Hungry For More

Just one example why Hungry Beast is the best new Australian current affairs show in many, many years :



And this interview with an Australian soldier who served in Afghanistan is stunning :



Plenty more Hungry Beast clips on their official site here, and on YouTube here.

There was a bit of nervousness, as you'd expect, amongst Hungry Beast producers and ABC executives as to how a show could leap almost instantly from absurd satire to devastating journalism. But it worked. It worked brilliantly.

Hungry Beast returns in 2010.

"you fill my empty days...."

Forget The Petitions, We Need Pitchforks And Torches

By Darryl Mason


(graphic from smh.com.au front page)

What has happened in the NSW government is a fucking insult to democracy. Not only do we not get to vote for the leaders of our major political parties, we don't even get a say in who becomes premier is anymore.

A campaign for early elections by the Sydney Morning Herald is an interesting start to returning a semblance of democracy to the people of New South Wales, but what exactly is a newspaper doing publicly campaigning for the dismissal of a government?

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

It is about a system of government that locks the people of NSW into a four-year fixed electoral cycle, that reduces the voters to bystanders in an endless rotation of ministers and premiers - with no way of bringing on an election.

The people of NSW, who elected Morris Iemma in 2007, have seen that choice overturned, and overturned again, until they now have a government they scarcely recognise. And that government is overseeing a decline in the quality of services to the public.

Hospitals are understaffed and over budget. They cannot pay their bills. Waiting lists for elective surgery are growing. Public transport is in disarray and its future is in doubt for want of adequate planning. Roads, railways, buses and ferries are dilapidated. So are our schools. Police resources are stretched. Looming over all the problems, explaining them and perpetuating them, is a budget shortfall that results from the Government's inherent inability to manage its affairs or anything else.

The Sydney Morning Herald is clickbaiting readers to sign a petition, but it's unlikely to achieve much, besides hits to their website. The NSW government needs to hear the call for early elections loud and clear, in person, at the gates of parliament.

Blockading the front and back of state parliament for about a week should give the new unelected 'premier' the message loud and clear that no-one in NSW is prepared to wait until 2011 to have a real, viable say on the future of this disturbingly corrupt, inept, backstabbing, ridiculously chaotic government.

update : The Daily Telegraph is in on the petition clickbait now as well.

Dave Gaukroger at Pure Poison :

All that these two newspapers have achieved with their campaigns is that they have lost any claim to be disinterested reporters and commentators. The NSW print media has shown that it is willing to actively campaign against a sitting government, making a mockery of their role as the fourth estate. This is not a sign of a healthy and informed democracy.

Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell Explains Why Petitioning For Early Elections Might Ultimately Be More Effective Than Pitchforks And Torches :

....as in September last year, when Nathan Rees was installed by the same factional bosses behind Kristina Keneally's rise, the choice of premier wasn't by the hands of NSW voters but by, in Rees's words, "the malignant, treacherous and disloyal forces" of the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party.

Four premiers, five health ministers and six police ministers since 2005 are signs of both a dysfunctional government and a lack of respect for the public, which is meant to be the basis of our democracy.

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Barnaby Joyce : Smash The Banks, Prepare For Econogeddon

The new Australian Opposition finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, does not believe the threat of total global economic collapse has passed, and is demanding the Australian government prepare for the day when, or if, the United States defaults on its debts and an angry China cuts off the credit supply.

From The Age :

(Joyce) proposed that the Federal Government should introduce laws allowing it to break up the assets of the four main banks - and use them to force banks to hold down interest rates.

...Senator Joyce said he did not want to alarm the public, but there needed to be a debate about Australia's ''contingency plan'' for a sovereign debt default by the US or even by an Australian state government.

''A default by the US means complete economic collapse around the world and the question we have got to ask ourselves is where are we in that?'' he said.

''The Federal Government has $115.7 billion in debt, Australian government securities, notes and bonds on issue, and the states have another $170 billion in debt.''

Joyce said if the United States failed to repay its $2 trillion debt to China, the yuan could replace the US dollar.

''If America collapses there will be no more sale of Chinese products to America and therefore very little purchase of Australian resources by China.''

''The whole pulse of trade is compromised because people say, 'Why would I trade with the US when it might not pay its debt back?' ''

Joyce said to prepare for an "economic Armageddon" Australian should ensure we have "the capacity to feed ourselves, the capacity to provide the fundamentals in medicines and basic fundamental requirements for our nation.''

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

(Joyce's) warning came as the Rudd Government ramped up its attack on Senator Joyce as an economic extremist by highlighting his strong opposition to Chinese sovereign investment in Australia.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said it was a cause for concern that Senator Joyce had been elevated ''from the reactionary fringe of our economic debate to the second-most senior economic policymaking job in the alternative government''.

Read The Full Story Here

Is Tim Blair now editing for Fox News?



Tim Blair notes an Associated Press timeline of key dates in what it calls the History Of Global Warming.....



....and Blair invites readers "to submit their own key dates in warming history". Here's an important date the AP didn't include in that timeline, one Blair would rather not remind his readers of :

May, 2007 - Rupert Murdoch instructs shareholders and his newspaper and TV news editors that "climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats". Climate change tabloid fearmongery explodes across Murdoch's world media empire, as Murdoch pledges to create "carbon neutral" workplaces for all his journalists.

Meanwhile, some boring academic guy tries to use facts and science to debunk ClimateGate :





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The Australian confirms John Howard tried and succeeded in crushing dissent at the ABC :

When the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched its political analysis program Insiders in 2001 the public broadcaster's own staff were forbidden from being panelists.

John Howard's coalition government was closely monitoring the ABC, which it viewed as enemy territory, and network programmers mindful of not agitating outspoken communications minister Richard Alston approved the show on condition only external commentators representing a spectrum of different views were used.

And yet, despite very strong opinions and criticisms from ABC journalists and commentators against prime minister Kevin Rudd all over ABC radio, TV and online, not one journalist has so far revealed any pressure coming from the PM's office to tone it down or shut up.

You Are The Storm, You Morons

Westpac, currently one of the western world's most profitable banks, tried some direct marketing to its customers, by sending the following patronising, condescending 'We Think Of You As Children' animated video via e-mail :



Westpac fails to grasp what many of its customers already understand. They Are The Fucking Storm in this scenario. The global financial crisis was entirely created by banking giants and masrket manipulators and speculators greedily squeezing every bit of profit they could from the hard work, and home ownership dreams, of the working poor.

The video is riddled with misinformation, and outright lies. You know raising interest rates is lot like pricing fluctuations of banana smoothies? What in all fuck?

This is pure damage control, as Westpac continues to raise rates while their profits volcano.

Mumbrella has more here, and here.

You Slurp Your White Wine And Sip Your Lattes

It's often interesting to see how the international media is reporting news from Australia.

Nick Cohen, of the UK Guardian, takes his readers through recent tumultuous events in Australian politics :

Last week, Malcolm Turnbull became the first right-wing leader to be deposed for the ideological crime of taking global warming seriously. Turnbull was a confident politician, from a party that had dominated Australian politics until Labor's victory in 2007.

He thought he was at the centre of the English-speaking world's conservative consensus. He dutifully committed his Liberal party to go along with Labor's plans to use a cap-and-trade scheme to cut emissions. His party's members went wild.

Tony Abbott, a reactionary Catholic, saw his chance, added opposition to green taxes to the old agenda of opposing gay marriage and abortion, and replaced Turnbull as leader.

How concise.

Cohen also claims a "right-leaning" Australian journalist told him that :

"climate change is now morphing from a science issue into yet another front line in the culture wars, in which any obsession of the inner-city, mung-bean-flavoured-tofu-eating, latte-slurping political/academic/media class is automatically the target of resentment and scorn".

So many cliches. There isn't a Google entry for Piers Akerman using "mung bean flavoured tofu eating" elites. Yet.

And this :

Globally, environmentalism is a middle-class cause, and in Britain, disastrously for its supporters, the children of the aristocracy and super-rich dominate the green movement. As before, many onlookers fear that they will pay the price for the soothing of the consciences of the wealthy.

Poor people like trees and clean air, too.

Soft Porn For The Howard Huggers

Bob Hawke sure loved to dance. Get pissed and dance :



Bob Hawke had a stripper perform at his 80th birthday a few nights back. She burst out of a cake and disrobed, wearing a John Howard mask. This is a video of the same burlesque act from 2007, with added George W. Bush :



This is both extremely disturbing and curiously arousing, on far too many levels to contemplate without introspective fungus-based drugs.

Expect an eruption of indignant fury from the MoralOutrage! activists that the ABC would dare to embed such titillating, amusing filth on its news site.

If we want to see strippers and women rubbing themselves against each other on a news page, we got to news.com.au, or in a pinch, smh.com.au.

I'm going to watch it again a few times to make sure I'm sufficiently outraged before I get busy with my complaints about how the ABC is debasing Australian morality and society.

Does the performer also do this show in a Brendan Nelson mask? It's not me who wants to know...I'm just asking on behalf of a friend...

update : John Howard's response :

“I was certainly not offended.

“It was very gracious of Bob to invite me to his party, and I’m glad to know that after two years I still bug the Labor Party.”

Excellent!
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Well Fingered

Powderfinger are releasing a seven album box set on vinyl on December 22, including their mostly unknown debut album, Parable For Wooden Ears (1994), Double Allergic (1996), Internationalist (1998), Odyssey Number Five (2000), Vulture Street (2003), Dream Days At The Hotel Existence (2007) and Golden Rule (2009). Just under $200 for the lot.

It's a shame they couldn't cram in the EPs, though. The Mr Kneebone EP, from 1995, sees Powderfinger dramatically re-inventing their songwriting, and contained two absolutely hard rocking Powderfinger classics, Swollen Tongue and I'm Splitting, Terry.

But the reason for this plug is to bring to your attention the way Powderfinger is promoting the box set on their website. A decent length excerpt from every song from all seven albums can be heard, and if you click on the first song of Parables, and let it play, you will be hurled through the recorded history of Powderfinger, in chronological order, in about an hour.

Great fun, and plenty of proof that the Finger have been (mostly) successfully mixing up styles and sounds from day one. And if you want to hear the band back when they still had some metal in their blood, check out Tail and Citadel from Parables For Wooden Ears. Pounding.

Andrew Bolt Hates Democracy

By Darryl Mason

Not just democracy, but free speech as well :

"Those who still like (Malcolm Turnbull) should urge him to keep his silence...."

"(Malcolm Turnbull) should be manouvered out of Parliament, if not the party."

The Professional Idiot wanted democracy in Iraq, even if it cost a trillion dollars, the lives and limbs of hundreds of thousands of people, and made orphans of millions of Iraqi kids. But when a Liberal Party politician holds a differing opinion to his own and that of the new Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, well, The Idiot wants democracy and free speech in Australia to be subverted.

And with his usual cowardice, The Idiot refuses to link directly to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, so his readers can see exactly what Turnbull wrote, and make up their own minds.

Bolt droogie and fellow gatekeeper, Tim Blair, also refuses to link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog. Maybe he's just jealous because Turnbull gets so many more comments than he does these days....

Anyway, this is what Malcolm Turnbull wrote on his blog that has so infuriated Andrew Bolt and made rant like an anti-freedom of speech fascist :

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won't complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition's policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, let's get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.

Somebody has to pay.

So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, "bullshit." Moreover he knows it.

---------------

....the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, it's cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

Which, in a remarkable coincidence, also happens to be a theory long promoted by Andrew Bolt and his commenters, some of whom were Liberal Party politicians, staffers and advisors writing under fake names.

Turnbull :

The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it.

Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it.

His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....."

Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now open to the charge that we are also without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted to keep our word or maintain a consistent position on the issue of climate change.

Unlike the cowardly Andrew Bolt, Malcolm Turnbull's blog is open for comments from readers on his stories and opinion, and unlike Andrew Bolt, Turnbull is not afraid to let through some very harsh criticisms indeed :

"are you throwing nothing more than an articulate tantrum?"

"As usual, you're hell bent on getting your own way like a typical spoilt brat, and couldn't care less about anyone else."

"Your a farce now Malcolm"

"(You are) nothing but a egocentric backstabbing bastard"

"Sour grapes from one of Rudd's elves. It doesn't matter what party you say you're on Malcolm, you are Rudd's boy. "

"unclench yours fists, stop stamping your feet and stop behaving like a spoiled brat."

"sour grapes comes to mind. Give me a break. You banter has as much BS in it as anyone who wants to take bat and ball and not play the game. Grow up"

Expect Andrew Bolt to grow only more hysterical and shrill when the Tony Abbott experiment doesn't produce the results the Abbott Army, firmly embedded in the Murdoch and Fairfax media, have been praying for.

It's going to be one of those elections.

Entertaining.

Australian politicians attacking and criticising each other through blogs and on social networking sites like Twitter is a new phenomenon. But it will cause much chaos, debate and delight as we move into the federal election campaign proper.

It's going to be ugly, and funny, but that's free speech. That's democracy.

UPDATE : After visiting The Orstrahyun to read the above story, Andrew Bolt finally provides a link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, noting the harsh criticism of Turnbull in the comments section that I noted above. Bolt thanks reader 'Steve' for pointing this out to him, even though he based a lengthy post on what Turnbull wrote in that now controversial post.

So it appears Bolt didn't even read the Turnbull blog post himself, before writing about it here.

So much for research.

Dave Gleeson of The Screaming Jets has a small onstage accident :

Seriously, who edits this shit?

Piers Akerman, Daily Telegraph :

"Prime Minister Kevin Rudd....has attempted to drive a wedge between voters who favour board-shorts and those who opt for sleeker nut-huggers as worn by the new federal Opposition leader, Tony Abbott."

"....pro-lifers...would see abortion promoted not as a last resort but as the contraceptive process of choice, are debasing what should be a serious debate."

So pro-lifers want abortion to replace the pill? Is he back on the gack?

I'll take any conservative's God-infected raging against safe, legal abortion seriously when they also begin discussing the far more devastating, and shattering, events of miscarriages in Australia.

Why do they never discuss, debate or even mention the awful tragedy of miscarriages? What are they so afraid of?

The Screaming Jets/The Radiators, St Mary's Band Club, December 4, 2009







A review, of sorts, of The Radiators 30th Anniversary gig at St Mary's Band Club to follow (well, not follow, but up Sunday sometime, along with all the other stuff I've committed to getting up here, eventually. Good thing I'm not charging for it, eh?)

I think this digital camera has seen its last gig, and its last drop down a flight of concrete stairs, and the beery splashes of drunk fucks who never learned how to headbang without spilling their drinks. The colours and bleeding of the pics are getting a bit too surreal. Even for me.

"I've Had A Yearning Inside Of Me For Quite Some Time"

Australian conservatives! The time to break free of Rudd's Totalitatyrannical Rule is now!

Here is your inspiration :



It probably seemed like a good idea at the time to spend all that money getting the Hey, It's That Movie Trailer Guy! to do the VO, but it just makes the whole thing immediately seem like a parody. A good parody, but hard to take too seriously, when obviously a certain level of seriousness was intended.

After all, Obama is clearly the Devil/AntiChrist/New Hitler/Hitler II/American Ayatollah

Abbott Redefines The Lies That Led To The Deaths Of 5000 American Soldiers And 100,000 Iraqis

The GodBott on the 2002 lies about Iraq WMDs and the alleged threat to Australia posed by Saddam Hussein, from ABC News :

".....whether something is a lie depends not on what turns out subsequently to be so, but on your state of mind."

Presumably Abbott thinks that rule applies even if your prime minister had personally committed Australians troops to an illegal War On Iraq within days of 9/11, and literally signed onto the war in February 2002, regardless of the WMD threat, or lack of one.




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Murdoch : It's Not Thievery When We Do It

By Darryl Mason

One year on, the man who sold his Australian citizenship to start Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, is still ranting like a senile old goat about digital "thieves" helping themselves to his "expensive" news content.

"Good journalism is an expensive commodity," he announced, while delivering a speech at a journalism conference in the United States.

According to Murdoch, there is "no such thing as a free news story."

"Producing journalism is expensive."

Occasionally, that is the case.

But more often than not what you get is rewrites of press releases, or simply the rehashing of stories published in non-Murdoch media.

Like this 'story', from the AAP, part owned by Murdoch, which today appeared on nearly every Murdoch news site in the country :

Ousted federal Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and his former deputy Julie Bishop reportedly have fallen out over this week's tumultuous ructions inside the party.

Mr Turnbull was deposed by Tony Abbott in a leadership ballot on Tuesday, but Ms Bishop remains the parliamentary party's deputy to a third leader in less than two years.

Shortly after the ballot, there were suggestions Ms Bishop had voted for Mr Abbott.

That led to a blazing telephone row between Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop on Tuesday afternoon, ABC Online has reported.

This AAP story is barely a rewrite of this exclusive by the ABC's chief political writer, Annnabel Crabb. All the key quotes and new information from Crabb's story is reproduced in the AAP story, and unlike most of the bloggers and aggregators that Murdoch and his executives have accused of thievery, neither AAP, nor any of the Murdoch media sites that ran the story, provide a link back to Crabb's exclusive.

Bloggers and aggregators play far more fair than the Old Media do, when it comes to reproducing or reusing news and information and quotes that have originally appeared in other news media. We provide direct links to sources, where possible, and more often than not acknowledge where non-original content has been reproduced from.

This is exactly why so many digital journalists and bloggers laugh so long and hard when Murdoch and his executives start ranting about online "parasites, content kleptomaniacs, vampires, tech tapeworms, thieves".

Lifting, rewriting, reproducing, the best stories from your competition is a 'news gathering' technique as old as newspapers themselves. It's usually the first kind of work assigned to cadet journalists. Scan the competition's newspapers, magazines, and reproduce the best of it. If there's time, expand on it a bit.

What many bloggers do, and what Digital Rupert rails so helplessly against, is downright traditional media practice.

And as the AAP reproduction of Annnabel Crabb's exclusive proves, it's still as popular as ever.


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"The Liberals Are Back!"

@AlexHawkeMP favourites this brilliantly accurate, only slightly exaggerated, take on last week's Liberal Party Meltdown from Hungry Beast :



When the next Newspoll shows a 10 point two party preferred leap for the Liberals, you are going to see that headline all over the media....Well, The Australian anyway.

The Libs should move fast and get that phrase, "The Liberals Are Back!", into their advertising as soon as the Newspoll results are out.

It works, and it will also provide plenty of fodder for the satirists.

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Here Comes The Rooster

Annabel Crabb, now chief political writer at the ABC, broke the news of a raging three-way feud (with e-mail revelations) between Liberals Tony "unelectable" Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop.

But on Twitter, Sky News' David Speers reveals he might have a bigger, follow-on scoop :


Don't get carried away. Twas merely the result of some teasing auto-pruning by Twitter's 140 characters per message limit. The full message :



Pah!


Julie Posetti : Your Election Will Be Twitterised

Tony Abbott "lacks humanity"


I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

The Orstrahyun, December 1, 10am :

Abbott thinks reality is a confessional booth, and all sins are immediately absolved.

Tony Abbott, December 1, The 7.30 Report :

"Well, this is not a confessional and you can't give me absolution."

update : Tony Abbott joins Twitter and states the obvious :




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