David Letterman Blackmail & Confession – full clip

This video keeps disappearing from YouTube, but given its inevitable place in popular culture, modern history, media studies, the news cycle, and the fact that it was first broadcast free-to-air and that no money is being made by reposting it here, its hosting is justified, imho. Sorry for the fact that it’s not smooth playing, I think it’s about 1FPS. It’s a shame to not see his full facial expressions, but it’s worthwhile for the audio and to know what was actually said, rather than just what was reported, again, imho.

Go to the video page from here.

F$%&!!!!!

Have been trying to upload actual video but WordPress wants paid upgrade before allowing any video to be part of the 3GB upload limit. Oh well. That sucks.

You’ll just have to check out the hyperlink before it gets taken down there as well.

Happy creepy viewing.

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

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

by Arundhati Roy

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.

Awesome Sarah Palin Sex Tape!!

well, sort of....

It’s enough to make a fat man scream….

8 )

PATRIOT Act Repealed!! Iraq withdrawal commences.

A very special edition of the New York Times was freely distributed to 1.2 million Americans as they raced to or from work today, in commemoration of an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Web traffic for the special edition has been so high that a number of pages have been forced offline, but the special issue is certainly worth visiting, for the stirring cover art alone.

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

Yay World, Racism’s Finished Now!

What an amazing year for black people: Kevin Rudd apologized to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations, Lewis Hamilton won the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and now this – Barack Obama, first African-American President. Yay, racism’s all gone now.

Of course it isn’t. And it’s freaky that media – credible, generally reliable media – are so gaga over the African-American component of Barack Obama that his victory is now being painted as the realization of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream.

This is not to take away from what Obama’s victory is. It is profound, and by virtue of the fact that America must now change direction on so many globally impactive issues, it is world-changing. It is a relief, it is a chance for the world to take a long-awaited breath. It is generational and cultural change. It is the elevation of vision triumphing over the politics of fear.

But just like Rudd’s apology, although it is a starkly powerful symbol – and therefore open to all manner of broadly varying characterization from any and all with a response to such a symbol – it is not an end in itself. It is, if anything, a beginning.

The most pragmatic assessment (pre-election) of what an Obama victory might mean for shifting racial tensions in America was that people still beholden to racial discrimination, whether consciously or reflexively practised, might see their distrustful tendencies diminish over time. If they experience a long term engagement with or relationship of sorts to a black man as President, and come to judge him on his words and actions, rather than their kneejerk attitude to his skin, then their embedded prejudices might register as irrelevant and unsustainable. And, like most useless things, be let go.

That’s more realistic. Then again, this is perhaps more caustic than it is pragmatic (still thoroughly timely reading):

Jesse Jackson will be appointed lead editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal. and Al Sharpton will assume duties at The National Review.  Rush Limbaugh will inaugurate a series called “Great African American Inventors.” Spike Lee will be invited to run Columbia Pictures  and Amy Goodman will take over at NBC. The Newspaper Society of America will apologize for the lynchings and civil disturbances caused by an inflammatory media over the last one hundred or so years. A choked up Rupert Murdoch will read the statement on behalf of his colleagues.

In an emotional press conference, John McWhorter, Ward Connerly and Shelby Steele will admit that  they have been tools of the Eugenics movement and donate all of the millions they have received from far right organizations to scholarships for black and Hispanic students. Blacks will have as much access to a good education as those members of Al-Qaeda and Saddam’ s government who studied in  the United States. This will end the policy of you educate them, we fight them.

Gertrude Himmlefarb and Lynne Cheney will insist that the works by Hispanic, black and Native Americans be added to the cannon.  Cornel West will co host  a show with Dr.  Phil. The New York Review of Books will end its white only policy and begin to resemble America. Phillip Roth will admit that all of his novels are autobiographical. Several prominent abstract expressionists will confess that they can’t draw.

All of the blacks and Hispanics who have been driven out of New York, Oakland, and San Francisco, as a result of the policies of ethnic cleansing, advocated by Jerry Brown, Giuliani and Newsom, will be invited to return. The banks that aimed toxic mortgage loans to blacks and Hispanics, who would have qualified for conventional loans had they been white, will halt the foreclosure process and renegotiate these loans. CEOs on Wall Street will forego bonuses and golden parachutes. Sales conferences will be held at Day’s Inn. For rent signs will go up on K street. The American Enterprise will close its doors.

taken from Morning in Obamerica, by Ishmael Reed

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]

Congo continues to be the 21st Century’s Secret Holocaust.

The continuing bloodlust in the Congo is the worst ongoing Holocaust on Earth and actually looks set, in simple numerical terms, to soon surpass the number of Jewish dead in Hitler’s WWII genocide. Already there are 5.4 million dead. This article about human tragedy and corporate sponsorship of rape by Johann Hari gives a very necessary glimpse into the worst secret slaughter in modern history.

The battalions of child soldiers — drugged, dazed thirteen year olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn’t try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.

I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in Eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.

I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean’s children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn’t look around, or speak, or smile. “I haven’t ever been able to feed them,” she said. “Because of the war.” Their brains hadn’t developed; they never would now. “Will they get better?” she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

Voting for vaginas – coz Hilree n Sayra iz the saaym.

niiiiice one Juliet Jeske, you rock. completely counterbalances the argument that anything which bleeds for five days without dying shouldn’t be trusted. as well as douchebags like this and even bigger stupider douchebags like this. Dems4McCain actually identify with Forrest Gump, seriously… probably because brain damage is a better excuse than an explanation Joe Liebermensch has yet come up with.

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.

from The Sniper’s Guide to the Bird Nest

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?

Dinner talks with cannibal.

Truly chilling chats – the following is a sample from this much more complete online conversation between ‘Cator99’ and ‘Antrophagus’ on March 6, 2001.

antrophagus: After you’re dead, I’ll take you out and expertly carve you up. Except for a pair of knees and some fleshy trash (skin, cartilage, tendons), there won’t be much of you left

cator99: There will be a good bit, like the knees, I hope you have a good hiding place for them

antrophagus: I’ll dry out the knees and grind them up soon after

cator99: Okay, they’re good as fertilizer, I heard that once. I see you’ve thought about it. Good! Sounds like I’m the first

antrophagus: And you won’t be the last, hopefully. I’ve already considered catching a young person from the street, but I would rather kill only those who want to be killed.

Antrophagus killed and ate Cator99 3 days later.

Best student film project ever: Italian Spiderman!!!

you neeeeed to check out Alrugo & Wiki for more. The back story and subsequent episodes all rock. But to be fair, there are comparably excellent though thoroughly different student films worth being aware of.

Also utterly awesome.

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.

Hillary II: The Puppy Chokening

Too good. Still relevant. Gotta love Mr. Fish.

The real wisdom of Clinton’s assassination “gaffe”.

Tony Blair hates bush?

heh heh, too good. Apparently this video from Switzerland’s Electric Six was banned in the US and UK – probably at the best of powerful gays not wanting to be associated with either of these dickcheeses. All weird and wonderful video brought dutifully to your attention by the wondrously eclectic and quality-obsessed Homepage Daily… okay, maybe i’m biased, but HPD does always get it done.

Weeze on some Pork & Beans, bitchezes.

😉 Seriously, HPD is a perfect template for future media – has everything except holograms and Interactive Torture Top 40.

Tasmania – forest lies, lies, and more lies.

Tasmania – where blokes are blokes, and trees are nervous.

A state where everything is above board, but Royal Commissions – the highest level of independent inquiry into allegedly corrupt use of authority – are practically banned. Oh Tassie – thank goodness for you, the one place on Earth where destroying forest ecosystems defies physics, biology and chemistry to fight global warming. How? Buggered if I know, but some big blokes with beetroot-blood pressure and friends running chainsaws seem to have worked it out.

Barely a week ago, Paul Lennon – the spectacularly inept Premier of Tasmania and occasional dinner-buddy of Gunns’ CEO John Gay – made a baffling announcement. In response to Professor Ross Garnaut’s analysis of the climate change issues and options facing Australia, Lennon declared that once and for all it was time to get the facts straight about Tasmania’s forests.

This was baffling for two reasons.

Firstly, Lennon and his colleagues in government, industry, and small-minded lobby groups have spent decades arguing that old growth grows on trees and should therefore be woodchipped as quickly as possible lest it get out of control. This argument shifted in the ’90s toward the need for human-led forest management for the good of forests, because without humans, forests are incapable of cutting themselves down. The latest model is two-pronged – logging prevents bushfires (just like abortions prevent cancer) and clearing forests makes room to plant more trees and therefore fight climate change (yes, they are that stupid). In essence, these people have deemed themselves the source of all forest facts. By calling for someone intelligent and with no connection to forestry cash to disseminate facts, Lennon risked undoing decades of half-assed but ubiquitous propaganda.

Secondly, for any non-Greens member of Tasmanian parliament, let alone the bug-eyed, frothing, rabidly pro-Gunns Premier to call for a setting aside of nonsensical argument and the genuinely independent presentation of clear, firm, scientifically credible facts about the environmental impacts of logging is simply unheard of.

But today everything is back to normal. Thanks to our good progressive friends at GetUp, we can see Lennon’s message for what it was. Thanks largely to his timing, it was just another hot, steaming, cow chip of media distraction from a sociopathic Tasmanian bureaucrat. GetUp has just circulated the following release:

You may have missed it, but the Tasmanian Government last week unbelievably signed an agreement handing over Tasmania’s forests to the Gunns pulp mill for the next 20 years – in the very same week Professor Garnaut warned them of the dire climate change consequences facing us.

If we don’t act now, bulldozers will start clearing land for the mill that will contribute 2% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions – at a time when we’re being told we need to drastically cut our emissions. But unfortunately Australia’s forests were largely left out of Garnaut’s recent interim report.

We have only one opportunity to put them in the picture. A proper assessment in his impending Climate Change Report of our native forests’ climate change value may just sink the mill project. Click here now to sign the petition asking Professor Garnaut to examine the full climate impact of this mill madness and the logging of Tasmania’s native forests:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/DontPulpOurClimate

There’s a real risk the Garnaut report won’t include a comprehensive assessment of native forests – despite new research finding the stopping of deforestation a “large, immediate and perishable opportunity”* to massively reduce emissions. Costing out the real value of native forests will not only prove Tasmania’s trees would be better left in the ground but make this teetering project financially unviable when Gunns realises they will have to pay for the carbon embedded in our forests.

Native forests are invaluable sources of carbon storage – and it costs nothing to leave them in the ground. But 80% of the 4.5 million tonnes of wood needed to supply the pulp mill each year will initially come from Tassie’s native forests – permanently destroying forests that can hold 10-20 times the amount of CO2 than plantations.

A proper assessment of their climate change value will undoubtedly make the arguments in favour of the mill, whose climate change impact has never even been assessed, untenable. Take action to protect nature’s lungs before the bulldozers move in:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/DontPulpOurClimate

Long story short, Lennon can dance naked down the main street of Hobart wearing wattle in his hair and singing about how he loves the freaky forest critters and their precious wooded homes because he has already pushed through the legislation guaranteeing that they will all be turned into dioxinated mulch.

What visionary leaders he, his state Labor Party, and their big-L small-minded ‘opposition’ are.

Many people may have missed it, but Kyoto in its current incarnation is the best hope for global climate action. Even supposedly progressive governments in supposedly first world countries still treat Kyoto as though it’s too hard, but it is riddled with perverse incentives.

For example, emissions from international shipping and air traffic are not included on anybody’s scorecard at the moment – even though these vapours are as damaging as those of any American cattle ranch or any Chinese coal plant. More directly, Kyoto rewards the cutting down of trees that were planted before the 1990s by recognizing the carbon uptake potential of new trees planted in their place – which means that governments have incentive to replace 600-year old eucalypts with water-intensive saplings.

Brilliant.

Add in the fact that Tasmania’s forest ecosystems are administered by people you wouldn’t trust to look after a goldfish, and all the big environmental research, studies, reports, and recommendations look less and less like progress, and more and more like good ways to feel proactive about doing less than nothing.

RSPCA chickens out over allegations against industrial donor.

The above picture comes from an excellent animal update by Maxine Firth here in today’s SMH. Amazingly, the RSPCA endorses the conditions in which these thousands upon thousands of birds at the Pace Farm facility in Buchanan, near Newcastle, are kept. More amazingly, their spokesperson, asked about these specific conditions and the ongoing commission-for-approval arrangement between Pace and RSPCA contributed to the following exchange:

Chief executive Heather Neil said: “RSPCA standards for accredited egg production ensure that hens are given the freedom to exhibit natural behaviours.

The program involves a process of stringent and regular inspections every eight to 12 weeks to ensure standards are being met.”

Ms Neil confirmed the RSPCA endorsed beak clipping of birds at the Buchanan facility.

“The RSPCA is aware of behavioural problems with this particular flock at Buchanan, specifically feather picking,” she said.

On the allegation that the birds were too cramped, she said RSPCA standards allowed for seven birds per square metre as opposed to the national code of practice standard of 12.

Animal Liberation said the RSPCA standard gives each bird an amount of space equivalent to a piece of A3 paper.

Ms Neil said the demand for eggs in Australia was about 200 million dozen eggs a year.

“Such a demand necessitates large-scale commercial production,” she said. “The RSPCA would prefer to be in there helping to improve the welfare of birds in commercial egg production rather than not being involved at all.”

Now, I may be wrong, but if birds are forced to live in such squalid and cramped conditions that they have to have their beaks burnt off so that they don’t peck each other to death… is that really a “behavioural problem”? Or is that a “human contempt for animal life problem”? And would the RSPCA have helped improve conditions for horses at race tracks or increase the size of steel pigpens if “large-scale commercial production” as opposed to “animal welfare” or “prevention of cruelty” was meant to be their priority.

Ha!! more like “eggs have the tick because it’s one less reason for you to give a shit about how these fucking trolls cash in on animal torture”

I have been pissed off at the way eggs are packaged, bought and sold for ages. Pace, for example, has a facility with close to a million chickens about 4 hours south west of Sydney, near Wyalong, in the appropriately named Bland Shire (seriously). These bastards have the nerve to produce a line of free range eggs, and people are either so busy or so ignorant that they buy them.

Here’s a simple question: If, for example, I keep a million chickens laying eggs in conditions similar to a concentration camp from the moment of their birth until their premature over-medicated death, but have another hundred thousand that run around in a nice field, should ANY self-respecting consumer be rewarding me with their cash?

Or to put it another way: If I run Auschwitz and I butcher 5 million people, turning them into soap, gold, and ashes, but I supply half a million with false papers and make sure they get across the Channel to England, am I a saint, am I halfway toward redemption, or am I so fucking evil that I should never be allowed to sell eggs again?

Basically – do not EVER buy ANY kind of egg from ANY company that runs ANY battery/cage hen facilities. Fuck PACE FARMS. Fuck INGHAM CHICKENS. FUCK KFC. Etc. LET YOUR SUPERMARKET KNOW –> tell them that you don’t want Pace Free Range eggs, tell them you want any other kind of remotely ethical free range eggs.

Buy organic if you’re really concerned about your own health. Buy free range if you’re concerned about the chicken whose period you’re eating.

And to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, as opposed to henpecked and cemented, here are photos from this page which allegedly details a 2002 investigation-of-sorts by local activists into the Pace facility near Wyalong.

These happy lookin’ fellas down the bottom have been in chook rehab. Not yet 100%, I’m guessing.

Dear Abby, my husband is a liar and a cheat…

Dear Abby,

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and, when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.

Also, since he lost his job eight years ago, he hasn’t even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills.

Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like
me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?

Signed: Clueless

Dear Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman, you don’t need him anymore!
You’re a Senator from New York running for President of the United States.
Act like one.

Signed: Abby

Greenpeace is lying and stealing your money

by Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd, first posted at Counterpunch, and properly titled

How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Death of the Great Whales

The Other Whaling Industry

By Captain PAUL WATSON

On board the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin.

“It does not matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

— Dr. Patrick Moore, President of Greenpeace Canada 1981

As the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society struggles to borrow and raise enough funds to return to the Southern Ocean, we feel incredibly frustrated by the fact that tens of millions of dollars have already been raised to defend the whales yet this money is not being spent for that purpose and it will not help put fuel in our tanks to resume our defense of the whales.

Enough is enough. The Greenpeace fraud about saving the whales must be exposed. For years, I have been tolerating their pretense of action and watching them turn their ocean posing photo ops into tremendous profits from whaling. And now they say they can’t return to the Southern Oceans with their ship the Esperanza because they don’t have the budget for it and because they are going to direct their energies into lobbying for change inside Japan.

Yet they still continue to collect money to save the whales. Greenpeace has booked all online advertising in the major Australian and New Zealand newspapers. Their ads are splashed across the internet from Google to MySpace. Send money, send more money. Television ads, millions of pieces of direct mail.

Greenpeace International raised 127 Million Euros last year. Greenpeace Australia has about 18 million dollars in the bank. Greenpeace USA sits on tens of millions of dollars. Yet they claim they do not have the budget to return to the Southern Oceans yet they also claim they stopped the whalers for two weeks in January, and if such a claim is true then they should go back and stop them again.

But they will not. They have surrendered the Whale Sanctuary to the whalers yet the ads keep popping up and the contributions keep flowing into the Greenpeace coffers. It is incredibly frustrating to see stories about Sea Shepherd’s successful interventions against illegal Japanese whaling usually sprinkled with criticisms by Greenpeace about our methods. And right beside these articles pops up an ad asking the public to send money to support Greenpeace. Even if Sea Shepherd wanted to invest in these ads, we cannot because Greenpeace has booked all the ad space for three months.

Greenpeace makes more money from anti-whaling than Norway and Iceland combined make from whaling. In both cases, the whales die and someone profits. We continue to receive reports from people who have received highly emotional appeals from Greenpeace for money to save the whales including appeals to help refuel their ship.

This is simply out and out fraud.

A Beautiful Whale Tale from the Southern Seas

This sweet piece of writing comes from Paikea – originally as a comment here, but too good to leave tucked away.

I am Maori, the Whales are very special to my people. I have heard their song all my
life. Our people and our Polynesian cousins have followed this magnificent creature
all over the world. As the whale knows the safest time to cross the seas. The Whale is
in our dreaming and is a very strong gentle intelligent spirit. It is a teacher.

We (all humans) were given this planet with everything we needed on it. We are borrowing it from our children. Yet we are slow learners and still defacate in our own nests, we act
like spoilt children who scream Mine Mine All Mine, we show our immaturity by not
thinking of others around us. Animals included. We show our ignorance and
arrogance by our actions of torture and greed.

The Japanese as a whole are a sophisticated people, this has blinded some because of greed and a misplaced sense of pride. Their hunting methods are barbaric to extreme, i’ts as if they feel power when they can inflict the most pain to the vunerable. This is not the behaviour of a civilised people. I kill my own meat with the greatest of respect and thanks, but if I cannot kill a creature humanely it lives for I would not put that shame upon my spirit. Not all of my people are of the same mind, but that’s something for me to bear.

The barbaric nature of many of the Asian nations on the Ones Without a Human Tongue, shows their inability to move forward in life. On traditions, the Japanese never went whaling in the southern oceans, a tradition of some of my ancestors was to eat Asians. Sushi
japanese at my place lol. The Japanese are endangering the extremely lucrative whale
watch industry in Australia and New Zealand, what right do they have to jeopardise
this. They have admitted killing lactating whales, leaving the babies to die a slow
lonely painful death, these people (if you could call them that) are evil. A whale is too
big to kill humanely.

I bow to The People of The Sea Shepherd, they have my financial and spiritual support, hopefully my son will join them next year to help protect our Spiritual Teacher The Whale. In time may you all grow ears so you can hear the song of the Whale, for then you will be able to see your world in all its splendor.

Best & latest on the Antarctic situation, including overview from Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson.

There was an excellent piece in the Guardian today, A Tale of Two Ships. It makes for a lengthy but captivating read, pitting the Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd philosophies against one another to enhance readers’ understanding.

Happy New Beer!

The General Managers of Cascade Brewery , Tooheys , XXXX , CUB and Coopers were at a national beer conference.

They decide to all go to lunch together and the waitress asks what they want to drink.

The General Manager of Tooheys says without hesitation, ‘I’ll have a Tooheys New.’

The General Manager of Cascade smiles and says, ‘I’ll have a Cascade Draught, brewed from pure mountain water.’

The General Manager of Coopers proudly says, ‘I’ll have a Coopers, the King of Beers.’

The bloke from Carlton says, ‘I’ll have a Carlton Draught, the cleanest draught on the planet.’

The General Manager from XXXX glances at his lunch mates and says, ‘I’ll have a Diet Coke.’

The others look at him like he has sprouted a new head.

He just shrugs and says, ‘Well if none of you ponces are drinking beer, then neither am I.’