red digital camera system.



And no, I have no idea where you can see the full version of that short movie. If you manage to find it online, please let me know on Twitter.


Peter

HitlerHitlerHitlerHitlerHitlerHitler

By Darryl Mason

Apparently if Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers don't run at least one story a week mentioning "Hitler" and/or "Nazis" the entire media organisation will wither and die.

What other explanation can there be for such a relentless obsession?

The latest :



First, the smear. Then the beat-up :



Wilkie dealt with the allegations at a press conference earlier today :

"Let me start by saying I can't remember anything about that specific allegation, but I have never made any secret of the fact that I was one of the many cadets involved in the bastardisation scandal at the Royal Military college Duntroon in 1983.

"In fact I was disciplined for misconduct at the time.

"I am obviously regretful of my behaviour of almost 30 years ago when I was a cadet at Duntroon in my early 20s.

"I think that sort of behaviour at the time was wrong and I regret I was in any way involved in that sort of behaviour.

"I've obviously grown up a lot in the last 30 years and what at the time seemed appropriate, I have learned is clearly inappropriate and nor is it necessary in a place like Duntroon or in the Defence Force Academy.

"If there is anyone in this country who feels aggrieved in any way by anything I've ever said or done to them then I apologise unreservedly."

Wilkie is, rightly, suspicious of why this near 30 year old incident, if it happened at all, is suddenly headline news, in the midst of his campaign for badly needed reforms of the multi-billion dollar Australian poker machines industry :

"There is clearly a campaign that is being waged against me on account of the fact I am the only thing standing between the poker machine industry and the $5 billion that is lost by problem gamblers in this country on poker machines each year.

"I will not be intimidated by that campaign against me, I will not be cowed in any way."

Nor should he. The Hitler card has been played. What's next?

The Man In Blue

The following, recently released video from the March 11 Japan tsunami, showing the utter destruction of the beautiful fishing town of Minami-Sanriku, should come with something of a warning.

I've seen dozens of videos of the Japan tsunami destroying villages, towns and cities, but nothing like this. You may think you're prepared, but you're not.

You will see people driving, unknowingly, into the path of the tsunami, people running for their lives being caught up and swept away and the horrified screams and cries of the townspeople watching their world being destroyed before their eyes is distressing, haunting.

But towards the end, there are moments of incredible heroism, stunning bravery.

At 5:01, a man in dark blue can be glimpsed helping to carry someone to safety. He then returns to try and save the life of another, at 5:08, charging into the rapidly moving wreckage, which then carries him away.





Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown

By Darryl Mason


Screengrab from The Australian online front page in the days following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami

How many times can pro-nuclear wacko and alleged journalist Andrew Bolt show himself to be grotesquely ignorant, wrong and ill-informed in the space of just one week? Five times? Ten times? More?

Following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, a 15 metre high tsunami wave slammed into a nuclear plant in Fukushima. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 28,000 people.

For obvious reasons there was widespread concern in Japan, and around the world, about how good a job the Japanese government and the nuclear plant's operators were doing in containing radiation leaking from the smashed plant.

As a sign of just how confident the US government was that the Japanese government could contain radiation from the Fukushima plant, they began preparations for the evacuation of thousands of US military families within hours of the US government learning just how huge and potentially deadly the unfolding disaster actually was.

And, not unexpectedly, news media leaped on the 'Nuclear Crisis' story and ran with it hard, voicing arguments both for and against nuclear power.

This gave Andrew Bolt the opportunity to blame The Greens for nuclear "scaremongering" and to attack "the media" (of which he is one of Australia's most prominent and highly paid) for their coverage.

Well, attack some media.

Attack, primarily, the main newspaper competition to the newspapers owned by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch that publish Andrew Bolt's often incoherent and poorly researched swill.

Bolt began his ill-fated campaign to bludgeon his ideological and political enemies for "fear-mongering" over Fukushima on March 14 :

"...the offensive media fear-mongering..."

"...the media coverage of some papers obsesses instead about trouble at some nuclear reactors..."

This was the only time Bolt linked to Australian newspapers he claimed were over-hyping the radioactive threat posed by the rapidly failing Fukushima nuclear plant. He didn't link to anything published in the newspapers he writes for, of course, because that would have proven what a deceitful idiot he is.

The stories from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Bolt did link to were, in fact, mild and quite low on undue hype and "fear-mongering", in stark contrast, that is, to the newspapers Andrew Bolt works for.






Here's the online front pages from the Bolt-publishing Daily Telegraph & Herald Sun the day before those Age & SMH stories were published.





Even more bizarrely, Andrew Bolt ran this headline on his blog...



....the day after his Herald Sun newspaper ran this front page :



Which proves Bolt doesn't even read the front pages of the main newspaper he writes for, because nowhere, in a week of blog postings, did he acknowledge it was the actually the Herald Sun shouting 'Meltdown'.

Here's more excerpts from Andrew Bolt's blogs & columns in the 10 days following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, interspersed with online & print front pages from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and other Murdoch news media, including The Australian, published during the same period.

Bolt neither linked to nor mentioned any of these in any of his columns or blog posts.

March 15 :

The great green scaremongering gets worse.

March 16 :

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary.

Isn't it though?



March 18 :

We will need to make some people accountable for this monstrous scaremongering once the truth becomes undeniable

March 19 :

The fear of Fukushima is deadlier than the fallout

Utter madness. The journalists who have whipped this up should be ashamed of themselves.

These journalists?



March 20 :

The wild reporting of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency continues, with lurid claims of radioactive plumes, poisoned milk and more. The fact remains, though, that no one has been killed and probably never will.

March 21 :

no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.

...the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.

March 21 :

It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.

These "scaremongers?"



Andrew Bolt, March 22 :

Why worry only about the reactor that has killed no one?

Yes, why worry about a mostly destroyed, exploding, radioactive water spewing nuclear plant when you can, if you read Murdoch news media, worry instead about whether or not Mother Nature is now purposely trying to kill humans?



Her cruelty, eh?

March 11 wasn't, you see, another one of the hundreds of mega-earthquakes and tsunamis that have rocked, smashed and swept across the fault-line islands we now call Japan in the past few dozen million years.....it was instead a Terror Attack on humans by 'cruel' Mother Nature, at least according to the Gold Coast Bulletin :



None of the above headlines or front pages were criticised, or even mentioned, by Andrew Bolt is his 10 day campaign to blame "fear-mongering" over the deadly serious, ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan on "the greens" and non-Murdoch news media.

Not one.

And since it has been confirmed that explosions at Fukushima did indeed claim lives, that vast farming areas of Japan are so polluted with radiation they can't grow essential crops like rice, perhaps for years, or decades, and that radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from the nuclear plant has destroyed lifeblood fishing industries and clouds of radiation have even reached milk and food supplies in the United States, what has Andrew Bolt said?

Nothing.

As soon as Andrew Bolt realised facts and reality had proven him wrong, deceitfully wrong, about Fukushima, over and over again, he simply dropped the story.

Completely.

Like a petulant child who, once told he is wrong, runs to his room and slams the door on the reality of his mistakes.

Bolt has said nothing, not even an update or a correction, about the true scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in weeks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Fukushima disaster has been upgraded to a Level 7 nuclear emergency, the same rating as Chernobyl, the highest rating possible.

Quality journalism indeed.

There Is No Good Outcome For Fukushima Disaster

Your New Reality - Mother Nature : The Ultimate Terrorist



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


.

This movie, Tree Of Life by Terence Malick, was to have starred Heath Ledger. The movie was in pre-production when he died in January 2008, with shooting scheduled to start in March. After Ledger's death, Brad Pitt stepped in to play the role.



For those not interested in sequels or superhero movies, or superhero movie sequels, Tree Of Life is about as good as cinema's going to get in 2011.

Trailer for the Snowtown movie :



Presumably the movie will do so, but the trailer doesn't really tell you much about the true horror of the 'Bodies In The Barrels' killings :

David Flint : Beyond Parody

Australian independence hater David Flint was so very, very pleased to learn the UK Guardian had decided it was time to re-embrace the British monarchy, he excitedly used this editorial to attack those who think Australia is mature enough to now exist without a foreign head of state, like most of the rest of the world :

"It is a knockout blow to the Australian republican movement – a mere shadow of itself compared with the formidable force it once was under the Turnbull-Keating ascendancy – as well as the minuscule United Kingdom, Canadian and New Zealand republican movements.

That respected voice of progressive politics, The Guardian, has returned to the monarchist fold.

Probably the leading English language quality newspaper of the left, The Guardian has renounced the republican agenda it vigorously endorsed in 2000. The newspaper had even challenged the law in relation to the succession.

The Guardian is the leading intellectual media source for Labour and similar parties in the sixteen realms over which The Queen reigns. This decision will have a considerable effect in these parties and beyond.

It will make it acceptable for ALP politicians to admit that they support the existing constitution. After all a large number of the 72% of Australian electorates which voted No in 1999 were held by the Australian Labor Party.

Some republicans hoped this declaration by The Guardian was just an April Fool’s day joke...

Did they, David? Did they?

....but there is no evidence of that.

No evidence....except for the fact the editorial was published on April 1.

What an hilarious old dickhead David Flint is.

He has since scrubbed the above editorial praising the Guardian from his website :

The Howard Legacy :

Australian's international competitiveness is under threat because up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs.

The nation's 11 Industry Skills Councils will today call for a new campaign to tackle endemic numbers of workers with poor reading and writing skills, launching a report detailing the problems being faced by industry training bodies.

And :

"International studies have shown that over the past two decades, Australia's literacy and numeracy skill levels have stagnated while those of other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, have improved.

More :

Mr Taylor said industry had been complaining about the poor quality of literacy and numeracy among school leavers looking to enter the trades for more than 10 years and there had been no improvement.

Prime Minister John Howard left Australia as a nation of coal diggers and fruit pickers, where sports stars are valued more highly than scientists and buying a home is more important than a sound education.

Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra On Touring Queensland In The Early 1980s :

It's the state that's referred to, in other parts of Australia, in hushed tones, because it's so openly racist and repressive. It's run by a state dictator, a kind of Huey Long, named Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His National Party hardly holds any power anywhere else in Australia because they're considered the right-wing lunatic fringe. But at home he's been able to keep in power by outrageous forms of gerrymandering, and is widely rumored to have rigged every election. He has beefed up the police force, and given them carte0blanche to do what they want to keep people from questioning things.

In Australia, there is no constitution and no laws about search and seizure, so the cops can, and do, kick in your door, and smash up your house, if they want. They've been known to break up conversations on the streets involving three or more people, cause they didn't want any assembly on the street. I met many people in Sydney who had fled Brisbane because they were being pulled over and detained for a holf hour or so every day. I met a lot of very warm people there, very radical in the head, but very afraid to talk. I felt safer walking around on the streets of East Berlin than I did in Brisbane.

Brisbane is also where Darren, our drummer, was picked out of a crowd of about 15 white people, and arrested for drinking in public, even though his can of beer was unopened. When Ray, our guitarist, tried to intervene, he was thrown in another police car and taken away. Also, Bjelke-Petersen's people are trying to take away the Aborigine's right to vote and own land, claiming they "haven't gotten that far up the evolutionary scale." And still, his party is kept in office. Some of his cronies, in fact the head of the Chamber of Commerce, wants to enact forced sterilization laws to kill off the Aborigines.

Summing up Brisbane, all I can say is it was the closest thing to a heavy, heavy, junta-style police state I've ever been in. I was looking over my shoulder a lot!

Biafra also supplies a state by state roundup of the Australian rock and punk music scene in the first half of the 1980s.

Julian Assange, Reykjavik, 2010 :

Just 15 years ago, reading the following lines would have meant you were perusing science fiction, not anymore :

...criminals were using online virtual worlds to communicate and transfer funds around the world.

...federal and state police had deployed resources to investigate virtual world money laundering....

...there were "a variety of means of online communication that criminals can engage in and also a variety of methods of laundering funds and ... virtual worlds create opportunities for both of those for criminal groups".

"What identity do you have? A game tag? There are cases of people buying others' online gaming identities..."

Mr Dyson would not comment on whether NSW Police had infiltrated any criminal groups operating in virtual worlds other than to say that NSW Police had an "ongoing presence..."

The Full Story Is Here

They're Just Giving Aid And Comfort To Global Warming

By Darryl Mason

If you're going to take on a sitting government with protests against that government's most high priority policy, you have to be prepared to cop a whole load of ugly shit from politicians, the media and opinionists. Think of the appalling abuse heaped upon the thousands of World War 2, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1 veterans who joined hundreds of thousands of other Australians to protest the Howard government's War On Iraq in early 2003. They weren't just called extremists by politicians, they told by their own prime minister they were merely a "mob" and were "giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein."

And just like all those veterans, elderly people and young families who attended protests against the War On Iraq, the thousands of Australians who attended the No Carbon Tax Rally in Canberra earlier this week have now discovered what it's like to be uniformly smeared for the actions of the extremist few who also joined their protest.

Unlike 2003, however, there are now numerous ways for protesters to get their message out to wider Australia without having to rely on the mainstream media to speak truthfully of their motives :



The next big No Carbon Tax Rally will be held in Hyde Park, Sydney, on April 2.

Finally, someone explains the Labor and Liberals parties positions and policies on the greenhouse economy, carbon tax and carbon trading in a way that can be easily understood :

One month on, a reminder of the devastation unleashed on Christchurch by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on February 22, killing more than 230 people :



The above video, from the day of the quake, shows many of the buildings where hundreds were trapped, and where many died.

A detail from a larger image of Christchurch shortly after the February 22 quake struck :



Rebuilding continues.

Below, the Fukushima nuclear plant after the explosions. My Japanese isn't so good, but I'm pretty sure the words "That place is absolutely fucked!" are in there somewhere. Or should be :

'God' Versus Greens

By Darryl Mason

Cardinal George Pell and some of his lackey bishops aren't happy with The Greens. Now there's a surprise.

Maybe 'aren't happy' isn't an accurate enough description. More like, 'Terrified'.

And, curiously, for an institution that is supposed to avoid getting involved in political campaigning to retain their non-taxpaying status, the Catholic Church is now demanding what remains of Australia's Catholics, at least those who bother to listen to anything Pell has to say, not vote for The Greens in next week's NSW elections.

Leesha McKeeny and Anna Patty in the Sydney Morning Herald (excerpts) :

Catholic bishops have warned the faithful against voting for the Greens in the state election, saying their policies were of ''grave concern''.

A two-page document entitled The Green Agenda is being circulated by Catholic agencies and through schools. It states the party's human rights and social policy areas are in direct conflict ''with the beliefs and values of virtually all religious people, and the beliefs of many other people as well''.

It also warns against voting for candidates who might share similar views, pointing out that some MPs in the main parties had voted for ''bad legislation'' such as same-sex adoption.

The letter outlines eight areas of ''grave concern'', including the Greens' treatment of personal drug use as a health and social issue ''and therefore acceptable'', and its efforts to legalise gay marriage.

But of course, as is usual with Pell's Catholics, it's really all about money.

The Full Story Is Here

Miranda Devine spellchecks Twitter because....oh, who knows why :

A quick Twitter survey found similar pet pronunciation peeves. "Knowen" instead of "known" was one. "Lyberry" instead of "library" was another, as was "aks" instead of "ask", although that, I think, is beyond the pale.

She gets paid for that.

This is 'The Ring Of Fire' :




This is The Ring Of Fire lighting up with dozens of huge earthquakes, in just one week :


(click to enlarge)

The Ring Of Fire :

....sweeps in a horseshoe shape up through the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, The Philippines, Japan, across to Hawaii, then to California and down the long coast of Chile.

The clashing of tectonic plates around this ring produces valuable anomalous minerals, including gold. It throws up spectacular mountains...

The Ring of Fire also comprises the most unstable zone in the earth's crust, beneath which pressure constantly builds, causing volcanoes to erupt and earthquakes to roar.

About 90 per cent of the world's earthquakes occur around the ring.

More On The Ring Of Fire And Tectonics at This Dynamic Planet

Millions Of Americans Will Not Be Killed By Nuclear Fallout In Two Weeks, It's Just A Fake Map

By @DarrylMason

Australian Radiation Services finds itself inadvertently caught up in a fast spreading online hoax, following the unnerving explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, after yesterday's 8.9 earthquake and 10 metre tsunami.

This is the hoax :



The authorative looking logo was stolen from here :



The Nuclear Fallout Map is fake simply because Australian Radiation Services don't issue such maps. It was likely chosen before ARS offices are closed until Monday, as they are most weekends.

This unsourced and likely dodgy chart (nausia?) is being heavily circulated, on social networking sites, forums and email, along with the fake Nuclear Fallout Map :

0-50 rads - No obvious short-term effects

80-120 rads - You have a 10% chance of vomiting and experiencing nausia for a few days

130 -170 rads - You have a 25% chance of vomiting and contracting other symptoms

180-220 rads - You have a 50% chance of vomiting and having other severe physical effects

270-330 rads - 20% chance of death in 6 weeks, or you will recover in a few months.

400-500 rads - 50% chance of death

550-750 rads - Nausia within a few hours ; no survivors

The fake map shows a huge nuclear fallout cloud of 750 rads engulfing millions of Americans by March 22. So, if you were a West Coast living American, the fake map and the above numbers might lead you to believe you and all your family and neighbours will be dying within 6 to 10 days.

But there are some interesting things happening on social networking sites and public online forums about that map.

First off, there are thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook shouting down claims this Nuclear Fallout Map is the real deal and pointing out exposure to 750 rads will not "cause nausia within a few hours; no survivors".

Also, discussion pages, linked in Google search to 'Nuclear Fallout Map, claiming the map is very, very real and The Truth Is Being Suppressed By The Media are disappearing or turning up blank. Google also appears to be jigging their search results so searches for the map will expose users to sites pointing out its utter fakeness.

But at the same time, at least a few dozen Twitter spam accounts (fake accounts pumping exact same tweet & link) are busily flogging the Nuclear Fallout Map, also claiming it's very, very real, and the truth is being suppressed, presumably aiming to spread panic in the United States. Most of these fake accounts only became active shortly after the fake Nuclear Fallout Map started circulating online.

It would seem that someone more powerful than a fukwit photoshopping hoaxer and his friends want the Nuclear Fallout Map to be viewed as a horrifying reality.

Who would want to do this? Who benefits?

Of course, attention and discussion focusing on the Nuclear Fallout Map hoax distracts many from the real truth about the Japan earthquakes, and particularly the quakes that seemed to be closing in on the Fukushima plant, and this real truth needs to be immediately revealed.

Here it is :

Al Gore used his earthquake machine to destroy the Fukushima plant and paranoid up the whole world about nuclear energy so everyone turns to alternative energy instead.

You know it, I know, but most importantly, Al Gore knows it. And now he knows you know!

Anyway, James Bond villianish conspiracy theories aside, the real truth about the March 11 Japan earthquake is this is turning out to be the worst, the most deadly, most devastating, in modern Japanese history.

Cities, towns, tens of thousands of people swept away. A disaster now of a scale beyond the imaginations even of Japanese disaster management specialists, the most earthquake paranoid people on the planet, who seem mostly stunned, broken, dazed, at press conferences. Who can blame them. The massive earthquake and horrifically devastating repeat tsunamis are beyond the worst scenarios ever workshopped or modeled, a surreal nightmare has become their reality.

The death toll may climb to over 30,000 within days, and top 100,000 within a few weeks.

At this moment, there are at least 1300 Australians visiting or living in Japan who are unaccounted for. This number is likely to fall as communications are restored.

Destruction So Vast, So Comprehensive, Your Brain Can Barely Register What You're Seeing As Reality


Recently On The Orstrahyun....

When Australia Had Elephants & Giraffe Camels, Apparently

Global Warming Is The New Hitler

Julian Assange : Nobody's Buying The Smears



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here

Tsunamis Destroy Cities On Japan's Coast








(screengrab via ABCNews)



UPDATE : The first tsunami wave sweeping across Miyagi, Japan. Cities, towns & farmlands gone, cars full of fleeing people swallowed up, those running in the streets disappear in the debris. Hundreds died under this wave. Simply terrifying :



Earlier....

One of the most devastating earthquakes of recent times has hit Japan, a massive 8.9 magnitude. Tsunami waves are killing thousands, destroying entire cities along the coast.

Tsunami waves are now radiating out, and will travel halfway across the planet. No official warnings have.been issued, yet, for Australian coastlines :




To the right of the Miyagi coast in Japan is the massive undersea fault that tore apart earlier today.

A recent new arrival at Taronga Zoo :

The Songlist Of Mass Distraction

Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave US President Barack Obama an iPod full of Australian music. The full list is here, but before you go for a scan, know this : The Angels didn't make the cut, neither did Rose Tattoo, or the Radiators, no Nick Barker, no Saints, no Radio Birdman, no Choirboys, no Beasts Of Bourbon, no Screaming Jets, no Cosmic Psychos, no Baby Animals, no Scientists, no Tumbleweed. Outrageous!

But what will Michelle Obama think when she scans through the song titles on her husband's new iPod?

'To Sir With Love'

'Your Love Is Like A Song'

'I've Got You On My Mind'

'Reconsider Me'

'Fall At Your Feet'

'Confide In Me'

'Throw Your Arms Around Me'

'Need U Tonight'

'Into My Arms'

'When You Come'

'Wash Me Clean'

'Never Tear Us Apart'

Or maybe the iPod list is a new way for world leaders to send coded messages to each other?

I've pieced together the following message from Gillard to Obama, using only song titles on Obama's new iPod :

We're Not Finished, Just Yet, but Little By Little, Now We're Getting Somewhere, we're Heading In The Right Direction.

These Days we wonder Which Way To Go, Tomorrow? To The Moon And Back? Will it be All Torn Down In The Midnight Hour?

On Days Like These When The River Runs Dry, we need a Big Jet Plane and A Bullet And A Target. A New Sensation. The Holy Grail.

It's a One Way Road, it's The Hard Road, to Better People in the Streets Of Your Town and The World Where You Live.

Remember, From Little Things Big Things Grow.

As Australia and the United States move into an even closer military relationship now China rises as the true world power of the 21st century, what exactly is Julia Gillard trying to say to Barack Obama?

What does it all mean?

It means I just wasted another 20 minutes.

Professional idiot Andrew Bolt sees this photo of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama having fun in the West Wing...



and smells some kind of conspiracy! Or at the minimum, something suspiciously amiss :

Bolt : What an incredible coincidence, that a photographer was there to witness Julia Gillard kick a footy in the White House with Barack Obama.

Yes, what an incredible coincidence that the official White House photographer Pete Souza happened to be doing his job at the same time the leader of one of the United States' closest allies paid a visit to the White House.

Here's another Souza photo from the official White House photos & video site. It was so hard to find it was the first photo I saw when I visited the page :



Fact-checking, like spell-checking, has never been a priority for Bolt in his rush to get out his latest conspiracy soaked rantings, or yet another frothing demand for whoever happens to be prime minister to quit.

Interesting, though, that in all his daily blatherings about a carbon tax, Bolt doesn't mention that he works in a 'carbon neutral' News Limited workplace, and never discusses how much money his boss Rupert Murdoch is likely to save when carbon tax & trading for Australian businesses become a reality.

As ex-Australian citizen Murdoch's newspaper circulations plummet across the country and his dreams to get people to pay money to read his digital news sites fall apart, the tax benefits of running a carbon neutral corporation in a carbon currency economy will help pay all kinds of bills and keep wealthy non-stop whiners and intolerance spreaders like Bolt in paid employment.

But despite the hypocrisy, and deception, Bolt will keep railing against a carbon tax, knowing all the while that even if the Liberals were in federal power they, too, would be bringing one in, because that's what his readers want, and he has to keep those readers well pleased, and coming back, because Rupert still wants News Limited bloggers like him to convince their readers to hand over cash for iPad & iPhone apps instead of reading for free.

Good luck with that.

A newly scanned French map of the world from 1546 by Pierre Desceliers includes, curiously, part of Australia :



Desceliers got the outline of the Northern Territory of Australia down in surprising accuracy for the 16th century, particularly when you consider the first official recorded "glimpse" of the west coast of Australia by a European explorer didn't happen until 1606.

Detail :



Desceliers also included Australia on a far more detailed map four years later, in 1550, where he, well let's face it, he went a bit nuts. Or at least, his flight into cartographical fiction was encouraged. Hell, who knows, maybe he was just having fun :



Some of the detail of this map is too good not be given prominence. A selection of screengrabs from the above map follows.






The now rarely seen Australian giraffe camel :



A human sacrifice? Note the figure hanging/suspended from the tree :



Yes, Desceliers even included elephants as Australian land beasts :



Beautiful art, at the very least.

Robert Manne has a lengthy essay in the March edition of The Monthly on how Wikileaks evolved from the Julian Assange's association with the first famous public act of hacktivisim in 1989 and the 1990s cypherpunks, a hackers information-sharing revolution that fought US government oppression of cryptography technology. The essay also goes into detail on the political philosophies of Julian Assange, which can be best summed up, in Manne's words, as "anti-establishment but genuinely beyond Left and Right."

Assange is often accused of being secretive himself, or vague at best, about what he is trying to achieve by leaking the secrets of both illegitimate and legitimate governments. But Assange has already revealed all on why's he doing this.

The Manne essay includes many excellent quotes from Julian Assange's past essays, interviews and emails, that tell you more about what Assange is trying to achieve with Wikileaks, the revolution he has mounted, his war against the war industry, his repeated calls for an uprising against government secrecy deceit, than ten thousand articles written about him by journalists who are more interested in the sex scandal angle and who've never bothered to go back to see what Assange himself has had to say; the ultimate, world-changing, mission he has so clearly spelled out over the past four years.

Julian Assange :

"The more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in the leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimisation of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive 'secrecy tax') and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold on to power as the environment demands adaptation.

"Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

"Mankind has successfully adapted changes as monumental as electricity and the engine. It can also adapt to a world where state-sponsored violence against the communications of consenting adults is not only unlawful but physically impossible. As knowledge flows across nations it is time to sum the great freedoms of every nation and not subtract them. It is time for the world as an international collective of communicating peoples to arise and say 'here I am'."

It's not really that complicated. And it's already proving to be an enormously effective way of fermenting & inspiring great change in the world.

But Assange's mission, as outlined in his statements above, has clearly only just begun.

Look at what has already resulted from the release of just over 2% of the CableGate documents. Three months ago, most of the Middle East was regarded by "experts" as moderately stable. There has been a revolution almost every fortnight since, and dictators and self-appointed royal leaders have already fallen from power, or about to lose power, due to mostly non-violent acts of public dissent and street-clogging demands for democracy, freedom and reform.

If Assange makes the US embassies cables available at the current rate of release, it will take until 2017 before all they're all out there.

Aftershocks are still jarring what's left of Christchurch and after reading the papers & watching the evening news, many who stayed on were jarred further by a widely publicised prediction that another huge earthquake will hit the fractured city on March 20 :

Mr Ring, who lives in Auckland, uses the moon, sun and tidal activity for the basis of his theories, which have been dismissed by scientists.

His warning is clear.

"If I lived in Christchurch, I'd get out for a few days over that time, go camping, visit friends, just get out and keep safe," he said.

"And if you don't live there, stay away."

Mr Ring claims he got it right last time :

On Valentine's Day, he issued a tweet stating that conditions were "potent" for a quake in Christchurch between February 15 and 25.

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck on February 22, killing as many as 240 people.

Eerily, he warned people to watch for "special signs", such as silent birds or scared pets, and said "stay away from old cracked buildings".

The day when scientists can accurately predict the eruption of an earthquake below a city will be one of the pinnacles of our understanding of this planet's thin, unstable skin that we base our entire existence upon.

But you do have to wonder, if it was known, say, 10 hours before it hit that a magnitude 7 quake was going to rip apart Los Angeles or Sydney, would a city wide evacuation even be attempted? Could authorities cope with the evacuation of millions of people in half a day?

Will we see a day when city evacuations are rehearsed in anticipation of earthquakes scientifically, accurately, predicted to hit within the next year or two?


For tens of thousands still trying to live in Christchurch, life after February 22 quake has gone back to the 18th century. There is no electricity, water is fetched and carted home, toilets are backyard holes or a long walk to a communal commode.

From the New Zealand Herald :

Blogger Peter Hyde, who lives in the south-east of Christchurch, said he was living in "refugee city".

It was populated by 50,000 to 100,000 people who have been living on broken streets with little access to power, water, gas and other services, he said.

"Their houses may or may not be intact. Their streets may be clear, broken, or full of silt. Or sewage. There are no showers. Or ways to wash clothes. Or to wash dishes. Or to heat the "must boil" water that is available - assuming they can make it to the nearest water truck, day after day. No refrigeration. No working toilets, and precious few portaloos. No face masks to defend against the blown silt.

"They have no internet either, and usually no phones. And their radio batteries are dead or dying."

This incredible, very real photo taken in 2005 in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia is doing the rounds on Reddit again :



That's an olive python trying to swallow a wallaroo. According to a person who claimed to have snapped this photo, the python spent about an hour trying to drag the marsupial from the water and then gave up.

A closer look :



If you're not familiar with the beautiful Australian olive python, here's a video, but don't hold anything of value in your hands as you watch this :

Not exactly the kind of story you want to make such a massive headline error on.

News.com.au :


"Glitch" or successful hacking expedition? I can't imagine any financial institution would publicly admit they've been hacked, unless forced to do so. They certainly didn't admit to such things in the 1990s.

In 2006, the Howard government turned on a show for Al-Saadi Gaddafi, son of the murderous dictator :

A ''colonel'' with the Libyan special forces, Al-Saadi was invited to visit the Swanbourne SAS barracks at the invitation of the former defence minister Robert Hill.

He also met the then foreign minister Alexander Downer for trade talks, and Australian investors from the oil, gas, tourism, agriculture, racing and cattle industries.

A chat with Alex and a tour of a military base. Nice.

Hackers' Challenge

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary, Dennis Richardson, has laid out an open challenge to hackers who want to try their skills at cracking firewalls the Australian government and intelligence agencies believe represent world class digital security.

ABC News :

The Department of Foreign Affairs has reviewed its computer security systems following the WikiLeaks saga to ensure classified documents are kept safe.

DFAT secretary Dennis Richardson has told a Senate estimates hearing that he is satisfied such a breach would not happen to the Australian Government.

"The breach in the US system - it beggars belief how they even had the arrangement they had," he said.

"In terms of the way our classified systems are set up, it would be very difficult to copy what happened in the WikiLeaks case."

Difficult, but not impossible.

The only truly safe digital file is one stored on a laptop or device that has no internet access and no CD or USB drives. Even then...

Christchurch Smashed By Quake

A 6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand earlier today, and rocked the city for one solid minute. Buildings collapsed on people across the CBD during lunchtime. Bodies have been recovered from shops, office buildings and at least one hostel. The iconic cathedral in the centre of Christchuch has been destroyed. Aftershocks were still rattling Christchurch more than an hour after the first quake, people still trapped screaming for help inside collapsed buildings as rescuers struggled to reach them.

Powerful raw footage moments after the quake :



Inside the Christchurch cathedral :



ABC News has a round-up of quotes from survivors :

"It was extremely violent. I was sitting there with a friend and the building just like exploded. It was like a movie. It took two or three seconds to comprehend what was going on ... and then we ran onto the street and the front fell out of the building right in front of me."

"It was just scary. [The cathedral], it just came down, like shit, within about two seconds. Unbelievable, unbelievable."

"It was very, very strong, I was up on the top floor of the council building and I got thrown quite a distance. I got down to the street, scenes of great confusion, some very, very upset people, a lot of people crying. I know of people in our building that have been injured." -

"I was in the square right outside the cathedral - the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there. There were people inside as well."

UPDATE : 4.30pm (Sydney time) : The death toll is likely to be beyond 70 by tomorrow morning, with serious injuries already numbering beyond 300, temporary morgues dealing with bodies that had been lain out in the streets & parks when ambulances were in short supply, water infrastructure trashed, roads shattered, dozens of buildings significantly damaged, many destroyed beyond repair.

How some Australian online media is covering the Christchurch earthquake, with an emphasis on, or overload of, interactivity & multimedia, including live video, maps, before & after photos of buildings where bodies are still to be recovered, plus now mandatory Twitter coverage, Facebook coverage.

The Herald Sun :



The Sydney Morning Herald :



The Daily Telegraph :



And the New Zealand Herald :

Coming soon to SBS, quality new Australian drama :



UPDATE : Unbelievable. Channel 9's A Current Affair ran ads claiming the above clip was from "a reality show" and "a waste of taxpayers money." Dumber than a bag of hammers. It also shows what A Current Affairs producers think about Westies, doesn't it?

Housos is a comedy from Paul Fenech, the creator of Pizza.