Archive for the ‘awesomeness’ Category
WORLD LEADERS SIGN PACT TO AVERT CLIMATE DISASTER
June 18, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TOP HEADLINE: WORLD LEADERS SIGN PACT TO AVERT CLIMATE DISASTER
Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database”
* Civil-disobedience database: http://BeyondTalk.net
* PDF of printed newspaper: http://iht.greenpeace.org/todays-paper/
– Online version: http://www.iht-se.com/
* Video: http://iht.greenpeace.org/video/ (coming soon)
In a front-page ad in today’s International Herald Tribune, the leaders of the European Union thank the European public for having engaged in months of civil disobedience leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference that will be held this December.
“It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies…. To those who were arrested, we
thank you.”
There was only one catch: the paper was fake.
Looking exactly like the real thing, but dated December 19th, 2009, a million copies of the fake paper were distributed worldwide by thousands of volunteers in order to show what could be achieved at the Copenhagen climate conference that is scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009.
At the moment, the conference is aiming for much more modest cuts, dismissed by leading climate scientists as too little, too late to stave off runaway processes that will lead to millions or even billions of casualties.
The paper describes in detail a powerful (and entirely possible) new treaty to bring carbon levels down below 350 parts per million – the
level climate scientists say we need to achieve to avoid climate catastrophe.
One article describes how a website, http://BeyondTalk.net, mobilized thousands of people to put their bodies on the line to
confront climate change policies – ever since way back in June, 2009.
Although the newspaper is a fake (its production and launch were coordinated by Greenpeace), the website is real. Beyondtalk.net is part of a growing network of websites calling for direct action on climate change, building on statements made in recent months by noted political
figures.
For example, in September Nobel laureate Al Gore asserted that “we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to
prevent the construction of new coal plants.”
Leading American environmentalist Bill McKibben was enthusiastic about the newspaper’s message and the methods BeyondTalk.net calls for.
“We need a political solution grounded in reality – grounded in physics and chemistry. That will only come if we can muster a wide variety of political tactics, including civil disobedience.”
“Non-violent civil disobedience has been at the forefront of almost every successful campaign for change,” said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes
Men, who helped write and edit the newspaper and are furnishing the technology for BeyondTalk.net. “Especially in America, and especially today, we need to push our leaders hard to stand up to industry lobbyists and make the sorts of changes we need.”
“Roosevelt would never have been able to push through the New Deal if people hadn’t taken to the streets, occupied factories, and demanded
it,” noted newspaper writer/editor and University of California professor Lawrence Bogad.
“Segregation, British rule in India, and apartheid wouldn’t have ended without a lot of people being creatively uncooperative – even if that meant getting arrested. Nonviolent civil
disobedience is the bread and butter of progress.”
The fake newspaper also has an ad for “Action Offsets,” whereby those who aren’t willing to risk arrest can help those who are.
A HOPEFUL NEWS PANDEMIC?
Today’s fake International Herald Tribune is part of a rash of recent publications which mimic prominent newspapers. Last November, a fake edition of the New York Times announced that the Iraq War was over. A few days earlier, a hoax USA Today featured the US presidential election result: “Capitalism Wins at the Polls: Anarchy Brewing in the Streets.”
And this April 1st, a spoof edition of Germany’s Zeit newspaper triumphantly announced the end of “casino capitalism” and the abolition
of poor-country debt.
The rash of fakes is likely to continue. “People are going to keep finding ways to get the word out about common-sense solutions those in
power say are impossible,” said Kelli Anderson, one of the designers of the fake International Herald Tribune and co-designer (with Daniel
Dunnam) of BeyondTalk.net.
“We already know what we need to do about climate change,” said Agnes de Rooij of Greenpeace International. “It’s a no-brainer. Reduce carbon emissions, or put the survival of billions of people at risk. If the political will isn’t there now, it’s our duty to inspire it.”
* CONTACT:
– The Yes Men, mailto:press@theyesmen.org
– Mark Breddy (Greenpeace), mailto:mark.breddy@greenpeace.org,
(+32) (0)2 2741 903, (+32) (0)496 15 62 29 (mob.)
– Lawrence Bogad, mailto:l.m.bogad@gmail.com,
+1-212 300 7943
New Australian Anthem
It has been floating around for a while, but to see AusFailure National Tantrum show up in the Sydney Morning Herald – where it may well be read by a quarter of a million Sydneysiders – certainly brings a grin that goes from ear to era.
The article is here, and this is the National Tantrum, as penned and painted by awesome Indigenous artist, didge guru and all round kickass mofo Adam Hill (not the whitefella, the other fella.)
AUSFAILURE NATIONAL TANTRUM
Australians all let us remorse
For we are blind can’t see
We’ve golden soil that we all spoil
Our home washes into sea
Our land abounds in racist gits
Of whom we really can’t bear
In history’s cage recompense the slaves
Do Australians really care?
In painful strains that left a sting
Do Australians really care?
SAS preparing French paratroopers for Pakistan
Watchmen – the movie: Review
Given its nature as a graphic novel, it is more than fitting that Watchmen is a similarly graphic film. Anybody familiar with Watchmen, the book, is most likely enamoured of it, and sure to have an idea of which elements of the richly layered text matter most to them.
The good news is that the characters are mostly well cast and recreated in a manner true to the novel. Promotional material is already out, spruiking the end of the superhero as we know it. But rather than ending anything, Watchmen – both as a book and as a new film – is about creating a necessarily new approach to the modern hero fable.
Rather than the appalling candy floss of Spiderman or Superman, and even less ‘moral’ than Hulk or the Dark Knight, Watchmen’s mostly well-drawn characters are multi-dimensional and as ambivalent as they have to be. Even with the elevation of some modern concerns like energy sources and the geopolitic of Afghanistan to a prominence they lacked in the graphic novel, Watchmen honours the original work of Alan Moore in a way that the Waukoski brothers’ molestation of V for Vendetta did not.
Matter-shifting Dr. Manhattan has all the power needed to save humanity from itself, but lacks the desire to use it. The Comedian is an alcoholic misogynist sociopath who wants to see the world burn, but shudders fatally when that possibility becomes certainty. Rorschach is almost as psychotic and unforgettable as on paper. In almost any other film, he could be the standalone supervillain.
Ozymandias/ Veidt lacks some of the impact he should have, simply because he is not portrayed in any sympathetic way, he looks more like a blonde Ken doll or Flash Gordon extra than the more rugged and wise comic book depiction of his character, and because the casting decision for this character who simultaneously achieves total heroic and villainous status is perhaps the worst in an otherwise well-played film. Other than Veidt, the Richard Nixon character is probably the closest to caricature in the film, contrasting pointedly with the far less thinly drawn characters driving the story.
And let’s face it, how few action movies of the last decade – whether transposed from comics or not – have offered anything substantial or challenging by way of character development, let alone done much more than sermonize Brady Bunch values thinly veiled in bloodshed?
Even at around 150 minutes and using the graphic novel quite faithfully as a storyboard, the filmmakers were never going to be able to transfer the entirety of such a complexly constructed book to screen. So the question really is one of what they left out and how they managed what was kept in.
A number of the vignettes and side stories not involving the Watchmen characters don’t make it into the movie and this is something of a shame. The directors and screenwriters likely made the decision that to do otherwise would crowd the work and add confusion to an already agile film which does – to its credit – faithfully use the soundtrack laid out in the novel, augmenting it with some clever pop culture inserts and beautifully constructed media montages and character backgrounds. Similarly, some of the book’s more extreme supernatural elements are excised, traded off instead for more ‘real world’ scenarios. Again, this is probably a choice based on what the film’s structure can solidly support and what audiences can comfortably absorb.
But the choice is also made to give the love and lust relationships of the novel greater prominence than they originally had. In a way – and like some of the costuming – this choice reaffirms the stereotype of the comic book fan as frustrated middle aged virgin. But the notion is fleeting, mostly offset by an avalanche of great ideas, explosive violence, and dark philosophical observation. Fans of the novel may scowl at the ending, but at least it offers a surprise for everyone.
The big question: is Watchmen a film release worth looking forward to?
Absolutely – catch it on the biggest screen and biggest sound system that you can. It’s really quite a movie experience which, despite some annoyances and absences, isn’t to be missed.
Unless you’d rather be watching Australia.
Watchmen gets 8.2 out of 10 (on a scale where V for Vendetta gets 6.5, X-Men 1.5 gets 8 and The Dark Knight gets 9)
Canadian Triathlete to swim Great Barrier Reef for Climate Change
An awesome eco-loony is planning to spend up to 5 months in a solar-powered shark cage swimming for 8 hours a day in order to complete the 2300km length of the Great Barrier Reef – the Earth’s largest living organism. It is his intention to donate money raised to Australian clubs and community centres for them to buy and install solar power on a massive scale.
It’s a great story and an inspiring idea – check out the full story here in Canadian media.
It’s just ashame that Rio Tinto and BHP will probably buy up all that good work as carbon offsets to increase their aluminium and coal output, thanks to the Federal Government’s utterly fecal 5% carbon pollution maintenance target.
Arundhati Roy defines Mumbai
This is copied from The Guardian, Roy’s piece is entitled Mumbai was not our 9/11. It’s 5000 words of essential reading, so grab coffee/yerba/chai and strap in. All that follows is a powerful op ed from one of the world’s most valuable living writers.
Mumbai was not our 9/11
We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11”. Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the “Bad Guys” he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.
But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.
The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something’s going very badly wrong in this country. Read the rest of this entry »
Awesome Sarah Palin Sex Tape!!
well, sort of....
It’s enough to make a fat man scream….
8 )
Aussie Captions Needed: Malcolm Turnbull…
.......................... ?
no prizes, plenty of reasons, pretty self-explanatory, and……GO!
one bloody good example from Glass Wall Observer that hassurprisingly little to do with penises:
Iraq War ends! Cars run on gasoline recalled.
Awesome!! This bulletin just in from New York Times:
Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out
that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had
come to an end.If, that is, they happened to read a “special edition” of today’s New
York Times.In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million
papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged
pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass
them out on the street.Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the
establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate
lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the
war.The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes
International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as
editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a
recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a
timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of
progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes
we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,”
said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make
sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do.
After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start
imagining heaven.”Not all readers reacted favorably. “The thing I disagree with is how
they did it,” said Stuart Carlyle, who received a paper in Grand
Central Station while commuting to his Wall Street brokerage. “I’m all
for freedom of speech, but they should have started their own paper.”
Some people just don’t get it….
updated reports here
Rihanna Vomits on Sydney Stage.
Rihanna thinks about vomiting, but is it because of the outfit, the pretention, or the set list?
Revenge!!! So little airtime, so much plastic music – but good taste is fighting back. Sort of.
At any rate, Rihanna apparently ran from the stage of her concert at Acer Arena in Sydney.
“She was indicating to the crowd she wanted a puffer,” he said. “Then she bent over, clutching her stomach and ran off. She fell over on the side of the stage and paramedics ran to help her. She was vomiting.”
Obviously her running is as inadequate as her songwriting and creative concepts. Her management claim it was the heat at the venue – but it’s more likely to have been her song choice.
She was performing the final song of the evening, Umbrella, with her boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, when she became distressed.
“El-la, el-la, el-la, el-la, el-la, el-la, el-la, etc.” Any song that depends on this crap instead of real lyrics and has a literal music video is going to make most people vomit eventually. It’s amazing it’s taken her this long. Living her stage show must be like getting trapped inside a 13-year old’s iPod. Pee-yook.
Obama by 123 seats! Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and The Senate..
Game On!!! It looks as though the Republican election-stealing machine has stayed mothballed so far. Perhaps because robbing this election would be too obvious. Pennsylvania confirmed as first big swing state prize, with Ohio and Florida looking set to follow.
Latest locked in numbers from New York Times have Obama on 192 seats and McCain on 69. Meaning: McCain is getting smashed, the Republic*nts are getting smashed, and Obama is only 78 seats from victory. If current trends continue, the Democrats also look set to take a clear majority in the all important Senate race, meaning no more excuses for their role in approving further failed policy positions.
Up to date election result map here, and recommended result surfing here.
Also, check out Tom Edsall’s Guide for Watching Election Results, which makes it all more bearable.
Ben Smith of Politico is also logging mini-updates of useful breaking news here, with the latest – and welcome – byte being that Obama may be considering Democrat powerbroker and brains trust Rahm Emanuel for appointment as his Chief of Staff.
Incoming state reports and news bytes here from bloggers for the Washington Post.
Naom Klein’s new Bailout piece for Rolling Stone
Naomi Klein – intellectanarcho-justice consiglieri extraordinaire and author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine – has just had a mini-opus on the $700B bailout published here in Rolling Stone. It’s suitably entitled The New Trough and like all of Klein’s writing is well worth a look for anybody thinking that the most loudly repeated story isn’t necessarily the real story.
On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of “seasoned financial veterans” that will be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one name jumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serve as chief investment officer for the massive new program.
On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment. Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he’s an alum of Goldman Sachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2005 to 2007, he proudly advocated “flexibility” in regulation — a laissez-faire approach that failed to rein in the high-risk trading at the heart of the meltdown.
Bankers watching bankers, regulators who don’t believe in regulating — that’s all standard fare for the Bush crew. What’s most striking about Jeffery’s résumé, however, is an item omitted when his new job was announced: He served as executive director of Paul Bremer’s infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War. Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the partisan machine that filled the Green Zone with Young Republicans, investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren’t a big issue back then, because the staff’s main function was to hand over stacks of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as “a free-fraud zone.” During Senate hearings last year, when Jeffery was asked what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said he thought that contracts should be handed out with more “speed and flexibility” — the same philosophy he cited back when he was in charge of regulating Wall Street traders…. [continue reading]
New McCain-Palin Republicans for Jesus poster. AWESOME!!
it’s so awesome, i want one!
My awesome Aussie Olympics joke…
Q. How do you know when the Australian Men’s Basketball team have lost their game and been bundled out of the Olympics?
A. Because the story about 150 brown people being killed in an exploding plane is the second item on the news.
GET IT?
ha ha ha haaaaa ha ha ha ha aaaaaaah ha aaha hah ahahah ah aha ha ha…………..
Channel 7 to fiddle Olympic free speech
Channel 7 in Australia appears to have misplaced the booking sheet for this ad by GetUp! and the Australian Tibet Council – due to run before and after the coverage of the opening ceremony tonight.
Wankers! Shame on!
Speaking of wankers – go behind the IOC facade of feelgood handholding and nationalistic mindlessness with journalist and author Andrew Jennings.
CLICK in a bullet. Crosshairs. Down a bit, left a bit. A clear view of the stand of Honour. The Lords of the Rings and their Partners. Berlusconi and Bush, they’re for another time, concentrate on the officials who stole and sold our sports. And the businessmen who learned from Gramsci’s prison notebooks. Hey, this commie saw how to make business bigger. Look at the hegemony stuff. Smarter than Milton Friedman.
This press enclosure is perfect for an assassin. The reporters, who can’t see the needle tracks up the athletes’ limbs, don’t notice the nearly two-metre long machine in my hands. Neither do the blue-tracksuited thugs. They don’t expect trouble from this quarter of the stadium.
There’s no shame in following the Olympics, so if you’re going to, please do the right thing and watch it on SBS, eh?
Emissions trading: Greens Senator Bob Brown takes aim at Cadbury…?
This just in from Bloomberg, one of the most useful American-based sources of international market-related news.
July 9 (Bloomberg) — Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens party that now holds the balance of power in the Senate, will push for the government to cut greenhouse gases by 90 percent by 2050.
The five Greens Senators will push for deeper emissions cuts and a tougher carob trading system, Brown said. The government has vowed to cut gases by 60 percent by 2050 and has not yet set short-term targets.
It’s not yet clear what climate science says about the impact of eating chocolate substitutes.
New Coen Bros. preview: Burn After Reading
Can’t believe the Coen Bros have a new movie coming out already! You’d kind of think that after making No Country For Old Men they would just realize they’d made another of the best 100 movies of all time and could probably buy a Jamaican island and chill for a year or three. But prolific is as prolific does. Scott Lamb has all the details here.
Great to see Frances McDormand & George Clooney back in the mix, together for the first time I think. Also John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Brad Pitt. !!!. Sort of looks like what might happen if Guy Ritchie did a Big-Lebowski-influenced remix of something Michael Clayton-y.
Should be awesome.
Tasmanian Bum Puppet Paul Lennon Finally Pisses Off
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!!!!
(by DJ Lobsterdust)
Woo Hoo!!!!! Paul Lennon has run out of scapegoat deputies and finally resigned as Premier of Tasmania. In what may be one of the only political moves he has ever made in the genuine interest of Tasmania’s populace and future generations, Big Red finally pulled the plug on his untenable losership blaming his 17% popularity rating and the needs of the party, rather than the fact that health claims about the vitamin content of Coco Pops are widely considered more credible than he is.
It will only be to make way for a slightly less oafish brand of corporate lackey douchebaggitora sociopathica, but bugger it – that’s something to get depressed about tomorrow and every day thereafter. For now, it’s time to pop corks and light whatever your preferred flavour of fat one might be.
Lovely bit from Tasmanian Times here – guessing their offices erupted into some sort of Bacchanalian orgy with in seconds of Big Fat Red finally making the announcement that TT had so long been anticipating. As they say,
The disaster of the pulp mill became more about the erosion of democracy and public trust than it was even about the environment. If it was the most glaring example of Paul Lennon’s contempt for proper governance and indifference to democratic process, he was here only following where Bacon had trod. At his ascension Lennon made much of his determination to fulfill Bacon’s vision for Tasmania. How could he know it also portended his own tragedy?
For he lacked Bacon’s charisma. Perhaps his greatest political failure was to be too honest about all that Bacon covered over with his undoubted public charm.
Lennon is now gone.
Even in the moment of final “Good Riddance”, the Mercury – “Tasmania’s leading source of frequently pro-government pap propped up by ad dollars” – has seen fit to run a blancmange of cut-and-pasted infobytes and ministerial quotes which more or less neglects to mention the curry-fart cloud of corruption and big-money-friendly bloody-mindedness hanging over the squinty eyed Big Red One for the last decade or so.
Nevertheless, at least the Mercury has chosen to mention on this fine day that Gunns are having some trouble getting the cash for their toxic planet-raping bog roll enabling Pulp Mill. Seems that ANZ are backing away from the project under the guise of credit concerns, rather than risking future industry dollars by bluntly opposing any project that might make the Exxon Valdez seem like a hiccough.
I don’t share the optimism of pundits who think that the departure of Lennon means a sure end to the pulp mill, nor do I think that ANZ’s unwillingness to fund the bastardry – even if this is officially confirmed in the fullness of time – is a guaranteed end to the world’s biggest, stupidest pulp mill. What is needed for 200 000 hectares of forest to rest easy is for John Gay to announce the project’s demise to the ASX, and for Peter Garrett to rescind any and all outstanding approvals related to the project. Given that Garrett just last week approved the construction of mill worker’s quarters, the gigantic forest-eater may yet have legs… ugly, gnarled, wart-infested, pus-dripping legs.
Read comments by the Tassie public here and here – seems most people are calling for a massive piss-up or a public holiday to properly acknowledge Lennon’s departure.
Hillary Clinton’s final solution..
bless you mildewmaximillian. This is friggin sweet for all the right reasons.
Cheesing balls.
Seriously.
Dollar Implodes: Oh you crazy Carlyles, you’ve done it again!!
Go little squiggle! Go!!
It’s all happening a bit fast now for anybody to garner an official ‘WTF?’, but how funny is it that the Carlyle Group – post-Presidency employers of George Bush sr., negotiation partners of Osama Bin Laden’s family, and the American mass weapon exporter of choice – is this very moment the latest leading reason for the utter implosion of the US dollar and global share markets? Go team!!
That’s too funny!!! See the dudes on the left – it’s meant to look as though Carlyle Group is all about respecting and connecting with foreign cultures that encourage the accumulation of wealth, but it’s actually two coked out merchant bankers watching their friend all the way from the top of their building to the pavement below.
Don’t worry though, the US Federal Reserve will probably just cut their overnight rate a few more times so that by July they will actually be paying people to borrow American dollars. Then the whole thing might meet more than 87% of requirements necessary for the current clu$terfuc to be termed a “recession”.
It’s like when that prick with ears on the American Today show or Good Yawning America came out and announced that The Network had decided to call the war in Iraq a Civil War. I’m sure that semantic pedantry really made a difference to the bodies in mass graves who thought they had been put there as part of a regional conflict or neighbourhood dispute.
Further Bushes & the Carlyle Group info at
The Information Clearinghouse -> big assortment of interesting info-bytes, background, and collected links.
This one from Third World Traveller is awesome:
Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
The Carlyle Group: Crony Capitalism without Borders
excerpted from the book
How Much Are You Making On The War Daddy?
A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration
And there’s a more recent one here at Culture Change which gives good background and I like simply because it quotes Tom Paine.
Monika’s Doggie Rescue: Paws for Thought
After more than a decade as a self-financed band of gypsies practicing random acts of canine survival, Monika’s Doggie Rescue became a fully registered charity in 2001. Now a network of over 300 volunteers, Doggie Rescue is reshaping its Sydney pawprint.
Speaking with Monika, she explained that their Drummoyne outlet, mainly used for weekend meetings between dogs and potential owners, has recently been dispensed with.
Increasingly, the refurbished Doggie Rescue website will play an important role for rescued dogs and their potential new families. People can look at online profiles of any of the hundred or more dogs housed at the Doggiewood compound at Ingleside. A half hour from the city, amidst scenic forests and the Northern Beaches, Doggiewood is already the main point of consolidation.
Fun, furry, pre-arranged happy petting sessions take place every Saturday at Pet Barn in Alexandria. This ongoing adoption program through Pet Barn provides an important physical gateway to potential inner city owners and foster homes.
Combined, these elements currently see Doggie Rescue place about a thousand dogs in new homes each year. But Monika’s real hope is for a change in the culture that produces abandoned animals.
Just last year, a small amendment to NSW law introduced a compulsory reporting mechanism for councils. As reported in late January, for the first time official figures confirmed that of close to 50 000 cats and dogs taken in by NSW pounds alone, nearly half were killed.
The Department of Local Government’s most recent figures also include the death rates from all other shelters, and indicate that over 60 000 cats and dogs were killed by the NSW system in 2007.
“We have an oversupply of animals because they get pumped out of impulse outlets,” said Monika. “And until people start thinking more about what they adopt when they take an animal – that it’s not just a disposable item – we’re just going to continue all these problems.”
In an effort to challenge this situation, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has been working to put the Animals (Regulation of Sale) Bill through state parliament. If she can build the necessary support, what began as a bumper sticker – ‘Say No to Animals in Pet Shops’ – could become law.
“Clover’s Bill,” said Monika, “really is the most crucial thing in trying to stave this awful production line, this breeding without very much care or nurturing.”
Monika described ‘the rescue cycle’. Similar to the cycle of homelessness facing many street
kids, abandoned animals get dumped and re-dumped, usually ill-treated by more than just one home.
The proposed law, currently sidelined following a motion by Joe Tripodi, would end the sale of companion animals in pet stores. Sale would instead be restricted to breeders, shelters, vets, and pounds with a proviso that potential buyers are screened, educated, and matched to the needs of their new pet.
Monika’s Doggie Rescue already follows such a process. Perhaps uniquely, they also follow the progress of re-homed pets, requiring that mismatched pets be returned – an outcome that occurs in less than one per cent of cases according to Monika.
Doggie Rescue also provides a permanent backstop. In the event of an owner’s death, departure, or if it is at all needed, they offer permanent right of return for all dogs that come through their doors.
She lists her husband as the group’s biggest supporter who, along with Double Bay Vet Clinic and a number of private donors and supporters, makes it all possible. On the feeding, cleaning, caring, and financing rollercoaster, Monika’s ride has elements of Zen, Old Yeller, and Superfriends.
It is this environment which seems to produce the many Monika’s stories – one particularly sweet one being of a family that adopted a needy little dog with heart problems to keep their father company as he struggled with heart problems of his own.
Drop by www.doggierescue.com, Pet Barn Alexandria, or call Monika’s on 02 9486 3133 to find out more, or even see how you can help.
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.... 
Turnbull displays both his level of concern for “working families” and the extent to which his own living standards will be affected by any economic downturn.