Sandstone at Bundeena Bay, New South Wales















Photos By Darryl Mason

Murdoch : Fuck Google, Fuck Yahoo

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch has decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy :

"People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change."

The ignorant old bastard really has no idea what's going on. At all.

Murdoch's on the verge of losing at least a hundred million or two on MySpace, after already kissing goodbye to a very personal couple of billion in the last year while revenue from the Wall Street Journal begins a downward spiral, and he thinks (or is praying) he can make people pay money to read online totally fabricated stories about Pauline Hanson's tits?

That's his Plan?

Ts is why he is now pissing his Depends in fear :

As online ad revenue growth stumbles and in some cases falls, publishers are being forced to rethink whether charging for access is possible, or whether readers would simply stop going to their websites.

....as they cut costs, publishers are looking for ways to get more people to read -- and pay for -- journalism.

Time is running out.

And it's particularly interesting that Rupert Murdoch sees news aggregators as "stealing" his "copyright" because they link to his media's stories and videos.

Let's see what else this alleged visionary, who happily gave up his Australian citizenship to brainwash Americans into supporting wars that would ultimately end up utterly devastating their communities, has to say about the Future Of Online Media :

Mr Murdoch also questioned whether the newspaper industry should continue to allow online news aggregators such as Google to aggregate newspaper content without being compensated for it.

"Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights? If you have a brand like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, you don't have to," said Mr Murdoch. "You can say, thanks but no thanks."

There's a visionary plan to ratchet up the faith of stockholders. Tell Google and Yahoo to cough up some cream or go fuck themselves.

It's particularly fascinating to see that Rupert Murdoch thinks Google is "stealing" his "copyright" because they are linking to his media's stories and videos, most of which are based around things that happened to other people, people who mostly don't want to be in the news to begin with. Rupert Murdoch actually believes he really does own The News, that is The News that happens in the private lives of private people.

Stealing copyrights?

More and more of his own media's millions of worldwide newspaper column inches and thousands of hours of TV 'news' is filling up with stories and photos his journalists are "stealing" from bloggers or social networking sites and user-created aggegator sites like Digg, usually without any credit whatsoever, let alone payment. The same goes for the constant begging and badgering from his Australian online newspapers for readers to "send us your stories" and "send us your photos" on the condition that the Murdoch newspaper keeps the copyright of anything reader-submitted and can sell them into syndication with no compensation at all to the reader who submitted. In journalism, begging readers for stories is the stuff of early, humiliating defeat. We can't afford to send out so many reporters anymore, so why don't you send us stories we can run for free instead? Have you spied your neighbour fucking a goat dressed in a tutu in his backyard? Take a photo and send us a story....

When this is all over, and when the current generation growing up online hits adulthood, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Fox News and almost all the other icons of modern media will be seen as so very, very 20th century, and all but worthless as mega-brands. They will be worth much, much less than what they're worth even today. The future is not massive domination of news markets by one or two mega-corporations, thank fuck, but locally based, inexpensively run, news websites and community newspapers. As it should be, as it already is across Asia.

You'd expect an allegedly visionary media mogul to know that.

Or maybe he's still betting on China letting him turn the misfortunes and humiliations of its people into another few billion for the pile.

It's not the kind of bet I'd be taking with other peoples' money.

(Source)

Murdoch's Lite Porn Meat Market

Murdoch Proudly Admits Using His Worldwide Media Empire To Shape Opinion On The Iraq War

Murdoch Execs Proudly Admit They Info-Dosed The Simpsons With Climate Change Fear Mongery

How Murdoch Influences Politicians : Do What I Tell You, Or My Newspapers Will Bury You

Murdoch Explains How He Tells His Newspapers What To Print And The Politicians They Should Get Behind

.

Stickers spotted on the back of a huge, rumbling old ute in Clarence Street, Sydney :

Boy + Ute = Man

I Snatch Kisses & Vica-Versa

My Sexual Preference Is Often

Outback = Outlaw

Bundy Made Me Do It

Vote Shooters Party

(thanks Kerry)

Photos by Darryl Mason

Wolverine : When Piracy Is The Best Publicity

The same media company that is supposedly shocked by the "illegal leaking" of its new Hugh Jackman movie Wolverine is also the same media that is going all out to publicise the fact that movie has been leaked, and that the FBI are allegedly investigating the leak, while also telling readers where to go to get their own "illegal" copy of the movie nearly a month before its cinematic release.



Coincidence?

You Sick Bastards, Stop Being Fascinated By The Stuff We Fill Our Newspapers With

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph is into its third day of mad rantings about the "sick" people who gather at scenes of car accidents, emergencies and other assorted human tragedies. As people do, as they have always done.

Some recent headlines :

Sick Sydney Thrilled By Violent Crash Deaths

Sick Sydney Gore Porn

Inhale the stench of hypocrisy :

The tragic late-night deaths of a young mother and a truck driver in Sydney had one thing in common - both victims spent their final moments as macabre suburban entertainment.

And yet The Daily Telegraph publishes photographs of the crash scene, ensuring the horror moves from "suburban entertainment" into mainstream entertainment.

They died as mothers in pyjamas and dressing gowns watched on with dozy toddlers.

They jostled to find a clearer view. They laughed, maybe at a private joke, and took photographs.

The bodies were still in view. Gore porn.

And here's a photograph of one of the crash scenes discussed, run in the Daily Telegraph, on the same story where it berates its readers for taking photographs at car accident scenes :



The stunning moralising continues :

Crash victims too often die, not only in excruciating pain but as a public spectacle.

The final screams of a dying man, the last breath of a dying woman, in front of a thrilled audience murmuring at the horror of it all, yet sipping from a mug of hot coffee as they move closer to the action.

Most of the rubberneckers who stopped to see the carnage just watch.

...one could give the crash victims the dignity of dying without spectators, their children in tow, treating crime scenes as movie theatres with snacks and drinks.

And the first thing the family of fatal crash victim usually sees is journalists showing up on their doorstep asking for photographs of the deceased, and interviews with the family members.

So where did all these people get the idea it was acceptable to take photographs at the scenes of car accidents?

Maybe they've just seen the media in action, close up, or perhaps they read The Daily Telegraph which actively encourages the "gawking public" to take photos of news events and send them in for publication :



However, they won't pay you for your photos, and they may not even give you a credit for your free news gathering :

1. You acknowledge that News may use all intellectual property rights in your content throughout the world, in perpetuity, without restriction and without making payment to you, including publication of that material in hard copy publications or in electronic media, using your content in advertising and promotional material for News and permitting others to do any of these, including when News and others receive payment for this.
   
2. You waive all moral rights in your content and consent to anything which News (or any person permitted to do so by News) may do in relation to your content which would otherwise be in breach of your moral rights. This includes that News may use your content without attributing you as the source of your content.

If you don't want people to take photos of crash scenes, don't ask them to take photos of local news events and send them into your newspaper.

As for the behaviour of locals at a car crash scene, anyone who has been unfortunate enough to live near an accident blackout knows that car accidents have always drawn people from their homes, even late at night. It's usually that startling sound of screaming tyres and the horrific crunch of metal that does it. Neighbours gather, those who can help usually will, and some kids act like idiots, but it's insane to berate the public for being morbidly fascinated by car accidents when you're a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly this kind of news fodder. And photographs.

In the days before Photoshop, April Fool's Day pranksters had to go to great trouble to nab a spectacular image like this, back in 1998 :



The explanation :

The photographer admitted that the image was actually created using a plywood model built by aeronautical engineering students.

Breaking News : Clone Tries To Kill Creator

"It Wasn't Attempted Murder, It Was Attempted Suicide"

By Darryl Mason

Only hours after The Orstrahyun broke the story of how the infamous Dr Philip Stanton cloned himself, then changed the sex of the clone and married her comes the dramatic news that the clone, Jessica Stanton, has been arrested for allegedly attempting to kill the controversy plagued doctor.

Jessica Stanton has now been charged by police with attempted murder.

"We're still trying to establish her identity," said a police spokesperson. "The only identification she has is in the name of Dr Stanton. Officially, she doesn't exist."

Dr Stanton has requested the charges be dropped and has employed a top QC to see Jessica released on bail, into his care, in the meantime. He has refused to reveal details of the alleged attack, and police won't comment further until a press conference scheduled for Friday morning.

In a short statement issued to The Orstrahyun, Dr Philip Stanton said :

"Her motivation for attacking me? I think it was a purposeful exercise by a very bright young woman who now demands to be legally recognised as a person. If police are serious about pursuing the charges against Jessica, for whatever reasons they have to so frivously waste public resources in this way, then they will have to establish an identity for her. They may find this more difficult than they can currently imagine."

In a further e-mail exchange, Dr Stanton refuted allegations that he conspired with Jessica in staging the attacks and arrest to garner publicity for his forthcoming book on his cloning experiment, and his love affair with his clone. The book is currently listed for advance sale on Amazon under the title :

Cloning To Your Way To A Better, Younger, More Beautiful You

The Man Who Cloned And Married Himself

By Darryl Mason

The Orstrahyun can reveal today that Dr Philip Stanton (who rose to fame at 19 for inventing an artificial womb) is the first human to successfuly clone himself, change the sex of the clone, then have a sexual relationship with 'herself'.

Dr Stanton was an acclaimed biological theorist by sixteen, and was set to revolutionise the way children spent the first six to nine months after creation through the use of his "better than human" artificial womb. But the controversial experiments, conducted on an isolated property outside Adelaide, in 1995, failed horrifically, with the death of at least eight foetuses.

At least, that was what we were led to believe happened back then. It now is certain that Dr Stanton used the artificial womb to grow the clone of himself that he named Jessica Stanton.

Investigations reveal that Dr Stanton 'birthed' his clone at his remote property and then fled Australia for twelve years exile in Thailand, where he grew his clone, after changing the sex, into the tall, healthy woman who is now experiencing government bureaucracy for the first time as she battles for that most basic piece of identification : a birth certificate.

Dr Stanton and Jessica want a birth certificate so they can get married. Legally.

The Australian Bureau of Births, Deaths and Marriages claim they cannot issue Jessica a birth certificate, because she was not born "in the legal sense of the word."

An employee commented that they have no criteria in place to assess Jessica's claim for a birth certificate.

"This is all new to us. Nobody ever thought this kind of thing would come true, so no preparations have been made. I don't know what happens if multiple clones each want their own birth certificate. We'll have to think about re-doing the forms if this is going to become a regular thing."

Jessica does not have a mother. Dr Stanton had no need for a woman to conceive or give birth to his child. She was created and born in Dr Stanton's home laboratory. In exile, in Thailand, Dr Stanton used human growth hormones and the LifeLonger health and fitness regime to speed up Jessica's physical growth. Although only twelve years have passed since Jessica's 'birth', she looks like a healthy, mature 19 year old woman.

The news of Jessica Stanton's existence is set to challenge not only the limits of the legal system, but the very concept of what it means to be an individual human.

Jessica Stanton shares the same blood type, the same DNA, the same fingerprints, as Dr Philip Stanton. The only difference, Jessica said, is that when she was created, Dr Stanton modified the DNA so she wouldn't develop his mild arthritis or have to endure his lifelong eczema.

As normal a young woman Jessica seems to be in person, she does not actually exist. She has no birth certificate, no passport, no insurance of any kind, no social security number. She holds no identification outside credits cards issued in Philip Stanton's name. Likewise her apartment and car are leased in her 'father's' name.

She said she does not consider Philip Stanton her father, and says she does not understand why so many people are upset that they have a sexual relationship.

"He made me, he is more than just a part of me," Jessica explained to The Orstrahyun. "He is me, as I am also he. We have no secrets. We know everything about each other. How could we not? We're the same person.

"Philip was always surprised when I could remember events from his own childhood that he had forgotten about. Some people I talk to refuse to believe that he could have passed his own memories onto me through his DNA, but it's true. When he can't remember something that happened 30 years ago, he asks me if I've got that memory. I usually do, some are more detailed than others. The memories of events that he said traumatised him, or shocked him, seem to be the most vivid.

"He said he always had a bad memory, but mine is very good. I think he fixed that during the tinkering stages of my pre-birth development."

Jessica went on to explain more about her childhood, and education :

"You have to understand that Philip kept me in a sterile intellectual environment. He screened every film I watched, every book I read, and chose the newspaper stories and TV news reports he thought I should read. He taught me how the media works, and how all supposed truths should and must be questioned. When he thought I was old enough, he told me the truth of how he created me, and how special I am. He also told me that the media would treat me like a freak, or some monster. I'm expecting the worst, but I won't care.

"Once I was old enough to walk, we were always traveling together. If we'd meet somebody and they'd ask if I was his daughter, he would say, 'legally yes'. It was a strange enough answer to stop them asking more questions, and I heard it so often, I learned that while the rest of the world saw me as his daughter, he saw me as a part of himself, separate but yet a different version of himself at the same time. I don't have a problem with any of this, and I'm trying to understand why my existence upsets so many people.

"It's hard to explain how he kept me in the dark about who I was for so long, and how he made our existence seem so ordinary and normal. All I know is that it was normal, I never knew any other way to live, and I refuse to let anybody tell me it was anything else but normal."

Jessica refuses to accept or acknowledge that abuse of some kind has taken place. She claims the sexual relationship between herself and Dr Stanton only began in the past 18 months, and that she initiated it. She pointedly refuses to be classed as a victim, in any circumstance.

"Philip has given me a thorough education. He taught me about art while we walked through the greatest galleries in the world. I've lived in jungles and deserts, dived on the world's most beautiful reefs and watched sunrises on some of this planet's tallest mountains. He taught me to do everything for myself. I am more capable and self-reliant than most women my age, and unlike most people I have no doubts about my identity, who I am, or where I came from."

While Jessica knows who Baudelaire and Renoir are, she has never heard of television shows like 'CSI' or the music of Kings Of Leon. She knows how to calculate velocity, but she didn't know what a woman's menstruation cycle was until I explained it to her. She claims to have never had a period, but said she intended to "look it all up."

Dr Stanton refused to be interviewed for this story, but he finally issued a short statement to The Orstrahyun after repeated inquires :

"If it is the media's intent to persecute me, then show me one single law that I have broken. Jessica is not recognised by society in any legal sense and therefore does not exist. She is a physical extension of myself, but existing in a separate body. Jessica is free to live her own life, I want her to discover the world for a while on her own. I will protect her if she needs protecting, and I will help her if she asks for help. Jessica does, however, remain my responsibility and my property."

Jessica said she is still adjusting to life away from Dr Stanton, who she says insisted "I get my own place".

She is, however, immensely proud to be one of the first in a new generation of human beings.

"Cloning isn't going to go away," Jessica said. "It is now a part of life, and will eventually mean a kind of immortality. Would I clone myself? I don't know. I haven't thought about it."

For now Jessica is happy to finish decorating her new apartment and is looking for a job.

"Unfortunately, being born a clone doesn't mean you get any super powers," Jessica laughed. "I'm just as boring as the next person, probably more so because there are so many things, like television advertisements, that I've never seen before.

"I find the most mundane things fascinating because so much of what everyone else thinks of as everyday, are new experiences for me."

UPDATE - Breaking News : Clone Charged With Attempted Murder Of Creator

The Bloody Camels Will Be Asking For A Glass And Ice Cubes Next

We've had plenty of shark attacks, and crocodile attacks, and we've even had wallaby and kangaroo attacks, but now the camels are invading our towns. They're coming for the water and they know how to get it :

Camels are coming into communities in central Australia and turning on the taps, the Macdonnell Shire Council says.

The shire has applied to the Federal Government for a $4.5 million slice of infrastructure funding to build camel-proof boundaries around 14 communities.

Wayne Wright from the shire says thirsty camels are causing significant damage.

"In a number of our communities it's quite common for camels to enter the community and if there are any taps adjacent to houses they're quite capable of either turning the taps on or knocking the taps off so they get water."

The intention is to put cattle grids at the entrances to the communities and place fencing around them.

Weird. The camels can work out how to turn on, or at the very least break open, taps to get water, but they still can't master the art of negotiating a cattle grid?

Sydney Harbour, March 28










Photos by Darryl Mason

Go Eat A Big Bowl Of Fuck, You War Mongers

By Darryl Mason

The staff cutbacks at The Australian are starting to bite. The lead editorial yesterday in the once psychopathically pro-Iraq War minded newspaper :



The editor of The Australian is clearly working under tight budgetary limitations. What other reason can there be for such blatant recycling of old arguments against the Iraq War voiced by hundreds of thousands of Australians, and hundreds of millions of people around the world?

While there is no doubting the moral and strategic sense of the war to liberate Iraq from the despicable despotism of Saddam Hussein, the campaign there took resources and attention away the first front in the war on terror.

With money and good management, Afghanistan may yet be the front where terrorism is decisively defeated.

We went to War On Iraq to find and dismantle WMDs? Hell, no. We did it out of a sense of morality!

The kind of morality that results in unimaginable chaos, the finishing off of already debilitated infrastructure, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, entire families full of children, thousands of doctors, civil servants, teachers, university professors, nurses and the creation of more than 3 million refugees.

The Australian newspaper, you may remember, joined the rest of the Murdoch national and worldwide media empire's downright nasty and sick assault on those who said Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda came from and so that was where the war should be fought, and that winding back in Afghanistan, after so much progress, to attack and invade and occupy Iraq was downright fucking insane.

The people who, back in late 2002 and early 2003, made all those kinds of arguments against the War On Iraq - including millions of World War I & II and Korea and Vietnam veterans in Australia, the US and the UK - were unanimously portrayed by Murdoch's newspaper and television empire as being pro-terrorist and supporters of Saddam Hussein.

And now, six years later, The Australian newspaper tries to justify its backing of the 2002 turning away from Afghanistan to ramp up the War On Iraq for "moral" reasons? Strategic reasons? So Iran can become the dominant nation in the region, and the United States can pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to brutal Sunni fighters to stop them killing American soldiers?

Is the editor of The Australian typing over a bucket of ether?

The editor of The Australian and Rupert Murdoch can go and fuck themselves.

They lied to Australians, day after day, weeks into months, about a threat that didn't exist, cramming headlines with absolute bullshit pro-war propaganda, while ignoring the obvious truth that hundreds of thousands of other Australians seemed to have no problem locating online for themselves.

The Australian newspaper's complicity in helping to manufacture the reality for a senseless war that killed hundreds of thousands of people will never be forgotten.

I Didn't Kill Anyone, But I Like That Movie Where I Did

By Darryl Mason

Unconvicted murder suspect Roger Rogerson was heard on 2MMMFM this morning promoting the DVD of the brilliant corrupt NSW cops TV movie, Blue Murder.

Roger Rogerson was never convicted for murder, and yet Blue Murder clearly shows him wasting scumbags. Why would he want people to think this is true?

It's Australian surreality.

Australians can't get enough true crime. Movies, half a day a week of it on TV in prime time, shelves full of best-selling books about those who simply did not give a fuck.

They try and convince us that cricket and football players and prime ministers are our real Australian Heroes, but since our convict ancestors stepped ashore on this land, we've always, usually quietly, admired the outlaws the most. From bushrangers to bank robbers, from gangsters to bikers, from drug dealers to drug dealer killers. Most Australians stop short of openly admiring our serial killers, but true crime books about such murders, and the true crime TV doco-reanactments, are immensely, suspiciously, popular.

We must be only a matter of months away from a journalist embedding a camera in his eye and joining a Lebanese biker gang to soak up the predicted carnage to come.

(thanks to Kerry for the tip)


Photos taken during a recent visit to the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney :

I Am Not A SockPuppet, And Neither Is My Cat

UPDATE : Even though I didn't mention the name of Daily Telegraph journalist Tim Blair in the story below, Blair's lawyers seem to think this story is about him, and have sent threatening letters demanding a compensation payment for the "immeasurable hurt" I've supposedly caused by publishing it on this blog.

Much of this "immeasurable hurt" appears to have been inflicted by my merely linking to the posts on the Pure Poison blog that first broke the story that either Tim Blair, or someone in Tim Blair's household, using the alias 'WB', was filling comments at his own blog and other blogs defending him, or trying to steer conversations about Blair away onto other subjects.

At Tim Blair's Daily Telegraph blog, 'WB' posted some 70 comments in just a couple of months.

According to blogger Jeremy Sear, who claimed he spoke to him on the phone, Tim Blair acknowledged that while 'WB' was posting comments at his blog, and other blogs, all through his home internet account, he didn't know anything about it. Or that he did know, but wasn't prepared to disclose who 'WB' was.

The letter from Tim Blair's lawyers I received after first posting the below story, also demanded I stop posting other "defamatory" stories about the Daily Telegraph's associate editor on this blog, though they didn't point out any other stories that are allegedly defamatory.

Letters from Tim Blair's lawyers threatening legal action have also been sent to at least three other bloggers who either wrote about what 'someone' in Tim's house was getting up to online, or linked to the same Pure Poison stories that I linked to below (which are now deleted).

Even though the links in the below story now lead to a blank page at Pure Poison, I've been told by Blair's lawyers these links to nowhere should disappear from this blog.

Not so long ago, Blair would have taken on his critics and his mockers at his blog, and would have made a fair to decent attempt at slaying them mightily. It probably would have been funny, too.

Not now.

The game has changed. This is serious.

You occasionally hear about people taking legal action against Murdoch newspapers or columnists or journalists for something they've written or claims they've made online or on air.

But this is the first time I've heard of any Murdoch journalist trying to sue bloggers for merely linking to a story about them, and demanding other stories and comments discussing the linked story be deleted from a blog, and forever disappeared from the Google cache.

Obviously I won't be taking down the below story. Such an action could be perceived as an admission of guilt. Or cowardice.

Anyway, if I disappear the below story Vex Voyager will be pissed. It's the only thing he's done that I've allowed him to post on this bog. I have no intention of causing him "immeasurable hurt."

And as far as "defamatory" comments on a blog go, here's one that's been up for a couple of years at Tim Blair's old blog, where one of his regular commenters made up the following psychotic slander and posted it under my name :

Killing Howard is laudable. Killing his cabinet got to be OK too. Killing members of the Liberal party - that has to be a plus, surely. And what about the Nationals? We’ll kill them too. They helped keep Howard in power. And Family First, slit their throats. And what about other Christians, they are conservative and probably voted Liberal. Best kill all them along with small businessmen. There is a real hotbed of Liberal sentiment among these fascist businessmen. Don’t forget the Jews, the money grubbing bastards. They have to be next. Then there are those class traitors, the workers who voted Liberal. Kill them all. Purge the public service of suspected Liberal sympathisers too. That teacher over there. He’s wearing a tie so he must be a conservative. String him up. Hey, that guy’s got an American accent. Slaughter him and his baby too. It’s in their genes, you know. It’s a lot of people to be massacred but it will reduce greehouse gases in the long run.
Darryl Mason

Blair knows I didn't write that. But he has no problem with it remaining on his website under my name. He refuses to delete it, or apologise for its publication.

Fortunately, I don't suffer so easily from the "immeasurable hurt" bloggers and commenters and links apparently inflict on Tim Blair, even though the above grim tirade posted under my name has led to some interesting, if very short, job interviews when some Googling was done.

Previously.....

I AM NOT A SOCKPUPPET AND NEITHER IS MY CAT

By Vex Voyager

There's been a bunch of accusations floating around the Australian blogstream in recent weeks, in which it is claimed that a 'journalist' with a major daily Sydney newspaper has been commenting away like a maniac on his own and other blogs under an assumed identity, or assumed identities, or that someone very close to him is doing all this, from his home.

The journalist's excuse when he was called on this alleged sock-puppetry by the rowdy lads at Pure Poison, basically ran something like this (not direct quotes) :

Yes, someone in my household has been commenting on my blog, and other blogs, trying to shield me from criticism, but it's not me. I either don't know who is doing it, from my home, maybe even from my own laptop, or I'm not prepared to say who it is. And by the way, my lawyers have a letter for you. So here's a big bowl of shut the fuck up.

The 'journalist' now accused of what most bloggers call 'sock puppetry', and who has had great fun in the past accusing other bloggers of doing what he now stands accused of, and who has often railed about Evil Pagan Lefties threatening defamation to try and shut up up bloggers like him, has swallowed down a whole bucket of "I'm A Fucking Hypocrite" and has now set his lawyers loose on bloggers who won't shut up about this story.

The Orstrahyun has asked the 'journalist' three times to answer three simple questions about who, if not himself, is writing all those nice things about him online, from his home. Three simple questions. But he refused to answer any of them, instead warning The Orstrahyun to leave the story alone, and go away.

As if that's going to happen.

So, instead, I made up a false identity, Vex Voyager (edit...No you didn't, I'm real - Vex Voyager), to ask myself some hard questions about The Evils Of Sock Puppetry.

VV : You've been accused of sock puppetry, that is writing comments online about your own work under an assumed name, haven't you?

DM : Yes, I have. But I deny everything. It could have been anyone in my house doing it, when I'm away or asleep. You can't prove anything.

VV : Who else in your household could have done it?

DM : Anyone. It could have been the maid, the butler....the sushi chef, he spends a lot of time online, playing games I think, but you never know....

VV : So someone else in your house is going online and writing nice things about you, and going after your critics, when you're asleep or at work, and you don't know who that person might be?

DM : LIke I said, it could be anyone. But It's Not Me. I know that....I'm pretty sure of that. Yep, damn sure. I think.

VV : Hmmm...

DM : Maybe it was the cat....

VV : The cat?

DM : Yeah. He's pretty smart. He can knit blankets out of his molting fur to keep himself warm. How environmentally friendly is that? He should get a whole lot of carbon credits for cutting down on...

VV : You must think I'm the Mayor Of Stupidtwon to believe something like that.

DM : I'm not telling you what to believe. Make up your mind. But my cat is whip-crack smart. That I do know.

VV : Can your cat work a keyboard?

DM : He can hit the keys, but the music is mostly shit.

VV : ....no...I meant, does your cat know how to type?

DM : I've seen it sitting there, licking the mouse pad. I don't think if it smells of mouse, but...

VV : But you were saying before that someone else in your house must have been leaving those comments saying nice things about you online, under fake names....

DM : What's a fake name anyway? I mean, what sort of fucking name is Vex Voyager? I once met a guy named Tooty Von HammerFix, and...

VV : That never happened. Now, you claim as your defence against accusation of sockpuppetry that someone else is writing comments on your own blog, from your home, from the same internet IP address, but you don't know who it is. Is that correct?

DM : Maybe someone comes in at night, when I'm asleep and pushes the cat aside and...It could happen.

VV : Someone breaks into your home and steals nothing but while they're there they get on a computer and leave nice comments about you at various blogs, talking up your work? And they do this over and over again? Night after night? And you don't know who it is?

DM : Hey, like I said, before....how do I know it wasn't the cat? I'm sure the cat understands that if, say, I was working at a major Australian daily newspaper, and I was doing a blog that maybe earned money for me based on how many people were recorded visiting and commenting on my site, if that was the situation, well, the more I earn, the better the cat eats, right? I mean, if I earn more because more people are supposedly visiting my site and leaving comments and I could make retarded claims that my blog is The Blog An Entire City Is Talking About, then I could afford those treaty cat biscuits with the soft, creamy fishy centres. Cats love them. They're like fucking crack for cats.

VV : And you also think your cat might be waiting until you go to sleep, then jumping online and reading through blogs looking for valid and often viciously accurate criticisms of you and then your cat is typing responses either defending you or steering the comments off onto another subject so other commenters stop hammering you...

DM : Yes, this could be so.

VV : And your cat is doing all this, while you're asleep...

DM : Or at work.

VV : Or at work....your cat might be doing all this, falsely inflating your blog's comment counts because it knows if you earn more money it will get a better kind of cat food? Do I have that right? Is that the full story?

DM : I didn't say that is what happened, I'm just saying, maybe it could happen that way. Who knows? I don't know. But someone in my house is doing it, and it's not me.

VV : So it could be the maid, the butler or the sushi chef, correct?

DM : Or the cat. I'm not saying it is, but....

VV : You don't have a sushi chef, do you?

DM : No.

VV : And there's no butler. No maid.

DM : ............correct.

VV : Do you think there's a need to exaggerate about such things?

DM : What do you care? You don't even exist.

VV : Yeah, that's right....


.

Inhale The New Reality

Just about every point that Mark Morford makes here here for how cannabis can revitalise the Californian economy also applies in Australia. Something like 300,000 Australians allegedly consume cannabis on a daily basis, while another million or two will light a joint or three this weekend, or the next. All are committing a crime, and all those many millions of dollars they pay out to break the law to feel a little better will go to suspected criminals. If California could theoritically raise $5 or $7 billion a year by legaliziing and taxing cannabis, there's probably, at least, $2 to $4 billion in extra tax revenue just waiting to be scooped up and put to good use in Australia.

....could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don't you already know the answer?

Are the discussions ongoing? Are they passing the bong of possibility around the state Senate chambers? You're damn right they are. What's holding them back? Probably the usual: the negative PR, looking "soft" on crime, encouraging permissiveness, pressure from prison lobbies, and so on. Don't worry, Sacramento. Everyone's already plenty drunk/high on prescription meds trying to alleviate fears of losing their job to care about that nonsense right now. Get to it.

Is there really anyone left who doesn't already know the "War on Drugs" is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they're "tough on crime" so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke?

Anyone left, furthermore, who doesn't know that pot is far safer than booze, less addictive, nonviolent, more transportable, easier to light, and generally won't interfere with your ability to crawl across the carpet and lick cookie crumbs from your lover's thighs? And sure, while heavy, daily usage can make you slow and stupid and rather useless to the world, well, so can a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and six hours of TV every day.

Let's phrase this grand scenario in another way: Why the hell not try it? What have we got to lose? What, we could go more broke? We could get more desperate and anxious? Fact is, economic nightmares need not breed only miserable stories of lost homes and lost jobs and shuttered businesses. They can also spawn creative solutions, innovative thinking, widespread munchies. Now is the time.

Those clips popping up on the evening news of air police carrying great armloads of very wild looking cannabis plants out of isolated rainforests are fantastic. Is there a better distributor of cannabis seeds across a large potential growing area than helicopter blades? Probably not. But it ensures that in six months or a year they can go in again and haul out another likely wild crop as the 'War On Drugs' continues along its expensive, destructive, immature and ultimately absurd path.

Something In The Air.....

Australians are smoking less and less cigarettes as each year, since the the days when they were handed out free to non-smoking soldiers during in World War 2, passes by. And yet, lung cancer rates are still rising.

Why is this happening?

Trachea and lung cancer remains the third leading cause of death in Australia behind heart disease and strokes.

But while the top two are decreasing, there is a rising number of deaths due to lung cancer

According to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were more than 7,600 deaths from trachea and lung cancer in 2007, up by about 900 on the number recorded in 1998.

According to the story, 15% of all lung cancer victims have never smoked, at all. So more than 1100 Australians are dying each year from lung cancer that is not a result of smoking. That's close to the nationwide road toll.

So what is causing so much lung cancer in non-smokers?

Breathing city air?

Call It Espionage, Because That's What It Is

If you go about cutting billions from defence budgets, you're not going to be popular with those who rely on ever increasing defence budgets to maintain their international arms industry relationships, and lifestyles :

Australia's defense department has secretly investigated ties between the defense minister's family and a Chinese-Australian businesswoman as a potential security threat, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The report will likely increase the tension between the defense bureaucracy and Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon who recently described his department as "incompetent" in its handling of a pay dispute within the elite Special Air Service Regiment.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said defense department intelligence and security officials recently examined the 16-year relationship between Fitzgibbon's family and Sydney-based Helen Liu.

Looking for something they could smear him with, via the Murdoch tabloids. They didn't find anything, and now another nefarious spying scandal has broken into the mainstream media. An immediate investigation has been launched, and of course the Defence Department will be investigating itself.

If Australia's intelligence agencies are spying on and hacking into the laptop of the fucking defence minister, imagine what they're doing to the computers, and online lives, of mere citizens of this country?

Bernard Keane at Crikey has lots more.

It's A Human, This Meeting Is Over

Photos By Darryl Mason

Cockatoos gather, awaiting the downfall of man, or plotting how they can work together to carry away small children, at Audley, NSW, in the Royal National Park

Play Nice, Your Comment May Be Archived For Later Use Against You

By Darryl Mason


The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair warns his readers :

Prepare to be watched...

He should also be telling his regular commenters to prepare to have their comments, all their comments, archived and data-mined at a later date by persons unknown. And not just the comments they leave now, but all the comments they have ever left at a Tim Blair blog.

It seems he's only just discovered that government agencies, including ASIO, monitor Australian blogs, and in particular, the posted comments.

Tim Blair won't tell his readers that the widespread trials and use of such online monitoring technology, and key word recognition programs, became reality during the lead-up to the Iraq War.

The surveillance of Australian blogs is not exactly a new thing. Whatever prime minister Kevin Rudd allows such programs to become, they began in the Howard era.

Blair should tell his readers that he's known for years that all comments at his blog were being monitored, and archived, by government agencies, right through the last four years of the Howard era.

Blair also failed to inform his readers that some of their more violent, or violently insane comments, might come back to haunt them one day, might in fact be used against them, to prosecute or persecute them. That they were written under aliases may make no difference at all in a courtroom.

Rupert Murdoch has already shown that privacy is all but a fiction at MySpace, and his worldwide media empire, presumably also including Tim Blair's blog at the Daily Telegraph, have something of an open agreement with local government agencies to offer what help they legally can to track down someone who has posted threats of violence against politicians, or public figures, at any of Murdoch's online media. Those loudly wishing to kill movie stars and necklace green activists also get red-flagged. Such comments might not make it online, but they are not forgotten, nor do they disappear.

Prolific commenters at blogs, say on a story about Islamic terrorism or why "something must be done" about Rudd, are routinely monitored and followed online by any number of government intelligence agencies and private agencies. They're not just looking for "terrorists" anymore, now they're looking for "extremists".

In March, 2004, Tim Blair enthusiastically promoted ASIO's recruiting of online spies, not perhaps understanding that some of those who signed up would probably be monitoring his own site for threats of violence or "hate speech" a few years later.

The joke is that Blair ever believed such monitoring of online comments would stop at sniffing out possible Islamic terrorists, and not go after those who want Islam banned, or get publicly furious about tens of thousands of Muslims immigrating to Australia.

There's a New Terrorism, of which many millions may already be likely suspects, because the War On Terror was never meant to only stop at nabbing the suicidally jihad-crazed, it was always about introducing laws and widespread surveillance to go after "extremists" (as then President Bush began calling terrorists in 2007).

If you think the definition of "terrorist" is loose in government legislation, try to find examples of behaviour that define you as an "extremist". The word "extremist" has come into common usage by world leaders because "terrorist" was almost too specific.

Depending on where you are in the world, "Extremist"covers religion-crazed church burners and airline bombers, American libertarians and Ron Paul supporters, anti-abortion activists and animal liberationists, anarchists and anti-globalisationists, drug-dealing bikers and Afghanistan-based beheaders, anti-cannabis prohibition marchers and gun-rights patriots.

Unspecified thought crimes will get you flagged, watched and followed across the internet.

Everyone is a potential suspect when the prosecution of thought crimes becomes a policing and crime prevention reality.

As is our reality now.

Seriously, What Are They Smoking?

By Darryl Mason

Who knows, maybe soon there will be a new pharmaceutical to treat this fresh, mostly unexplained and extremely dodgy sounding "syndrome" :

There is mounting evidence to support the existence of a new syndrome afflicting heavy cannabis users, after the world's first cases were found in South Australia.

Of course.

The condition "cannabinoid hyperemesis" was first identified in a group of about 20 heavy drug users in the Adelaide hills in 2004, and a new case has emerged this time in the US.

The syndrome is characterised by nausea, stomach pain and bouts of vomiting - ill effects which, oddly, sufferers say they get some relief from by having a hot shower or bath.

"Cannabinoid hyperemesis" is a terribly shit name for anything. If they want this new "syndrome" to seize the public imagination, and make those who use cannabis for medicinal purposes shift back to pharmaceuticals from paranoid fear that the next long slow sweet numbing inhale, or next crunchy bite of a delicious cannabis-rich Anzac biscuit, might turn them into people from the hills outside Adelaide, then they've got to come up with a truly catchy name.

ShowerHolic Screaming Dope Disease (SHSDD)

Toxic Pot Shower Shock Syndrome (TPSS)

Adelaide Hills Mindfuck Freakout Disorder (AHMF)

Something like that. But better.

In the US case, the sufferer had been smoking marijuana daily and in heavy doses for six years. This eventually led to bouts of vomiting lasting two to three hours daily, and this was worse after meals.

As with South Australian cases, the young man initially turned to "compulsive hot bathing behaviour" to relieve the symptoms but he was not cured until he gave up smoking cannabis altogether.

The cure is a simple one. Stop smoking so much fucking pot if it's fucking with your head and driving you to act like an insane vomiting death-wish crazed lobster.

Adelaide-based drug expert and emergency ward doctor, Dr David Caldicott, said he had seen three cases of the illness and it was possibly also under-reported by sufferers.

Possibly under-reported? There's only four known cases of it mentioned in medical literature, after widespread cannabis usage across the Middle East, China, Mexico, North America, for thousands of years. For twice the length of Christianity, cannabis has been used, and abused, and yet nobody has ever written, or reported, the symptoms of this new "syndrome" before. Unless the consumption of bong or bucket water is involved.

"We're probably seeing the tip of the iceberg in the emergency departments, it's probably far more common but far milder (in the broader community)," he said.

Little was known about how cumulative cannabis use could lead to vomiting...

Cannabis poisoned by toxic chemicals in grow rooms pushed to maximum output? Too much tobacco in the mix? Unchanged bong water that resembles watery peat moss?

Cannabis is used by hundreds of thousands of Australians, and hundreds of millions of people around the world. Daily. Where are the deaths? AIDS and cancer patients use cannabis to stop nausea, to fight the urge to vomit and to calm stomach complaints. These three benefits from absorbing cannabis are amongst the most frequently cited reasons why so many American medicinal cannabis users moved away from gut-burning pharmaceuticals to one of the world's most common weeds. It stops you feeling like you're going to vomit everything inside not nailed down.

That this new excitedly, hopefully, promoted cannabis-related "syndrome" is manifesting in heavy users the exact opposite of the well known, medically recognised, very real benefits of cannabis is utterly bizarre. And likely not true. At least in the 'syndrome" being linked to cannabis. Toxic doses of THC are all but impossible to ingest, short of drinking a wine barrel of hash oil without stopping for a nine cheeses pizza.

Whatever is going on, "cannabinoid hyperemesis" sounds downright nasty :

"Grown men, screaming in pain, sweating profusely, vomiting every 30 seconds and demanding to be allowed to use the shower. It's a very dramatic presentation."

Unfortunately it's not on YouTube.

The Daily Telegraph, and the evening tabloid TV shows, must be greatly anticipating an explosion in Crazy Sweating Screaming Projectile Vomiting Toxic Pot Syndrome (CSSPVTPS). None of them have been hooking hard into Australia's most popular natural, curiously illegal, drug recently, probably because so many of their reporters, writers and producers are themselves infrequent users of cannabis, and other drugs, and are secretly wanting to do positive, non-attack stories on pot smoking in nursing homes and terminal illness wards, and know the drug is the least dangerous, and least domestically destructive, of all those consumed recreationally by Australians.

Then again, perhaps this new, mega-cannabis consuming "syndrome" is real, dangerous and spreading.

If so, the cannabis consumed by those suffering twice a minute vomiting might turn out to be spiked with something toxic, and hallucinatory. Cannabis dosed with enough DMT would make anybody (particularly someone who didn't know they were about to get higher than God) vomit like a gushing tap, sweat profusely and demand immediate communion with healing, calming water.

If these alleged syndrome sufferers are also having mind-electrifying religious visions, then DMT spiking is likely the cause.

But still....

Smoking vast quantities of Adelaide hydro every day for endless years, probably punched from festy buckets, would turn even Tommy Chong into a gibbering freak convinced that only by immediate immersion in hot water can he stop from involuntarily puking out his lower intestine.

News.com.au : Cannabis Users 'Suffering New Syndrome'

Teenagers All Fked Up On Drugs & Booze....Well, A Few Are