Nobody Saw The Financial Crisis Or An Australian Recession Coming?

Bullshit

By Darryl Mason

There seems to be more and more people popping up in the media claiming "nobody saw it coming", the IT being an Australian recession, plunging house prices, a global financial crisis.

But it's not true. You just probably didn't see it coming if you were only reading the business sections of supposedly reputable Australian newspapers, or believing the guff that flowed from so many now discredited financial experts on the evening news, always promising that everything was okay, that stocks were the safest place to park your money, and it still wasn't too late to take out yet another loan on your heavily mortgaged home to buy another $20,000 worth.

If I could see it all coming back in 2006, why didn't the financial experts? That the world was heading for a major, if not unprecedented, financial crisis wasn't exactly a big secret, and you didn't have to search too long or hard to find the stories that told the blindingly obvious truth about what was coming. You just didn't find many of them in the mainstream media, particularly not in that media's business sections.

I published the following story near right on three years ago at the Your New Reality blog :

US Faces "Impending Financial Disaster"

"Tremors Through The Global Financial System"

May 16, 2006

By Darryl Mason

Those kinds of headlines are exactly the words you want to see in a news story about the US Dollar and US stock markets and the growing loss of global market faith in both.

The US, like Australia, has been borrowing more from central bankers than the value of the goods and services it produces.

The US and Australia has been living on vast credit, and now the international lenders look like they're going to start calling in some of the debts, as stock markets in the US and Australia go through an "adjustment", or "downturn".

Is the US on the brink of a recession? Yes. It hasn't tipped over into recession yet, but it's on the brink.

The rush to turn US dollars into gold, and even copper, is the simplest and most obvious sign that the US Dollar is fading rapidly. Gold is regarded as a faithful standard during years of economic turmoil, and some predict it may even reach an incredible $1000 per ounce with the next six to twelve months.

Mind-blowing. A few years back, the first websites I saw that pitched the positives of turning dollars and savings into gold were the alternative news ones.

That was less than two years ago when gold was still at $325 an ounce. Buy gold, buy gold, 'radical' economists chanted, while Bloomberg, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal sniffed at and quickly dismissed the likelihood of gold rising dramatically anytime soon.

So much for the experts.

One of these so-called radical, or alternate, new rhythm economists is Paul Craig Roberts. He's an older, wiser gentlemen of vast experience with the US economy, having served as the Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury during Ronald Reagan's administration.

Here's what he's thinking today :

The US current account deficit as a percent of Gross Domestic Product is unprecedented.

As more jobs and manufacturing are moved offshore, Americans become more dependent on foreign made goods.

This year the deficit could reach $1 trillion.The US pays its current account deficit by giving up ownership of its existing assets or wealth. Foreigners don't simply hold the $800 billion in cash. They use it to acquire US equities, real estate, bonds, and entire companies.American consumers are heavily indebted.

The growth of consumer debt is what has been fueling the economy.....is this the economic picture of a superpower that can dictate to the world, or is it the picture of a second-rate country dependent on foreigners to finance its consumption and the operation of its government?

You could say virtually the exact same thing about Australia today (not including the word 'superpower').

We, too, depend heavily on foreign lenders to help fuel our recent economic booms. Australians were allowed to borrow vast sums of money to buy houses, cars that depreciated spectacularly and consumer goods that took years longer to pay off than their warranties lasted.

Unlike the US, however, we've had a massive wave of mineral markets boom-time, which sadly is now drawing to a close.

The Howard government collected more than $100 billion in "extra" taxes, over the past four years, on the back of the minerals boom, and blew most of it on the War On Terror, the War On Iraq, meeting superannuation commitments for former politicians and government workers and tax cuts for the richest of all Australians.

The Howard government used virtually none of it for major infrastructure projects or new technical training schemes. The state governments were just as wasteful.

So now we don't have a human stockpile of skilled workers, or the manufacturing facilities for them to work in, we don't yet have a national broadband system (the one alleged to be coming is still years away), and our roads and train lines couldn't cope with all the plugged-in, high-tech workers even if they existed.

What is unique about the Howard government is that they were so brilliantly able to bamboozle the media and the public at large that Australia was one of the leaders of the global economy and, at the same time, convince most Australians (with a spectacular program of propaganda and double-speak) that interest rates were not going to rise.

Of course, Howard actually asked "Who do you trust to keep interest rates low?" But his minions made sure the public understood that to mean "Who do you trust to stop interest rates from rising?"


If you walk out of the casino with $10,000 in cash, but you owe the casino $100,000, you are not a winner, and they will catch up with you. Sooner, rather than later.

For the average credit-card using, mortgage paying, $50,000 per year earning Australian family, the worst is well and truly yet to come.

Hundreds of thousands of Australian families got suckered into the home ownership scam of the past four years, when house prices were over-valued by tens of thousands of dollars, from Brisbane all the way down to Melbourne (with the exception of most rural and country towns).

And, at the same time, they were tossed credit cards to buy white goods to fill those huge homes and to purchase mega-wide screen TVs as fast as China could churn them out.

More than 100 houses a week are now being repossessed by the banks and average credit card debts are spiraling well above $5000. Average household debts, outside of the mortgage, are racketing up to between $10,000 and $15,000.

For a few thousand Australian families, a further half a percent rise in interest rates will mean ruin. For tens of thousands of Australian families, a two or three per cent rise in interest rates will be absolutely devastating. Even if both parents manage to hold onto their jobs. In a recession, their wages will be cut, of course, and with the recent IR reforms there will be little they can do to stop that from happening to them. And if they protest too much about working a 60 hour week, they can now be fired without recourse.

In a recession, you are not rich if you are you paying off a house that has lost 20-30% of its value in the past two years, or if you are struggling to the meet the interest payments alone on credit card debts. And families will be using them, of course, to pay the phone bill and to buy groceries.

And you are certainly not rich, even if it may feel like it, if you own a $10,000 mega-wide screen TV and surround sound system that isn't worth a tenth of that at a hock shop less than year after you purchased it on low interest credit. It might take you five to ten years to pay off that TV, but there will be 3D holographic TV soon enough.

In a recession era economy, you are as good as rich if you are debt-free, regardless of the accumulation of possessions in your rented home.

Debt-free and freedom become virtually one and the same when the economy stumbles and falls and the true value of the dollars you earn drops, as your wages drop and interest rates rise.

Australians are being told that we must "be more competitive" with international rates of pay and productivity levels.

The problem for Australian workers is that the powerhouse of productivity today is China, where 70 and 80 hour work weeks are not unusual and the average hourly rate of pay there is a mere 57 cents.

Actually, forget what I said about the mega-wide screen TVs. For the average Australian worker, with a crippling mortgage to pay off, kids to put through school and a mountain of credit card debt to deal with, a mega-wide screen TV with surround sound might be just the thing to take the edge off after a 14 hour workday. That is, if you can afford to buy the fuel you need to drive those traffic-clogged roads to work because there are not enough engineers to keep the buses, trains and ferries running on time.

But that's another story altogether.

Brrr. A Cold Wind.

"Chasher Style Prank" Cost An Election, And $3300

By Darryl Mason

He helped get the Rudd government elected, he screwed up his wife's career, it cost him $3300 in fines and court costs, a blanket of shame, people shouting at him "you're a fucking dickhead!' in the street, an acre of humiliation :

Gary Clark was convicted last month of breaching the electoral act by handing out the bogus leaflets in his wife's seat of Lindsay, just before the last election.

The pamphlets claimed to have been published by a non-existent radical islamic group, and praised the Australian Labor Party for supporting the Bali bombers.

He has been fined the maximum penalty of $1,100 and ordered to pay more than $2,000 in court costs.

This event sucked the life out of the Liberal Party, on the eve of the 2007 election.

The day the Lindsay Leaflet Scandal erupted, John Howard delivered his last big speech, and it was a pretty good one, but the entire Q & A at the National Press Club was devoted to going hard on Howard over the Lindsay Leaflet Scandal. It was ugly, and across Sydney, you could feel rusted on Liberal voters peeling away by the thousands, throughout the day, in disgust at the filthy sabotage politics that had been attached to their brand.

Clark's wife, retiring Liberal Party member for Lindsay, claimed she knew nothing about it, and when she did, she thought it was, you know, just a bit of a laugh and infamously, a "Chaser style prank".

ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann delivered a dawn phone call interrogation on Jackie Kelly, less than seven hours after her husband was busted hand-delivering the leaflets linking the Labor Party to support of terrorism :

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, Jackie Kelly, good morning.

JACKIE KELLY: Hello. How are you?

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was your husband involved in the distribution of this pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, I've read the alleged pamphlet and when I first read it I had to laugh because I think everyone who reads it has their first instinct is to laugh, pretty much everyone who's read chuckles in terms of the parody it does make of various things that have happened during the campaign.

So my view is that it's a bit of Chaser-style prank that an ALP goon squad, which I understand was is led by some unionists, have chased down and hunted down and tried to intimidate and I understand there was even a fight, so yes, I think it was all a very…

CHRIS UHLMANN: But just to establish it, your husband and two colleagues were handing out this pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, my understanding is they were letterboxing…

CHRIS UHLMANN: This pamphlet?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, I don't know. Well, I don't know, allegedly. Allegedly.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And this pamphlet says it comes from an Islamic organisation that doesn't exist? It says the ALP wants the Bali bombers forgiven and supports the construction of a mosque in western Sydney. What's funny about that?

JACKIE KELLY: Oh, look, it makes a parody of Robert McClelland's gaffe and those sorts of things. I think its sort of, I think its intent is to be a send-up but it obviously hasn't worked.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Isn't it its intent to drive people away from the Labor Party? Isn't that the intent of this?

JACKIE KELLY: No, well, I think if you read it you'd be laughing. I think it's quite… most people who've read it have sort of said, "Oh, well, that's a Chaser-style of prank."

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

CHRIS UHLMANN: Alright, who printed it?

JACKIE KELLY: Oh, look, I don't, I don't - I'm not, I don't know enough about it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was it from your office?

JACKIE KELLY: No. Absolutely not.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Who funded it?

JACKIE KELLY: I don't know. I don't know.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Who authorised it?

JACKIE KELLY: Well, look, there isn't any authorisation on the alleged document, but certainly our anti-union material has all of our stuff all over it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Can you guarantee that no funds came from your office, or from the Liberal Party for this?

JACKIE KELLY: Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

CHRIS UHLMANN: So where did the money come from? Someone must have printed it.

JACKIE KELLY: Look, everyone's got home printers and whatnot. I mean, you can do up dodgy flyers how you like. Anyone could have… even the goon squad following.

CHRIS UHLMANN: So you're saying that the goon squad following then printed it, then put it in their hands so they could letterbox it?

JACKIE KELLY: Look, I could send you a number of material that has been put out by "dear residents et cetera" on exactly these same issues or similar issues related to the campaign. I mean…

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was the Liberal state office involved in this joke?

JACKIE KELLY: No, not at all.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was the Federal office involved in this joke?

JACKIE KELLY: Not at all.

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

CHRIS UHLMANN: So now you're saying that he - you knew that they were going to be expelled?

JACKIE KELLY: Where is this conversation going?

CHRIS UHLMANN: I rang and I've identified myself as a reporter and I want to know how much you know about this particular document?

JACKIE KELLY: I don't know anything about it, right? I know basically what my husband has told me, his version of events, and obviously what the papers are alleging, and obviously what the ALP is putting about. Now I think there's a certain modus operandi in the ALP that is showing its face here in terms of unionism, using its standover tactics and thuggery. They're on the way back. I mean, they're coming back.

********

CHRIS UHLMANN: Jackie Kelly, thank you.

JACKIE KELLY: Cheers.

Cheers. Jackie Kelly and her husband, Gary Clark, destroyed the last chances of the Liberal Party at the 2007 election by what he did, and then what she said.

The audio of Uhlmann's interrogation of Kelly is here. A remarkable piece of historic political journalism, and a classic example of why so many Australian conservatives so often hate the ABC.

This is how The Chaser reacted to Kelly trying to associate their comedy stylings to the monumental dickheadry of her husband, and mostly unnamed fellow conspirators.

And here's why Conservatives Don't Do Comedy.

John Howard knew when he stepped up to the podium in the National Press Club in the early afternoon the day the horrible story hit all the headlines that disgust was spreading fast through his Bennelong electorate. It was a nasty story, and it was everywhere. It was the biggest Liberal Party story of the entire election campaign, and the hardest to dampen down, or dismiss.

But Howard knew an even bigger story was breaking as he began his final speech. He'd already lost the election. Bennelong was gone, and with it the prime ministership. His political career was dead.

The text of the Lindsay Leaflet that Tony Abbott knew absolutely nothing about, at all :

"The role of the Islamic Australia Federation is to support Islamic Australians by providing a strong network within Islamic Australia.

"Muslims supporting Muslims within the community and assisting and showing christian Australians the glorious path to Islam.

"In the upcoming federal election we strongly support the ALP as our preferred party to govern this country and urge all other Muslims to do the same.

"The leading role of the ALP in supporting our faith at both state and local government levels has been exceptional and we look further to further support when Kevin Rudd leads this country.

"We gratefully acknowledge Labor's support to forgive our Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings.

"Labor supports our new Mosque construction and we hope, with the support or funding of local and state governments, to open our new Mosque in St Marys soon.

"Labor was the only political party to support the entry to this country of our Grand Mufti reverend Sheik al-Hilaly (sic) and we thank Hon Paul Keating for over-turning the objections of ASIO to allow our Grand Mufti to enter this country."

A scan of the leaflet :

FightFightFight

We don't get a lot of brawling amongst authors in Australia, certainly no good knife fights at the writers' festivals, or blaring headlines about Tara Moss slapping Thomas Keneally into a blithering heap at a double-booked Dymocks instore, and we are a poorer literary nation for it. When was the last time you read about two Australian novelists smashed out of their minds on borboun punching the effluvia out of each other? It must be decades.

So we must settle for this violence-light, envy heavy online exchange between John Birmingham and Nick Earls.

Birmingham :

I've been on a book deadline for about four weeks now, I think. I have another two to go.

Oh sure, I could be like those suck-ups and panty-waists who get their manuscripts in on time, or even early, with minimal fuss and a daily regimen of cold showers, birch-whip floggin's and a steady, metronomic rhythm of a thousand words a day, every day, for as long as it takes. Yes Nick Earls I'm looking at you. But those Playboy Bunnies up on the hovercraft's pool deck aren't gonna chop their own lines or massage each other's buttal regions with extra virgin olive oil all by themselves you know.

Earls : Wish I could help JB. I sympathise with you, locked away in that cage, your every pore pumping out the ugly deadline pheromones. But what can I tell you? I got my manuscript in about a year early, and everything feels very mellow right now in the hot springs in which I'm luxuriating on my pre-book-tour junket in the mountains just outside Taipei. They brought the laptop over to the edge of the pool in case I could contribute, but the screen's steaming up faster than I can type. I'd like to at least say I feel your pain but, you know, right now I don't think I'm feeling any. Might have to go - I have a sudden rush of nothing to do, and all day to do it in.

Birmingham : Damn you. Damn you to hell, Earls!!! It's just like kindy all over again. Always turning up with finished forts and castles on box construction day.

John Birmingham, now a self-confessed airport novelist (and a damned good one), has been using Twitter to detail exactly what it is like to punch out thousands of words a day of action-fat novel as a hovering, shadow-heavy deadline twists his ears and repeatedly rams his head into the desk to keep those words flowing. It's been very interesting, funny and fascinating to follow.

Birmingham should publish a selection of those twoots at the end of his new book, so readers can see a bit of the process behind it, the airport novel equivalent of a DVD extra.

Pistols from the mid-1800s through to the early 1900s used in Australia by bushrangers, traps and bank robbers. On display at the Sydney Police & Justice Museum

Who Are All You People? What Are You Doing Here?

Thursday was a very, very good day, so thank you :





Unlike blog's that claim "one million hits a month", this readership came mostly from people who read a couple of stories then left, without leaving a dozen or two dozen comments. The Liberal Party comment crew obviously don't see it as worthwhile to come around spraying comments and insults, and thank fuck for that.

Readers clearly have more important things to do than hang around a blog like this posting comments and checking back a few dozen times a day to see responses to their comments and then posting another comment, then checking back to see who responded to their last comment. If that was happening on a daily basis around these parts, there'd be "one million hits a month", and more.

I appreciate comments, when they come, but it doesn't make any difference to why I do this, and keep doing it. I'm glad readers, like you, don't have the time to post hundreds of comments, you get more time for more worthwhile pursuits and I get a lot more other writing, fiction writing, done.

Some new short stories for the ED Day prequel, covering the 90 days of pandemic waves that lead up to ED Day, will be ready soon, and of course they'll be free to read online.

Riveting Viewing, If Your Head Is Filled With Rivets

Rupert Murdoch wants all his journos and bloggers to get used to the idea of reporting and opining in word and video. If they can't cut it across multi-media platforms, and pull those hits, they'll be gone.

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair dips his toe into these tepid new waters with this video.

The flanno is for bogan cred.

He doesn't seem to get it. You don't score three or four million views because you are reluctant to do the jump, you score that kind of traffic when you attempt the jump and fail, smash into the ground at 70kmh and catch a bouncing motorcycle to the spine.

Hopefully, this bit of snark won't upset him too much, I'd hate to get another 'Be Nice To Tim' letter from a lawyer, they must cost a packet.

Exclusive? We Got Nothing

By Darryl Mason

Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Melbourne's Herald Sun, the Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser, proclaims a Mad Max 4 "EXCLUSIVE" today :



MTV had a story with far more detail back in early March, including the fact that director George Miller has already stated the fourth Max Mad movie is going to be animated, not live action, meaning there will be no "shooting" in Sydney :

“We’ll probably go a different route,” Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role. The plot would be partly lifted from the script of the fourth “Max” film, which was set to shoot in 2003 until financing collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War.

Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated “Happy Feet”—not that the newest, ever-violent “Max” film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.

“I see myself as someone who is very curious about storytelling and all its various media,” Miller said. “I’ve always loved anime, in particular the Japanese sensibility. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

The Orstrahyun covered this story back on March 8 :

Max Mad 4 Is Coming, Animated And Mel Gibson Free

So what's the big Exclusive all these Rupert Murdoch daily newspapers have nabbed?

Nothing :

The Daily Telegraph could not confirm casting intentions because nobody at Kennedy Miller was available for comment.

Nor could we confirm whether Miller intended to direct Mad Max 4 himself. And if he did, whether he intended to direct it simultaneously with Happy Feet 2, which is currently in production in Sydney.

Nothing about Mad Max 4 as anime, or the extensive video game that will see release before the fourth Mad Max movie, nothing about Miller's already announced plans for the movie, nothing about the old Mad Max 4 script, 'Fury Road', that has been kicking around for years and will likely supply at least the basic plot of the new movie :

The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.

While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.

Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.

The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.

How hard is to fluff out an "Exclusive" with some actual information from a Google search, seeing as the Daily Telegraph couldn't get an interview with George Miller, or find out any hard detail from anyone connected with the project?

The MTV story quoted above, with Miller's quotes, is the third story listed when you Google 'Mad Max 4.'

Rupert Murdoch thinks that people will soon pay him to access this kind of non-event "Exclusive" content online.

Good Luck with that.

Here's an old trailer for the original Mad Max, the American trailer with, akk! American voices dubbed over all those excellent, characteristic, funny Australian ones. How wrong is this?

Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apocalyptic Aftermath

"this beat up controversy"


.

Finally From Howard's Pouty Lips, The Truth....

By Darryl Mason

John Howard reveals the cause of all that tension between himself and Peter Costello.

"Peter did not offer himself," Mr Howard said.

Unlike most of the Liberal Party, and Liberal Party supporters, Howard likes Malcolm Turnbull, a lot :

"Malcolm is very capable and I think he demonstrated last night..."

I'm not running the rest of that quote, you can read it here, it's too early in the morning for that kind of stuff.

Howard also likes Bob Hawke :

"The most talented person I faced..."

Again, too early, the rest of that quote is here, but you may need a strong coffee first.

Howard better not go too far with all this praise, someone might get jealous :






John Howard, the prime minister who lost his seat to a former host from ABC's 7.30 Report and Lateline (that still reads like an alternate reality joke from The Chaser, a very very funny one) is close to finishing his book. A rumour of a working title :

John Howard : How I Made Australia Grate

There will be many photos of John Howard with his favourite men.


John Howard Happy That Al Qaeda's Prayers Have Been Answered

The Australian Welfare Bludger As Ex-Prime Minister

When John Howard Advised Al Qaeda To Pray For An Obama Presidency

December 2006 : Rudd Plays With Howard's Mind By Refusing To Get Angry, Julia Gillard Slays Howard With "His Best Days Are Behind Him"

March 2007 : Hating Howard - The New National Sport Everybody Wants To Play

Rupert Murdoch Pays Me To Never Mention He Belongs To A Pagan Cult Who Want To Destroy The World And Wipe Out Humanity

By Darryl Mason

This ad from the corporate green HQ of Rupert Murdoch's The Herald Sun....



...sits right above this headline from Herald's Sun associate editor, The Professional Idiot - 'Star Hypocrites Of The Warming Faith' :



The story includes this declaration :

Truly, global warming is the first major religion to be led entirely by shameless sinners, attended by assorted hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Al Gore gets a mention, Richard Branson gets a mention, Oprah Winfrey gets a mention in the League Of Extraordinary Global Warming Hypocrites, but somehow, yet again, to my utter shock, The Professional Idiot forgets to include his boss Rupert Murdoch, the world's biggest, most influential promoter of global warming hysteria and Corporate Greenism, in his list of hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Does Rupert Murdoch row a boat to Australia when he visits?

Doesn't the same multi-billionaire who uses The Simpsons to scare children about drowning cities use a corporate jet to travel the world?

Every time The Professional Idiot goes comment mining on global warming or carbon trading, the massive ad appears from the boss reminding him of just what a spectacle fucking hypocrite he is. And every time it appears it reminds readers how pathetically afraid The Professional Idiot is to criticise or even mention his boss's chief role in the worldwide promotion of global warming hysteria, while he religiously ignores his own newspaper's efforts in ramping up The Fear and following Rupert Murdoch's masssive plan to cash-in on the coming carbon trading market and carbon tax.



Then again, when you've already admitted there is no ideology so evil or inhuman that you would not take a job or a pile of cash from its believers, screaming Stop The Global Warming Hysteria! while working for a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly that kind of hysteria, does make some kind of sense.

At least enough to not choke on your own hypocrisy every payday.

Maybe we should remember the Alan Jones excuse : It's not news, it's not even journalism, it's Entertainment.

It sure is entertaining.

Crikey's Guy Rundle goes behind the scenes of Budget 2009 :

It's been a long time.

"We Had Some Dedicated Rooters There Who Wanted To Test Out Their Ability To Toss A Root"

ABC journalist and author Leigh Sales, on Twitter, suspects the following local news story from regional Australia can't be for real, that it has to be fake.




City journos, always so suspicious and skeptical of non-city cultural events and local customs they've never heard of before.

"Wait a minute, you want me to stand in a bucket of pig shit for two minutes? Do all visitors to your pig farm have to do this?" "Yes, bloody oaf they do."

Perhaps Sales was suspicious of fakery simply because the throwers are called "rooters", and the local news team managed to squeeze the word "root" so many times into a brief story. For international readers, "root" was, and remains in some parts of Australia, a popular Australian slang term for "fuck". As in, "You wanna root?" and "Ahhhh, get rooted you drongo."

Mallee Root Throwing is real (enough), and is often used by locals in Australian towns where mallee roots are numerous to test the strength of visitors, particularly visitors from the "City".

World Championships, after the state finals of course, are held each year on Australia Day where the utes gather by the hundreds.

Joyce Unveils .1% Dissent Against Liberals

They tried to make Barney believe in global warming, but he said, "No, no, no."

Senator Joyce said the Nationals did not always vote with their Liberal partners.

"About 99.9 per cent of the time, or more, we vote for the Liberal Party and I can't understand why people get their noses so out of joint when that's not the case,'' he said.

Even in a marriage, couples don't agree all the time, he said.

"I don't ... and no one says that's the end of this relationship, they just say that's the way relationships go.''

Yes, but the aggrieved partner may also seethe quietly while plotting wicked revenge.

Carbon trading, and the carbon tax, might be delayed for a year or two, but it's not going to fall into the "Forget About It" pit anytime soon. Most Labor and Liberal politicians want it, some of Australia's biggest businesses are demanding it, and Rupert Murdoch stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from it, even if he lets a few of his columnists, for entertainment purposes, rage against it.

Barnaby Joyce could ride an anti-carbon tax movement to even greater election success, unless pensioners and the poor actually get paid cash by the Rudd government because they emit less carbon in their lifestyles than the rich, which is probably exactly what is going to happen to smooth over its introduction.

Captain Cook statue, Hyde Park, Sydney









Photos by Darryl Mason

Aporkalypse, Please

By Darryl Mason

The first confirmed case of an Australian with swine flu, actually in Australia - but she had it in the US and claims she was no longer sick or showing symptoms when she boarded a plane to come home - is announced to massive media freakout on a slow news day.

So how did the Saturday 5pm news on Channel 10 in Sydney deal with one confirmed case of Australian Has Swine Flu! as the first story of the bulletin, without being too dramatic? Cut to newsreader questioning Some Expert :

Newsreader : Is it time to panic?

Some Expert : No.

It's like the declarations from government health departments and the World Health Organisation warning us, "Don't Panic!" as though there will come a time of "Fuck Yes, Panic Now!" announcements.

Newsreader : Health Minister, there are now 2000 confirmed cases of ManBirdPig Flu in Australia, with dozens of deaths. Is it time now for the Australian public to panic?

Health Minister : "Yes. Yes I do think the time has come for everyone to panic."

Newsreader : Are you panicking right now?"

Health Minister : "Yes. I am panicking. This is me in a state of panic."

Newsreader : "Sorry, minister, I couldn't hear you clearly over what sounds like breaking waves and a game of beach volleyball in the background there."

Health Minister (off) : "....close the fucking door, Wayne!"

Newsreader : "Minister?"

Health Minister : "Sorry, it was...the TV...in my hotel room...in Canberra."

Newsreader : "Just how should the Australian people panic, minister? Should they go all out bat fucking shit crazy, and start killing their neighbours and salting their corpses for future meals when quality food will be scarce? Or should we remain in homes for a third month and watch TV and shiver just a little at this news and make little defeated wincing, sighing and choking-sob noises instead?"

Health Minister : "I'd advise against the gathering and preserving of other working families for later consumption, at this time. It is in the interest of all Australians to remain calm even as we move through this state of obvious and prolonged panic."

Newsreader : "So you're saying the Australian people should stay calm but feel free to panic?"

Health Minister : "Yes, as long as your frantic panic is confined to your home, and you don't break anything and you don't start grabbing your family members by the shoulders and shaking them as you scream 'God hates us! He really does!' over and over again until you fall exhausted and dehydrated to the floor."

Newsreader : "So we can panic, but we need to remain calm in our panic?"

Health Minister : "Yes, that's exactly correct."

Newsreader : "Thank you."

Health Minister : "Thank you."

Newsreader : "In other news, the NRL is reeling after more group sex allegations surfaced, but this time no females were involved..."

Health Minister (off) : "...that's what I told that clue-bat worthy idiot. I just can't believe how fucking doomed they all are back there."

Newsreader : "..........I'm sorry, it appears the health minister's microphone is still on and we are trying to get the..."

Health Minister (off) : "....well you tell Kev he should have thought about packing his own frigging hair dryer before we evacuated. And another thing, Wayne, if I'm going to be staying here for six months, I want a bungalow right on the beach, goddammit. I'm not spending half a year in Vanuatu living in some damp shack a half kay back from the frigging beach."

Newsreader : "In breaking news, the federal government and opposition have announced the relocation of Parliament to a well-defended, heavily stockpiled island in Vanuatu, for the immediate future."

I think there are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people in Australia who have picked up the swine flu virus in the past five weeks or so, and because they are used to dealing with flu symptoms most years without feeling the need or urgency to see a doctor, they don't know they picked it up, suffered briefly and with no mammothic discomfort, and are now feeling much better.

It's a flu, one that will probably prove more fatal to those it infects than seasonal Influenza A viruses usually do, but it does not deliver vastly different symptoms than those 'usual' flu. You'll only know you've got or had ManBirdPig Flu once you've been tested by a doctor.

If the New Flu made your nose change into a snout, or made you puke out the inside of your own leg, then yes, it would be obvious you'd picked up H1N1 and dozens of people a week would be announced to have become infected.

Even if H1N1 turns into a pandemic and kills 2% of everyone it infects, these deaths are not going to happen all in one week or month or probably not even in the same year.

Twenty or thirty thousand Australians dying from HumanBirdPig Flu over 18 months will be big news, and the changes to the most basic functioning of society from widespread absenteeism will be monumental and unavoidable, but the deaths, if they come, will come in waves, across those many months.

With constant nightly news attention focused around the spread of a virus that is killing hundreds a week, even the news of an ongoing pandemic will get old for most, or will want to be mostly avoided by those who have already lost friends and family to the virus.

A pandemic killing tens of thousands of Australians in a year will be one of the biggest stories of the century, but it will be one of the hardest for the media to cover, respectfully, and without hysteria, and also maintain interest in.

The science is difficult, the lies and deceptions from governments about what is actually going on will be monumental and the visuals of people lining up outside hospitals, or bodies being carried from homes, the mass funerals, the quarantined being interviewed from behind their living room windows, and barren city streets and squares, will quickly become boring to most viewers.

A pandemic is not a fast moving story, at least not fast enough for the speed of today's news, it will crawl along, a tragedy that unfolds slowly filled mostly with intimate dramas behind the front doors of quarantined homes. And there will be months when nothing happens at all, when road accidents and heart disease deaths beat out pandemic influenza for 'Most Deaths This Month.'

I'm sure the evening news will give us maps of Australia with death tallies for each state and territory, too, if a pandemic becomes reality, and you'll know just how serious the pandemic actually is by whether the reporter 'on the scene' will be wearing a face mask or a full biosuit, breathing like Darth Vader.


Aporkalypse Now?

Aporkalypse When?

Just, Wow

A twelve foot barrel captured in high definition super slo-mo :



(found on Digg)

I See Dead Pets....And Easy Profit

The Daily Telegraph runs one of those stupid stories about something stupid nobody's heard of before, which they can follow up on a few months from now when the publicity they gave this stupid idea has found its faithful amongst those who think it perfectly reasonable to pay $100 to hear made-up messages from their dead cat :



You don't need to pay $100 to know what the secret message your dead cat is trying to send you from beyond the grave. I'll give it to you for free. The message is this :

Feed Me.

I'm tempted to set up a Dead But Psychic Pets hotline. Not that I hear dead animals talking to me or anything....

Correction : We Are Not Under Siege From Monster Spiders

The Brisbane Times has moved fast to reassure Australians that British tabloid media reports are wrong - a Queensland town is not currently being invaded and overrun by giant, "barking" spiders :

The story was picked up by several other UK news outlets, including The Telegraph and the Irish Independent, with Sky News running it under the headline: 'Super-sized tarantulas are spinning a web of terror in a town in Australia.'

But Mr Geiszler laughed off the coverage this morning, telling brisbanetimes.com.au it had been "blown out of all proportion and massively sensationalised."

"There have been no more than 10 sightings of these spiders here," Mr Geiszler said.

"There is definitely not an invasion or a plague or anything like that."

The Brisbane Times didn't notice that it was in fact the Townsville Bulletin that began this story with a sensational report of "five "monster spiders" spotted in Bowen.

We Will Laugh At Their Coffins

Australia's most boring columnist, Gerard Henderson, thinks that The Chaser is "media".

After The Chaser boys completed some pre-new show publicity over The Vatican, Gerard Henderson unfurls a troubling little fantasy he has about what would happen, and how the ABC would respond, if The Chaser "Boys" tried to pull that kind of shit somewhere Islamic :

“The Chaser shoot was approved by ABC TV. Not all the Chaser boys got their throats cut in the resultant mob violence. Fortunately, one of The Boys was pretending to urinate in a Tehran toilet fixture display store at the time and escaped injury. He has our full support. We are certainly sad that two of The Boys did not make it safely home. But the return of The Boys’ coffins will provide an opportunity at gallows humour to match the 2007 skit by The Boy Licciardello aimed at the disabled in wheel-chairs.”

I hope Gerard wasn't touching himself inappropriately while conjuring up that fascinating little fantasy.