This morning we're hunting mankind's greatest foe - the yellow-fin tuna, or, as it's known around these parts, the Water Bastard. A boat has been hired; gear prepared; crew assembled; crack vials loaded.
We're ready.
The question is: are they?
UPDATE. The yellow fin still stalks the seas. None were caught, although several snapper were landed and a mako shark briefly detained. All captured seabeasts - about 50, including leatherjackets, pike, and some fish I'd never heard of called "sweep" - have since been eaten or donated to the hungry.
Salam Pax has been hunted down by The Guardian’s Rory McCarthy:
Screens cover the windows to keep the midday sun away from his three computers, each of which has been opened up into a sprawling tangle of wires and circuit boards. A poster from the film The Matrix hangs on the wall, looking down on a jumble of computer books and CDs strewn over the floor. Pages of website addresses and computer commands are tacked to the wall above his screen.
Salam himself will be writing for The Guardian from next week. To practice, he’s already contributing to Indymedia’s new Iraqi franchise. (Speaking of which, aren’t those Indykids meant to oppose globalisation?)
UPDATE. Jeff Jarvis writes that The Guardian’s story (billed as “Exclusive: The Baghdad blogger reveals all”) actually “says surprisingly little, tells us nothing new, does not dig into Salam's stories or opinions, and does not identify him”. Close followers of Salamythology may feel the same way. Jeff also spots a grave Guardian edit. By contrast, Ken Layne describes the piece as “really interesting” and notes: “Dead guys post no blogs.” Possibly, but what about the undead who blog amongst us?
The London Sun reports the arrest of a British soldier for abusing an Iraqi prisoner. This is the second such story the Sun has broken:
A British soldier has been arrested over sickening “torture” photos of an Iraqi prisoner.
They show a PoW dangling from a fork-lift truck.
Others allegedly depict soldiers committing sex acts near captured Iraqis.
The squaddie — in the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers — was seized after he took a roll of film to his local photo shop to be developed. Horrified lab workers called in police.
One snap showed an Iraqi PoW who was bound and gagged. He was bundled up in netting suspended from the a fork-lift driven by a British soldier.
It is believed the prisoner was alive when the pictures were taken in Southern Iraq as the war was raging.
"Sex acts"?
You expect this sort of thing from CNN and The New York Times, but not China Youth Daily:
A Chinese newspaper group has fired a reporter and suspended two editors over an article that said one in 10 female university students in a central city work as prostitutes, a manager at the paper said today.
The article about the city of Wuhan appeared on May 21 in Youth Reference, published by the China Youth Daily, one of the mainland's biggest newspapers.
It was reprinted by several newspapers in areas throughout the country.
Reporter Chen Jieren has been fired and two editors, Fan Yongsheng and Liang Ping, were suspended, said a manager in the newspaper's administration office in Beijing. She wouldn't give her name or other details.
The paper published an apology on May 23, saying its report "did not have any basis."
Michael Jennings writes:
You will be pleased to know that your site is blocked by the filters on the public internet terminals in Croydon public library in South London. It gives "Reason: hate speech".
I’d like to believe this story ...
For the truly smitten, there is Hummer camp, a sort of 21st-century dude ranch of mud-besotted excess more formally known as the Hummer Driving Academy. For three nights and two days last week, half a dozen students convened for a camp session, rambling over obstacle courses and roaring through 300 acres of muddy terrain thickly wooded with beech, white oak, cherry and shag-bark hickory trees in South Bend.
... but it’s from the New York Times.
Me in The Australian:
Fewer than 12 hours after Saddam Hussein's statue had been torn down and turned into a target for liberated Iraqi footwear, John Highfield, host of ABC radio's The World Today, went to air with this: "Well, dawn has broken over Baghdad, welcoming day one of the new freedom, but if this is liberty, then it's far from perfect."
Neither was France immediately after World War II. Or France now, for that matter. Highfield's misery was reflected throughout the ABC; the Bad Guys had triumphed, and poor Iraqi citizens would be forced out of their torture chambers and made to live in a democracy. Pity them. We all know how dull elections can be.
And Senator Richard Alston in The Age:
Despite Pentagon officials indicating that US troops had no choice but to defend themselves, Mottram proclaimed that: "The deaths undermine the Pentagon's claim that it's waging a compassionate war."
Reporter John Shovelan immediately followed with dripping sarcasm from Washington: "Oh, the civility of this US military. The daily Pentagon briefing begins with an illustration of its mercy and kindness."
Some lunatic armed with wooden stakes attacked several people aboard a Qantas flight. The passengers and crew didn’t much care for that:
The 40-year-old man stabbed two flight attendants and injured two other people before he was overpowered by crew and passengers aboard QF1737. He was in custody tonight.
Shocked passengers later hailed a 38-year-old male flight attendant as a hero for helping to subdue the attacker, while being stabbed in the head.
Several passengers helped restrain the would-be hijacker with plastic ties, bundling him between two seats before the flight returned to Melbourne and made an emergency landing, federal police said.
Good work.
Ooh, feedback and correctins! Keeping you honest, Tim.
Posted by: Amos at May 29, 2003 04:49 PM
Oh, feedbacks and correctings! Keeping you honest, Tim.
Posted by: Amos at May 29, 2003 04:50 PM
Oh, feed back and.. nevermind.
Posted by: Amos at May 29, 2003 04:50 PM
Bernard Slattery posted this on Sunday morning:
It's no good for Hollingworth to claim that he acted out of concern for the priest's family and parishioners. He has to go because he did not act according to today's standards. OK, if that's what the witch hunters want, let it be. But a little consistency please. And lets' start with Hollingworth's main accuser, Peter Beattie.
The next day Gareth Parker republished an e-mail sent to Slattery alleging that Beattie may have known of pedophile claims against Queensland ALP deputy Bill D'Arcy, to which Parker added a message to Simon Crean:
So now let us see you and the media turn your attention to the premier of Queensland.
And on Wednesday, all hell broke loose:
Pedophile allegations rocked ALP governments in Queensland and NSW yesterday, prompting accusations by Peter Beattie of a smear campaign by the Howard Government as payback for Labor's stand against Peter Hollingworth.
The Queensland Premier was forced to defend claims that in 1997 he protected former state MP Bill D'Arcy - a convicted pedophile - when he knew he was a child abuser.
The question is legitimate. Several journalists have noted in recent years that the activities of D’Arcy and Keith Wright were well known in Queensland, yet most were silent on the subject during Hollingworth’s incineration. Advantage: Slattery and Parker.
Education is neither a right nor a privilege nor, these days, an education:
Jesus Christ was gay because of the position of the planets at the time of his birth, a Brisbane academic says.
Rollan McCleary, who was awarded his doctorate today from the University of Queensland, also believes one and possibly three of Jesus's disciples were also gay.
Dr McCleary, who will launch a book on his findings next month, said today he based his opinions on St John's gospel and on Christ's astrological chart based around the date, place and time he was born.
The SMH’s report doesn’t include that Dr McCleary’s “findings” cost taxpayers $51,000. Maybe he needs the money to pay for healthcare after this tragic nude barbecue incident:
At 3pm on Sunday, 1st December, three protesters gathered to enjoy a nude barbecue under a shady tree in the Westfield picnic area at the northern end of Fairfield's Yarra Bend Park in Melbourne. Their peaceful act of civil disobedience served as a protest against the fact that it is a crime to be naked in public in Victoria. Two of the protesters, Rollan McCleary and Tony Pitman, stripped naked. The third man, Gary, remained clothed, but gave his support to the principle of the protest.
The tranquility of their afternoon picnic was shattered 15 minutes later, when about seven men approached the protesters bearing large pieces of wood. The men had broken away from a group of about 50 people attending a reunion of Italian "Alpini" (former soldiers who served in the "Alpini" division of the Italian army) who were having a barbecue about 80 metres away. Suddenly they launched a violent and frenzied assault on Rollan and Tony, first smashing the barbecue to send burning heat beads flying everywhere, then bashing the two naked men with pieces of wood as well as pieces of the broken barbecue. They also set about smashing the men's personal belongings, including a $4,000 video camera. The three protesters fled in terror and called the police once they had reached a safe distance.
How come astrologer McCleary wasn’t able to predict this? The stars tell him Jesus was gay, but don’t inform him of his impending beating. Some stars. More details of McCleary’s controversial discovery may be found here, along with shocking details of precisely which planet McCleary associates with the birth of Our Lord.
Journalism keeps interrupting my career as a sullen recluse. Got a call from The Australian today for 750 words on the ABC bias brawl, then had to get to the ABC itself by 5.30 for Richard Glover’s show. Other guests: the ABC’s Jennifer Byrne and the SMH’s Ross Gittins. Jennifer provided wine. “Now that you’ve tasted it,” said Ross, “you’re one of them.”
ABC bias was discussed. Glover, more centrist than most at the ABC, revealed that he’d received about an equal number of calls during the war denouncing him for being either a peacenik or a warmonger. The difference between the callers? The peaceniks were more violent and threatening. We online types get this a lot, and mostly ignore it, but Glover was plainly still upset at having been called a baby killer. Understandably.
Anyway, it was all fun, despite me calling for ABC budget cuts and labelling the whole place biased and wrong. Jennifer is charming and giggly, which made me regret that time I was in her house and tried to arrange the magnetic letters on her fridge to spell ABC TOXIC DEATH. And Gittins made several fine jokes, which means he is now disqualified from describing himself as an economist.
My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. Two grim-looking Agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was a "prime suspect'' in the case of a Federal Mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus. It was a Federal Offense, they said, and carried a five-year prison sentence.
"Oh no!" wailed my mother. "Not in prison! That's insane! He's only a child. How could he have known?"
"The warning is clearly printed on the Mailbox," said the agent in the gray suit. "He's old enough to read."
"Not necessarily," my father said sharply. "How do you know he's not blind, or a moron?"
"Are you a moron, son?" the agent asked me. "Are you blind? Were you just pretending to read that newspaper when we came in?" He pointed to the Louisville Courier-Journal on the couch.
"That was only the sports section," I told him. "I can't read the other stuff."
"See?" said my father. "I told you he was a moron."
Jim Treacher has a new Movable Type site featuring revolutionary “readable” technology. Try it - you can actually read his site! On the Internet!
The Sydney Morning Herald blames the police:
John Wai Keung Lau, the latest innocent victim of a high-speed police pursuit in NSW, didn't have a chance. Like too many others killed in similar circumstances, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The 48-year-old family man died in a head-on collision involving a utility whose driver police wanted to breath-test and who was being chased at speeds up to 110 kmh through residential streets.
It was a tragic outcome to a high-pressure decision all too often made by a police driver.
All the cop’s fault. Nothing to do with the guy they were chasing, of course. Who, it turns out, had given his pursuers the slip at the time of the fatal accident:
After another seven blocks, the patrol car was travelling at 110 kmh and the utility was pulling away. Past Hawksview Street, the patrol car got stuck behind a car which was overtaken by the utility. Police lost sight of their quarry. The utility continued north along Fowler, crossing Merrylands Road into residential Burnett Street.
Three blocks away, Mr Lau was on his way home after working as a chef in a Chinese restaurant. He drove his Nissan sedan around a curve, heading south along Burnett. Death was on him in an instant.
The driver, not the police, has been charged with manslaughter. The SMH clearly believes this to be an injustice.
When pleading for more funding, the ABC would do well to present the government with this example of its totally unbiased news coverage, from The 7.30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien:
The Federal Government's tough strategy to stop asylum seekers arriving on Australia's coastline has certainly worked. No boats have made the perilous journey in the past 18 months. Even those who have made it to Australia and survived the lengthy detention process to be recognised as refugees are only allowed a temporary three-year visa with limited access to social services.
Yep. That should do it. Meanwhile we await full details of Indira Naidoo’s salary, and some explanation as to where the poverty-stricken ABC found the pile of cash it is wasting on promotions for Andrew Denton’s show. Oh, and is Phillip Adams still pulling down an annual $120,000 for his four hours of weekly agitprop on Radio National?
Get on over to Tex’s place, currently dispensing undiluted, top-shelf wrath. Current highlights include stupid commie poetry:
Big Marxist book,
Wrapped around my cock,
Gives me a happy.
And a Discovery Channel Piranha Week-style skeletonising of Richard Neville (“less a writer than a flesh-covered mound of swirling madness”). The unifying theme, by the way: Matrix reviews. Seriously.
China wants its citizens to stop loogying up the place. Part of this anti-SARS campaign involves banning any knowledge of the spit activities enjoyed by China’s leaders:
If one tries to enter "spit" and "Deng Xiaoping" or "Jiang Zemin" into a Chinese computer search engine, the screen goes blank. Censors have apparently decided that Internet browsers should not go there.
Still no fresh garbage in The Mirror from John Pilger since April 5. Maybe he’s sulking over this reader Q&A with fellow Mirror columnist Sue Carroll:
Q: Your opinion of John Pilger please.
A: Dickhead. Next question?
The head of al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television station, will step down after criticism of its reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan and claims that it was infiltrated by Saddam Hussein's agents.
The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC could use the same excuse. I'd believe it.
Maureen Dowd has plagiarists beat; she’s writing so badly that none would dare copy her.
By rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties.
The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway.
Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos.
McGovern ran in ‘72; Clinton was President from ‘92 to 2000; the Lennon tune she references was released in ‘74. It’s all the sixties to Maureen. Whatever gets her through the intro.
As Joanne Jacobs notes, this week MoDo attempts to make up for earlier misquoting George W. Bush by publishing his entire comment on Al Qaeda. It only gets her in more trouble, as we’ll see:
"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.
By strict definition, to ”decimate” means to reduce by 10%. Even by a more flexible definition - to reduce substantially, let’s say - the Prez is accurate. It’s no contradiction to describe as decimated the forces behind the Riyadh attacks. The fact the attacks took place in Riyadh is actually evidence of decimation; Al Qaeda has lost its reach, as surely as Dowd has lost her touch.
Via Warliberal, warning that next Sunday in the US Noam Chomsky will expose himself to the angry opinions of actual live humans, as opposed to the scavenging collectivites who commonly attend his knowledge-removal seminars:
On Sunday, June 1, 2003 at 12 noon ET, IN DEPTH on Book TV, C-SPAN2's signature author interview program, features a three-hour LIVE conversation with philosopher, political activist and author Noam Chomsky.
As Warlib explains:
That's a call-in show, folks. A three-hour, live call-in show. Beginning noon, ET. Get your questions ready.
I want to know about his Audi. Good mileage, Noam? What tyre pressures you running? I hear they’re a little underpowered, those Audis. No? You beat a three-series BMW in a street race? Well, I take it back.
ABC News and Current Affairs czar Max Uechtritz is copping some belated heat for the bias revealed in this comment, uttered last year at a conference on war coverage:
"We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain -- death, taxes and the fact the military are lying bastards."
Unlike, say, certain New York Times writers. It was a mere throwaway line, Max insists, but the Bunyip’s powerful foreclaws have dug up the non-throwaway context in which Max’s remark was made. Go read.
(And read also the Bunyip’s item on Greenpeace battleaxe Anne Summers and her “sprout-fed squadrons of simpletons”. The Bunyip is ablaze!)
The Guardian’s computers must have switched to overload when this story hit the screens:
Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids.
The musician-turned activist said Washington was providing major assistance, in contrast to the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to the continent's humanitarian crises.
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.
The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."
Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."
He sure did. All of these, for starters. Another unlikely source also supports Bush:
Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration.
"Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said.
UPDATE. As Alan McCallum points out in comments, the ABC somehow missed the Bush angle.
Emerging mystified from a performance of modern dance at a Nato summit in Prague, Donald Rumsfeld told a reporter: "I'm from Chicago."
I got your hypocrisy right here:
NSW Premier Bob Carr today accused Liberal MP Charlie Lynn of abusing parliamentary privilege by alleging a government minister sexually assaulted a teenage boy, but said he would still refer the matter for investigation.
By “abusing Parliamentary privilege”, does Carr mean anything similar to his Labor pal Lindsay Tanner drawing attention to Peter Hollingworth’s rape case?
Mr Lynn last night told the NSW upper house he had documents relating to a police investigation of pedophilia allegations against a senior member of Mr Carr's cabinet.
Mr Carr told reporters he found the allegations extraordinary and incredible but would nonetheless ask the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) to investigate.
The alleged time of the incident - during the 1994-97 Wood royal commission into police - meant that three parliaments and two or three police commissioners had served since it was supposed to have occurred, Mr Carr said.
"And we heard of it for the first time last night," he said.
Astonishing! Yet the allegations against Hollingworth were nearly 40 years old, and that never halted his accusers. In fact, the truth or otherwise of the ancient charges didn’t bother them much at all. As the SMH reported:
The new allegations, regardless of their truth, are likely to fuel arguments that Dr Hollingworth is now so legally entangled in sex scandals dating from his previous career as to be unable to fulfil his role.
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin: John Pilger, Osama bin Laden, Jostein Gaarder, The Norwegian Federation for Animal Protection, Bjørn Stærk, Annika Sorenstam, Tiger Woods, Kevin Rudd, Amir Taheri, Christopher Hitchens, Nicole Kidman, Senator Lyn Allison, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Lance E. Brooks, and Philip Ruddock.
Letter writers remain delighted. You may send your own letter to The Bulletin by clicking here.
UPDATE. Brian Jones writes:
As was very patiently explained to me by a female correspondent, Sorenstam's playing in the PGA means she was playing UP into a better class of play, and therefore Tiger should not by rights be eligible for LPGA events.
No, only those male players who Sorenstam beat should be eligible for LPGA events.
Beats me how these things are decided, but the grey nurse is now officially the most loved shark in New South Wales:
Grey nurse sharks will be extinct in NSW within 40 years, a scientific report commissioned by the State Government has found, and its own protection measures are failing to stop the decline.
A two-year tagging program completed by NSW Fisheries has found the population has dwindled to as low as 300 and the research concluded the shark is close to dying out.
"This is a critically low level," the Fisheries Minister, Ian Macdonald, said.
"No one wants to see the state's most loved shark become extinct and if more protection can be given, we'll do it."
No bias at the ABC, oh no no no no no no:
Communications Minister Richard Alston yesterday escalated the Government's war with the ABC, questioning the journalistic ethics of news and current affairs chief Max Uechtritz and accusing the broadcaster of biased reporting on Iraq.
In a sign of the Government's increasing hostility, Senator Alston's office yesterday distributed a dossier to Canberra journalists, containing 16 examples of alleged anti-US reporting from ABC Radio during the Iraq conflict.
The dossier also contained background information about remarks made by Mr Uechtritz at a broadcasters' conference last September in Singapore.
"We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain - death, taxes and the fact that the military are lying bastards," Mr Uechtritz is reported to have said during a forum on war reporting in Afghanistan.
Mr Uechtritz yesterday described the minister's claims as "nonsense" and said his reported comment had been a "throwaway line", but Senator Alston said the remarks were cause for concern as Mr Uechtritz's attitude could have flavoured the ABC's news coverage.
The dossier of alleged examples is heavily critical of AM presenter Linda Mottram, instancing a series of reports in which the journalist referred to the US Government's "propaganda war" and described the death of three journalists as a "body blow" to the coalition's campaign that "undermined the Pentagon's claim that it is waging a compassionate war".
I’m working on a piece about the ABC’s war coverage, specifically its radio coverage. Should be available in a few weeks.
With 368 votes counted, Annalise Braakensiek leads by 15 over Barry Humphries and 33 over Tony. It’s looking good for Annalise, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
John Howard is working on a shortlist of candidates for governor-general that includes at least one woman, Government sources said last night.
Fact-free Phillip Adams today writes about Australia’s least-known, shortest-lived radio program - Radio National’s The Continuing Crisis, featuring me and Imre Salusinszky:
It might be an idea for Salusinszky to confess to readers that he has a conflict of interest when it comes to comment on the ABC in general and on RN in particular. He and his fellow traveller of the hard Right, Tim Blair, who left The Australian for The Bulletin earlier this year, sought employment at RN as a double act.
For just one hour a week, late on Friday nights. We were the sole non-commie presence at RN. As for “hard Right”, both Imre and I have voted for Labor, at state and federal levels, many times.
They were hired in a blaze of publicity to meet the Prime Minister's suggestion that the ABC needed a "right-wing Phillip Adams".
”Blaze of publicity”? Oh, please. Adams is hallucinating.
The duo hired Archbishop George Pell as a regular commentator and gave oodles of air time to fellow conservatives such as Clive Robertson, Peter Costello and P. J. O'Rourke.
Pell wasn’t “hired”; we didn't have Phil's budget. Pell was invited. And his commentary was restricted to sport; Pell was our Australian Football League tipster. Costello, O’Rourke, and Robertson each appeared only once, for about 15 minutes each time. We also gave "oodles of air time" to lefties and Laborites including Mark Latham, Kalle Lasn, Doug Cameron, Tanya Plibersek, and Catharine Lumby. The show's producer was a lefty.
Mistaking self-congratulation for wit, the program did attract an asterisk rating. (Well, two asterisks. One for Salusinszky, one for Blair.) When the program was not renewed, their campaign against the ABC in general – and RN and me in particular – escalated.
I’d love to know the actual ratings. We were never given any details, except that the ratings for our timeslot - 10pm to 11pm on Friday nights, not exactly prime time - had increased over whatever RN had run there previously.
When Blair and Salusinszky insist that nobody listens to RN, they mean, of course, that nobody listened to them. At last count, RN's audience was up 17 per cent – in the five mainland state capitals alone.
Maybe our show enjoyed an increase of that amount over the previous show. It wouldn’t have been difficult. In any case, RN never saw fit to tell us, despite repeated requests.
That takes the weekly audience to about 1 million listeners. To that should be added the 400,000 who tune in via the internet, hearing RN programs via the technology of audio streaming. Then a wide range of RN programs are rebroadcast by the ABC's international service, Radio Australia.
The grand total? Impossible to estimate but it could well exceed 2 million. Either way, even the local audiences are many times greater than 2GB's (580,000) or 2UE's (563,000).
Phil’s “1 million” figure accumulates the same people who listen to RN every day. Divide it by seven. Is he seriously claiming that 2UE and 2GB (local Sydney stations) are out-rated by Radio National? In the Sydney market, RN is 11th in station rankings and rates just a 2.5% market share, compared to GB’s 10.2 and UE’s 9.2. In Melbourne, RN is 13th with only 1.6%. In Brisbane, 2.3%. In Perth, 1.9%. Go here (and register) for more details.
The network Salusinszky holds in such contempt is highly valued by its audience. Of the 11,000 submissions received by the recent Mansfield inquiry into the ABC, 7000 came from RN listeners. As Bob Mansfield stated, on that basis RN seems to be the most appreciated of all ABC services – outranking even ABC TV.
I get more than 7000 hits every day. On that basis, RN seems to be appreciated by as many people who appreciate a free one-man website.
From Lateline:
TONY JONES: Today you have accused Dr Hollingworth of moral turpitiude. Do you know what that means?
SIMON CREAN: Yes, but this is was the test that the Prime Minister made and I simply asked this question, Tony ... in terms of someone who continues to protect a paedophile when they were in a position of authority where they should have referred that, that is not appropriate action. And that's --
TONY JONES: Simon Crean, it may not be appropriate action, but is it moral turpitude? That's what you've accused the Governor-General of. And I'll put the question again, do you know what moral turpitude means?
SIMON CREAN: The moral turpitude is the circumstances in which he failed to act and he should have acted.
TONY JONES: But do you know what it means?
SIMON CREAN: Tony, I the know what it means.
TONY JONES: I can spell it out. It means baseness, shameful depravity, wickedness. Do you really want to brand the Governor-General with those terms ... shameful, depravity, wickedness?
SIMON CREAN: But it's the moral failure to act in relation to what clearly were wicked acts, Tony. This is the point. Look, you can have the argument about the semantics, Tony, but I say this to you that the issue --
TONY JONES: Simon Crean, these are not semantics. These are English words you've levelled against the Governor-General, who is still holding that office. You've suggested that he's wicked, that he's behaved a depraved or shameful way.
Here’s some words that Crean might understand: Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party. Let’s see Simon “act in relation to what clearly were wicked acts”.
Kevin at Primary Main Objective reports a fire at his base that has destroyed the belongings of 29 soldiers and 12 Marines. You can see images of the damage here.
So donate, already! Kevin’s only asking for $5 from each reader, so send it in and put a smile on the face of the US Military-Industrial Complex. Lord knows you don’t want to piss it off. Ain’t that right, Saddam?
Clearly motivated by his strong early showing in this week’s poll, Barry Humphries has made a pre-emptive bid for the job of Governor-General.
Bali trial update:
Alleged Bali bomber Amrozi was forced for the first time yesterday to face Indonesian victims of the attacks -- and the only one he offered any sympathy to was a Muslim.
Didn’t Alison Broinowski tell us that the bombers only hated tourists?
Then take the time to read this fine article, which proves that sharp, informative and clever journalism still happens in the US. Here’s the intro:
In the past decade, the village of New Rome, Ohio, suffered a severe case of urban flight—46 percent of its residents packed up and moved away, according to the latest U.S. Census numbers. Folks familiar with New Rome and not fond of it may sanitize their explanations for this exodus, but in simple English it usually comes down to this: New Rome is a chickenshit town ...
Thomas Keneally, apparently urging a free and open society, writes:
We hope for a cultural future that matches that of which Mahatma Gandhi prescribed in a prescient foreshadowing of the role of global access by satellite and internet: "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible."
Bizarrely, Keneally’s preceding words in this piece mostly argue for exactly the opposite. He doesn’t want the cultures of all lands blown around his house; he wants to maintain market barriers, lest regional cultures be undermined. Hey, Tom; if it weren’t for globalisation of communications, you’d have never heard of Gandhi. And why are you tainting our local culture with the words of an outsider?
John Quiggin sends a note:
I was watching a current affairs segment on the poor showing the Victorian AFL clubs have made so far this season. They interviewed interstate fans including a little girl (maybe 6) supporter of the Lions (I think). They asked her who she most liked to see beaten, and she named Collingwood.
Asked why, she thought for a moment and said with a beatific smile: "Because ... I hate them".
I can’t remember the journalist responsible, but in the ‘70s one infamous match report began like this:
”Write something nice about Collingwood,” a toothless hag hissed at me as I arrived for yesterday’s game at Victoria Park.
Talk about your root causes. I’ve known nothing but hatred and spite my entire life. Now the haters are even trying to steal our spiritual heritage.
A new poll is up. Following is a brief outline of each candidate. Please read it before voting, as this poll is legally binding and will select the nation’s next Governor-General:
Gough Whitlam was fired from the Prime Ministership in 1975 but never let that harm his healthy self-image. Here is a 1/25th scale image of his head.
Helen Caldicott recently ran naked through San Francisco’s streets. Not decades ago, when this often-used publicity shot was taken. Recently. Think about that.
Steve Waugh has scored more than 10,000 Test runs and last year sent my mother a gift. Vote against him? I don’t think so.
John Pilger is a writer. Here he is relaxing in his living room.
Annalise Braakensiek, although known mostly for her work in fabric tensile analysis and tidal/sun interaction theories, also has attained considerable success in the fields of lightspeed reflection mapping and ... er ... ethnomusicology.
Barry Humphries once concealed a roast chicken and a bottle of champagne in a garbage bin, later to consume them in front of stunned onlookers. He has been preparing for this job for years.
Tony from the corner shop sometimes doesn’t wake up in time to open the shop for early-morning customers. He could do with some extra work to get him motivated.
David Marr is on unpaid leave from his newspaper job. He is campaigning under the slogan: “New Shoes For David”.
Every argument you'll ever need to counter SUV hysteria, all in the one article. Plus the economic wisdom of Arianna Huffington and SpongeBob compared. Bob wins.
Phillip Adams is deeply confused, as Andrew Bolt reveals:
The failings of this otherwise gifted and charming man go deeper, as I realised from one of his letters to me, in which he complained I'd got his history as a communist wrong.
"I was not a member of the Communist Party for 14 years," he snapped.
"Try 14 months. I joined that fine organisation when I was 16 and was expelled when I was 17."
I wondered how I'd got this so wrong, and soon discovered my mistake. As I wrote back, "I have no excuse -- I relied on a notoriously and wildly inaccurate source . . . Phillip Adams".
It was Phillip himself who'd written six years ago how he'd left the communists "after the crushing of the Prague Spring" in 1968, having joined "in 1954, at the ripe old age of 15".
So was Adams 15 or 16 when he joined? Did he leave after 14 months or 14 years? Where are my trousers? I need money for the bus. The government! Who keeps changing the television station? Did you steal my tablets?
John Howard says this:
"He has paid an extremely high price for that error of judgment."
And The Age hears this:
Resignation 'too high a price': PM
In quotes and all. Idiots. That’s via Gareth Parker, who also points to a fascinating letter at Bernie Slattery’s place. Go read. It’s about the Australian Labor Party, Peter Beattie, and hypocrisy.
They are roaring in from every direction: Adonises piloting Harleys, women draped over Kawasakis. One guy with arms the size of motorcycle tailpipes wears a cutoff shirt that modestly states, "I am the American dream."
At the New York Times, motorcycle tailpipes are obviously a standardised unit of measurement. Whatever happened to the NYT’s celebrated commitment to diversity?
Michael Moore’s site has been hacked. It’s the cyber equivalent of how Moore behaves in his documentaries.
In case a fix is quickly made, here’s the text that replaced Moore’s usual dreck:
Mr. Moore, your documentary "Bowling for Columbine" is fictitious, not factual. David Hardy's Truth About Bowling is simply damning. You deliberately deceive your viewers, who are only expecting a slightly biased factual report. Mr. Moore, my personal hope is that you publicly apologize, not for your ideas, but for dubbing your lies the truth.
Please see revoketheoscar.com.
Love always,
NHA Crew.
You can bet that Socialist Action or Marxism for Babies or whatever the hell they’re called aren't planning anything like this:
Hundreds of thousands of Moroccans carrying pictures of victims of a series of suicide bombings marched through Casablanca today to say "no to terrorism".
Marchers began their protest at the Farah Hotel, one of five targets in the nearly simultaneous attacks in the city on May 16 that left 31 bystanders dead and injured about a hundred others.
The Interior Ministry estimated the crowd for today's march at about 500,000.
Oppressors. This amounts to an implicit support of the Bush/Howard/Blair axis of oil. How dare they.
George W. Bush is under a concerted tribble attack. Do something, Kirk!
Asked last year if the liberation of East Timor may have been a root cause of anti-Australian terrorism - as a statement from Osama bin Laden asserted - John Pilger had this to say:
We can't believe that. We can't believe all these things we're being told.
Maybe he’ll believe it now:
Bali bombing co-ordinator Abdul Aziz (aka Imam Samudra) has cited 13 reasons for the fatal blast, singling Australia out for its role in a "conspiracy" to separate East Timor from Indonesia.
Aziz's 13 reasons are contained in a dossier or brief of evidence to be used at his upcoming terrorism trial.
The 33-year-old recounted the justifications during police confessions which form part of the 2000-page dossier.
In it he claims "Australia joined in separating East Timor from Indonesia" in an international conspiracy by followers of the Christian cross.
Pilger led that “conspiracy”. He might eventually learn that these people hate him as much as they hate Bush or Howard.
Oh, and Alison Broinowski (who believes that crude, insensitive Australians provoked the Bali attacks) might be surprised to read today’s Daily Telegraph, which reveals (no link) that Aziz kept a porn collection on his laptop. Such a devout person.
Take a look at the modern vast right-wing conspiracy. Blacks, seniors, Asians, gays, Jews, women, Italians, Canadians, even Australians are represented. And not an affirmative-action hire among them.
UPDATE. The cards foretell of Yobbo love.
The BBC will screen footage of British soldiers killed in Iraq, a decision condemned by London’s Sun:
Major Gen Ken Perkins, The Sun’s military adviser, said: "Once again BBC TV is plumbing the depths. It should be renamed the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation."
It already has, Major General.
The Bunyip needs a new home with the comments and the fast uploading and the working archives and the type that moves, but he’s paralysed by Blair-level computering skills. Throw some dollars at Andrea, Professor! She’ll fix everything.
Leading pork blogger Peter Kerr suggests a new pork slogan. And here’s Juan Gato, your international symbol of pork-chompin' goodness.
Governor-General Peter Hollingworth has resigned.
Blinding hypocrisy from Maureen Dowd:
It is paradoxical that the hawks were passionate about breeding idealism by bringing democracy to the Middle East, but are unconcerned about breeding cynicism by refusing to admit mistakes.
What was that about refusing to admit mistakes, Maureen?
Expect a few posts here on the Indianapolis 500, to be run early tomorrow Australian time. How can you not love an event where a driver who qualifies at an average speed of 223.609 mph complains that “it’s really frustrating to be that slow”?
If you ever get the chance, visit the fantastic Indy museum at the racetrack. I’ve been there twice. Today’s IRL cars might look like junk (well, the G-Force is kinda interesting, with those dihedral sidepods) but the Indy cars of yore (and even not so yore) are beautiful. The Indy museum is loaded with Millers. Man, I’d loot a Miller in a Baghdad minute.
Here’s the starting grid. Pick a winner. I’m going for Michael Andretti or Little Al, with whom I once shared an entertaining 30 minutes or so chatting about how damn devious Formula One bosses are. Despite multiple approaches (Williams among them) Al never landed an F1 drive.
UPDATE. Helio Castroneves picks Sarah Fisher to win; Fisher picks Little Al.
Gulf War syndrome does not exist, according to a report cited in the UK Telegraph.
Via MSNBC:
Police are hunting two men in Britain who have been trained as suicide bombers by al Qaeda, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
How, exactly, does one train a suicide bomber? (“Step one: strap explosives to body. Step two: explode”.) And who does the training? A suicide bomber veteran? Someone with experience?
The New York Times encounters actual conservative students, and can’t quite believe what it’s seeing:
The temptation, upon entering Charles Mitchell's dorm room at Bucknell University, is to assume that he's kidding. The doormat features a picture of Hillary Clinton and the injunction, ''Wipe Liberally.'' A vast American flag festooned in red, white and blue Christmas lights adorns one wall, along with a faded Reagan-Bush '84 poster and a small photograph of the cowboy-hatted Gipper himself. The sole concession to any interest outside right-wing politics is a wall hanging of an African jungle scene. ''My nod,'' says Mitchell, an intense 20-year-old history major, ''to multiculturalism.''
The rest of the piece details the crafty psy-ops machinations behind the student-conservative trend.
A US military intelligence team in Iraq has found a dozen French passports, and defence officials believe others were used by former Iraqi officials to flee the country, a news report said today.
The Sunday Telegraph’s Paul Pottinger - who has replaced the sub-trivial Leo Schofield - is a fine judge of tobacco-activist fashion. Here’s the dress to which he refers.
Morag Fraser praises Howell Raines for giving “a straight account of why he had favoured Jayson Blair” and asks why we all can’t be so decent in admitting our errors:
The NY Times case is instructive. Executive editor Howell Raines had to front a meeting of the journalists, some 375 or so of them who make up the editorial staff of what is now the most famous newspaper in the world. He had to explain how one of their colleagues, 27-year-old reporter Jayson Blair, could have got away with journalism's equivalent of fraud and professional treason - fabricating stories, quotations, sources and falsifying datelines over a four-year period ...
The reason? A failure of communication? Yes, admitted Howell Raines. Haughty, perhaps even arrogant management style? A possibility, and something to be addressed. Over-eagerness to give a young black journalist a chance in the first place and too many second chances? Yes.
It was a huge blow to the reputation of the 152-year-old newspaper. But the blow was taken on the front. Howell Raines gave a straight account of why he had favoured Jayson Blair. Agree or disagree, you could at least comprehend what he was about. You could also understand, from what he said, just how complex and historically fraught race relations in the US still are.
But the NYT (and Raines) at first denied that race was an issue; a meeting with staff was arranged partly because staff were unhappy that Raines hadn’t been sufficiently direct or clear on the Blair debacle. Fraser is spinning spin.
UPDATE. The Bunyip has more on the Mogog woman.
The woman who had sex with hundreds of men and then wrote about it is in Sydney for the writers' festival. Margaret Simons caught up with her.
Way to go, Margaret! How long did it take?
From the SMH:
Terrorism is increasing. Australians are more scared than ever. Yet the Government talks down the threats. Are politicians playing with our lives? Mark Riley reports.
Terrorism is decreasing. Australians, if crowd sizes are any measure, are less scared than ever. The government is aware of threats. Is Mark Riley playing with himself? Tim Blair reports.
The Dandy Warhols speak for the real people:
"In the '90s it would freak me out that no one would know the Beatles song Blackbird," explains Taylor-Taylor, not usually given to explanations of his lyrics. "Now I have much bigger things to worry about." Seconds later, he is describing George Bush as a "crazy, murdering sociopath who doesn't relate to real people".
A point not explored in this piece on the Hollingworth case is that Hollingworth and the Anglican Church are likely to seek costs from the law firm that represented Annie Jarmyn. Considering the number of lawyers involved on the Hollingworth side - ABC news radio reported yesterday that they couldn’t all fit on the same bench, or table, or whatever - these costs could be seriously good. I mean, seriously big. Yes, big is what I meant.
Andrew Bolt on the terrorist cause:
The past week of horrors -- with 15 suicide attacks in Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Morocco -- should prove to anyone with sense that such Islamic terrorists have no cause. They have nothing for us to discuss. No grievance worth apologising for. Nothing.
It says something of the intellectual poverty of so many of our universities' "experts" in the Middle East and Islam that few have better explained the nature of today's Islamic terrorism than did the half-educated mass murderer of Bali, Amrozi, last weekend.
When Amrozi himself explains he just wants Westerners "finished" for something as trivial as drinking in a bar on a Hindu island, or for being Jewish, then it's time to stop negotiating and start shooting.
At least they haven’t banned bacon.
(Via Tony the Teacher.)
The charming gentlefolk who bombed Bali were provoked by Australians’ beer-drinking boorishness and support for the US, according to something called Alison Broinowski:
"The Bali trials (of suspected bombers) have reinforced my view that Australia was the target. I don't say the tourists deserved their fate but, with hindsight, what happened to them is predictable."
Well, obviously. The delicate sensibilities of the bombers - thoughtful men, with highly developed notions of civility - must have been jolted by the sight of people drinking beer instead of, say, composing poetry.
According to Broinowski, beer-swilling ... is an insult likely to provoke violence when Australians hit the bars of some Asian countries. She quotes a syndicated Malaysian journalist, Rashid Rehman. After Bali, he described the targeted Sari Club as filthy and reeking of beer, sweat, drunken foreigners, and smoky air "jagged with Strine".
Turning it into a blazing, blood-drenched ruin was an improvement, I guess.
By 1993, even with the pro-Asia Keating government in power, an editorial writer in Singapore was calling Australians "lazy bums", not the intellectual equals of Asians. It is a theme echoed by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who in 2000 told Howard that Australia was a small country and should act like one.
This sounds boorish to me. But at least he isn’t a beer-drinker.
To top it off, we slavishly followed the US line. "Our assiduous support for the US line actually endangers more than protects us," she says. "A country that takes its foreign policy predigested (from Washington) invites contempt."
Let’s support Osama, like the Bali bombers do! Then everyone will love us.
Last week the Sydney Morning Herald's Mike Carlton wrote that George W. Bush believed al-Qaeda to be "not a problem any more". Like many others, he apparently got this inaccurate idea from Maureen Dowd.
This week Mike applauds Senator Robert Byrd:
Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, entered the US Senate in 1958, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, and at the age of 86 he is still there, the Dean of Congress. Snowy-haired and courtly, Byrd is an old-school Democrat in direct descent from Roosevelt's New Dealers, though no Ivy League patrician. He was raised by an aunt and uncle on the West Virginia coalfields in the Depression. He welded Liberty ships during World War II and, after that, put himself through law school in his first term in the Senate.
This admirable background stands in splendid contrast to the slippery neo-conservative spivs and silver-spooners who infest the Republican Administration of George W. Bush.
Notice anything Carlton has omitted from Byrd's "admirable background"? Like, perhaps, that Byrd is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, who once vowed that he'd never fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds"?
Over to you, Media Watch. You missed Carlton's error last week. Catch him this time.
Himself wins! By the narrowest of margins (156 votes over 155 for "Evil Amerikkka" at the time of posting) the BlairPoll™ predicted that today's Phillip Adams column would be about Phillip Adams - and so it proved. Count the references to "I', "me", and "my" mixed in with his self-serving story of a young Aboriginal woman speaking at a conference Phil attended. Some highlights:
I want to tell you about an experience ...
It was my job to deliver a keynote address ...
I attend a lot of conferences like this ...
I was impressed ...
Several other conference speakers aren’t even named. Congratulations, Phil.
The suicide bombers who attacked Casablanca have caused movie makers to halt a $200 million film deal in a Muslim country - and transfer the whole operation to evil Australia.
The Melbourne Age today reviews Beavis and Butt-head, apparently unaware that the final episode went to air six years ago. In next week's Age: Should Murphy Brown have a child out of wedlock?
How do you improve dull wire copy? You add pictures. I learned this old trick when I worked on newspapers.
Rape charges against the Governor-General have been withdrawn. And he isn't quitting - not yet, anyway - despite the braying of Simon Crean.
The UN is back, and it's better than ever!
The new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq approved today showed the world body "is back", French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said.
Speaking on state-run France Inter radio before the vote, he said: "We can consider that the UN is back, and at bottom that is now the key issue: to make sure that the UN can resume its place" in the handling of the Iraq crisis.
"We are convinced that the UN alone is capable of bringing its legitimacy, experience and effectiveness on the ground," he noted.
Dominique should have expressed these noble thoughts in verse:
Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, has written an 800-page book about poetry, including examples of his own work.
Here is an extract from his preface: "This eulogy owes nothing to artifice or chance. It has ripened inside me since childhood. From the bottom of my pockets, stuck to the back of my smock, hidden in the corner of abacuses, poetry gushed out …"
Maybe not. Smock-wearing poem gusher.
After reading this, I just had to go buy a Treacher t-shirt from Honest Jim's House of Items:
Tim's alright, you know. I don't always get what he's talking about, with all the stuff about Aussie politicians and TV shows nobody in the civilized world has ever heard of, but he's good with the zingers. Seems like most of the people who really hate him have no discernible sense of humor, so I think it's less of a left/right thing than a stick/no-stick-up-the-ass thing.
And if I was a woman or a homo or just really really blitzed, I'd probly do 'im. Fortunately for him, I am none of those things at the time of this writing.
Jim's alright, too. I just never want to share a prison cell with him. Oh, here's the shirt. Buy one for that special person in your life and hear her exclaim: "What the hell?!"
Learn about Australian politics the easy Tok Pisin way via the ABC's Papua New Guinean news service! Here's the latest on Australia Praim Minista John Howard and his Foren Minista Alexander Downer, who recently asked Robert Mugabe to step daun. Zimbabwe bilongs to ol the pipal!
The San Antonio Express-News got the ball rolling on the whole Jayson Blair affair. As Mark Harden reports, however, it has since done everything in its power to stop that crazy ball:
In a preemptive bid to cut off discussion of the pernicious influence of racial preferences which was brought to wider attention as a result of the scandal, local writers from Clack ("Don't put other journalists in same boat as Blackbeard Blair"), to Rangel ("Big Apple's bad apple must not ruin march toward diversity") to Fletcher Stoeltje ("New York Times' shame is about human nature, not diversity") have rushed to toss a blanket over the elephant in our living room.
Mark has all the links. Go read.
Acidman's Blog Survivor contest has me in its hostile, unblinking gaze. Will I survive? Nobody knows!
The A-man might be on to something here. Blog-related reality shows could be the Next Big Thing. Marry a Blogger, for example, with various babes competing for the right to support the posting habits of a semi-employed blogging spouse. Big Blogger, in which several bloggers post at the same site while an unseen tormentor randomly changes their sign-ins. And Weakest Link, a study of weblog spelling errors that lead to Error 404 pages. Hey, I'd watch!
Remember how the residents of Moab were furious that a bomb was named after their town? Well, imagine how the people who live here must feel.
UPDATE. Reader Andy D. writes:
Never mind how the town feels about the journalist; how must the journalist feel about the town? This place is an overwhelming affront to everything he stands for! I mean, how does a population of 361 manage to support not one but TWO Lutheran churches!? This is an outrageous example of homogenised monotheocentrism! Why are these people not embracing multiculturalism and theological diversity? It's appalling!
In a good and perfect world, John would be spinning in his grave over this.
Nicole Kidman without a few grams of tobacco between her fingers = Australia's favourite actress. Nicole Kidman with = horror monster baby-eater outcast freak beast:
Her face has graced the covers of hundreds of fashion magazines worldwide and she is regularly voted one of the most beautiful women.
But the world glimpsed uglier images of Nicole Kidman at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday when she smoked her way through an international press conference.
THE JOHN KAMPFNER debate continues. Now Tim Dunlop - an early doubter of the Lynch rescue story - adds this furious condemnation:
I must say, the BBC guy doesn't sound all that convincing.
Whoa! Don't hold back, dude!
ONE DAY after the national president of the public sector union died of a brain aneurism, a colleague offers this tribute:
"He had a big friendly smile and a good brain."
JOHN HOWARD'S AUSTRALIA is supposed to be a cruel place, rejecting innocent refugees and beating up on little Afghan children. Yeah, sure:
Two members of the Indonesian terrorist group responsible for the Bali bombings have been granted permanent residency after claiming religious and political asylum in Australia.
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation reveal 10 members of Jemaah Islamiah were refused protection visas by the Refugee Review Tribunal, but two men were later granted residency.
Both of the successful applicants, who claimed persecution on the basis of their membership of JI, are believed to be Indonesian-born and have been free to travel in and out of Australia.
Yay. Freedom.
THE US House of Reps awards a $2 million military contract - to the French! From Wyeth Wire:
WASHINGTON - U.S Representative Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) today announced that the House Defense Authorization bill contains nearly $2 million for a Michelin facility in the upstate area to assemble tires for the Marine Corps' Land Attack Vehicles (LAV). The House is scheduled to pass the annual Defense Authorization bill later this week and the funding is expected to be formally appropriated later this year.
UPDATE. An ex-Michelin employee writes:
Don't go to a liberal slanted blog for your information. Yes, technically, Michelin is French (although they've moved the "corporation" to Switzerland for obvious tax reasons).
But: Michelin has plants all over the South East U.S. (especially concentrated in South Carolina, and in Jim DeMint's district). These tires will be made in the U.S., the tire molds will be made in the US, and the rubber, steel and fibers will all also made in the US.
In fact, these tires were probably designed in the US (The Greenville, SC area also has the North American R&D facility.
The profits may benefit to Michelin shareholders (and that won't be significant in this "almost commodity business), but very little to the French government or government run business.
BTW - Almost all the top jobs in Michelin North America are held by North Americans (A few that I know personally are US Military Academy, West Point, grads).
And from Maureen:
Actually, I regard that piddling $2 million contract as an insult to the French. Last year the US spent $518 billion on the military (not counting intelligence operations), and I'm sure it's much higher this year and will be higher still next year. Add to that the fact that, while the tiny award went to a French-owned company, the work will be done in the US, so US workers at the tire plant will reap some benefit and the facility's local government will take in some tax revenue. It's sort of like leaving a penny tip to punish a bad restaurant experience, and I hope the Pentagon keeps it up whilst awarding juicy contracts to our friends.
HMMM. According to Four Corners' account of conditions inside the Woomera Detention Centre, a "19-year-old Afghan" threw himself into razor wire. The Bunyip has evidence that suggests the "Afghan" was actually a member of the Baktiyari family - who were refused visas because they are Pakistanis rather than Afghans.
Was the man featured in the program the same chap shown here? I didn't see the show. Anyone who did is welcome to compare and correspond.
(Another point: one of the more antagonistic former Woomera staff members interviewed on the show "was soon given the sack over another matter." Four Corners provided no additional information. Curious.)
JENNIFER LOPEZ has found a studly new boypal. Will Matt Welch's father audition for a lookalike role? Maybe I should; I've got this guy's look completely down.
ANTI-AUSTRALIAN brutality in New Jersey. Several emus killed.
JAPAN
adopts the Howard position.
THE AUSTRALIAN states it plainly:
The ABC is falling short of the duty, stated clearly in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act and reiterated in the ABC's own code of practice, to present news and analysis that is accurate, impartial, and balanced.
ACTUALLY, the ABC isn't presenting any news at all. Richard Glover just announced on ABC radio: "Due to industrial action there will be no 6pm news." Your taxes not at work.
IT'S THE MOST BORING INTERNET QUIZ EVER! Are the following lines from The Dullest Blog In The World or from South Australian leftist academic Gary Sauer-Thompson?
Test your dullness-guessing abilities! (Answers may be found a couple of posts below):
1. I have a number of objects in my house.
2. I sat outside on the balcony this morning.
3. I've been thinking about the Howard Government's third term reform agenda.
4. As I was looking around my house I noticed that there were a number of empty glasses.
5. I cannot figure out the digital Swedish washing machine.
6. I'm still catching up with the reading of the newspapers.
7. I came home and needed to open the front door to get into the house.
8. I was having breakfast and doing the washing this morning.
9. I was doing some things and noticed that it was nearly time for something to eat.
10. I noticed that there were a few things lying around here and there.
11. I left the room and walked past the ironing board.
12. I had breakfast in the early morning autumn sunshine.
13. I ate one or two biscuits this evening.
14. I'm slowly getting around to reading the weekend newspapers.
15. I looked at the internet for a while.
16. I have been trying to get connected to broadband this week.
17. I have become a little tired of the war with Iraq and I wanted a break from it for a moment.
18. I logged onto the internet and thought about posting something on my blog.
19. Whilst on holiday I missed out on a lot of reading of newspapers.
20. I have not been following events in the Middle East since the fall of Baghdad due to renovations.
21. I read a few articles from one section of the newspaper.
22. Whilst surfing the internet I happened upon a page which had a number of links on it.
23. I have been wandering in cyberspace late at night.
24. Today I logged onto the internet.
25. I have been trying to get connected to Broadband today.
26. Whilst walking along I noticed that there were some cars driving along the road.
27. I went into a cafe the other day.
28. I did not see any television whilst on holiday.
29. I did some washing up this evening.
30. I have realized that Tim Blair has no pity or compassion for the vulnerable and the fragile.
UPDATE. Gary gets into the spirit of things.
NICOLE KIDMAN smokes. It's unheard of - an actress, smoking! And in front of the impressionable, non-smoking French! Right Thinking salutes the brave Australian, and Moxiegirl contributes grade-A commentary. Will Nicole's tragic nicotine habit bankrupt her? Not likely; she's the only "solo self-made woman" in this year's list of the 200 richest Australians.
WOMEN PLAYING golf with men? Unthinkable, says feminist Pat O'Shane:
While Sorenstam is good, she could never be as good as Tiger Woods, however we construct society. And why she - or any other female - would want to compete in a male event in any power sport is beyond my understanding.
Maybe she just wants to see how good she really is. Meanwhile Steven Den Beste posts on women competing in power sports of a massively higher order.
Boring Quiz answers:
1 - Dullest Blog in the World
2 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
3 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
4 - Dullest Blog in the World
5 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
6 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
7 - Dullest Blog in the World
8 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
9 - Dullest Blog in the World
10 - Dullest Blog in the World
11 - Dullest Blog in the World
12 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
13 - Dullest Blog in the World
14 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
15 - Dullest Blog in the World
16 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
17 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
18 - Dullest Blog in the World
19 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
20 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
21 - Dullest Blog in the World
22 - Dullest Blog in the World
23 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
24 - Dullest Blog in the World
25 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
26 - Dullest Blog in the World
27 - Dullest Blog in the World
28 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
29 - Dullest Blog in the World
30 - Gary Sauer-Thompson
JOHN HOWARD says yes to dope - with certain conditions.
INVEST in earplugs! The shrieking over this will deafen millions:
Australia has been approached to provide bases for US forces and combat and reconnaissance aircraft as part of a bold plan to bolster the war on terror in southeast Asia.
The US approach is also understood to be related to concerns in Washington over threats to Indonesia's stability from fundamentalist Islamist groups and separatist movements, such as in Aceh.
THE AGE reprints a UK Sunday Telegraph piece on the non-deadly nature of passive smoking. Watch the letters pages, er, light up.
READER R.H. Hardin writes regarding my regretted suggestion (scroll down) that people donate to the Red Cross in the wake of the Bali bombing:
I can't believe you ever recommended a large organization.
First, there's Hannah Arendt's observation that goodness that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil. You could gloss it that actual good takes a lot of work and actual knowledge of individual cases. The rest is feel-good make-work.
I know he's right. But from Chuck Simmons, a compelling Red Cross defence:
I've spent a career as an accountant for not-for-profit organizations in the United States. What I see is 2.7% of donations being spent on administrative expenses, not unusually high. Indeed, here in the U.S., it would be fairly outstanding. Some charities and not-for-profits operate with 60-70% overhead a
