Australia is occupied by a foreign power and you join the resistance — where would you draw the line between name-calling and suicide-bombing?And details his dream newspaper front page headline :
World's Last Arms Manufacturer Closes Plant, Join Former Competitors Aiding Agriculture Projects In AfricaMore Here
''The real argument is here in Indonesia some quite remarkable Indonesian scientists and doctors have discovered that cigarette smoking can, with specially treated cigarettes, significantly assist people's health and has the potential to cut health costs around the globe.'
''One thing we must do is learn from the ancient wisdom and find out how to grow healthy tobacco. Indonesia has made a start and it's a great place to do it. Unfortunately my country (Australia) has almost banned any private initiatives in this area.
''Tobacco is certainly not the key factor in many of the health issues attributed to it; the jury should remain out on that.
''These and other matters are still the subject of investigation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here in Indonesia now. To conclude, let's ban unhealthy cigarettes and promote healthy smoking.
''This will serve many purposes, the pro-smokers can have their cake and eat it without fear, the anti-smokers are likely to have a new cheap readily available healing tool.''
"Healthy smoking." There's two words I don't think I've seen paired together before. At least not in the past few decades anyway. And smoking as a "healing tool"?
Woody Allen's 1973 future-satire Sleeper foresaw this day :
"Here, smoke this. And be sure to get the smoke deep into your lungs."
"I don't smoke"
"It's tobacco. It's one of the healthiest things for your body."
...there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his nastiness under there - a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison.Read The Loaded Dog By Henry Lawson HereNearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings - spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs - that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining - and yapping, yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when --
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When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
"What a devastating indictment of our education system and culture of proud know-nothingness"Some footballers don't know much about Australian political history so they should have to sit a test before being allowed to vote?
"Beats me why these neanderthal boofheads are 'heroes' and 'role models'...they’re brainless, mysogynistic idiots who chase a ball around a field."
"they really are only required to be able to grunt and tie their shoelaces."
"Yet Australia still has compulsory voting?"
"I want a refund of my education tax money."
"I haven’t seen a better argument for ending compulsory voting."
"how moronic do you have to be NOT to know only five prime ministers?""Footy players, AFL or League are by definition thick as two short planks. The come from the working class"
"Why would you expect them to know names of prime ministers when they probably need to take off their shoes to count the twenty?"
"This is the best reason I have seen to restrict voting to those who can pass a general knowledge and intellingence test."
While he doesn't say it directly, Tanner is pushing a mantra that declares if you vote for The Greens, then you are also voting for the Liberal Party, whether you intended to or not. It sounds surreal, but it's a line Labor will continue to push, perhaps hoping that opposition leader Tony Abbott will come to The Greens defence, which would allow Labor to brand them as radicals, extremists, or worse.The Greens are not some benign group loosely allied with Labor. They're not a middle-ground party. They're not idealistic activists changing the world. They're just another political party, no less cynical or manipulative than the others. They feed off Labor's need to make compromises to marry progressive reform with majority government. Their energies are directed to attacking Labor, not the conservatives.
It might seem like a good idea to support those who yell the loudest, but it's unlikely to produce good outcomes. Labor is the only worthwhile option for achieving progressive change through parliamentary politics. It might be a bit piecemeal and gradual, but it beats the hell out of doing nothing.
Donald Ritchie, who has lived opposite The Gap for nearly 50 years, has shown what can be done when you have the chance to intervene. He and his wife have talked many back from the brink, with a few kind words and the offer of a cup of tea. Honoured with an Order of Australia, Ritchie has talked more than 160 people out of taking their lives.Malcolm Turnbull on The Gap, where some 50 people every year jump to their deaths.
Aliens could be the latest to weigh in on the nuclear waste storage debate after UFOs were spotted near the proposed Territory facility.How can you not read the story after that intro?
The automated email response from News Limited gallery hack Glenn Milne delivered the news: “Please be advised that as of the 13/03/2010 I no longer work for News Limited Sunday Papers, I still work for The Australian.” Milne is directing correspondents to a Gmail account, presumably because his role at News is now as Australian column contributor only.Interesting. So Glenn Milne gets sacked from the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun for being a very expensive and all but useless inventor of quotes from anonymous 'senior Labor officials', but will still be writing columns for The Australian? Presumably the rate of publication of his columns in The Australian will fall off as he eased out of the way in time for serious election coverage.
Warned late last year after being summoned to a gathering of the Sunday newspapers’ editors that he had to pick up his game, the axe finally fell this week.
Exhibits from Glenn Milne's Hall Of 'Journalistic' Shame & Hilarity. 1) :Milne is believed to have been on a package well in excess of $250,000, a number considerably in excess of most of his bosses. They compared their own productivity to his poor performance as a Gallery lounge lizard and found him wanting.
Frequent complaints about Milne included his lack of current political connections, his failure to generate exclusive stories of the kind he frequently promised and his tendency to share with editors “his stories” that were not much more than prevailing gossip around the water-cooler in the Gallery.
....more Australians have died as a result of the Rudd government's home insulation program, "administered" by Environment Minister Peter Garrett, than lost their lives in the Iraq war.2) Glenn Milne announces Tony Abbott's friends should tell him to quit politics and go home to his wife :
...watching Abbott's disintegration you have to ask whether the strength of those convictions was ever viable in an environment where the electorate increasingly likes its politics "lite" in all respects, including when it comes to values.3) My favourite :
In some senses, Abbott is simply too honest and too raw for modern politics...
Peter Costello will take over a decimated Coalition unopposed as Opposition Leader, knowing he would have been able to mount a stronger fight against Kevin Rudd and Labor.Glenn Milne used to get paid $250,000 a year to come up with stuff like that?There is unlikely to be any credible challenge to Mr Costello when he formally stands as leader at the first Liberal Party caucus meeting.
Previous contenders - Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull - have all faded under the weight of their own mistakes.
....it was seen as too risque for Australian audiences although it proved popular in European cinemas.It was produced in 1896 by French filmmaker Marius Sestier, who was dispatched to Australia by a French film company in a bid to introduce cinema to the colony.
The newly-restored film contains the 19th century equivalent of a well-known gesture of contempt, as the rollerskater lifts up his coat to show the camera the imprint of a white palm on his posterior.
Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming told a parliamentary seminar discussing the "Twitter election" that politicians could use the social networking site Facebook as a powerful tool to phish phone numbers.Yes, a federal member of parliament does appear to be lavishing praise on a form of digital identity fraud, at least according to this headline :
Yeah, that'd work great. If people didn't furiously mind getting spam messages from politicians on their phones and want to punch the sender in the face, or the nuts."There is extraordinary capacity there to create non-political pages and harvest and phish huge numbers of not only emails but mobile phone numbers," he said.
"And once you have a mobile phone number . . . they don't have to follow me, I phish them and can sort of harvest huge numbers of mobile phone numbers and then I just drop them onto a single piece of software and I can SMS hundreds if not thousands of people directly when I choose."
Kevin Rudd has taken on his arch-rival Tony Abbott on a heavenly question - whose saintly namesake is the best?At a dinner in Brisbane to mark St Patrick's Day, attended by both leaders, the Prime Minister jokingly contrasted his namesake - St Kevin of Glendalough - with Italy's St Anthony.
Mr Abbott (said) "...the PM is trying to be more Queensland and more catholic then he really is."
Sticking to the Irish-Catholic theme, Mr Abbott joked that Archbishop John Bathersby said that Mary Mackillop's second miracle was to bring him as leader of the opposition.
Can you both step into the 21st century, please?
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Last night, Abbott also attempted to unleash on prime minister Kevin Rudd.Abbott will stick to "all hat and no cowboy". He won't allow himself to be seen comparing Rudd to Bush. Ever."It is pretty clear he is a guy who is all announcement and no follow through. He is, to coin a phrase, 'All Hat And No Cowboy'."Abbott didn't coin the phrase. It's been in common usage in Texas for decades :"It is not a compliment in West Texas to be referred to as 'All hat and no cowboy'. It is a term of derision used to indicate the person has little real character beneath the very thin veneer of appearance."It's a good line, but it doesn't sound very Australian.
There is argument that the correct West Texas historical phrase is actually "All Hat, No Cattle", which certainly sounds more local.
Or perhaps Abbott knows this phrase, too, and decided not to use it to attack Rudd, because it has been popularly attached to George W. Bush since the late 1990s.
"Compulsory voting stinks. What a marvellous way to bugger up democracy."