It's Not Movie Piracy When Hollywood Does It

So if you've got a couple of minutes, watch these two movie trailers and spot the similarities. It's not too hard. First, an Australian movie called Freedom Deep :



And next, one of Warner Bros. mega-budget box office monoliths (or so they hoped), The Book Of Eli :



Yeah. Amazing, isn't it?

So how does an Australian movie get away with blatantly ripping off a big budget American flick?

Well they don't. Because they didn't.

Freedom Deep was made in 1995. The Book Of Eli was made in 2009-2010.

Think about that the next time you hear Warner Bros. executives whinning about movie piracy and how it's "destroying the movie business".

More from Encore Magazine :

(Australian writer/director Aaron) Stevenson claims The Book of Eli is “virtually identical” to his film Freedom Deep.

“It’s not just the premise of the prophet getting the book back to the remnants of civilisation; that plot point is the same, but there are lots of visual references as well,” said Stevenson. “The last 10 minutes make it a little different, but up to that point, it’s pretty much the same.”

“We’re independent and we don’t have the money to go to the US and start a legal case. It’s a David and Goliath story and we need the publicity first. We’re looking at the possibility at the moment,” said Stevenson.

It will be a long and ugly and expensive fight, unfortunately. Hollywood studios don't give in easily to such lawsuits, even when it's obvious blatant plagiarism has occurred.

The Full Story Is Here

One of the latest contributions to the There's NothingLikeAustralia.net tourism website :




More Here

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Nick Barker, from back in 1994 :



Nick Barker, in 2010 :



I should mention that Nick Barker is rumoured to be reforming his awesome rock band from the late 1980s/early 1990s - Nick Barker & The Reptiles. I'll write some more about them when I confirm the rumour as true.


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Political Career Tweets Itself To Death

By Darryl Mason

The future of the Young Liberal National Party doesn't look so bright when they've got vile racists like Nick Sowden representing them.

Some of Sowden's recent contributions to Twitter, after watching the Kerry O'Brien interview with US President Barack Obama on the 7.30 Report :

@nicksowden I'm not sure why they paid Kerry to fly to the US, if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a Ferry to Taronga would have sufficed.

But one revolting outburst wasn't enough. He had to post another :

@nicksowden If i wanted to see a monkey on TV id watch Wildlife Rescue.

He then revelled in the outraged comments reacting to his racism :

"nothing like a little bit of hating to make you feel that little bit better!"

Then Nick Sowden deleted his Twitter account.

He's obviously a deep thinker :

When I equated (Tony) Abbott's comments to a general feeling of the community I meant to show that if Abbott's comments were homophobic, then Australia is also a homophobic country. This is about as true as saying that Australia is a racist country. Whilst those on the left will push this portrayal of Australian society, the rest of us know differently.

Oh yeah, we know.

Sowden's friend @PeterBlackQUT, an academic, claims he only did it "to shock and offend" :

as i know @nicksowden i know he was joking and i'm not going to condemn him for it

More Sowden presumed attempts at "joking" :

(On NSW premier Kristina Keneally) "stupid bitch, youre not in the kitchen anymore!"

(On shadow minister for education, Christopher Pyne) " it's hard to describe Pyne without sounding misogynistic and homophobic. Fuck it, he's such a camp whiny bitch."

"Fuck you UN - i'll give you 'overt racism' you retards. #leftyfucktards"

"its not the obama administration, its the obama disaster and it is an affront to freedom and the history of the WHITE house."

"We need to see another film with a minority in it. there has to be a film with a gay darky in it"

"technically (refugees from the Middle East) aren't people, is there something from the UN on animal rights?"

A political career ends before it begins.

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Sydney from the International Space Station.


(click to enlarge)

Photo by Astro_Soichi

Why Are Australian Soldiers Training To Sniper Fleeing Unarmed 'People'?

In a fake West Australian town, robots riding Segways are being used as targets for 'urban warfare' live fire sniper training :



For now, the Segway riding robots are not shooting back. Or planting IEDs. Or running at sniper positions wearing bomb vests.

They're just playing the role of civilians, rolling around their town, getting picked off at a safe distance with high-powered sniper rifles.

I wonder if they've tried this out with the automated sniper/sentry bots already in use in Iraq and Afghanistan? A bit of robot killing robot action?

And those who think today's youth are the cause of all crime and misery and street violence will be pleased to note that some of the robots are wearing hoodies!


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The Greens Are Now Bigger Than The Nationals, Even In The Bush

It won't be the Labor Party or the Liberal Party who see startling swings towards them at Federal Election 2010. It will be The Greens, as Lenore Taylor explains in National Times :

In 2010 the Greens want to be seen as a mainstream party, not a protest movement in political disguise. They base the claim on their polling and on how they have used the power they have already got.

In the latest quarterly breakdown of Newspoll the Greens are polling 11 per cent, 3 percentage points ahead of their 2007 vote. Even taking into account the tendency for opinion polls to slightly overestimate the Greens' vote, it's a strong position. The Greens now outpoll the National Party in both the cities and in the bush.

And ever since 2007, when they found themselves the largest party on the Senate crossbenches with five senators, after the demise of the Democrats, they deliberately set about proving they could be "responsible" holders of the balance of power.

They negotiated the passage of many critical bills including the government's second stimulus package, which Malcolm Turnbull's Coalition opposed. The Greens also negotiated through bills like the youth allowance and the Medicare levy surcharge. The claim to be mainstream could have a significant impact on this year's poll.

In the Senate the Greens will be pitching to the centre - with a message that a vote for them is a vote for stability because they can negotiate a way through legislative deadlocks.

"We're the ones that made the stimulus package better and then voted it through. Without us there wouldn't have been a stimulus package and we are not going to let that be forgotten," (said leader Bob Brown)

The Greens vote in the recent Tasmanian elections was a whopping 21%. Their best result yet. And this makes the gatekeepers of the traditional Two Party State System very, very nervous indeed.

It's going to be a strange election. You'll see Labor hammering The Greens wherever they can, while the Liberals will stay quietish. An unofficial Greens-Liberals coalition may become reality sooner than most political pundits think.

The Full Story Is Here

Pity The Wife

I don't want to have to keep pointing this out to international readers of The Orstrahyun, but we are not weird and scary people.....mostly :



(Via @prawn_gravies)

"Print Is Dead"

Rupert Murdoch should have listened to Egon, who made this prediction about the future of printed works back in 1984 :

Immeasurable Hurt DeHurted

According to Daily Telegraph associate editor, Tim Blair, the "Graceless & Weird" defamation suit he lodged against Crikey publisher Eric Beecher is now "Case Closed."

Here's the April 2, 2009, apology on the Pure Poison blog at Crikey that was deemed not satisfactory enough :

In a post last night titled “Sockpuppet Worn” it was suggested that enthusiastic Pure Poison critic “WB"....had been making comments from Tim Blair’s private IP adress. The post, now removed from the Crikey site, included speculation on the identity of WB, concluding that it was Blair. Tim denies this flatly, and notes that people in the same house would share an IP. Commenters to the original deleted post had also made that point. We don’t know any more than that WB comments from the same private IP. Our criticisms are reserved for whoever “WB” turns out to be. We unreservedly withdraw any allegation that Tim has been using the “WB” identity, that he had personally used this identity to artificially boost his “hits”, and apologise for any offence caused by the above.

That apology, for an incorrect story that was online for all of a couple of hours, did not soothe the immeasurable hurt caused, apparently, so twelve months later Crikey publishes another apology, this time written (or at least guided) by Blair's lawyers.

The April 12, 2010, apology on the Pure Poison blog at Crikey :

On 1 March 2009, an article entitled “Sockpuppet Worn” was published on this blog about Mr Tim Blair that was incorrect. The article wrongly suggested that Mr Blair publishes comments under a pseudonym on his blog and various other blogs to make them appear as if they were independent reader comments.

It also falsely suggested that Mr Blair is dishonest in that, by publishing comments under a pseudonym on his own blog, he artificially boosts his blog readership and visit numbers, and that Mr Blair is unprofessional in his conduct as a journalist.

Crikey and the authors of this blog acknowledge that each of these suggestions are false and that there is no basis for any of them. We withdraw them unreservedly and acknowledge that Mr Blair has acted properly at all times. We apologise to Mr Blair for the hurt and distress caused.

The assumption is that a cash settlement was part of the ap0logy. But it's hard to know for sure, because tabloid journalists, despite often writing articles that blow up to headlines the most insignificant details of peoples' private lives, don't like to talk or give quotes when they become part of a story. They don't even want others to comment or discuss such stories :



Blair's lawyer friend WB - Wogblogger - cracks the champagne :



(click to enlarge)

And gloats about the settlement on any number of blogs :

....he’s sued a superrich publisher. Epic fail on the hypocrisy argument and no points for trying.

And the ‘glass jaw’ argument......is just historical revisionism at its finest. Blair has taken more abuse than most over the years. I think you’ll find Tim Blair’s reputation is as the guy who cracked Crikey’s deep pockets (that’s Private Media = worth >$6m), which in journalistic circles makes him some sort of a God.

Some sort of a God....

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"Cool And Weird At The Same Time"

They have their own personal dressmaker. Of course they do. You can't just get duck clothing of this quality off the rack.



Even the dog looks a little humiliated on their behalf.

Video Is Here (if the ahove Sky News clip doesn't play for you)


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The Australian newspaper has an anti-ABC agenda? You must be some kind of crazed, paranoid Leftist. Obviously, this is the most important lead national news of the day :

If he wasn't religious before, he probably will be now :

A freak wave saved a man's life after he plunged off The Gap at Watsons Bay (Sydney) last night.

The 45-year-old man who fell 200m was washed back on to dry land unharmed shortly after 9pm.

He was found by emergency rescue crews with only minor injuries and suffering from chest pains.

Stories I've Been Reading :

Forget The Bullshit From Murdoch Gatekeepers, US Soldiers Detail How Rules Of Engagement In Iraq Included Purposeful Shooting, Killing, Of Civilians

This Isn't The First Time US Military Has Killed Journalists In Iraq - In 2003, A US Tank Opened Fire On A Baghdad Hotel Filled With Journos

Nigeria, China & India Are Supposed To Havens For Movie Piracy, So Why Are Their Movie Industries More Successful, More Profitable Than Hollywood?

The Incredible, Life-Saving Legacy Of Henrietta Lacks

Matt Taibbi : "Most Of The Work In This World Completely Sucks Balls And The Only Reward Most People Get For Their Work Is Barely Enough Money To Survive"

Carl Sagan On How Cannabis Taught Him How To Appreciate, Enjoy Fine Art, Music, Food & Sex

South East Asia Drought : "We Will Have A War, A Water War. When They Need
Water To Drink They Will Fight For Everything"

Have You Ever Heard A Carrot Scream? The Feelings, Rights And Dignity Of Plants

Apes Have Theory Of Mind, Just Like Humans

The Iraq & Afghanistan Civilian Slaughter Cover-Ups That Exploded In The Petagon's Face

"How Do You Trust An Ally That Steals British And Australian Citizens' Identities For An Assassination?"

Fall Of Newspapers : Ad Revenues Decline 43% In 3 Years For American Print Media

Peter Hartcher On How President Obama Used Reasonableness To Expose Republican Opponents As Extremists

American Conservative Media Seem Very Nervous About Using The Words "Christian Terrorists"

86 Out Of 88 Cities In China's Drought Zone Running Short Of Drinking Water, Affecting At Least 17 Million People

How To Repossess The Executive Jets Of Drug Dealers & Dictators Without Getting Your Head Blown Off

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Sydney's Daily Telegraph runs a story about a bar of soap allegedly made from the fat of Holocaust victims :

Historians have dismissed reports that the Nazis mass-produced soap from the remains of Holocaust victims during World War II....

True enough. But WTF is going on with the DT's 'related coverage'?



It'll get worse, the more the Murdoch media outsource their newsrooms.

"It's Terribly Flabbergasting"

Smiley

Andrew Bolt, a regular guest of ABC's Insiders :

Islam, after all, is a faith that preaches rejection and subjugation of non-believers...

...doesn't sound like he's been to a mosque recently.

....and is thus likely, at least in theory, to inhibit assimilation and a sense of communal responsibility towards other Australians.

You get the feeling sometimes he's incredibly disappointed Muslim youth haven't tried to suicide bomb our trains or buses. If they had, just once, he wouldn't have to spend so much time clinging desperately to so many self-constructed straw men.

Powderfinger, before all the fucking ballads :






Awesome. Haven't seen this before :




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"That Water Was Cold, Ladies. Real Cold"

Tony Abbott, another victim of Unnecessary Censorship :



More victims of UC.



It's not them, it's your dirty mind.

The 'NothingLikeAustralia.net' tourism campaign keeps coming up with reader-submitted Gold :

More Here

"It's The Worst Insult You Can Give A Man!"

They're A Weird Mob

Wombats Listed By Australian Zoos As Only Slightly Less Dangerous Than Lions And Bears

Oh yeah, they're cute, they look cuddly, but given the chance to do so, adult wombats will seriously fuck you up :

A wombat will hoist an intrusive dingo on its back and crush it against the roof of its burrow.

It can skittle a fully grown man as if a 120-litre barrel had bowled him over.

Bruce Kringle fought off a wombat for 20 minutes, suffering numerous bites, before a neighbour killed it with a blow from an axe.

"I Thought I Was A Goner"

Turnbull : Hatred Does More Damage To The Hater Than To The Hated

Former leader of the Australian Liberal Party Malcolm Turnbull announces his resignation as the Federal Member for Wentworth, and posts a poignant farewell to Canberran politics. Excerpts :

The last 5 ½ years have been a wild ride, filled with achievements and disappointments. Losing the leadership was heartbreaking....

I will miss enormously my work as a local MP. Whether it was visiting a school or a play group, a surf club or a church or synagogue, being the local member has always been fun.

My wife, Lucy, and I have always lived in Wentworth and look forward to remaining involved with our community, and to again pursuing new business opportunities, especially with early-stage businesses and new technologies. One of our greatest passions is supporting and promoting Australian technology. For a highly educated developed nation, we derive far too little of our gross domestic product from our own intellectual property.

The dispute about climate change policy and the loss of the leadership was traumatic but I am resolved to leave Parliament without bitterness or resentment. Politics can be a tough and brutal business. We politicians treat each other harshly and the media treats all of us - no doubt deservedly - even more so. It is a rough game and if you lose a battle, as I have done, then you will get hurt. But you don't have to get bitter.So many people in politics find themselves nursing resentments and hatreds for years. Often they may have justification in doing so, but far better to let it go. Hatred does more damage to the hater than to the hated.

Turnbull wanted to, and doggedly tried to, drag the Liberal Party and conservative politics into the 21st century. Obviously they're not ready for all that, just yet. And it will cost the Liberal Party dearly at the 2010 federal election.

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Not a parody.....

Why Rupert Murdoch Loves The iPad

By Darryl Mason

Media readers, like the iPad, will effectively, eventually, shut out the free news competition :

Sweeting says he thinks many of the major media companies would love to see computers discourage people from searching the open Internet for content.

"I think the media companies will leap at this," he says. "It offers them the opportunity to essentially re-create the old business model, wherein they are pushing content to you on their terms rather than you going out and finding content, or a search engine discovering content for you."

Overhead-heavy bloated media corporations, like Murdoch's, who want to "put a tollbooth on the ocean" are betting the house that locked up media readers will save their outdated 20th century business models.

But they seem to be the only ones who believe that there will be enough people willing to pay to make it profitable enough to continue paying corporate media executives like Rupert Murdoch tens of millions of dollars a year.

Media Watch chewed through these issues last night.

Murdoch newspapers like The Australian are already planning to do away with their print versions, at least on a daily basis. It's the only way they can survive. The sums have been done and print must go. Here's The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell :

"When you remove the fixed costs in newspapers, they become much more viable. So if you think of a newspaper without paper and ink and petrol and trucks, you're taking out between 60 and 70 per cent of the cost base....

"But I guess my view is that the core of the business is your ability to dream up ideas to create news - the things that we chase each day. "

"Dream up ideas to create news." What a curious thing to say, or to reveal about how the newsrooms of a corporate news empire actually work.

And you thought their job was to simply report the news.

September 17, 2009 : Rupert Murdoch Celebrates Death Of Newspapers : "It's Going To Be Great!"

October 2009 : The Australian Tries To Rally Support For Murdoch's War On Free News Media

Man Vs Wombat

Nature's brutal War On Humans continues :

A man is recovering in hospital after he was mauled by a wombat at Flowerdale, north-east of Melbourne.

Paramedics say the 60-year-old was attacked by the animal as he stepped out of a caravan early this morning. He was bitten on the arms and legs...

The ABC, of course, joins in with a no doubt pro-nature Lefty infiltrated government department to play down the savagery of this animal insurgency :

Jeff McClure from the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) says it is highly unusual for a wombat to attack a person.

Yeah, sure. What is unusual is that yet another unprovoked attack by native fauna has broken through the standard media smokescreen.

"Wombats that are in an advance stage of mange will become very agitated from the suffering and the irritation of the mange," (Mr McClure) said.

He said if they are approached or feel threatened wombats will rush towards someone.

"But it's not known that they will push the attack to where they would physically attack someone."

Stop the lies, Jeff. Tell the truth. The wombats, like the kangaroos, koalas and ring-tailed possums are out to get us. They want to kill us and eat us and suck the marrow from our bones.

There is only one solution. Concrete all the national parks. Do it now. Mother Nature must be taught a devastating lesson.

You're either with us, the humans, or you're with the fluffy and cute, but also heavily fanged razor clawed fauna.

Why do Australian male conservative commentators hate on female politicians when they glam up, but fawn over the perpetually nearly-nude Tony Abbott?

For non-Australian readers, this is Kate Ellis, Federal Minister for Youth & Sport.

The Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt on Ellis : "thick head."

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair on Ellis : "She looks like an East German gymnast"

Maybe they prefer their politicians in high heels to look like this instead?

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Get Out Of The Way Boomers, It's Time For Generation X Nostalgia

Pollytics on Twitter :

If you can't listen to Radiators "No Tragedy" and not go wow, then you just ain't living

Agreed!

Pollytics also made note of this excellent YouTube comment attached to the above vid :

Early 80s = Paddle Pops, Dennis Lillee retiring, first tongue pash, nobody singing Oz Crawl lyrics confidently, Orchy bottle bongs....then the Rads. Fucking timeless

Here's The Radiators first single, released in 1979 :

More than 3400 live gigs later (no, that's not a typo), The Radiators are still touring.

April 17 - Blacktown RSL Club

April 23 - Wyong Leagues Club

April 24 - Panthers World of Entertainment

May 7 - Moorebank Sports ClubMoorebank

May 14 - Edgeworth Bowling Club

May 21 - Wests Illawarra, Shellharbour

Opposition leader Tony Abbott is not afraid to tackle the big issues of the day....well, most of the time :

QUESTION : ....The Catholic Church has had a few problems over the past few days with lights being shone on the Pope and now there’s been a link drawn between anti-Semitism and collective blame. Have you anything to say?

TONY ABBOTT: No, look, that’s right outside my field. Thank you so much.

The teaser trailer for the new Australian movie Red Hill, shot in the Victorian high country :

So what's it about? From the SMH :

....the film tells of an escaped convict (Tom E. Lewis from The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith) who wreaks havoc on the isolated town of Red Hill as he seeks payback on the town's sheriff (Steve Bisley). Caught in the middle is a new cop (Ryan Kwanten of True Blood). Red Hill is bloody fun.

No Australian release date yet.

There's Nothing Like...Fake Fakes?

By Darryl Mason

Within just two hours of Tourism Australia's new international "There's Nothing Like Australia" advertising campaign being launched, a parody site with an almost identical web address, was posting mock ads, and scoring the sort of widespread media attention that the original campaign launch sought, but did not get.

Some of the first images on the parody site.

The parody site is now taking suggestions for future slogan and image combinations.

As is the legitimate site.

The cynic in me wonders if, in fact, the real and parody sites are not more connected than it would appear.

After all, what's a major Australian tourism campaign without parodies and mockery? Why let someone else get in first and do something much worse with the slogan than any of the above?

Word got out that Tourism Australia was going to take legal action against the parody site, which bumped up the media coverage of the real and fake campaign sites, before Tourism Australia announced that no legal action was on the cards.

An example of a fake fake ad campaign?

Australian Beaches "Like A Petting Zoo For Great White Sharks"

It blows my mind that anybody is seriously discussing whether or not Robin Williams is being racist in his jabs at Australians :

Robin Williams loves Australia, he's been working and holidaying here for decades, and owned a house up near Palm Beach for years. If you find anything at all offensive, as an Australian, in what Williams had to say, you should have heard him ripping Australia and Australians during his unannounced appearances at Sydney's Harold Park Hotel and The Comedy Store back in the mid-1980s. Now that was some hardcore slagging of Aussies. Brutal, and absolutely hilarious.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd would have been better off correcting Williams and pointing out that Charles Darwin did in fact visit Australia, and his observations of Australian fauna, and flora, played an important role in Darwin's humanity rocking theory of evolution :

While Darwin never saw a kangaroo in Australia, despite riding a horse from Sydney to Bathurst, he did see many other species. Darwin made some very astute observations about Australian animals, especially the platypus. At the time, the platypus was regarded as a curious creature, and it baffled the scientific world. Darwin was the first British scientist to see a platypus in its natural environment, at a creek near Bathurst, in 1836.

For over forty years after his visit, Darwin used and relied upon collections of specimens from Australia that related directly to his 'theoretical concerns at any given time and his recognition of the peculiar status of the continent'.

A Comprehensive Look At Charles Darwin In Australia

UPDATE : An unnecessary apology from Robin Williams, with an offer of friendship :

"Mr Rudd, I apologise. I would like to modify my terminology and use the term `English good old boys' instead.

"I'd love to go to a strip club with you in New York...."

Brilliant!

Bury Your Bananas

Mike O'Neil on the latest attack by a rogue elephant on the New South Wales north coast :

Boulton Close resident Billy Williams woke to the sounds of the 5-tonne beast as it ripped apart his garden and demolished part of a storage shed.

“It was bloody huge,” an animated Billy said. “It just kept ramming the shed where I keep my bananas and beer nuts.

(A Taronga Zoo elephant handler) said any residents with bananas or peanuts in the house should get rid of them straight away by burying them in their neighbours’ yards.

“...these animals are becoming more brazen and roaming built-up areas,” she said.

You have been warned.

(via @MisterShuffles)

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"Journalists Suing Journalists....Is Graceless & Weird"

In follow-up to this post about the downright sad and pathetic legal battle that sees Daily Telegraph blogger Tim Blair suing Crikey bloggers for defamation, here's Blair writing about talkback host Steve Price successfully suing Crikey founder Stephen Mayne for defamation back in 2002 :

"...leaving aside the matter of journalists suing journalists, which is graceless and weird, Price took this action – at a cost to himself of $150,000 – to restore his reputation. But has his reputation been restored? Most journalists I've spoken to today believe the opposite."

Graceless and weird, indeed.

(via @cosmicjester)


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Tim Blair Vs Crikey : Stupid Blog War Now Wasting NSW Supreme Court's Time

By Darryl Mason

Apparently he decided to only go after those he thinks he might actually get money from, if he wins :

(Daily Telegraph associate editor and blogger) Tim Blair is now suing Eric Beecher's Private Media, publisher of the website crikey.com.au, in the NSW Supreme Court for defamation. He is understood to want tens of thousands of dollars because of the damage to his reputation.

Damage to his reputation? I thought his reputation as a journalist was damaged almost beyond repair years before when he and his gormless commenters spent months attacking the character and motivations of an American mother whose young soldier son died in the Iraq War....

More from Sean Nicholls & Jessica Mahar :

....the Diary understands the trouble began when one of Crikey's bloggers noticed that the IP address - or computer identification number - of one of the people commenting on Blair's blog was identical to Blair's own IP address. In effect, the blogger wrote, Blair was so hard up for comments to his blog that he had resorted to writing his own comments, under another name. It sparked almost a year of demands by Blair, through his lawyers, that Crikey atone for what he says is a false accusation. While the blogger published an apology of sorts early in the piece, Blair was unsatisfied because he thought it repeated the alleged defamation. A couple of weeks ago he took the matter to court.

Here's the (now deleted) early March 2009 apology from Crikey's Pure Poison that failed to repair the immeasurable hurt allegedly caused :

Correction and apology to Tim Blair

In a post last night titled “Sockpuppet Worn” it was suggested that enthusiastic Pure Poison critic “WB"....had been making comments from Tim Blair’s private IP adress. The post, now removed from the Crikey site, included speculation on the identity of WB, concluding that it was Blair. Tim denies this flatly, and notes that people in the same house would share an IP. Commenters to the original deleted post had also made that point. We don’t know any more than that WB comments from the same private IP. Our criticisms are reserved for whoever “WB” turns out to be. We unreservedly withdraw any allegation that Tim has been using the “WB” identity, that he had personally used this identity to artificially boost his “hits”, and apologise for any offence caused by the above.

Blair's Law appears to be true, after all.

No typing cats were harmed, immeasurably or otherwise, in the posting of this story.

Journalists Suing Journalist (Or Bloggers Suing Bloggers) Is "Graceless & Weird"

UPDATE : Sorry, all comments are closed on this blog for the moment. I'm guessing you can understand why.

Iraq and Afghanistan war correspondent Paul McGeough poses a question :

Australia is occupied by a foreign power and you join the resistance — where would you draw the line between name-calling and suicide-bombing?

And details his dream newspaper front page headline :

World's Last Arms Manufacturer Closes Plant, Join Former Competitors Aiding Agriculture Projects In Africa

More Here


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Coming to Australian cinemas, June 1 :



Air Supply as a key theme song for this "gritty" Australian movie? Really?

I Smoke, And I Vote

Murray Clapham, a director of the Victor Chang Foundation, writing in the Jakarta Post :

''The real argument is here in Indonesia some quite remarkable Indonesian scientists and doctors have discovered that cigarette smoking can, with specially treated cigarettes, significantly assist people's health and has the potential to cut health costs around the globe.'

''One thing we must do is learn from the ancient wisdom and find out how to grow healthy tobacco. Indonesia has made a start and it's a great place to do it. Unfortunately my country (Australia) has almost banned any private initiatives in this area.

''Tobacco is certainly not the key factor in many of the health issues attributed to it; the jury should remain out on that.

''These and other matters are still the subject of investigation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here in Indonesia now. To conclude, let's ban unhealthy cigarettes and promote healthy smoking.

''This will serve many purposes, the pro-smokers can have their cake and eat it without fear, the anti-smokers are likely to have a new cheap readily available healing tool.''

"Healthy smoking." There's two words I don't think I've seen paired together before. At least not in the past few decades anyway. And smoking as a "healing tool"?

Woody Allen's 1973 future-satire Sleeper foresaw this day :

"Here, smoke this. And be sure to get the smoke deep into your lungs."

"I don't smoke"

"It's tobacco. It's one of the healthiest things for your body."

I have no idea whether or not these skit-style VicRoads ads will help reduce death tolls and car accidents, but they're pretty funny and more likely to cut through and be remembered because they aren't grim lectures :







More VicRoads Ads Here

The Mitchell Library, in Sydney, one of Australia's most beautiful and historically important buildings, is now welcoming virtual visitors to areas of the library once off limits to mere members of the public.

A slide show of some of those areas, collections and exhibits from ABC News

One of the collections includes the death mask, and mementos, of one of my childhood literary heroes, Henry Lawson :


(photo from ABC News)

Henry Lawson wrote the perfect Australian short story for bored boys sitting in late 1970s stiflingly hot classrooms wondering what droning story their teacher was going to read to them next. That perfect Australian short story is The Loaded Dog. Not only did Lawson go into great detail about how to constuct a devastingly powerful bomb (for fishing purposes), the tale romped along and had a gruesomely funny ending.

...there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his nastiness under there - a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison.

Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings - spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs - that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining - and yapping, yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when --

**********

When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.

Read The Loaded Dog By Henry Lawson Here

I must admit, Harold Hulk and George Bush were two of my favourite prime presidents of Australia as well.



This harmless vid sparked a gusher of gruesome elitist snobbery :

"What a devastating indictment of our education system and culture of proud know-nothingness"

"Beats me why these neanderthal boofheads are 'heroes' and 'role models'...they’re brainless, mysogynistic idiots who chase a ball around a field."

"they really are only required to be able to grunt and tie their shoelaces."

"Yet Australia still has compulsory voting?"

"I want a refund of my education tax money."

"I haven’t seen a better argument for ending compulsory voting."

"how moronic do you have to be NOT to know only five prime ministers?"

"Footy players, AFL or League are by definition thick as two short planks. The come from the working class"

"Why would you expect them to know names of prime ministers when they probably need to take off their shoes to count the twenty?"

"This is the best reason I have seen to restrict voting to those who can pass a general knowledge and intellingence test."

"Compulsory voting stinks. What a marvellous way to bugger up democracy."

"This is utterly shameful."

Some footballers don't know much about Australian political history so they should have to sit a test before being allowed to vote?

It's probably for the best those haters of Australian culture and democracy have somewhere to go to unburden themselves of at least a small portion of their spite and bitterness.

Labor, state and federal, are extremely worried about The Greens, and their ever-growing popularity. The anti-Greens campaigning by Labor, in the lead up to the federal election, has begun.

Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner kicks the campaigning into gear :

The Greens are not some benign group loosely allied with Labor. They're not a middle-ground party. They're not idealistic activists changing the world. They're just another political party, no less cynical or manipulative than the others. They feed off Labor's need to make compromises to marry progressive reform with majority government. Their energies are directed to attacking Labor, not the conservatives.

It might seem like a good idea to support those who yell the loudest, but it's unlikely to produce good outcomes. Labor is the only worthwhile option for achieving progressive change through parliamentary politics. It might be a bit piecemeal and gradual, but it beats the hell out of doing nothing.

While he doesn't say it directly, Tanner is pushing a mantra that declares if you vote for The Greens, then you are also voting for the Liberal Party, whether you intended to or not. It sounds surreal, but it's a line Labor will continue to push, perhaps hoping that opposition leader Tony Abbott will come to The Greens defence, which would allow Labor to brand them as radicals, extremists, or worse.

It won't happen anytime soon, but Labor clearly understands that if a new generation of Liberals find much common ground with The Greens, that is a mid-decade Liberals-Greens coalition, Labor will be in big trouble.