Just Plain Strange

There could be a whole lot of valid, and very interesting, reasons why extraterrestrials might cross the universe to visit Planet Earth and steal water from our lakes, gold from our mountans and people from their cars. But why the hell would they want to steal thousands of kilos of olives?

Thieves have stripped a NSW Hunter Valley olive grove of its fruit in an overnight raid, the latest of a series of such bizarre thefts.

Quentin Von Essen, who runs an olive grove in Lovedale, was alarmed to find that all but two of his 400 trees had been stripped of their olives earlier this month.

Mr Von Essen said he was dumbfounded how the theft of about four tonnes of olives could have happened without anyone noticing.

"It would take approximately six people up to three days to pick our olive grove," he told ABC Radio today.

"It appears that ... a whole lot of people have come into the grove overnight and just stripped the trees.

"The eerie part is ... there is not an olive on any of these trees and not an olive on the ground.

Apparently five other olive plantations in the region have also been stripped bare in recent months.

Actually, aliens with an olive fixation is the more boring, but still kind of fun, explanation for all those missing olives.

Speaking on radio, Mr Von Essen sounded absolutely flabbergasted at how the thieves managed to do their work and not leave one single, solitary olive on the trees or on the ground. Not one. Even olive picking machines leave some of the fruit behind.

Weird.

Flannery : Use Chemtrails To Fight Global Warming

Carbon bad, but sulphur is good?

Scientist Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.

But he says it may be necessary, as the "last barrier to climate collapse."

Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.

The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth's stratosphere to keep out the sun's rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

"It would change the colour of the sky," Prof Flannery told AAP.

"It's the last resort that we have, it's the last barrier to a climate collapse.

"We need to be ready to start doing it in perhaps five years time if we fail to achieve what we're trying to achieve."

Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year, said the sulphur could be dispersed above the earth's surface by adding it to jet fuel.

He conceded there were risks to global dimming via sulphur.

"The consequences of doing that are unknown."

Flannery should come clean. Trials of dumping sulphur and other chemicals into the atmosphere from planes to create a 'sun shield', to encourage global dimming, has been going on for years. Distributing a substance like sulphur from planes is the very definition of a 'chem trail', and these test runs have been on show over Sydney in recent months, for anyone who bothers to look up occasionally.

The 'dimming' that Flannery talks of will be similar to the skies we've come to know well over some Australian cities in recent years. The cloud cover spreads early in the morning, and fills the sky, thin cloud but from horizon to horizon, blocking out much of the direct sunlight, and the cloud cover stays around for days. It's not the miserable grey of London skies, it's just...dim.

You will hear much, much more talk of using chemtrails to fight climate change very soon, if Flannery is speaking of such plans on behalf of international interests, and presumably he is.

ABC's Four Corners current affairs program ran a story on the dangers of global dimming in mid-2005. Despite what Flannery claims, scientists have a pretty good idea of what global dimming will do to the planet :

Noticed less sunshine lately? Scientists have discovered that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has been falling over recent decades.

If the climatologists are right, their discovery holds the potential for powerful disruption to life on our planet. Already it may have contributed to many thousands of deaths through drought and famine.

Global dimming is a product of the fossil fuels that cause global warming. It is the result of tiny airborne pieces of soot, ash and sulphur compounds reflecting back the heat of the sun.

Scientists have also linked global dimming to the failure of rains in sub-Saharan Africa – and the catastrophic droughts that hit Ethiopia in the 1980s. They worry that the same thing will happen again in areas like Asia, home to billions of people.

The overriding concern expressed by climate scientists in this program is that our climate will be radically altered, rendering many parts of the planet uninhabitable - unless concerted action is taken to combat both global dimming and global warming.

So more pollution will counter global warming, as long as it's sulphur pollution, but we need to cut carbon pollution and then increase the amount of sulphur in the atmosphere to encourage global dimming, which masks the full effects of global warming, which will destroy much of the world if it's not stopped, but global dimming is also destructive, but not as destructive as global warming, which is being held in check by current global dimming so we need to increase global dimming with sulphur while cutting down on carbon to stop global warming...or something.

I'm sure it makes perfect sense, if you're a professor.

Council Hires 'Witch', Council Goes To Hell

This is what happens when you start dabbling in the black arts of 'administrative review' :

Her special powers have cost (Port Philip Bay ratepayers) upwards of $800,000: $600,000 for overseeing a controversial review of the council administration, and close to another $200,000 on the legal drama that flowed from it. The bill is rising.

Four years after Ms Shahbaz was commissioned to weave a spell of success over it, Port Phillip is on its knees, senior staff say.

Her qualifications and experience include a masters of psychology at La Trobe University, a course with the astrologist Stella Starwoman and excursions to ashrams in India.

"I have a vast, vast array of interests," she says, spelling out her suitability for the job to The Age. "I'm a student of, you know, what life is."

Yeah, most living people are students of, you know, life, and living. But how do you convince a council's chief executive to hand over half a million dollars so you can cause absolute chaos?

That's obviously the real majik.

Gaffe-y

Tim Blair has settled into his new blog at Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, after howling outrage from many of his readers that he had betrayed them by closing his independent blog. Now if they want to comment at Blair's blog they now have to share comments space with people who actually hold opposing views to their own. The horror.

One day into the new gig, Blair was clearly already well over his mostly Bush-worshipping American readership's endless complaints that their bursts of 'brilliant wit' actually had to be moderated now, and why didn't he get more moderators or work faster so they could more quickly show each other how brilliant and witty they were? Blair's frustration was obvious :

Remember, we’re only 24 hours or so into this. Don’t fear the newness. Only a few years ago my site had no comments facility at all; I used to get slammed for that, too. And later for allowing too many comments. Now, for not posting comments quickly enough ...

We’ll sort things out. Might take a little while, but still.

Blair was then told by some of his most frequent commenters that they didn't think he was all that important to his own blog anyway, and it was the brilliant wit of the commenters that pulled the crowds and kept the blog alive. Nice. Here's Wronwright :

...this blog was built on the comments. This community has essentially crafted a unique situation. I don’t know any other like it. You lose that when you go over to a newspaper blog.

...I can tell it won’t be the same as this blog. For one thing, it’s not enough that moderation is being done. I detest 95% of the trolls and I’d just as soon they’d be eradicated. You can’t do that on a newspaper blog.

Diddums.

Tim Blair is also discovering already how embarrassing it can be to be a newspaper blogger, particularly when you're a blogger that likes to rip into the corporate competition. Witness The Daily Telegraph's Blair going after the Sun-Herald over this story, which claims :

The Australian Army tested chemical weapons on a town which now has deaths from cancer 10 times the state average.

Military scientists sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in the jungle that is part of the water catchment area for Innisfail in Queensland’s far north at the start of the Vietnam War.

Blair wonders :

A defoliant now counts as a “chemical weapon”? Fairfax staff are traditionally confused over this.

Blair's workmates seem confused as well, because they ran the exact same story on the same day as the Sun Herald over at the Telegraph :



Blair doesn't acknowledge this double-standard, of course. Not yet, anyway.

This is a typical tactic of both Blair and his Yoda, Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun. They quote global warming hysteria and eco-mania from wire stories run in Fairfax media, and at the ABC, while refusing to acknowledge that their own newspapers are running the exact same stories, often with far more dramatic headlines and imagery. Rupert Murdoch himself announced last year that climate change posed "dire consequences" for the world, and that his worldwide media empire would work hard to convince readers of this truth.

But neither Blair nor Bolt will acknowledge that Rupert Murdoch is a far more influential promoter of climate change than Al Gore, or Tim Flannery (their standard emotional scratching post). Nor will they acknowledge the fact that the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun pump as much, if not more, environment- related Fear & Doom stories into the minds of their readers as Fairfax and the ABC.

But those truths don't tie into the Blair n' Bolt 'Evil Lefties' narrative, of course.

Pharmaceutical 'Cannabis' Trials To Begin In Australia

So it's okay to use cannabis to deal with the pain and nausea of cancer and AIDS, but only now that the drug is being supplied by a pharmaceutical company :

Doctors will prescribe cannabis-based drugs to cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS patients in a planned NSW Government trial.

NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher will write to Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon in the next few weeks for permission to import and trial a drug expected to be Sativex, which delivers cannabis compounds through an oral spray.

"While the Iemma Government is opposed to the legalisation of marijuana, we do support a therapeutic trial of a cannabis-based drug," a spokeswoman for Ms Meagher said.

The Australian Medical Association welcomed the trial.

"We believe medicinal cannabis may be of benefit in HIV-related wasting and cancer-related wasting," said chairman of the association's public health committee Dr John Gullotta, adding that it might also relieve nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

The Cancer Council NSW welcomed the move.

UK company GW Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Sativex, grows cannabis then extracts cannabinoids CBD and THC. "The formulation is believed to enhance the pain relief of THC while modulating the unwanted psychotropic and other THC-related side effects, such as tachycardia [rapid heartbeat]," the company says.

It's hardly different at all from natural cannabis, with the exception that the Sativex formulation has been patented, which is something no pharmaecutical company has been able to deal with the real thing.

The support from the AMA and the Cancer Council is extremely positive for the case for medicinal cannabis, and will go a long way to tamping down the conservative hysteria that erupts every time someone dares to suggest that cannabis might actually be the wonder drug it has been claimed to be for thousands of years.

How Science Explains 'Goin' Troppo'

The heat and humidity of Northern Australia, plus lashings of booze, really does send the locals a bit nuts, particularly when the monsoons are on their way :

...surgeons at the Royal Darwin Hospital who analysed facial fracture rates have concluded that the period of extreme heat, leaden skies but little rain, provokes a surge of violence.

In an analysis presented to a medical conference in Hong Kong this week, the doctors showed that fractures resulting in hospital treatment were 40 per cent higher in the months when daily minimum temperatures at night were highest, humidity peaked and the rainfall and hours of sunshine were lowest.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says that the rate of injuries from assaults in the region is at least five times higher than the national average. Nine in every ten facial fracture admissions are the result of violence. Dr Thomas and his team studied monthly hospital admissions over the 12 years to 2006 and plotted them against historic weather data on temperature, humidity, rainfall and sunshine.

“Hot nights spell trouble when there's all that warmth but no rain to relieve it and bring the tension down,” Dr Thomas said.

Dr Mathew Brambling, a lecturer in psychology at Queensland University of Technology, says it may be no coincidence that the Northern Territory ranks second worldwide in hospital admissions of facial fractures behind Greenland, which is cloaked in extended periods of darkness.

Shorter, darker days could affect the secretion of neurochemicals involved in mood, giving rise to the condition called seasonal affective disorder, also known as SAD, he said. Heatwaves had been found to increase aggression, impulsiveness, risk-taking behaviour, violence and suicide.

Internet Filtering Won't Work Says Action Group

The Electronic Frontiers Australia advocacy group is trying to whip up some outrage amongst Australian internet users over draconian plans by the Rudd government to censor the internet :

...the Government's decision to fund its mandatory "clean feed" internet in the 2008-09 Federal Budget is a waste of taxpayers money.

"At a time when the Government is cutting services to fight inflation, it's bewildering that they would decide to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a filter before feasibility trials are even complete," EFA spokesman Colin Jacobs said.

The Budget allocates $24.3 million to the Government's "cyber-safety" initiative, rising to $51.4 million in the 2009-10 financial year.

What exactly is the Rudd government planning that requires a doubling of the internet censorship budget within two years?

"Australians are very uncomfortable with the idea of having the Government decide what's appropriate for them and their families," Mr Jacobs said.

...in a survey of 18,000 internet users, only 13 per cent agreed with the policy.

Few countries have made internet filtering work...well, China and Iran have made it work. But should we be holding up those regimes as examples of how we want the internet in Australia to be censored?

Of course, there are plenty of entertainment companies with outposts in Australia who are all for mandatory filtering of the internet, in the mistaken belief that online piracy is stealing their profits, instead of too much average music and far too many deflating films.

The Art Of Bon


Photo by Rennie Ellis
Bon Scott isn't just the greatest rock n' roller in Australian history, he's also become something of a cultural phenomenon :

Interest in Scott keeps surging 28 years after his drink-induced death just as the band was hitting its prime. British magazine Classic Rock has named Scott the greatest ever frontman, ahead of Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.

The Melbourne City Council has named a laneway after his band, his birth town of Kirriemuir in Scotland unveiled a Caithness stone slab in his honour and money was raised to erect a bronze statue of him in Fremantle, Western Australia.

His grave in Fremantle cemetery is now the most visited grave site in the country.

Bon Scott has also become the subject of an art and installation exhibition in Fremantle, Scott's home, which aims :

...to explore notions of masculinity, remembrance and rebellion by deconstructing the charismatic rock star.

"I feel that Bon has always relished his outsider status. He's always been a bit of a rascal and hellraiser, like a Ned Kelly figure, so I wanted to look at other ways we could celebrate his life."

Some of the works include personal letters, photographs uncovered from the late Rennie Ellis' collection, Bevan Honey's Apparition installation, which is visible only in certain light, and a blog written by Lucas Ihlein about the cult of Scott.

They will even wheel out fashion critics to analyse "the ugly/sexy factor" — Scott's allure despite his not being conventionally handsome.

"By wearing kilts and dressing up as a schoolgirl, it's clear Bon had an intuitive understanding about how to play dress-ups," Ms Stephens said. "And yet he was admired so much for resisting the pressure to go glam — he was a denim man through and through."

The exhibition runs from May 17 in Fremantle's Arts Centre. It will probably tour from there.

And there's more AC/DC exhibitfication coming :

The Melbourne Arts Centre also plans to present exhibitions on AC/DC and Peter Allen.

Presumably that will not be a joint exhibition.

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

Look at the faces in that audience, a moment more than 30 years in the past now. Did anyone who saw this photo in The Age newspaper recognise themselves? Did they get that distinct, electric jolt that comes when a vivid exciting memory of youth suddenly unfolds in the mind?



The girl in the front row second from the left looks like she just might be in love.

(photo and link found at the BonScottBlog.com)

ED Day Update

I've posted some thoughts on finishing the ED Day : Dead Sydney online novel over at the ED Day blog.

Go Here For That

The short version is that I'm rewriting Dead Sydney to include more of the plot elements that turned up when I was writing the last chapters and to more fully detail post-pandemic Sydney a bit more.

I've also decided to do an online book of short stories of how characters who turn up in Dead Sydney managed to survive the first waves of the bird flu pandemic that kills millions across the city. This book of short stories would then act as a prequel to Dead Sydney.

I've also started work on the first few chapters of the sequel to Dead Sydney, which follows the narrator, Paul, on his journey into the Blue Mountains after escaping the 'invisible' wall that surrounds the city centre, trapping pandemic survivors inside a few city blocks. I think it's going to be great fun writing about city office workers and Blue Mountains locals joining together to fight, and survive.

Like Dead Sydney, the prequel and sequel will be free to read online.

I hope to have copies of the Dead Sydney for sale through this blog in a month or so. I'm toying with the idea of printing Dead Sydney with four or more different covers, for a bit of variety, and because not everyone will want to read a book in public that has a cover showing Sydney landmarks strewn with bodies. Some, however, won't mind.

I'll update here when the first short stories go online. The first chapters of the sequel are a few weeks away.

When Being Mauled By A Shark, Always Go The Eye Gouge



This extraordinary photo by James Bickerdike shows two swimmers splashing the water to try and scare away a 4-metre long white pointer shark near Albany, West Australia. You can see the shark's huge fin cutting through the water just above the water splash.

The shark had just attacked a man, who fought it off by finding its gills and then feeling along until he found an eye socket. He then plunged in a finger. Lucky he did :

When it . . . banged straight into me, I knew it was a shark. I was more concerned about getting out of its mouth because it was dragging me backwards under water.

Sharks are supposedly quite the cowards, and are not used to their prey fighting back. Particularly not prey that goes the eye gouge.

Go Here For The Full Story And More Photos

How To Blow $60 Million

From King Of Online Porn to lord of mum's vacuum cleaner in only a few short years :

Five years ago Greg Lasrado drove a $500,000 black Lamborghini Diablo, rubbed shoulders with high-powered people such as US president Bill Clinton, lived between multimillion-dollar penthouses and bought racehorses for fun. Today his sole asset is a rusty ute, he lives in his parents' spare bedroom and spends most weekends helping his mum with the housework.

During the 1990s, Lasrado went from being a university student drop-out to Australia's No.1 internet porn tycoon, accumulating a $60million fortune along the way. But an extravagant lifestyle and poor business management sent him on a downward spiral to a broken marriage, heroin addiction and, finally, bankruptcy.

Today Lasrado, 38, reveals for the first time his dramatic rise and fall as an international porn baron.

"Up until five years ago, I was living every man's dream," he told The Sun-Herald in a Brisbane restaurant last week. "I'd wake up on a day like today, have lunch, buy a car, then head to the airport and be in another country by the close of play.

"I was convinced it would last forever. Now, I've lost the lot. If you were to turn me upside down, 10 cents would not fall out of my pocket."

If you're going to fall, fall big and fast.

Not Right

Andrew Bolt's green hysteria is becoming deeply disturbing, and deeply offensive to those who view Hitler as something far more evil than merely a symbol to be used in political attacks.

Weird, bizarre political attacks, using modern day Nazi propaganda like this :



Has Bolt never heard of the American government's World War 2 homeland campaign called 'Hemp For Victory'? Americans were told they had to grow hemp to defeat the Nazis.

Bolt also now claims : "I'm not of the right..."

Confused? Obviously you're not quite as confused as Andrew Bolt.

Rudd Vs The Media

Christian Kerr, formerly of Crikey, is doing some fine politics vs media analysis at The Australian, and nails PM Rudd for his purposeful denial of access by journalists and television crews :

Television crews had gathered outside the venue to get footage of the PM entering and so journalists could ask a question or two. John Howard was usually up to it. If he wanted to talk, he'd stop. It gave all the media a line from the PM on the issues of the day and vital background shots for the newsrooms to use.

But Rudd didn't appear. Instead, he came in the back door. What's more, he came through an area where media are not permitted to film or ask questions. That didn't stop some media trying, and failing.

Adam Collins, one of the PM's junior media minders, told them to move on and not to ask questions. Security appeared, followed by a senior member of the PM's media team, Fiona Sugden.

She brokered a compromise. The media could stay and film, but not ask questions. It was just another skirmish in the war between Rudd's press office and the media, a war that has seen one of the Canberra gallery's most senior journalists forced to act as an errand boy.

It's a bad look for democracy.

Howard's Rage

Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has tried being a shiny, happy person, as he toured Australia "listening", but with serial-killer levels of public approval, Nelson's remaking of the Liberal Party leadership clearly hasn't worked.

Former Liberal leader, and ex-prime minister, John Howard, suggests a new strategy :

John Howard last night urged Liberal Party faithful to maintain the rage, saying they should work hard to get out of Opposition and promising a federal Liberal government "will come again".

"Rage against opposition," he said. "Work as hard as you can to get out of opposition as soon as you can.

"Opposition is a dismal position in politics. I had my share of opposition, I had 13 years of it, and I hated every year of it, I hated every week of it."

So much hate, for so many years.

John Howard seems to have delayed his promise to fade away quietly, and not become like other ex-MPs, always giving speeches and making public comments and critiques. Maybe next year.

Bob Ellis Challenges Tim Blair To Public Debate

Tim Blair has been having great fun with Labor barnacle Bob Ellis in the past few weeks, on whether or not he deserves to be voted for in the ABC's 'Favourite Australian' poll, and a recent column published at ABC Online where Ellis gruesomely mused on how the world might be a different, and better, place if Hillary Clinton had spent more time orally pleasuring her husband in the mid-1990s.

Ellis responded to a Blair column bagging him in the Daily Telegraph with a letter, that Blair has now published as an opion piece :

Tim Blair said the Iraq War would bring oil prices down, and he still has his job.

He said there would be no humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and now, with three million Iraqis living elsewhere, and a million of them, probably, dead, he still has his job.

He called George W. Bush a modern-day Winston Churchill, and he still has his job.

I think it's great he still has his job. He shows how wrong the Right are about most things, and how they never learn, and never admit a mistake.

Ellis' easy ire was sparked by this Blair colum and Ellis has now laid down a challenge to Blair that will be humiliating for him to refuse, even though it's clear that Ellis is hoping for a little attention, and money :

If he wants me sacked, impoverished and silenced, he should say why in detail.

Perhaps on a public podium, before a paying audience - one he shares with me.

Any time, anywhere.

Tim Blair's response?

UPDATE : It turns out Bob and Tim have been challenging each other to public debates for almost six years. Blair in 2002 :

...(Ellis) interrupted me with this challenge: we must have a public debate! I'm up for it, Bob. Name your time and place, and my appearance fee.

They're both hoping for attention and money. Six years, and they're still only making goo-goo eyes at each other.

Loser Conservatives Can't Stop Whining

Think tanker Gerard Henderson lashes the "Australian conservative movement", whatever that is, for not being intellectual or influential enough in a humiliatingly whiny rant that is neither intellectual or influential and reads like a letter to the editor of The Australian.

A rejected letter :

...it would be unwise to regard leadership as the only problem facing the Liberals. This issue disguises a deeper cultural problem that turns on the intellectual weakness of the politically conservative tradition in Australia, compared with that which prevails in similar democracies such as Britain and the US.

...towards the end of his administration it was difficult to find even three members of the Canberra Press Gallery who supported Howard on any one of such issues as Iraq, national security, Work Choices or climate change.

Aren't they supposed to be journalists, and therefore neutral? How can you complain about the media being filled with biased Evil Lefties and then bitch about how few in the press gallery "supported" Howard? Henderson shows he isn't concerned about political bias in Australian journalism, just that there's not enough Liberal campaigners disguised as journos (probably the crap wages for most) applauding Brendan Nelson from the press gallery. Fantastic.

During Howard's time there was considerable hype among the left about what were termed the culture wars. If such a cultural battle was ever engaged, Howard did not win it. His appointments to the ABC board did not change the national broadcaster's prevailing leftist culture.

Political cycles invariably turn, and the Liberal Party will almost certainly regain office somewhere, sometime.

That might make for a catchy Brendan Nelson brand slogan, "Somewhere, Sometime".

Meanwhile, the social democrats and the left still dominate the intellectual debate in Australia. This reality contributes to Nelson's evident difficulties and discontents, and especially to the fact that the Howard/Costello legacy is now being trashed.

What absolute twaddle. Nelson goes on a listening tour, it gets plenty of media coverage, he has nothing much to say, he listens a lot and then has few insightful comments on what he heard, and nobody generally gives a shit. Sure, blame the Evil Lefties for that, too. It would be terrible if Liberals actually had to take responsibility for their failing, falling ability to impact on the national conversation.

It's very simple, if your ideas are getting an airing and they're not finding much of an audience, there's a good chance the ideas are not interesting or popular, or worse, they're just plain disturbing and acutely divisive. Like much of Andrew Bolt's production line word vomit.

Part of the problem of shouting 'Evil Lefty!' every time someone disagrees about the reality of the Iraq War or why hanging onto oil and coal as our main energy sources isn't going to be a good idea for the rest of this century, is that conservatives who believe these things are isolated because they don't see themselves as members of 'The Left', that outdated relic of obsession for a bunch of columnists who went to uni together in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Hendersons and the Bolts of the "conservative movement" need to spend less time whining about why they're not supposedly being heard, and more time trying to draw in those who truly believe conservative values are important, and can change the country for the better, without all the hysteria and bitterness.

Why would you want to be associated with the bitter, sulky likes of Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson, even if you did think they're mostly right, and not just Right?

If this great unrepresented mass of secret Liberal supporters is really out there, the Hendersons and Bolts have to make the beliefs and values they push far more attractive, and create enthusiasm for these ideas, and ideals, instead of pissing on about Evil Lefties hogging ABC air time and trying to turn every university student into the next Bob Brown or Al Gore.

It's fiction, and it's boring.

The people want to hear ideas they like, and believe in, they want to get excited by the new and challenging, but right now they're not hearing any of this from anyone much in the Liberal Party, or the mysterious "Australian conservative movement."

All they're still hearing from the Hendersons and Bolts is how awesome John Howard was, and how there's not enough appreciation for whatever it was he did during all those years in power.

Yeah, that gets people excited.

Drug Expert : Sell Cannabis At Australia Post Offices

Predicts Spliffs Will Replace Cigarettes

Hundreds of thousands of Australians will light up joints, or punch cones, this or next weekend. All of them will be breaking the law. A country originally settled for the purposes of growing industrial cannabis (hemp) two centuries ago, continues to criminalise adults who think that cannabis is a better way to unwind on Friday night than binge-drinking, and that it provides better mild pain relief than gut-burning pharmaceuticals.

But Alex Wodak, the director of alcohol and drug services at St Vincent's Hospital posits that 'cannabis use will replace cigarette consumption' in the next ten years, and it's time now for the government to get in first and make sure that criminal profiteering and police, corporate and political corruption doesn't run rampant in this new marketplace :

Cannabis would be sold legally in post offices in packets that warn against its effects under a proposal outlined by the head of a Sydney drug and alcohol clinic.

...Wodak said Australia needed to learn from the tobacco industry and the US Prohibition era in coming to terms with his belief that cannabis use would replace cigarette consumption over the next decade.

"The general principal is that it's not sustainable that we continue to give criminals and corrupt police a monopoly to sell a drug that is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco," he said.

"I don't want to see that [industry] fall into the hands of tobacco companies or rapacious businessmen."

Dr Wodak believed his idea could reduce cannabis consumption, based on comparisons between consumption in Amsterdam and San Francisco. He said regulated availability would also reduce people's exposure to other illicit drugs when buying the product. His model would make cannabis advertising illegal, ban political donations from the cannabis industry, and demand proof of age on purchase.

He chose Australia Post for distribution as it could be regulated and had branches across the country. "What I'm talking about is not pro-cannabis … it's about reducing cannabis harm."

A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, said the proposal would not be considered.

Instead the federal government will back criminal records and jail sentences for Australians repeatedly caught smoking, eating or growing a weed.

Priorities

From Sydney's The Daily Telegraph :



Only 4000 dead in Burma?

Clearly, a naked newsreader must take priority then in the really big World news stories.

UPDATE : The death toll across Burma is estimated to be hitting 10,000. More than 100,000 are homeless.

A city of 6.5 million people finds itself without energy, without water, with a military unwilling to help them clear the streets of trees and debris.

Coming To Your Living Room, Police-Enforced Alcohol-Free Zones

Many Australians agreed with alcohol bans in violence and sex-crime plagued Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Sure, the meme went, such catch-all bans mean responsible drinkers in those communities have to go without, but if it saves a community from more alcohol related violence and sex crimes then, well, obviously it's necessary, isn't it?

But what happens when alcohol bans are proposed for communities that not Aboriginal?

That is, what if police decide that a certain part of a suburb, or street or apartment block should be made a no-go zone for booze, due to violence and disorder, but the no-go zone is filled with white, middle-class Australians instead of Aboriginals?

What then?

Drinking a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.

Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as "restricted alcohol areas" for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of "chronic alcohol abuse" can be slapped with a range of restrictions.

"Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities," the paper reads.

Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises - licensed or not.

...it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone.

Eviction? Enforced alcohol counselling?

Perhaps instead these no-alcohol zone insurgents will be screened for booze before they can enter their neighourhood or apartment building, or forced to endure in-home surveillance cameras.

It is undeniable that the media hysteria surrounding binge drinking and teenage alcohol abuse in recent weeks, with plenty of story meat processed by police media units, has been part of the softening up process for the implementation of alcohol-free zones that include the interiors of peoples' homes.

You can take away an Australian's right to smoke in public, to not care about seat belts, to burn off the rubbish in the back yard instead of sifting it for recyclables, to ride a train without a ticket once or twice in a year of paid for travel and to shout abuse at referees and opposition sporting teams, but if you try and take away the right to get hammered at home and pass out face down in a pizza box while missing the last five minutes of the Friday night game on the wall screen, then you're rolling down a road filled with neon billboards bearing the warning "Trouble Brewing."

Australians Fear Terrorism Less Now They're Not Being Bombarded With Ads Telling Them To Fear Terrorism

The former Howard government's generous publicity campaign for Al Qaeda and terrorism fell off our TV screens and out of the newspaper ads some weeks before John Howard became the former prime minister of Australia.

The Howard government spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to position terrorism as the National Fear. It kind of worked for a while, particularly with the in-the-neighbourhood attacks in Bali helping to make the threat seem more real to the people of Broome and Wollongong, but Terror Fear never really took hold, not like it has in countries where state and non-state terrorism is a local, brutal reality.

The survey quoted below claims that Australians are now more worried about meeting their financial obligations - mortgage, credit cards, fuel, food - than they are about the esoteric threat posed by terrorists deciding to attack a concrete bridge they may occasionally drive over :

Australians are more worried about their hip-pocket than being involved in a terrorist attack, according to a new survey.

One in three people are very concerned about meeting essential payments such as mortgages, while fears about national, personal and internet security have all fallen since December.

December, 2007, was about two months after the ads telling you that you must be awesomely suspicious of bags of garden fertiliser, rolls of wire left in carparks, bearded men with cameras and an intense interest in architecture and not really curious holes in fences stopped airing across the country.

The findings graphically illustrate the impact on average families of rapidly rising grocery and petrol prices, and high housing costs.

Fears about meeting financial obligations rose by three percentage points to 33 per cent of people being very or extremely concerned.

"There's no doubt more people are fearful of protecting the family's hip pocket than of being bombed by the Taliban..."

Those promoting Al Qaeda through exaggerating its potential threat must now find a way to blame Islamic bomb fetishists for $1.50 litre petrol, soul crushing drops in the value of millions of Australian homes, interest rate rises that shred hope and break up families, and food prices that leave much more space in the fridge and not so full plates.

All of those financial head and heart kicks are terrorism, too. If what worries you makes you fight with those you love, makes you sleep less, and less deeply, and makes you feel paranoid and fearful, uncomfortable and hopeless, then you are being terrorised. But this is legal, financial terrorism.

You won't, however, see ads telling you that three credit cards with limits all far beyond what average wage earners are every likely to be able to pay off - while bleeding cash on the mortgage, fuel and food bills - will do more damage to the lives, health and minds of Australians than tribal warriors in lands where electricity and water does not flow will ever inflict.

Bin Laden could only have dreamed of unleashing the kind of terror that savage debt now carves across the country.