Archive for June 2008
Exxon crude oil $US45.45: US Supreme Court ruling
In a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court today slashed the damages bill against Exxon for the 11 million gallons of oil their drunken captain poured into a pristine Alaskan ecosystem just 20 years ago. Deciding that “the people” – as in of the, by the, and for the – of the original jury were brain damaged for originally awarding $5 billion in punitive damages against the company, Justice David Souter today pissed mightily in the faces of victimized communities, environments, and species for generations to come.
He found that Exxon should only have to pay $500 million in punitive damages, seeing as the company had already paid $507 million in damages to directly compensate communities of Prince William Sound for economic losses.
$500 million totals about $15 000 for each of the 33 000 claimants, and 4 days worth of Exxon’s profits last year, Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft’s fraudathon: Screw charity, let’s self-promote!
Parker Whittle is so real. He shaves. He uses Flickr, where his name is P-Whit (too easy to make something else out of that, hey?). And with a heart of gold, he’s launching himself into a 30-day email and i.m.-a-thon to raise an unknowable amount of money at an undisclosed rate for a handful of mainstream charities.
And the best part? It’s not your money. It’s Microsoft’s money. It’s like you’re reaching into the Man’s pockets and taking cash and handing it to a hungry person, every time you hit “enter.” The i’m Initiative turns you into Robin Hood with a goofy screen name.
Every time Parker, the Parkster, the P Man, or Da P, as his close friends call him, uses Windows Messenger or any other similarly contorted piece of Windows communicationware over the next month, Microsoft – “the Man” – sweats “coin”.
Parker could have just said “money” but he’s so “shtreet” he says “coin”!!
Oh no he di’n’t!!
He better talk to the hand…gurrlfren’!!! Read the rest of this entry »
George Carlin RIP, damn it.
Just read this on Huffington and got to say that it has saddened and surprised me. There’s no point in comparisons, but George Carlin always sort of struck me as something like the bastard child of Bill Hicks and an alcoholic truck driver, only without the finesse and with ruptured haemmorhoids. Which wouldn’t make sense. Because he was older than Hicks. But the haemmorhoids would explain his infinite grouchiness.
For all his gruffness he must have had a heart, certainly one big enough to propose turning all golf courses over to public housing. And whatever disagreement other people may have had with his style and sass, they must at least acknowledge that Carlin, at least until Sunday June 22, 2008, was one of the only living American comedians of his generation – of most American generations, actually – who was both generous enough to point out that Mickey Mouse’s shorts are big and red simply to help hide his colostomy bag and wise enough to know what that meant – both symbolically and for his career.
Great life history of the man here at HuffPost. And Rachel Sklar has compiled a wealth of links to obits elsewhere in world and US media here as well as posting a fully transcribed interview with Carlin right here.
Full transcriptions are both a labour of love and a guarantee of readworthy answers so check it out.
Here’s a few good moments.
for a start, Carlin on Death
Carlin on Tyranny Americana
On needed upgrades for The Ten Commandments (hope these worked out for him)
On Countdown just last year in October with Keith Olbermann (the discerning newsviewer’s big-balled over-coiffed angry guy of choice)
And, of course….
Hard to choose some videos that do any kind of justice to his work and make them fit on one 15″ screen. Go and explore if you’re not familiar with the big fuckhead or if you’re remembering – either way, take your patient mouse and check these pages out.
RIP
*shakes head*
*sighs*
GetUp’s pulp mill poll carries warning for Australian future.
I’m not much for analysing polls, though I certainly admire the astuteness of those who are able to do so in meaningful ways. Citizen lobby group GetUp has just taken this poll looking at Australian attitudes to the ongoing clusterf&%k that is the Gunns would-be pulp mill project in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley.
GetUp! Poll
Conducted by Essential Research between the 10th – 15th June 2008
n=1019 adults 18+Q: The recent resignation of the Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon and the decision by the ANZ Bank to withdraw its involvement from Gunns proposed pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley has resulted in more debate on this issue. Do you personally support the building of the pulp mill or oppose the building of the pulp mill?
Support Oppose
TOTAL 39% 61%
Male 45 55
Female 34 66
ALP voter 35 65
Liberal/National voter 48 52
Green voter 21 79
Other/Independent voter 35 65
18-24 44 56
25-34 38 62
35-49 39 61
50+ 38 62
Interestingly, this survey result shows the opposite of what might be expected based on common assumptions about age and conservatism of attitudes. Namely, rather than 50+ year olds being more conservative in their politics and trusting of corporations than 18-24 year olds the opposite is true. 62% of over 50-year olds across Australia oppose the mill, while only 55% of the should-be more radical and more aware 18-24 crowd reject it.
To me, this says one thing very clearly. Basically, if you were aged from 6 to 12 years old when John Howard came to power, then your experience of Australia, governance, and social values has been retarded by having not been properly exposed to life in a country with a social conscience in your formative years.
State governments – in Tassie and New South Wales at the very least – have done nothing to balance this retardation. Just as there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who buy Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera albums, it seems that we’re also awash in young Liberals who know too little to know any better.
Which explains how turd blossoms like Christopher Pyne were spawned, even if it is impossible to explain why.
‘Fair & Balanced’ obituary for Tim Russert
From Ken Silverstein at Harpers
The truth is that on any night of the week Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” does more in a two-minute segment to show in politicians’ own words how venal, dishonest, contradictory and just plain dense they can be than Russert did in his Sunday services. Russert’s master was always the political structure he grilled, but never fundamentally questioned.
Yep, along with Scott Horton & Mr. Fish, Silverstein is just one of many compelling reasons to check out this ‘zine on a regular basis.
When Life Hands You a Lennon….
sorry this stream of contrariness is a bit behind the times. I have been busy negotiating an arrangement with the International Panel on Climate Change. Now I can offset carbon emissions that I create by burning plastic bags, furniture, and SUV drivers simply by agreeing not to mine coal, rape penguins, or nuke the Vatican. It’s a tough trading scheme but we’ve all got to do our bit.
Tasmania never ceases to amaze – bigger than Glebe, less corrupt than Zimbabwe, more lively than Stan Zemanek, and better looked after than the Fritzls (pre-rescue, at least). But even by Tassie’s own standards of enviro-political chaos and angst, news emerging from that state over the last month has been like a prolonged advertisement for a WTF theme park.
In late May, ANZ Bank confirmed the rumour that had for weeks been spontaneously swelling the nipples of environmentalists. They would not be acting on behalf of their client, Gunns, to help secure the $2 billion needed to build the world’s largest pulp mill. Some prematurely celebrated the death of the project.
But it is still likely that Jaakko Poyry, Gunns’ pulp mill consultant, will organize the money through less scrupulous international financial colleagues of their own. To do so would not only guarantee their commission, but make it possible for Gunns to actually pay up.
Seemingly bigger, better news came the following week. On the morning of Monday the 26th of May, Premier Paul Lennon aka Big Red, aka The Guy in the Pulp Mill ads, aka Gunns’ Elected Representative, aka The Forest F*cker, announced his resignation. After less than five years and many more decimated ecosystems, Premier Lennon decided to follow in the footsteps of every single east coast Labor Premier before him.
Echoing Lee Harvey Oswald, Lennon declared “I’ve given it my best shot.”
Content with his legacy and bathed in the love of his people, he had gone for a walk in the park and realized that it was time to retire and be bronzed by tulip-clad virgins, placed on an altar made entirely from the feathers of endangered eagles, and worshipped with offerings of old growth at the rising of each morning’s Sun henceforth.
There was, of course, unkind speculation that he was stepping down to avoid being pushed – given that an opinion poll the week before had seen his approval amongst Tasmanians rating a sub-George-Bush 17 per cent. Those are nearly Brendan Nelson numbers.
Unkind and as yet unaddressed rumours have circulated that the poll was actually commissioned by Federal Labor. While it would make sense for Federal Labor to jettison a Labor Premier for whom two deputies have already fallen on their sword amid suggestion of deceptive conduct, one might expect that an inquiry, a committee, and a Lennon Watch scheme would have first been established before launching such an effective and timely strategy.
Even less kind – though almost plausible in a T.I.T. (This Is Tasmania) way – was the suggestion that Lennon didn’t stand aside for family and personal reasons, that he didn’t stand aside out of political foresight, that he didn’t stand aside because he had become less bankable than an old-growth-eating pulp mill or even because he was perceived as less credible than Eddie McGuire.
Some tied his resignation on the Monday to the death of a Gunns’ board member, with the subsequent job opening, on the Saturday immediately before.
It’s enough to make you Very Old Men In Ties.
Lennon was immediately replaced as Premier by David Bartlett, a squinty-eyed bucket of water ten years his junior. His first eighteen hours in office were promising. He considered withholding tens of millions of public dollars from questionably sound private projects and mumbled something about a corruption inquiry before descending into the time-honoured practice of contorted linguistics.
The closest he has since come to promising a return to democracy in The Land of the Wrong White Crowd has been to propose a visionary new system of governance involving merit-based appointments. This, of course, is code for ‘business as usual’.
Because in Tasmania, as in News South Wales, ‘merit’ means one thing: Mates Employed Regardless of Intellectual Talent.
The battle for sanity continues…..
New Australian book: planet doomed.
Due to be released shortly, a book from CSIRO Publishing promises to put the climate change debate in Australia back on track. Ten Commitments: Reshaping the Lucky Country’s Environment is divided into three categories – ecosystems (desert, marine, etc.), sectors (forestry, fisheries), and cross-sectoral and cross-ecosystem themes.
Leading environmental scientists write within these sections, using each chapter to address the question: “What are the 10 key things that must be urgently addressed to improve Australia’s environment?”.
Appearing on ABC’s Science program in early June, lead editor and author David Lindenmayer added weight to the argument that time is beyond short. He detailed how at even a minimal level of carbon taxation – $19 a tonne – logging operators in the remaining wet forests of Victoria should be paying $80 billion to that state’s government. Which would be well beyond the half billion dollars in logging royalties they currently pay annually.
He also detailed how, globally, destructive species – such as the mountain pine beetle of Canada – are thriving as winters become more mild. Rather than being wiped out or diminished seasonally, these beetles have now destroyed more than eleven million hectares of previously permanent forest, making way for logging operations and farming to move in.
According to Lindenmayer, the latest research, ongoing delays to real action, and these emerging new paradigms point to a future atmospheric carbon mass of 700-750 parts per million, with all the unimaginable consequences that will surely entail.
Atmospheric carbon is currently at 385 parts per million.
And visionless politicians want us to worry about the price of gas.
Dan Rather on free media, new media, and bogus media
Yet another pearl picked up at Huffington Post. America’s most respected living newsman deconstructs the reasons why crappy governments get a free pass from mainstream news coverage in a way that most supposedly qualified anarchogressives can’t.
Tasmanian suicide bombing caught on home video.
Pauly RIP, did it for white skinned bogans everywhere.
Kevin Rudd labels all arguments for Iraq invasion as absolutely wrong.
Why is this speech being covered by British media but neglected by the Australian media? Did I miss something?
From the article in the UK Telegraph, dated June 2:
In an admission that will make uncomfortable reading in London and Washington, the Labour leader dismissed one-by-one the reasons used by his predecessor, John Howard, to join the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq five years ago.
“Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No, they have not been, as the victims of the Madrid train bombing will attest,” Mr Rudd told parliament.
“Has any evidence of a link between weapons of mass destruction and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No.
“Have the actions of rogue states like Iran been moderated? No … Iran’s nuclear ambitions remain a fundamental challenge.
“After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not.”
Mr Rudd, whose campaign for election last November included a pledge to withdraw Australian combat forces from Iraq, said pre-war intelligence had been “abused” by the Howard government.
He said there had been a “failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence – for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it”.
Why does Gordon Brown talk utter $h!t?
Well, it could just be that Gordon Brown’s the kind of guy who favours cluster bombing people when they aren’t expecting it, but I think it’s because of his superfluous anus (don’t look too closely). God knows there’s already enough of those in global politics, not to mention England.
As if you’d vote for a conservative London mayor, you tossers.
US Democrats – tactical genius!!
Yes indeed, the US Democrats could well have won the election with ease this year. Having recaptured the Congress and the Senate in 2006, not been the government responsible for the last 8 years of disastrous defence, foreign, domestic, economic, natural disaster, war, and social policies, and running against albino Republican candidate Elmer McFudd – nothing short of every single Democrat coming down with HIV after a massive gay orgy to celebrate Osama Bin Laden’s birthday should really be inverting their ascendancy.
But what can be said about a party pouring all its supporters’ time, effort, hopes, and dollars into an ever-widening chasm of self-loathing? Cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Spineless slaves to peecee guilt? Wimpy, wet, directionless intellectually-prostrate masturbatorial over-achievers thoroughly disconnected from the reality of daily life?
Absolutely.
Or, maybe…. tactical geniuses!!
In 2000, right up until he swallowed every drop squirted at him by the Supremely Loaded Court, Al Gore really tried to win the US election. Sure, in 2004 John Kerry didn’t go so far as to get a man’s haircut or even completely extricate that same haircut from his own ass, but you did at least get the sense that he was trying to win.
The Democrats have realized that this is a failed strategy, which immediately recommends them as the next government of America, given that the current brand of dictator wouldn’t recognize a failed strategy even if it turned his Vice President’s daughter gay.
Realizing that they can’t stop their candidate – whoever they end up grudgingly conceding that to be – trying to win, and therefore losing (as has happened twice now), the Dems have come up with a brilliant “Nothing or All” strategy. By doing their utter best to convince the US public and the world at large that they really, really, really don’t deserve to be in charge of a spit bucket, let alone the world’s largest nuclear arsenal/ economy/ etc., they will perhaps have leadership thrust upon them… in pretty much the same way that they haven’t lately.
The natural trajectory of this logic is for Hillary Rodham Clinton to run as Barack Obama’s deputy. Because then when Obama is elected (if the lose-at-all-costs-by-completely-wimping-out-whenever-possible strategy of the DNC works), it will only be a matter of weeks until one of her fanatical sore-loser supporters shoots him dead and raises her paygrade.
At which point her “team” will deny any involvement.
Genius.
Xavier Forrest, aka Harry Shortz, aka Hugh Manatee, aka typingisnotactivism. Sydney-based writer/ environmental law researcher & editor mostly focussed on environ mentalism, media, politricks and WTFs.
e me via the 
typing is not activism.... 