Sleepy Time

Former John Howard staffer Gerard Henderson confirms he is Australia's most boring columnist, and is keeping himself busy pumping the mythology of his old boss :

No doubt about it. Nine months after the Coalition's devastating election loss, John Howard is looking better. Likewise Peter Costello. So much so that the former prime minister did not seem out of place among political leaders at the Olympic swimming events on Sunday.

...the Howard/Costello legacy seems stronger today than it did on election night.

Stop it, Gerry. Your tongue cannot get any browner, no matter how long or deep you lick.

Police Say "Thank God" Youth Are Throwing Down Illegal Drugs Instead Of Alcohol



The day after the world's biggest Ecstasy bust goes down in Australia, this story appears with some fascinating insights on how police in one alcohol-soaked trouble spot regard the drug and its use by youth :

If it was not for the prevalence of ecstasy in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, understaffed police say they would struggle to cope with the drunken violence.

"We're at the point where we're saying thank God 80 per cent of them are using an illegal drug rather than alcohol, even though in 10 years they'll be suffering manic depressive disorders," the officer said.

"But we just couldn't deal with that many people affected by alcohol."

Drug Arm national communications manager Josie Loth said it was well known that illicit drugs such as ecstasy were much more prevalent in the Valley than other parts of Brisbane.

She said although ecstasy was a stimulant it tended to relax people but alcohol had the opposite effect. "When certain people drink . . . it brings out more of a violent tendency, often leading to problems," Ms Loth said.

Australian Medical Association Emergency Department spokeswoman Alex Markwell said alcohol definitely contributed to a lot more injuries than drugs.

"Young men especially can become aggressive on alcohol and get involved in fights and assaults," she said.

"If people didn't drink we wouldn't see anywhere near as many patients as we do."

It's not all good news on the E, however. As police and health officials point out, the long-term effects of Ecstasy are as damaging as binge-drinking :

"The big thing a lot of us feel is that one of the most dangerous and insidious things about 'e' (ecstasy) is that most young people think it's not hurting them but every time they use it, it's hurting them a little," the officer said.

"We deal with them all the time; these kids who are now 30 or 40 who are suffering serious mental health problems as a result of their drug use in their 20s. Often it ends in suicide."

It's so very, very rare that we hear police talking honestly about drug use in society. We need more of it.



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here

Study : 1 In 3 Doctors Would Abandon Patients During Bird Flu Pandemic

It's a fascinating question of ethics in a debate that has barely begun : You're a GP, there's a bird flu pandemic unfolding, the deadly virus is as easy to catch as normal flu and the dead are piling up. Would you stay and continue to treat the sick and the dying, or would you do a runner to save yourself, and your family from infection?

According to this story, 1/3 of doctors surveyed answered they would place their own health and safety above that of their patients in the event of a bird flu pandemic :

While health experts continue to warn the world remains ill-prepared for a global outbreak, mass absenteeism of doctors has emerged as the latest threat that might exacerbate a crisis.

Researchers who interviewed GPs about how they would cope with a global outbreak were surprised to find nearly one-third "felt that their responsibility to themselves to stay healthy and to protect their families outweighed their responsibility to continue working".

Independent ethics expert Paul Komesaroff, director of the Monash Centre for the Study of Ethics in Medicine and Society, and ethics convenor for the Royal Australian College of Physicians, says there is no ethical obligation on doctors to put themselves in harm's way while doing their job.

"However, it's also part of the tradition of medicine that people in fact do that," Professor Komesaroff said.

How doctors and hospital staff react, and act, during a bird flu pandemic is a subject I'm planning to explore in some of the short stories I'm writing that will form the prequel to ED Day : Dead Sydney novel, the online novel I finished a few months ago about a bird flu pandemic that kills millions of Australians.

Doctors may have ethics, but they're still human, and many have families. The flight response to get the hell away from an infected city as quickly as possible would be all but impossible to resist.

Indonesia : 13 Adults, Children Hospitalised, Quarantined With Suspected Bird Flu Symptoms

UPDATE : 13 Indonesian Villagers Cleared Of Bird Flu Virus Infection

Surveillance Camera Policing Leads To Wrongful Arrest Of Two Innocent Men For Rape, Graffiti

Have you ever watched the news and seen photos or video from surveillance cameras released by police of a suspected criminal and wondered what it must feel like to see your own face on the screen, knowing you are innocent?

The right thing to do would be to go to the local police station and try to have the mistaken identity situation cleared up. Right?

Or perhaps not :

A man who was wrongly accused of being Sydney's buck-toothed rapist and locked up for more than 24 hours is demanding a public apology from police to restore his reputation.

The Supreme Court ordered that Joey de Mesa be released from custody late on Sunday after DNA evidence cleared him of any involvement in a string of rapes in Sydney's west.

Mr de Mesa, 23, had gone to Mt Druitt police after family and friends saw CCTV footage of him at Blacktown railway station on the news on Saturday night.

However, instead of clearing his name, police immediately arrested the Minchinbury man and charged him with 11 counts relating to the sex attacks.

It was 24 hours before the Supreme Court order, based on DNA, came to set him free.

Mr de Mesa said that after his court appearance on Sunday, during which he was told that as someone charged with rape he was not eligible for bail, he began to doubt his own sanity.

Here's another failure of surveillance cameras being relied on to do the hard yards of police investigative work :

Innocent 18-year-old Tim Lynden was humiliated and distressed after being fingered by Castle Hill RSL Club, which wrongly identified him on security vision and gave his details to police.

The confusion arose when Tim was innocently captured on camera in April but police only realised after his arrest that the criminal was also on the tape and he had a different coloured afro and different clothing.

...the false accusations resulted in Tim being dramatically evicted from a friend's birthday party at the club in full view of other guests.

Keen to clear up the confusion, Tim volunteered to go to Castle Hill police station on May 16 but to his shock he was arrested, stripped of his belongings, read his rights and locked up.

Police said Tim could apply to have his arrest record expunged.

This is what they got for doing the right thing - a day and a night in the cells, public humiliation, a court appearance and then a battle to clear their names. Kinda freaky.

"Wheezing, Collapsing Shoppers In Aisle 2, Ron..."

It's like the opening scenes of a zombies-by-plague horror movie :

Thousands of people were evacuated from a major shopping centre on the Gold Coast yesterday after dozens of shoppers and workers were struck down by a mystery illness.

Helensvale's Westfield shopping centre, one of the Gold Coast's biggest, was locked down just three weeks after the city council's main administration centre was brought to its knees in a similar scare.

Yesterday's drama started about 11am when staff at Westfield's Commonwealth Bank branch reported feeling discomfort and difficulty breathing.

The bank was evacuated by 11.30am and 14 staff members were treated with oxygen after reporting symptoms including shortness of breath and dryness in the airways.

Two were taken to hospital suffering respiratory problems.

Emergency services personnel initially thought the scare was limited to just the bank, but as the day progressed more people were struck down.

After treating almost a dozen more people, emergency workers shut down the northern half of the shopping centre about 3pm before issuing a complete lock-down.

Firefighters and QFRS scientific officers conducted regular air quality tests to determine what was affecting the patients and Brisbane's hazardous materials unit was also called in, but late yesterday the cause of the outbreak was still unknown.

Rudd To Australia : Think Long Term, And By The Way, We're Going Down...

Kevin Rudd spells out why Whitey World Domination is coming to an end, with varying degrees of doomosity :

Australia is facing some complex, long-term challenges that go to the heart of the nation's prosperity and security in the changing world of the 21st century. These challenges don't have easy solutions. If we're going to tackle them successfully, we must have thoughtful, robust debate and exchange of ideas.

As we saw at the 2020 Summit in April, Australians are genuinely interested in new ideas for our future. Australians are not much interested in the old battlelines of yesterday's ideological wars. Watching the traditional Right and Left in today's policy debates sometimes reminds you of seeing your kid trying to put on last year's jumper only to realise it no longer fits. The old Right and Left thinking is often an ideological straitjacket.

Well that's just great. I put in an order on Monday for 100 official Proud To Be An Evil Pagan Lefty t-shirts. It might not be too late to change the order to straightjackets.

The solutions to today's challenges on productivity growth, on welfare reform, on indigenous policy, on workforce participation and on climate change won't come out of conventional Right or Left paradigms. The solutions will come from people willing to challenge the false choices of the old paradigms that said that our only options are heavy-handed regulation or unrestrained market forces.

What does Rudd stand for? Boring, but necessary stuff.

Can't he falsely accuse Muslims of destroying Australian culture while he's at it to spice things up a bit and distract us from the fact that millions of Australians got suckered into becoming life-long debt slaves?

No.

The Australian Government sees itself as being at the reforming centre of Australian politics. We believe unapologetically in the power of market forces as the most efficient and effective means of generating economic prosperity. Just as we also believe in the public goods that constitute the pre-conditions for a market economy to perform efficiently and effectively.

We also recognise that markets fail. As a matter of general principle we believe in using market mechanisms and incentives to design innovative approaches to these long-term challenges. We also believe in a compassionate society that endeavours to pick up those who have fallen down, and help them back on to their feet. Not through the episodic acts of private philanthropic endeavour, but through the actions of society through the state. Always, however, with an open mind as to the agency through which a compassionate society should act.

That is why we explicitly reject Hayek's view that society has no obligation to others who are unknown to us and his preparedness to allow fundamental social institutions such as the family to fend entirely for themselves against unrestrained market forces. That is why, for example, we have a different approach to industrial relations, because we believe families need certain fundamental protections in the workplace.

This broadly is the philosophical framework we bring to government: recognising the power of markets but recognising equally the limitations of markets.

The most productive intellectual and policy debates today often lie at the intersection between market failures and market mechanisms. And the challenges of policy innovation and solving complex problems often arise from the nuts-and-bolts questions, such as how we design markets that harness the innovative potential of market incentives that operate transparently with informed and empowered consumers and that are supported by the most appropriate provision of public goods, while intervening where necessary when markets fail.

That is why the Government is building a stronger, fairer, and more secure Australia to help meet the needs of families and to see Australia through.

From the day we came to government, we had to make a choice between two paths for Australia's future. Would we take the easy path of business as usual, hoping that the good times of recent years would just roll on? Or would we take the harder path and take on the big challenges, putting the long-term interests of Australia ahead of short-term politics?

We are determined to take the latter path. We know that will often make things tougher for the Government. But it's why we're here. Not power for its own sake, but to prepare Australia for the challenges of a new century, a century in which the Anglosphere that dominated the past two hundred years is unlikely to remain in ascendant.

NSW Government In Search Of Teenage Spies

The Iemma government continues its privatisation of policing duties. The Liberal opposition is right, this stinks of entrapment :

A team of young government spies will be dispatched across Sydney to "test" whether pubs and clubs are checking IDs before letting punters gamble.

The NSW State Government has called for tenders from research firms to provide a group of 18- and 19-year-olds to be sent to pubs, clubs and Star City Casino in the next six months.

Under the plan, the latest left-field idea from the Iemma government, the group will report the number of times they were asked for identification while gambling across Sydney.

The team, expected to include as many as 15 young adults, will also be deployed to TABs and bookmakers.

Will Australia Cop A Worse Hammering In The 'Economic Tsunami' Than The US?

Capitalism and the free market are great and wonderful things....until it all goes very, very wrong. And who pays for the 'mistakes' of the world's central bankers and the fetid greed of speculators?

Well, not the bank directors and CEOs. They get bonuses....well, they got their bonuses before it all went tits up, didn't they? They always do. The working poor will pay instead, as they always do. And the central bankers will all look you right in the eye and swear they didn't see any of this coming :

The world's financial storm has swept through Australia and New Zealand this week amid mounting signs of contagion across the Pacific region.

Gabriel Stein, from Lombard Street Research, said Australia could prove vulnerable once the global commodity cycle turns down. It has racked up a current account deficit of 6.2pc of GDP despite enjoying a coal, wheat, and metals boom, effectively spending its resources bonanza in advance. Household debt has reached 177pc of GDP, almost a world record.

"It is amazing that in the midst of the biggest commodity boom ever seen they have still been unable to get a current account surplus. They have been living beyond their means for 10 years. What worries me is that productivity growth has been very low: they have coasting after their reforms in the 1990s," he said.

What happened to us all being Relaxed & Comfortable? How could Peter Costello, 'Australia's Greatest Living Treasurer', not have prepared and insulated the nation from this chaos and misery? And how will the Rudd government stop the destruction spreading further?

Australia's Reserve Bank has had to grapple with vast inflows of Asian capital, especially Japanese money fleeing near zero rates at home. Short of imposing currency controls, it would have been almost impossible to stop the inflows.

"The easy money went straight into real estate," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

"Australia will now have to generate 4pc of GDP to meet payments to foreign holders of its assets," he said. This is twice as high as the burden faced by the US.

Both the Australian and New Zealand dollars have fallen hard in recent days and now appear to be breaking down through key technical support against major currencies, including the US dollar. "The Aussie (dollar) is going down, big time," said Mr Redeker.

UPDATE : Writer Mike Whitney - who managed to predict the economic apocalypse now destroying American families and sending double-shift working men and women to the food banks, all back when the Wall Street Journal was still trumpeting 'We're All Rich! Say Yes To Everything! Max Out Another Credit Card!' - explains why the National Australia Bank's massive billion-plus write-downs this week are set to cause further panic on Wall Street :

We are now way beyond sub-prime. NAB says that it is suffering a 55 per cent loss on American housing loans – an event that has never happened in the history of a developed country in recent memory. This is an unprecedented event and means that the cost of bailing out the US financial system is now far beyond the highest estimates. A US recession is now locked in, but more alarmingly, 55 per cent loan losses point to the possibility of a depression.

It means the cost of bailing out housing exposures to the two mortgage insurers will be so great that it will leave no room to bail out anything else and there are several US banks that are now in big trouble. NAB says that the dislocation in the residential market is separate from the corporate market, but the flow on is inevitable." (The Business Spectator,"NAB will shock Wall Street")

The conduits are off-balance sheets operations run by the banks which contain hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds which are now essentially worthless.

So far, many of the banks have not accurately reported the losses from these operations hoping that the housing market will stabilize and the value of the bonds will rebound.

The action taken by the National Australia Bank is a "game-changer"; it's like the Grim Reaper swooping down on Wall Street and lopping-off the top of every big investment bank in downtown Manhattan.

Bizarrely, if the Great Central Bankers Swindle continues, and interest rates do not begin to fall soon, those without mortgage and credit card debt will be regarded as wealthy in comparison to millions of fucked over debt slaves, who really believed the lie that always seems to work at least once in every generation : You Can Have It All, And You Can Have It All Now.

In the words of Johnny Rotten : "Do You Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?"

It's never too soon to start growing some of your own food, in whatever space you have available. You know, just in case.

Married For 65 Years, They Died On The Same Day

When you read or hear stories like this, it's easy to wonder that as you can will yourself to live on, sometimes through horrendous pain and misery and torment, can you also will yourself to die, when you've had enough?

Or when you lose your life-long love, as in this case?

Marie and Frank Cotton studied dentistry together, when she, the shining star of her year at Sydney University, tutored him. They married, raised a family after he returned from war, and set up a dental surgery together. They played tennis and built a court and gardens together.

In later life the Cottons had moved to a retirement village at Baulkham Hills, where they were together until Marie, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, went to a nearby nursing home three years ago. Frank joined her after a heart attack in March.

Determined to stay alive while she clung to life, he recovered enough to care for her. Marie was moved into Frank's room on Sunday night. She died early on Monday. He said he just wanted to grieve, then die.

He had a heart attack a few hours later...

You don't have to be religious to believe that Marie and Frank are together now, somewhere.

Awesome

I knew absolutely nothing about this brilliant Australian short film before I watched it. And that's the best way to see it. So here it is :




'I Love Sarah Jane' was written and directed by Australian movie-maker Spencer Susser, and is playing at film festivals around the world. Plenty of potential for a full length movie here, and a few sequels.

More on 'I Love Sarah Jane' at its MySpace page here.

Rowr!



The big cat of the outer Sydney suburbs has been spotted again

AC/DC : The Musical?



By Darryl Mason

It's hard for any die-hard AC/DC fan not to shudder at this news, from UK's Popbitch,
that a new rock musical is in the works, based on the career and music (obviously) of Australia's most successful and influential hard rock band.

Working title apparently is 'It's A Long Way To The Top' and it is expected to mix some of the true early history of AC/DC with a fictional tale of an AC/DC-like hard rock outfit taking on a new singer, who grew up as a die-hard fan of the band he will now front. Something like that.

Of course, there is a massive audience all over the world for an AC/DC musical, if done right, and presumably Angus and Malcolm Young have been sold on the concept by the awing success of the ABBA-based musical, Mamma Mia, and the millions of Best Of CD sales the musical, and movie of the musical, have been responsible for.

But what AC/DC songs to include in a musical? Whole Lotta Rosie? The Jack? Big Balls?

Actually, plenty of Bon Scott-era songs are extremely theatrical, and perfect for that kind of sing-along retro vibe. Bon was a master showman, and the brothers Young always knew they had to entertain, first of all, to win a following that would stay with them for life. They pretty well achieved that in a way that only a handful of other bands ever have.

It's easy to imagine an AC/DC musical being some hideous train wreck, but in all likelihood it will be a monster success. How many 40 and 50-something blokes out there who haven't willingly seen a musical will be vibed to hear all those excellent old-school AC/DC blasting from a Broadway or West End stage, complete with a chorus line of headbanging Anguses?

You'd imagine there must be a few million at least.

And unlike Mamma Mia, the blokes this time will be the ones dragging their wives and kids to the show, and buying and blasting the soundtrack.

Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's Free Online Novel 'ED Day'

Climate Change : We Believe! We Did It!

This must be the only controversial issue that so many Australians are in such complete agreement on. A mind-bogglingly high level of agreement, and belief :

According to Newspoll, Australians overwhelmingly believe climate change is under way now and that humans are partly or entirely responsible.

When asked if climate change was caused by human activity, 96 per cent said it was entirely or partly caused by human activity; 84 per cent believed climate change was currently occurring.

96%? They must be the highest "We Believe! We Did It!" numbers relating to climate change of any country in the world today.

Yes, The Professional Idiot is correct. Now is the perfect time for the Liberals to come out as die-hard climate change sceptics.

Most Australians Want Carbon Tax, Now

More Chaos Looms For Libs As They Plot Delaying Introduction Of ETS

Some stunning poll results on how Australians feel about the introduction of an emissions trading scheme :

As the Coalition meets in Canberra today to forge a climate change policy that would delay an emissions trading scheme beyond 2010, it will be confronted with evidence that most Australians support the Rudd Government's position.

Brendan Nelson is expected to adopt a policy with his shadow cabinet colleagues that opts to delay an ETS until greenhouse gas giants such as India and China act to cut their emissions.

But the latest Newspoll survey has confirmed widespread public support for an ETS, with 60 per cent of voters backing the adoption of a scheme "regardless of what other countries do".

Another 23 per cent support a scheme if other countries act.

Only 11 per cent of voters oppose an ETS under any circumstances.

I'm surprised at how low real opposition to the carbon tax amongst Australians actually is. You'd think such a controversial, and likely very costly scheme, would be far more divisive, and generally opposed. Apparently not.

Expect failed Melbourne Age 'journalist', former Labor Party advisor and now full-time Liberal Party climate change policy fantasist Andrew Bolt to once again call most Australians a bunch of idiots, or worse, for not subscribing to his anti-progress, Greens = Hitler hysteria and fear-mongering conspiracy theories.

However, it should be entertaining to see Bolt go into an apoplexy of rage that his claims of a Vast Green Pagan Lefty Conspiracy over climate change are simply not getting through to the public, despite him having the highest combined online, newspaper and TV profile of just about any commentator in Australia.

The Professional Idiot is all over Murdoch newspapers and websites, as well as the ABC, but few believe what he shouts through a growing collection of visible ticks, eye-rolling and general head-shaking. Perhaps his message would get through more, and be more influential, if he didn't come across as such a petulant, whiny, fringe-dwelling, hysterical fuckwit.

Those poll numbers are really going to suck the wind out of the Liberals who thought they could knock the shit out of PM Rudd, and in particular climate change minister Penny Wong, over the introduction of a carbon tax, and capitalise on what The Professional Idiot claims is growing scepticism amongst Australians on the reality of man-made climate change.

And Opposition transitional leader, Brendan Nelson, will be utterly smashed by the next Liberal Party leader, Malcolm Turnbull, over those poll numbers on the ETS and climate change in general, and of course, these utterly dire Liberal polling numbers as well :

It also confirms the Government's dominance over the Opposition, with Labor leading the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis by 57 per cent to 43 per cent.

Kevin Rudd also kept his 50-plus percentage point lead over Dr Nelson as preferred prime minister...

Mr Rudd had 66 per cent support as preferred prime minister compared with Dr Nelson's 14per cent.

And these :

Newspoll shows the Rudd government would trounce a Nelson-led opposition if the election was held today.

Labor's primary vote rose four points from the last poll to 47 per cent - the highest since the election.

Kevin Rudd has a satisfaction rating of 58 per cent, with 66 per cent saying he makes a better PM.

Amazing. Rudd and the Labor government are polling almost better now than they did when they flogged John Howard's then government at last year's election.

But why?

Is Rudd really that popular, or are the Liberals so boondoggled and their message and policies so confused and hard to keep up with that most Australian voters just don't want to know about them anymore?

Exploiting Ozploitation

In follow up to yesterday's rant about the shitty state of the Australian film industry (so much art, so little entertainment and profit), here's a trailer for a new documentary about the glory days of Australian cinema, when we made movies that Australians wanted to see, that people around the world wanted to see, that made buckets of money, and that influenced an entire generation of young film-makers and film freaks, both here and internationally.



I'll come back to the movies glimpsed in this trailer later in the week. I've been waiting for years for an excuse to have a rant about the glorious brutality and excellent craziness of Mad Dog Morgan and Turkey Shoot!

US Intelligence, Scotland Yard Claim "No Bomb" Involved In Qantas Explosion Before Investigation Begins

Qantas Had Bomb Threat Against 747 On July 19



Even before Australian aviation investigators reached Manila, two of the world's biggest intelligence agencies were hitting favoured media sources deny that the explosion that ripped through the floor and the side of a Qantas jet was the work of terrorists.

The UK Telegraph runs big with this :

Sources from Scotland Yard said they did not believe an explosion had caused the damage and attributed the “gigantic hole” to problems with the plane's fusilage.

Flight QF30 was carrying 346 passengers and 19 crew from London to Melbourne when it was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila after it suddenly lost cabin pressure and dropped 20,000 feet.

And ABC News (US) enthusiastically helps in the hosing down process :

US law enforcement and intelligence officials say there is "no sign" that a bomb caused the gaping hole in the fuselage of a Qantas Airlines 747 early today over the Pacific.

"No sign", except for the "gaping hole" of course.



So how did Scotland Yard and "US law enforcement and intelligence officials" know for certain, or were confident enough at least to tell the media, there was no bomb in the baggage hold of this Qantas flight only hours after the explosion occurred, and before any investigation had even begun?

Aviation experts, however, are not so quick to dismiss the possibility of a bomb in the baggage hold, for good reason :

David Learmount, Safety Editor at Flight International Magazine, said: "It's possible there was some kind of explosive device in the suitcases. There's a hole where there shouldn't be."

But he stressed that other possible causes for the damage included physical damage or a corrosive that weakened the hull, making it give way.

He said the hole had exposed some bags in the hold which are usually contained in metal containers. "It's interesting to see them - how else could that be if not an explosion?"

Here's one of the more bizarre explanations for the explosion offered up through the media, the UK Telegraph again : spilled coffee!

UPDATE : Just in case readers of the American ABC News site didn't get the 'No Terror' message, they helped out with this amazing double headline of stated fact, with no attribution :




UPDATE : Only a week ago, more than 300 passengers were evacuated from a Qantas 747 at Los Angeles International Airport after a bomb threat :

...Qantas had been told of the threat by US authorities but declined to comment on the nature of the threat.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said agents searched the plane and the luggage for about six hours but found no explosives.

Detectives are now investigating who made the bomb threat.

Australia Joins Long List Of America's "Best Friends"

US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, during her most curious 18 hour stopover in Western Australia :

"There is no better friend to the United States than Australia," Dr Rice said.

Wow, that's pretty impressive. Out of all the countries in the world, of all their trading and war partners, the United States has no better friend in the world than Australia.

If Rice grinning "we have no better friend" sounds familiar, it should :

''We have no better friend than Japan,'' Ms. Rice said at the State Department.

As secretary of state, Ms. Rice has said that the United States had ''no better friend'' than Jordan, Greece, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Britain and....the United Kingdom.

I'm sure Condi Rice really meant it, this time.

Garrett Gives Boring Film Industry Long Overdue Slapping

It's nearly two years since Kenny turned toilet humour into Australian box office gold.

No Australian movie since has come even close to turning the kind of profits Kenny did, though plenty of low budget American teen comedies have.

That Kenny ended up being so profitable for its makers and funders probably has a lot to do with the fact that Kenny was an ultra-independent movie, and the makers worked their arses off to promote it in hundreds of towns all over the country. Kenny was funded by private investors, and the first scenes were shot by with a crew of exactly one. If you want to see one of the best documentaries ever made about how two guys with a great idea turned out an impressively profitable movie, and created a new Australian icon in the process, get the Kenny DVD and watch the extras disc. It should be mandatory viewing for every film student in Australia.

If Kenny had crawled through the creativity-draining development processes that most Australians films (partly or fully) funded by taxpayer dollars have to endure, it would have been nowhere near as raw, and funny, and would have cost three or four million dollars, instead of a few hundred thousand.

Since Kenny, there has been less than 30 new Australian movies released in our cinemas. Most have bombed, lost money and turned even more Australians off trusting Australian movies to deliver the most important thing of all : entertainment.

Arts minister, Peter Garrett, is now supposedly slapping some sense into the rusted-on dregs of the Australian film industry who still believe it is more important for a movie to make a statement than to entertain, or to turn a profit :

Australia's federal arts minister Peter Garrett told the country's filmmakers on Friday that they must shoulder some responsibility for the industry's failings.

Some? If Australia's filmmakers aren't responsible for the lack of interest from many Australians in Australian movies, then who the hell is?

In his first speech to the film biz since he was appointed minister of the new Labor government late last year, Garrett told delegates of the Melbourne Film Festival's marketplace, 37 South, "It is time for the industry to re-examine the way it does business so it can aspire not only to cultural independence but also to new levels of financial independence, too."

Despite state and federal coin at near record highs, as a proportion of all film funding, Australian films are not doing well at home or abroad.

"You will be supported for developing productions that attract strong financial backing and are genuinely appealing to audiences," Garrett said.

"You will be rewarded for writing scripts that excite leading Australian producers, directors, cinematographers and actors to come back to Australia."

The establishment within the Australian film industry that supposedly acts as cinematic gatekeepers of our culture have failed us enormously. What's the point of spending millions making poignant, beautifully crafted movies when most Australians have absolutely no interest in seeing them?

Why do appallingly crap American teen comedies routinely make $4-$10 million at our cinemas? Because they're full of big American movie stars? Bullshit. Kids go to see them because nobody in Australia is making these kinds of movies. That is, teen comedies that teens are interested in actually paying to see at the cinema.

If you need an example of just how blind the old guard of the Australian film industry is to what audiences actually want to see at the cinema, and on DVD, look at the example of the Saw movies.

Two young Australian movie makers came up with the script and trailer for an obviously franchisable, and fairly original, horror movie, which could be made (and was) for a million or less and they were turned down by everybody here. They took Saw to Hollywood and quickly found the money to get the movie made.

The four Saw movies didn't make hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide (from cinema, DVD, cable) because they were American movies. The movies were a massive success because they filled a hole in the marketplace. Torture-horror, full of great twists and real tension.

It was a hole that the Australian originators of Saw knew was there, but nobody in the Australian film industry could get their heads around that idea, and so the Australian film industry lost an entire franchise of incredibly profitable horror movies for a fifth of what it cost to turn out yet another miserable film about junkies that nobody wants to endure on a Friday night with their friends.

Movie industry people I've spoken to in the US just can't understand why our industry is doing so very, very badly. We've got the world's best actors, directors, special effects technicians, production designers and costume designers, and most of them have to go overseas to get work. They want to work here, and they will work for scale (or less), but the projects that will win their support and skills don't come along very often.

Seriously, it's fucking embarrassing when American movie producers mock our pissy little output of movies, and their appalling performances at the box office.

"You guys made 15 movies last year? Fifteen whole movies? Lithuania makes more fucking movies than you Aussies do, and they make more money."

Rant over.

Sydney Cops Kill Small Dog, Mace Baby

Freaky. According to this story, cops in street clothes sprayed mace over a mother and four month old baby and pulled guns to blow away a yapping dog caught up in its own lead :

"They shot my dog three times in front of me. They were judge, jury and executioner and it is just not right," Ms Small said.

"I didn't know they were police, they were plainclothes, they just stopped and I was saying I needed a stick and they sprayed stuff and I was asking what are you spraying and my baby was screaming.

"I keep seeing the gun, I keep playing it back in my head.

So just how many undercover police armed with mace and guns are wandering the streets of Sydney's suburbs?

Stating The Obvious

News.com.au :



What else would a professional skeptic be?