Bury Your Bananas

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

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

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

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

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

You have been warned.

(via @MisterShuffles)

.

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

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

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

Graceless and weird, indeed.

(via @cosmicjester)


.

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

By Darryl Mason

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

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

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

More from Sean Nicholls & Jessica Mahar :

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

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

Correction and apology to Tim Blair

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

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

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

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

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

Iraq and Afghanistan war correspondent Paul McGeough poses a question :

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

And details his dream newspaper front page headline :

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

More Here


.

Coming to Australian cinemas, June 1 :



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

I Smoke, And I Vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't smoke"

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

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







More VicRoads Ads Here

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

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

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


(photo from ABC News)

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

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

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

**********

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

Read The Loaded Dog By Henry Lawson Here

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



This harmless vid sparked a gusher of gruesome elitist snobbery :

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

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

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

"Yet Australia still has compulsory voting?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This is utterly shameful."

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

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

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

Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner kicks the campaigning into gear :

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

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

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

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

Incredible :

Donald Ritchie, who has lived opposite The Gap for nearly 50 years, has shown what can be done when you have the chance to intervene. He and his wife have talked many back from the brink, with a few kind words and the offer of a cup of tea. Honoured with an Order of Australia, Ritchie has talked more than 160 people out of taking their lives.

Malcolm Turnbull on The Gap, where some 50 people every year jump to their deaths.

Suicide remains the leading cause of death for Australians under the age of 44. More than 65,000 Australians try to take their own lives every year, more than 1880 succeed.


.

.

Photos By Darryl Mason

The Northern Territory News always delivers :

Aliens could be the latest to weigh in on the nuclear waste storage debate after UFOs were spotted near the proposed Territory facility.

How can you not read the story after that intro?

In the NTN, even storms have a local crime-related angle :




.

"We Know What You Are Against, Now Tell Us What You Are For"




It's hard to see this as some kind of prelude to war. Gone is the talk of 'Axis Of Evil' and the 'War On Terror'. Obama could not sound anymore reasonable, which no doubt infuriates his most fevered critics, who aren't used to, and do not like, reason after eight years of BushCo.

NeoCons and anti-Muslim warmongers can shriek all they like about 'worldwide threat' posed by Iran getting nuclear energy, demanding the UN "do its job!" (despite usually claiming the UN is utterly useless), but Russian and China will not back tighter sanctions, they've moved on, nor will they allow the US, or Israel, to attack one of their biggest trading partners.

It's not going to happen.

And President Obama knows this.

He Really Liked Peter Costello

The glory days of the influential, hard drinking, extremely well paid political journalist are over.



Glenn Milne is one of the last to fall :

The automated email response from News Limited gallery hack Glenn Milne delivered the news: “Please be advised that as of the 13/03/2010 I no longer work for News Limited Sunday Papers, I still work for The Australian.” Milne is directing correspondents to a Gmail account, presumably because his role at News is now as Australian column contributor only.

Interesting. So Glenn Milne gets sacked from the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun for being a very expensive and all but useless inventor of quotes from anonymous 'senior Labor officials', but will still be writing columns for The Australian? Presumably the rate of publication of his columns in The Australian will fall off as he eased out of the way in time for serious election coverage.

Unless he writes them for free, of course.

VexNews :

Warned late last year after being summoned to a gathering of the Sunday newspapers’ editors that he had to pick up his game, the axe finally fell this week.

Milne is believed to have been on a package well in excess of $250,000, a number considerably in excess of most of his bosses. They compared their own productivity to his poor performance as a Gallery lounge lizard and found him wanting.

Frequent complaints about Milne included his lack of current political connections, his failure to generate exclusive stories of the kind he frequently promised and his tendency to share with editors “his stories” that were not much more than prevailing gossip around the water-cooler in the Gallery.

Exhibits from Glenn Milne's Hall Of 'Journalistic' Shame & Hilarity. 1) :

....more Australians have died as a result of the Rudd government's home insulation program, "administered" by Environment Minister Peter Garrett, than lost their lives in the Iraq war.

2) Glenn Milne announces Tony Abbott's friends should tell him to quit politics and go home to his wife :

...watching Abbott's disintegration you have to ask whether the strength of those convictions was ever viable in an environment where the electorate increasingly likes its politics "lite" in all respects, including when it comes to values.

In some senses, Abbott is simply too honest and too raw for modern politics...

3) My favourite :

Peter Costello will take over a decimated Coalition unopposed as Opposition Leader, knowing he would have been able to mount a stronger fight against Kevin Rudd and Labor.

There is unlikely to be any credible challenge to Mr Costello when he formally stands as leader at the first Liberal Party caucus meeting.

Previous contenders - Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull - have all faded under the weight of their own mistakes.

Glenn Milne used to get paid $250,000 a year to come up with stuff like that?

Just another example of the amazing excesses of 20th century corporate journalism. How could such a business model do anything but fail as the decades long decline of newspapers ran headlong into endless free comment and content from the internet?


..

Democracy Hater

By Darryl Mason

How much does Rupert Murdoch's most prominent Australian opinionist, Andrew Bolt, hate democracy? So much it makes him seethe at the free election choices about to be made by Tasmanians.



He's trying to claim, yet again, as always, that people who exercise their democratic rights in a way that displeases him are mentally ill.

If you don't like the free and fair democratic vote we have in Australia, Mr Bolt, why don't you go live in North Korea?

Love it or leave it, democracy hater. Love it or leave it.


.

One of the first movies to be filmed in Australia is believed to have been made as a "Fuck You!" to the early international movie-making competition.

....it was seen as too risque for Australian audiences although it proved popular in European cinemas.

It was produced in 1896 by French filmmaker Marius Sestier, who was dispatched to Australia by a French film company in a bid to introduce cinema to the colony.

The newly-restored film contains the 19th century equivalent of a well-known gesture of contempt, as the rollerskater lifts up his coat to show the camera the imprint of a white palm on his posterior.

The Video Is Here

@TwitterHype

Politicians are calling Federal Election 2010 'The Twitter Election', apparently :

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming told a parliamentary seminar discussing the "Twitter election" that politicians could use the social networking site Facebook as a powerful tool to phish phone numbers.

Yes, a federal member of parliament does appear to be lavishing praise on a form of digital identity fraud, at least according to this headline :



From the Courier Mail :

"There is extraordinary capacity there to create non-political pages and harvest and phish huge numbers of not only emails but mobile phone numbers," he said.

"And once you have a mobile phone number . . . they don't have to follow me, I phish them and can sort of harvest huge numbers of mobile phone numbers and then I just drop them onto a single piece of software and I can SMS hundreds if not thousands of people directly when I choose."

Yeah, that'd work great. If people didn't furiously mind getting spam messages from politicians on their phones and want to punch the sender in the face, or the nuts.

What's the thinking here?

And if it really is going to be 'The Twitter Election', what should we make of the massive gulf in Twitter followers when it comes to the main event?






There's no denying the incredible power of a politician being able to reach thousands, or tens of thousands of voters through Twitter updates, free of media filtering or re-interpretation.

So far on Twitter, Rudd (and/or his team) is making Abbott look like an amateur.

.

From imagery by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, twin tropical cyclones over the South Pacific on March 15:


(click to enlarge)

More On The Cyclones From Earth Observatory

The twin cyclones hit the Solomon Islands and Fiji hard. Cyclone Tomas has been hammering Fiji for four days. Dozens of homes were damaged in the Solomon Islands. The death toll is rising in Fiji.

UPDATE : Tourist resorts off the Queensland coast are now being evacuated.



.