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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to vote for a party moving diagonally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darryl Mason On Twitter

Federal Election 2010 : Who's Doing What Now?

By Darryl Mason

Oh, looks like I missed most of it.

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

From the Sydney Morning Herald :



Get used to saying it, Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

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

Or will it be US ambassador John Howard?

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

Today should be a very interesting day for The Greens.

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

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

An afternoon sky over Sydney, August 2010.

2pm.



2.30pm



3pm



5pm



5.30pm

via @AndrewBolt :




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Murdoch Backs Gillard

By Darryl Mason

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





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

From The Australian's Media Diary :

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr Latham Helping Himself To A Cup Of Coffee"

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



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



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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



The 'story' :

Did humans live at the same time as dinosaurs?

The answer is of course no....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Former Labor leader Mark Latham on PMLive, Sky News :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The poor woman has been brainwashed.

Price Of Bread To Rise By Two Carbons

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



Meh. Try Harder.

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



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

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

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

Tony Abbott knows that as surely as Julia Gillard does.

Still some of the most sensible talk we've heard in years on Australian TV on asylum seekers and immigration. PJ O'Rourke on Q & A :



If only our politicians were willing to speak such obvious truths, in the face of tabloid hate front pages screaming 'Invasion!'

As you may already be aware, The Chaser returns to the ABC tonight for the first of five new episodes covering the Federal Election 2010, a year on from the end of their War On Everything series.

Yes We Canberra! will likely be the most, or only, entertaining thing about the next four weeks of campaigning, leading to the day Tony Abbott is declared the new prime minister of Australia.

In preparation for a Liberal Party-led new government, Chas takes on the next Australian deputy prime minister, Julie Bishop, in a deathstare cagematch :



After the June coup, The Chaser had to dump a ton of sketches and gags they'd been working on, centred around prime minister Kevin Rudd on the campaign trail. Here's one of the Rudd gags that didn't get the chop :

Coming to DVD & download late October :

FireBomb Democracy

Today on Andrew Bolt's blog of fevered hate and intolerance, an open, uncensored call to commit acts of terrorism in Australia from a regular commenter :

"...it's always the darkest before dawn, and the people will have the ultimate voice - molotov cocktails into the Parliament Houses. We WILL regain control of the nation."

Let me guess, it slipped by the moderators, eh?

The Herald Sun's and ABC Insider's Andrew Bolt suggested an act of terrorism could have helped then prime minister John Howard win the 2007 election :

"...something might yet turn up that will make us appreciate anew his vast experience and steadiness under fire...if there were to be another terrorist attack...(we could) admire his firmness in handling it."

Will he suggest the same for Tony Abbott now?

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Five Stars

Crossing a review-style format with doco-reality TV is the best comedy idea to hit Australian TV screens since Alan Jones decided to squawk for five minutes just before 8am on the Today Show (sadly that piece of daily Gold is no longer). The smartly dressed Myles Barlow is the man responsible for the hilarious, disturbing, challenging, WTF? show Review, returning for its second series on ABC2 tonight at 9.30pm.

So what's under review for Review 2?

"I review Addiction, Fear, Starting a Cult, Being a B-Grade Celebrity, Buck’s Parties, Happiness, Justice, Racism, and Killing Kyle Sandilands, to name just a few."

Sadly, Kyle Sandilands was not willing to add total authenticity to that review.

The trailer :



Featuring one of the most realistic stabbing scenes ever seen outside of Melbourne public transport, Barlow reviewed Murder in series one :






To finish, some good advice from Myles Barlow :

"Don’t listen to advice, would be my advice. And yes, I’m aware that by taking that advice you’d be doing exactly what I’ve told you not to, but therein lies the central paradox of critical analysis. Do you listen to others or do you make up your own mind? A smart pin-stripe blazer doesn’t go astray either, just quietly."

Noted.

Does Tony Abbott Still Believe Bible Classes Should Be Compulsory For All Students?

Opposition leader Tony Abbott, December 19, 2009 :

"I think everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation. That includes, most importantly, the Bible.

"I think it would be impossible to have a good general education without at least some serious familiarity with the Bible...."

Most important core text of our civilisation, eh?

"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?"

"....they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel..."

"If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered....he must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."

"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

Unicorns, donkey dicks, raping virgins, stoning women to death and cutting off their hands - the Tony Abbott literature class of 2011.

It's funny, because it's true :



Effective political advertising :

The front page of The Australian online gets downright cognitively dissonant one day into Federal Election 2010 :



"Labor has started the campaign well ahead of the Coalition..."

"Voter support for Labor has slipped since the election was called...."

The Australian should considering changing it's advertising mantra from 'Think. Again.' to 'Wait. What?'

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Some Sunday rock. The Screaming Jets doing AC/DC's Ain't No Fun (Waitin' 'Round To Be A Millionaire) live on a barge in Sydney's Darling Harbour in late 1991. None of the kids who jumped from the bridge were seriously injured, though one jumper (not caught on video) hit the water about an inch from the dock. An absolutely fucking insane day, hard to believe it was almost two decades ago.

Four of the top six most popular news stories of the week on the ABC News website are psychic octopus-related :



So much for ABC News readers being obsessed with politics.

Standing Up, Moving Forward, Falling Asleep

By Darryl Mason

So here we go. Federal Election 2010 is on. Even though we don't actually vote for the prime minister of Australia, politicians to the media are quite happy to play along and make it a battle of personalities, less so than policies, or even competence.

But it's not even really about coup prime minister Julia Gillard Vs the Mining Industry/Coalition's Tony Abbott. It's about Gillard & Abbott doing everything they can to stop The Greens from gaining the balance of power in the Australian senate, and completely undermining the two party system that has served Australia's richest people so faithfully for so many decades. It's fortunate then that the Labor Party and the Liberals/Nationals coalition can rely on the full support of the Australian Murdoch media doing everything they can to scare people away from voting for The Greens.

As coup prime minister Julia Gillard has made clear, by mentioning the phrase more than 20 times in a 10 minute speech, the Labor Party are for Moving Forward, or Moving Forward Together or Moving Australia Forward :



It's a corny phrase already making people grind their teeth, less than 24 hours after the election date of August 21 was announced.

The Liberal Party meanwhile have settled on 'Stand Up' :



'Stand Up' is, of course, the name of an excellent song by The Angels :



Note these key lyrics :

Promises are easy
You swallow every word
Just be sure of who you serve

And here's the first official Federal Election 2010 ads from the leaders of the Labor and Liberal parties.





Here's Greens' leader Bob Brown outlining his party's policies for the coming election.

I'll go easy on the Federal Election 2010 coverage here, because you're going to be inundated with it everywhere you turn, and I'll be a bit busy elsewhere finishing off my first movie 'Fuck The War', starring Dave Gleeson, for an October release.



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The Australian, July 14 :

Americans who are attending the annual conference (with Kevin Rudd) are curious.

They wonder how it happened that an Australian leader who appeared so popular and so comfortable on the world stage only 12 months ago could be tossed out so quickly -- even before he had faced an election.

Yes, what an absolute mystery it is.

The Australian, June 26 :




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The Herald Sun on the culturally vital website Things Bogans Like :

"...the best online port of call for the voice of bogan authority."

Things Bogans Like on The Herald Sun :

There is nothing a bogan loves more than being outraged. In particular, being outraged at people who, for a variety of reasons, it has made minimal effort to understand on ethnic, national, or religious grounds.

With an array of columnists with a hard-wired awareness of the bogan’s panic buttons, the topic du jour on the comments page......invariably revolves around blaming ‘other’ people for bad things.

Thus stimulated, bogans are equipped with sufficient righteous indignation to cover any encounter with a fellow at the water cooler, food court, playgroup or other designated daytime bogan convergence point.

There's a book of Things Bogans Like coming in November. Just in time for the Bogan Family Christmas stocking, which this year will be either Harley Davidson branded leggings, or Ugg socks (Do we have those yet? And if not, when we do, will they be called Oggs?)


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Kudos Kodos

I keep hearing coup prime minister Julia Gillard using variants of this phrase :

"We must move/go forwards, not backwards."

Such a familiar phrase. Someone else had used it, many years ago, in a gripping campaign speech, powerfully podium pitching their political wares.



It was Kodos :

"Tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"

I'm not being critical in pointing out that Julia Gillard appears to be sourcing The Simpsons for political rhetoric. I say More Of It.

In fact, let me help out. I submit following stirring political views of Homer Simpson for inclusion in future speeches by our coup prime minister :

Children are our future. Unless we stop them now.

If something goes wrong.....blame the guy who can't speak English.

Volunteering is for suckers. Did you know that volunteers don't even get paid for the stuff they do?

How is education going to make me smarter?

I wish God were alive to see this.

Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.

Marriage is like a coffin and each kid is like another nail.

I never apologize, I'm sorry but that's the way I am.

It takes two to lie....One to lie and one to listen.

When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work.

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Movie News

By Darryl Mason

It's been a bit quiet around here for the past week or so because I've been finishing off a movie. It's a hostage thriller set during the Sydney Student Protests against the Iraq War in 2003.

The basic plot is this : The prime minister is giving a speech at Sydney's Town Hall. An anti-War On Iraq protest outside turns violent, and during a scuffle the prime minister is separated from his security. One of the protesters manages to kidnap the prime minister. He lashes him to a chair in the cellar of an empty house and interrogates him over the deceptions and lies that led Australia into the War On Iraq.

The movie is called :



The movie stars Dave Gleeson, lead singer with The Screaming Jets. Gleeso ripped into the role like a professional, found plenty of laughs where there would have been none without him, and generally pulled the gold from a way too long script and made it shine.

Some images from Fuck The War, straight off the rough edit :









I'll get some clips from Fuck The War up on YouTube soon.

It'll be out on DVD and digital download in a couple of months.

If it sells 500 copies, Fuck The War will be one of the few Australian movies of 2010 to turn a profit.

If it sells a few thousand copies, we get started on another movie.


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Election advertising in Australia gets mega-mashed up :

Some Saturday tunes.

Amazing. Redgum's John Schumann performing Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn :



Not the lyric change from "teenage Chinese princess" to "jaded Chinese princess."

Redgum are best known for the spine-chilling ode to youth lost in the Vietnam War, 'I Was Only 19' :



And here's an excellent clip of Redgum doing a now all but forgotten classic. "They went through my bags like McCartney in Japan, didn't have a thin so I didn't give a damn."



The Australian government had to insist on two month limit visas for Australians in Bali back in the 1980s. Tens of thousands of Australians would never have come home again if they could have stayed, thousands didn't anyway.



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Australia. So great it's even endorsed by The Kinks :



How catchy is that? Why has this song, or parts of it, never been used for Australian tourism ads? What a theme. And such great Ray Davies' lyrics (excerpts) :

Opportunities are available in all walks of life in Australia
So if you're young and if you're healthy
Why not get a boat and come to Australia

Australia, the chance of a lifetime
Australia, you get what you work for
Nobody has to be any better than what they want to be

Everyone walks around with a perpetual smile across their face

Pretty cutting amateur satire :



I've never linked to, or really watched, those Hitler Downfall parody vids. But this one about Kevin Rudd is very well done, covers the history, and was done extremely fast, online within a day of the Australian Coup.


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So many, many swears :

The Australian Coup : Does Kevin Rudd Know Something We Don't?



In the Twitter reality, Kevin Rudd is still prime minister of Australia, and was not deposed in a coup on that began one week ago, on the morning of June 23.

This is the @KevinRuddPM twitter page on June 30 :



Shortly after the coup, the 'Verified Account' tick disappeared from the @KevinRuddPM page.

Last night the 'Verified Account' tick reappeared.

@KevinRuddPM is still posting updates to his 930,000 or so followers on Twitter about moving his family from Canberra back home to Queensland :


For nearly a week, Australians have been posting messages to @KevinRuddPM on Twitter pouring out their shock and disgust at what happened to the prime minister they believed they elected, and had the right to vote out at the next election if they weren't happen with his performance.

The messages are a portrait of a country, outside of Canberra and the mainstream media, where support for Kevin Rudd as prime minister remained in the majority, and his literally overnight disappearance as their leader remains mostly a mystery. How can they his happen in Australia? they ask, over and over. Aren't we a democracy? Don't we get to choose our prime minister?
What have they done to you? What have they have done to this country?

A recent sampling :




As far as most of the media here are concerned, however, this official approval of the coup from Rupert Murdoch is all that needs to be said :


But millions of Australians don't agree. Labor politicians are acknowledging "the anger out there" over the coup, but they've done little to address it.

If Julia Gillard doesn't round up Labor voters lost thanks to bitterness, anger and bewilderment over the coup, they're going to be in real trouble.

Last night, Julia Gillard attended a function in Brisbane. She must have been thanking whoever you thank when you don't believe in God that the protesters weren't holding up 'Bring Back Kev' signs :





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Police violence against Sydney anti-war protesters 2004 - 2007 :





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Mr Percival : Hero Or Barbarian Pelican?

By Darryl Mason

Storm Boy, the 1977 movie of Colin Thiele's childhood altering book :



Storm Boy got a screening on ABC2 on Saturday night, decided to catch it because that's how I roll (now I don't rock so much). We did the Storm Boy book and movie in primary school. It's fascinating to re-watch, many decades later, a movie that impressed you, made you weep, as a kid.

However, Storm Boy is a bit hard to enjoy as adult without thinking horribly/cynically, 'Wait...Mr Percival might be smart and might really like this kid, but that pelican grew up with a free feed, he can fend for himself, but he doesn't want to. He's lazy. That pelican is there primarily for the fish handouts.' Therefore, Mr Percival was a New Barbarian.
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And another thing becomes starkly clear, early on, that didn't register as a kid who thought it would be plenty cool to live on a beach with a fucking huge pelican....well, for a while anyway, it becomes obvious that this dune shed isn't a dream place to dwell and that the father is living with the kid, nicknamed Storm Boy by a local Aboriginal man, in a scrap wood and sheet metal humpy in amongst wind blasted sand dunes because he's utterly shattered by the death of his wife, and has literally withdrawn from the world, from the 20th century, taking his son with him.

If the trio of orphaned pelicans, fresh out of their eggs, hadn't turned up in the lives of Storm Boy and his dad....

Some observations made via Twitter as I soaked up Storm Boy last night, spoiler warning in effect :

What a brilliant children's story Storm Boy is (Ch 22). Kid lives on a beautiful beach, no shoes, doesn't have to go to school and his best mate is a pelican

Storm Boy rescued the pelican, Mr Percival, when he was a baby. He returned pelican to the wild, pelican returned. They play catch together

Aboriginal friend from up the beach reveals that when a pelican is shot, big storm arrives. Don't tell drought stricken farmers that.

Haven't seen Storm Boy since 8yo. Forgotten the ending. The boy & that pelican are such good friends, sure hope nothing happens to that bird

Storm Boy's dad : "Radio? You don't want to listen to radio. Fill your head with wanting this and that. Things you don't need." Communist!

Storm Boy is a child. He doesn't realise pelican he rescued now and adult and is using him to catch & cut up fish dinner & snacks. Pelican trained boy

Uh oh. Storm Boy has to go to school now. No shoes, can't read, hangs with pelicans. The other children will be brutal, vicious, relentless.

"We miss you Storm Boy. Me, your dad, and Mr Percival." Storm Boy's joy at discovering school is actually quite nice ruined by dependent pelican

How long do pelicans live anyway? What happens when Storm Boy turns 18 and heads to uni? Having a pelican following u round then would be weird

Storm Boy back at home now with dad & pelican. The kid & dad prepare for a gale at the beach humpy. Pelican bails when there's hard work to do

Boat caught in gale off shore. Only way to save people on boat is to get a line out there, reel them in. Mr Percival volunteers to do it

Pelican saves boatload of people, possibly asylum seekers, Storm Boy realises pelican isn't a total sponge. Pelican waits for fish reward

"I knew you could do it, Mr Percival! You're really great, Storm Boy tells pelican, who seems to be getting annoyed no fish reward is forthcoming

People rescued by pelican discuss possible newspaper headlines. One of the rescued men tells StormBoy when hero pelican is dead he'll look "great stuffed and in a glass case"

Weird that when StormBoy discusses rejecting life of school, shoes, electricity with Mr Percival, pelican immediately flies off in the direction of hunters

Hunters are shooting at Mr Percival. Oh fuck,now I remember how this ends. "They shot Mr Percival!"

StormBoy visits grave of his pelican friend. Contemplates lesson learned by his mate Mr Percival - save peoples' lives, get shot at

Hmm, no storm appeared when Mr Percival was shot dead. So StormBoy's friend from up the beach is a liar.

Aboriginal friend shows StormBoy nest of recently hatched pelicans. "Like Mr Percival started all over again." Pelican poses in sunset, credits roll

Beautiful movie.

A near perfect children's movie.

Do kids still think it's kind of cool to run around without shoes and live without TV and refrigeration? Probably not.

But Storm Boy will instill in children who view it a lifelong respect for birds that have beaks big enough to hold more fish than their bellies can. It may possibly also introduce a mysterious suspicion of radios to their mind state. And also ingrain a slightly crazed, yet justified, loathing of hunters who shoot pelicans for fun and teenage hoons who tear up protected sand dunes for kicks.

Like I said, a near perfect children's movie.

A beautiful passage from Colin Thiele's novel :

"And everything lives on in their hearts the wind-talk and wave-talk, and the scribblings on the sand; the Coorong, the salt smell of the beach, the humpy and the long days of their happiness together. And always, above them, in their mind's eye, they can see the shape of two big wings in the storm-clouds and the flying scud, the winds of white with trailing black edges spread across the sky. For birds like Mr Percival do not really die."

Unfortunately, the talented Mr Percival died last year. He was 33 years old. As in the movie, Percival made sure he really did not die, mating successfully into his declining years. And his tale has a wonderful ending :

Mr Backhouse had cared for (Mr Percival) since starting at the zoo in 2000.

"....I’m 33, so I remember Storm Boy pretty passionately as a kid.’’

A boy who loved Mr Percival in Storm Boy ends up looking after him, until his death.

Where's Australian Story?

Face reality, the producers are running out of interesting humans to squeeze a half hour out of. The old Australian Story is already running repeats, or "encore presentations" as they're now known, of the Julia Gillard one. And what's she done lately of interest? Nothing.

The first series of the New Australian Story, one which is not speciesist, can focus on a living things that everyone loves. Hero animals. Like the Australian Defence Force dogs that died serving their country in Afghanistan. Brendan Nelson can introduce one on Simpson's donkey.

Series two can deal with thespian pelicans.


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Trouble Brewing :

The circumstances of Rudd’s removal are a graphic exposure of the thoroughly worm-eaten character of both the Labor Party and the entire system of so-called parliamentary democracy in Australia. The Labor Party long ago ceased to be a mass political party in any meaningful sense of the word, but the depth and breadth of the gulf between it and the lives and concerns of the mass of ordinary people have never been so clearly demonstrated.

The leadership challenge was not decided by a move from the caucus but by a tiny handful of unknown factional bosses and union bureaucrats responding directly to the demands of powerful corporate and financial elites for a revamping of the government.

Not only did backbench MPs have no idea of the events on Wednesday evening, Cabinet members were in the dark as well. As one minister told the ABC: “I am sitting in my office watching all this unfold on TV. I have no part in this and no idea what’s going on. This is madness.”

Much has been made of the collapse in opinion poll support for Labor as the underlying reason for Rudd’s demise. But the opinion polls reflect more the impact of the media on popular consciousness than any genuine social or political movement. When key sections of the media and the corporate interests they represent backed Rudd, his opinion poll ratings reached record highs. Once he lost their confidence and their support was withdrawn, his opinion poll rating, and that of the Labor Party, fell accordingly.

The ousting of Rudd—the only time a Labor prime minister has been removed during his first term—was not carried out as a result of a movement of the working class, but by key sections of the financial and corporate elites.

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott knows a coup when he sees one :






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Wreckage

From this :



And this :



To this :



And this :



Homer Simpson :

"When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work."


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Haunting :

The Orstrahyun, always first with the Big News. From September, 2007 :


Gillard To Challenge Rudd For Leadership Of Labor Party




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How The Media Welcomed Julia Gillard, Prime Minister

A round-up of graphics from local and international online news sites announcing the results of the Australian Coup.

ABC News Online :



7News online :



CNN :



Daily Telegraph :



News.com.au :



Herald Sun :


News.com.au :

New York Times :




Sydney Morning Herald online :



And two particular favourites to close. The Illawara Mercury :



And Al Jazeera :



The Murdoch media decides it's okay, now the coup is over, to call it a coup :




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Peter Hartcher :

Kevin Rudd’s polling numbers were no worse than John Howard’s had been at the same point in the electoral cycle on several occasions before he went on to win.

Howard managed to rally his party, campaign and win. Rudd has not been given the same opportunity.

Rudd’s poll support fell brutally in April and May, but had stabilised. Two polls this week, a Newspoll and an Essential Media survey, put Labor ahead by 52 per cent to 48 on the election-deciding two-party share of the vote.

As the former national secretary of the Labor Party, Bob McMullan, told a caucus meeting on Tuesday, no government sitting on these polls numbers this close to an election had lost.

And no opposition leader as unpopular as Tony Abbott at this point in the cycle had gone on to win.

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