The endangered Montana Merkle bears an uncanny similarity to the Australian kookaburra, even down to the "naturally occurring swastika in its tail plumage" :


Bird Hunted To Near Extinction Due To Infuriating 'Fuck You' Call

The first teaser trailer from the new Australian movie Fuck The War showing Dave Gleeson, singer with legendary Australian rockers The Screaming Jets, in action.



FTW : The Movie is coming to DVD and torrents in November, 2010.

Now, kneel before Zod.



Photo by Gary Ramage, The Australian

Still one of the greatest scenes in cinema.

UPDATE : Zod, or BobCat as he's more commonly known on Twitter, has made the front page of the New York Times.




A rare treat for any Australian politician. It was definitely the hat that won over the photo editor.

Researching the Australian conservative media campaign to rally support for the Iraq War back in 2002 - for onscreen quotes and the Notes section of the coming FTW : The Movie DVD and download - it's mind-boggling how many pro-war campaigners actively played down the chances of Iraq erupting into any kind of post-invasion chaos. Even more noticeably, back in 2002, pro-war media campaigners repeatedly, vehemently, ridiculed claims that more than 100,000 troops would be needed to fight the war, or that it would cost more than a few dozen billion dollars in total.

In playing down the real risks of starting a war in Iraq, some pro-war campaigners in the media said 50,000 troops would be enough, some said 20,000, but there was only one who said the War On Iraq would require less than 100 American troops.

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair :

John Hawkins: If and when do you see the United States hitting Iraq? How do you think it'll work out?

Tim Blair: It all depends on Iraq’s fearsome Elite Republican Guard. Why, those feisty desert warriors could hold out for minutes. Dozens of US troops will be required. Perhaps they’ll even need their weapons...Wouldn’t expect it to last long once it happens.

When asked to predict a casualty count for the invasion, Blair predicted :

"Below 50."

The Republican Guard began killing American soldiers with car bombs and IEDs the day Coalition of the Willing troops entered Baghdad. Civilians, trained by Saddam Hussein through TV broadcasts in the construction of improvised weapons and explosives, joined in the fighting.

Within twelve days of President Bush announcing the start of the illegal bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq, more than 60 American soldiers had been killed and more than 200 wounded.

Tim Blair joins the FTW Dishonour Roll.

You ask one gay guy on Twitter why he isn't off raping rodents and look what happens :




Via Mumbrella

Even the most psychotically pro-war conservatives now admit that civilian massacres by NATO, and NATO-allied troops, in Afghanistan are anything but legal.

I'm guessing most of you have already seen this newsimation of the lead-up to Federal Election 2010, but it's still the best vid I've seen online summarising the lead-up to this historic outcome. Here's hoping they do another showing Liberal and Labor party officials trying to negotiate with the independents who have already revived Australian democracy by forcing the major parties to realise the end of the two party system is officially nigh.



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Here is the Federal Election 2010 campaign as I saw it on Twitter over the past five weeks :

Outrageous. ABC1 cut short Superfreak by Rick James on Rage for some election announcement thingy.

How different would the asylum seeker debate be if boats filled with economic refugees from the UK & US turned up?

If you want Australians to support boat people, you have to turn it into a sport. Give the boats numbers and get them to race here

Pauline Hanson's mid-90s beliefs and policies on immigrants have now been raided by both Liberal & Labor prime ministers.

Australia has 7.5 million square kilometres & 22 million people. 3 people per square k. We're not overcrowded, we're fucking barren

Abbott costing plan to blast asylum seekers into space for "off world processing."

I sure hope in the future we never have to flee Australia in boats for any reason. How welcome would we be as refugees in Indonesia?

For non-Aust. readers, here's our new PM @JuliaGillard preparing to snog an elderly member of the electorate.http://tinyurl.com/25xtysy

@JuliaGillard Moving Forward Together? Together : Moving Forward? Or how about Forward We Move Together With Working Families?

Joe Hockey : " I don't know what Labor stands for." Same thing the Liberals stand for - keeping The Greens from shattering 2 party system.

"Moving Forward" from what? Moving Forward from the coup

I want to vote for a party moving diagonally.

Is @JuliaGillard really lifting political slogans from The Simpsons? http://tinyurl.com/2fzglrv

What election? 4 out of 6 Most Popular stories of the week on ABC News online are psychic octopus related http://tinyurl.com/23zhkcq

is anyone going to have one single fucking inspiring thing to say in this whole fucking election?

Bob Brown calls for end to Labor Vs Liberal vicious, bitter. election advertising, promoting "nasty negativism". Hear Hear.

Apparently, some evangelists think atheists, like @JuliaGillard, are satanists in disguise. Perfect cover.

@JuliaGillard announcing Australian austerity measures : "clean and green, but very very lean."

@JuliaGillard announces "this requires ongoing discipline." Mmm, discipline.

It doesn't seem to matter whether you vote Liberal or Labor, either way the mining industry's candidate becomes PM

A shame the Liberals couldn't use The Angels 'Stand Up' as their theme tune as well as their mantra http://tinyurl.com/25bydt5

From The Angels' Stand Up: "promises are easy, you swallow every word, be sure of who u serve."

Can't we just replace nearly all politicians by some mix of Google Wave & social networking? At least until the robots are ready to govern?

Two polls, one front page, utter cognitive dissonance http://tinyurl.com/353sbnp #ausvotes

Yes, it's true @JuliaGillard & @TonyAbbottMHR, we are more interested in Tambo's adventures than your campaigns http://tinyurl.com/3xz8cw9

If Citizens' Assemblies decided policy, we wouldn't have gone to war on Iraq, cannabis would be legal & everybody would have free iPads.

So now the minimum price for a 20 year old 2nd hand car is $2000? That'll keep P-platers off the roads. The poor ones anyway

On the plus side, the FedElection2010 campaign does seem to be slowing down time.

Anti-Gillard leaks from inside federal Labor should be referred to as REDs, (Ruddevised Explosive Devices)

Surreal. Reporters pepper @JuliaGillard with questions about what it's like to be peppered with questions about #Ruddileaks

Did @JuliaGillard make the decision to dump campaign plans and "Go For It" after hundreds of Twitter messages telling her to cut the shit?

@JuliaGillard promises to make sure "the real Julia is on display." Will this Real Julia also refer to herself in the third person?

Majority of Australians opposed to Afghanistan War. @SenatorBobBrown says we need a debate on it. No media reported this today.

A Philip K Dick election. What manufactured reality are we in now? Another fake? Is this the real Julia? Are u real? Am I?

Seriously, if Labor don't know how pissed off people still are about the coup, they don't deserve to win

Craig Emerson is dying on Q & A like a kitten juggler at a PETA Christmas party.

Christian lobby groups panicking that environment-minded Christians are drifting off to hang out with atheist Greens. Interesting.

A shocking international headline for this federal election. From the UK Independent : "Children found starving in rural Australia" http://ind.pn/cpVvkX

The Liberals think a few thousand asylum seekers is a more important issue than national broadband. Priority/reality check needed.

Co-conspirator of illegal war that killed more than 200,000 wanders freely thru Australian communities during campaign http://tinyurl.com/28mgvpz

So far in @JuliaGillard's launch speech, the Mr Rabbits have outnumbered the Mr Abbotts 2 to 1

Even Westies who moved away decades ago are secretly pleased so much of election appears to be hanging on Westie opinion

New Liberals slogan : 'Let's Wait And See What Happens Tomorrow, Okay?'

The fact that carers get so little for looking after the elderly & new mothers will get so much tells you a lot about our priorities

Welfare for the poor? Bad. Welfare for the rich? Good. Think Liberal.

"Mr Rabbit, we got another boat here, whaddauwannado?" "How many Muslims on board?" "About 40." "Turn em round."

@SenatorBobBrown's checklist of issues undebated, so far, revealed how thin & duplicate campaigns of Gillard & Abbott have been.

Gillard can live with 'Ranga', but can Tony Abbott handle 'The Rabbit'?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Governor General John Howard. US Ambassador Alexander Downer. The Horror.

Darryl Mason On Twitter

Federal Election 2010 : Who's Doing What Now?

By Darryl Mason

Oh, looks like I missed most of it.

Anyway, I have no idea why the mainstream media is dying, or why the Federal Election 2010 appears to revolve almost solely around trivialities. It's a complete mystery. Really, it is.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :



Get used to saying it, Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

And get used to saying this, too : Governor General John Howard.

Or will it be US ambassador John Howard?

That Greens-Liberal coalition I predicted for 2016 is about to move forward a few years, if Tony Abbott doesn't win, that is, and Malcolm Turnbull snatches back the Liberal Party leadership (bringing back to the party with him all the vital, big cheque writing donors who bailed), probably before Christmas.

Today should be a very interesting day for The Greens.

Both the Labor and Liberal parties have only 24 hours to come up with something horrifying enough about The Greens to push down their share of the vote on Saturday, and deny them the balance of power. I'm sure the Murdoch media will help the Labor and Liberal parties to come up with something to really fuck them over.

Unless Greens leader Bob Brown does the damage himself, by making the mistake of injecting gay heroin into a Christian child during a press conference, which, if Piers Akerman's judgement on The Greens can be trusted, just might still be a possibility.

An afternoon sky over Sydney, August 2010.

2pm.



2.30pm



3pm



5pm



5.30pm

via @AndrewBolt :




.

Murdoch Backs Gillard

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph ramps up the mockery of opposition leader Tony Abbott as the last week of the 2010 Federal Election campaign begins.





Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloids, reaching more than one million Australians, carried front pages and lead editorials endorsing coup prime minister Julia Gillard to be officially elected PM this Saturday.

From The Australian's Media Diary :

Australia’s top-selling newspapers yesterday went for Julia Gillard, with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph (circulation: 630,000) saying every government since 1931 has been given a second chance, so why shouldn’t the ALP get one, too? Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun (circulation: 597,000) said “the best interests of Australians are served by the re-election of Labor”.

Tony Abbott doesn't back a carbon tax, Julia Gillard, like Rupert Murdoch, does.

It's going to be an ugly week for Abbott in most of the Murdoch tabloids.

Unless, of course, Tony Abbott agrees, by Thursday, that a carbon tax "of some kind" may be necessary, after all.

UPDATE, August 18 : Both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have denied they plan to introduce a carbon tax in their first term. I'll wait and see on this one, but it's rare that big business doesn't get what it wants. The pressure on Gillard and Abbott to make a carbon tax part of their first term government agenda is not simply localised corporate pressure from those who stand to gain the most from a CT, it is also coming from international banking and investment institutions.

I'll be both pleased and, frankly, amazed if Australia doesn't have a carbon tax by 2013, regardless of who wins on Saturday.

"Mr Latham Helping Himself To A Cup Of Coffee"

Nine surreal minutes of 24 hour live TV news, as a reporter reports on a reporter reporting. Some minor action at 7:02 when Mark Latham confronts Tony Abbott about his role in the jailing of former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson :



And speaking of surreal, there is this frantically OTT election promo from Channel 9 :



I swear the people who put these together have trawled through old pisstakes of exactly this kind of promo on Frontline and CNNN and thought, 'Fuck irony, this stuff is Gold.'

A first look at The Screaming Jets' Dave Gleeson in FTW :



Finishing the FTW (Fuck The War) movie is why it's been tomblike around here lately. The above clip is from one of the quieter moments in the movie, set during the 2003 protests against the War On Iraq, when the anti-war activist played by Gleeson goes to the pub for a beer while he waits for his kidnap victim, tied to a chair in his cellar, to recover consciousness.

Right now I'm working out how best to make use of interviews with protesters shot during a string of early 2003 marches. It's amazing how many people, including school students, at those protests made more accurate predictions about the chaos, terrorism and mass death that would unfold in Iraq than than our leaders, or our leading commentators.

FTW will be released on DVD and digital download in late October.

It's the best ad of the Federal Election 2010 campaign, it's a shame the Greens can't use it :



The ad was, however, seen by more than 1.6 million viewers on Gruen Nation last night, will be seen by a hundred thousand more in repeats and will probably clock up another 20-50,000 views on YouTube between now and election day.

Considering The Greens didn't pay for the production of the ad, or come up with the slogan, or pay the equivalent of getting such an ad screened on commercial networks to more than a million and a half Australians in prime time, the ABC did The Greens one hell of a huge favour.

Compared to 'Stand Up For Real Action' and 'Moving Australia Forward', the gifted to The Greens slogan 'If You Think, Vote Greens' is election pitch poetry.

Another teaser for 'FTW', coming to DVD and download late October.

Wait, Are You Saying Jesus Didn't Ride Dinosaurs?

Pro-reality ABC News would have you believe this never actually happened :



The 'story' :

Did humans live at the same time as dinosaurs?

The answer is of course no....

Yet another eye-widening example of the ABC's relentless pro-science bias.

...but about a third of Australians got it wrong in a recent survey.

About 6 million Australians believe early humans hung out with dinosaurs. And the problem is?

The survey results are being used to highlight what is being described as a disturbing ignorance about science.

Dr Cathy Foley, president of the Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, says Australians have a long way to go before having good scientific literacy.

"Unfortunately 30 per cent of Australians think.... dinosaurs and humans were alive at the same time, for example, which is probably something I guess worries us."

If my reading of taxpayer funded religious school literature has taught me anything, it is that it's no up to the people who think Jesus Rode Dinosaurs to prove that he actually did, it's up to scientists to prove overwhelmingly that he did not.

Also, why isn't anyone making Jesus On A Dinosaur toys?


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'FTW' : Coming to DVD and digital download late October.

Former Labor leader Mark Latham on PMLive, Sky News :

"...the things you had to do to go through the motions of the standard political contest....I hate the idea of war. I'm not a fan of the military, and many of the people in it.

"...I had to crap on a bit (praising the troops), get that over. Everyone does it. But if you came out and said 'I don't really think much of the troops', you'd end up with no seats and no votes. So that's the nature of politics.

"Those things don't rest easy with me now. I mean, you've got to be comfortable with yourself, first and foremost.

"...it is very hard for politicians in the environment where....you've got to toe the party line, you got to toe a lot of national emotional line, and if you don't necessarily agree with that, then go get another job, and that's what I did."

Mark Latham writing in the Australian Financial Review, August 20, 2009 (not online) :

Over the years I have received tender messages from (current prime minister Julia) Gillard saying how much she misses me in Canberra. One of them concerned her study tour of the US, sponsored by the American government in 2006 -- or to use her moniker -- "a CIA re-education course". She asked me to "stand by for emails explaining George Bush is a great statesman, torture is justified in many circumstances and those Iraqi insurgents should just get over it".

She promised "to catch up when I'm back from the US and I'll show you my CIA-issued ankle-holster". I never got to see her ankles or her holster, but I will say this: you have to hand it to those guys in Washington, they have a way of making lefties like Gillard change their minds on foreign policy. Within the space of two years, they converted her from a highly cynical critic of all matters American into yet another political sycophant.

The poor woman has been brainwashed.

Price Of Bread To Rise By Two Carbons

Two of the most recent attack ads of the Federal Election 2010 :



Meh. Try Harder.

The Liberal Party decide to go The Big Fear on the carbon tax :



Tony Abbott can rage against the Carbon Tax all he wants, and he will, but he too will introduce a Carbon Tax in his first term as prime minister, just as John Howard found a way to undo his promise to Never Ever install a GST. By 2015, a carbon tax will be the global currency, and if you don't have one, you will be shut out of the global carbon economy.

The greenies might want a carbon tax because they faithfully believe it will save the world, but it is the world's richest banks, and banking families, who are already positioned to skim tens of billions from this new global currency.

That's why a Carbon Tax will become a reality, not because some protesters chain themselves to coal loaders,, but because some of the world's, and Australia's, wealthiest families want it to be so.

Tony Abbott knows that as surely as Julia Gillard does.