The victim has moved out of his home but hopes what happens to him will not distort people's view of his adopted religion, the network said.
THE Greens have launched another strike against the media, calling for volunteers for a rapid-response team to target "shock jock" and "hate campaigns" through talkback and letters to editors.So pointing out the failures of these meddling bureaucrats and doomsayers is a hate campaign?
The call to action echoes Bob Brown's attack on the "hate press" last week and Twitter jibes at individual journalists from his director of media, Marion Rae.
"The Australian Greens are looking to build a national network of individuals who want to take up the challenge of responding to the misinformation and hate campaigns being waged by radio shock jocks and other sections of the community and media," says the party in an email.
It says there will be no need for the volunteers to actually hear or read the opinions and reporting to which they are responding.So in effect they can be lamestream media types who regurgitate edited soundbites spoonfed them by party apparatchiks. Hmm. It all sounds so familiar. I wonder is Soros is financing this scheme?
First he points out that “What began in 2004 as a ten- persohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn shop with a $3 million annual budget now has around 90 employees and plans to spend $15 million this year.” That is striking and demonstrates the enormous fundraising operation that they have created. But that is not translating into readers. With that budget and staff, they should be about the size of a site like Politico, but the numbers tell a far different story. According to web traffic evaluator, Quantcast, Politico averages 5.6 million monthly unique visitors, Media Matters a mere 646,200. Even if you give Media Matters the benefit of the doubt and double that number, they are still doing a fraction of the traffic of sites its size (at 1.3 million, it would still be far smaller than little Mediaite, with ten times the staff). That’s something that clearly should have been pointed out in the story.Not exactly much of a return for a staff of 90 and a budget in the millions. It's worth noting that Quantcast number and the sites listed that Media Matters readers also like, including the far-left Democrat outfit Think Progress and even further left The Nation. Even Al Jazeera makes the list, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
Boy Racer Lewis Hamilton's misery in Melbourne was complete after he was branded a "d***head" by an Aussie road safety minister.Needless to say, the Don't Be a Dickhead campaign is causing quite a stir.
Former world champion Hamilton was humiliated after he was arrested by traffic cops and had his Mercedes impounded as he drove from the circuit to his team hotel.
Then he launched a furious radio rant at his McLaren bosses after trailing in sixth behind teammate and race winner Jenson Button following a controversial pit stop.
And Hamilton's retreat from Oz added insult to his indignation on the day Victoria transport minister Tim Dallas launched a road safety campaign entitled 'Don't Be A D***head'.
Asked if Hamilton's run-in with the police matched the campaign's criteria, Dallas crowed: "OK, I'll say it - he's a d***head."
It’s the same concept as the “drink drive bloody idiot” campaign which put the B word up there in lights. Gosh how daring THAT was too but we all know what happens with this sort of propaganda, it’s that irritating Law of Diminishing Returns. After a while “bloody idiot” doesn’t seem quite so hip and happening any more, drivers just got back to running in to trees and wiping out pedestrians and we’re just left with one more swear word that has been approved and stamped by officialdom for public use.
“Dickhead” will go the same way. Thanks to the bow-tied marketing nerds, “dickhead” will have official sanction (although the Premier has been refusing to say it publicly, how hypocritical is that?). So what’s next? I guess we go the F word – then the C-word. After that, there’s not much left. Apparently “shithouse” is already in the “dickhead” series of ads too and we’ve already done “bugger” in a car ad years ago.
AN ABC TV segment that showed real vaginas and a woman having hers surgically altered has divided viewers.Hungry Beast? Wait a minute. This could get raunchy.
Some thought the footage, on last night’s Hungry Beast episode, was inappropriate, while others found it legitimate given the issue it was covering.
Kirsten Drysdale used the segment to explore the porn industry’s airbrushing of female genitalia, which gave an unrealistic image of what was “normal”.
Industry sources claimed they were forced to airbrush pictures due to classification rules which deemed explicit depictions of female genitalia to be inappropriate.Only eight complaints? Either this is a very low-rated program or the folks in Australia really dig vaginas. The Prime Minister appears to.
An ABC spokeswoman said it had eight negative comments from viewers overnight and several more this morning, although she did not have the actual number yet.
“Hungry Beast’s story on labiaplasty was a valid look at the impact censorship might have on women’s body image,” she said.
“Certainly, it contained strong scenes. However, viewers were given clear warnings about the content – one before the show began, and one before the actual segment – and so had ample opportunity to avoid the segment if they felt it might make them uncomfortable.”
Twitter was abuzz this morning with comments about the show. Some supported it while others were not so sure.
“The vaginas have lead to some uncomfortable silences,” one viewer said.
“Confronting, yes, but very good,” said another.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appears on Hungry Beast’s website jokingly saying his top priority is to watch the show.They have a video link but it's not viewable outside Australia and nobody's posted it to YouTube yet, apparently.
“My number one priority officially speaking is to make sure that I’m home on time of a Wednesday night to watch Hungry Beast,” he says.
Click Chart To EnlargeTHE jobless rate has fallen to 5.7 per cent with the number of employed people increasing by an unexpected 31,200 in November, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.
The unemployment rate is expected to peak at 6.2 per cent in 2010, according to the Australian Business Economists' annual forecasting survey.
MEAN pranksters glued an elderly man's bottom to a toilet seat in the public loos at Cairns Central, forcing him to sit tight during a highly embarrassing rescue.
The 70-year-old Cairns man was stuck so fast he had to be taken from the men’s toilets with the unwelcome fixture still attached, in full view of a gathering crowd of curious Saturday shoppers about 10.30am.
He was taken by ambulance to Cairns Base Hospital where it is understood industrial-strength solvents were used to dissolve the glue.
Police said it was the second case of a strong, fast-acting glue being smeared on a seat in the same men’s toilets that day, although in the earlier incident the man had been able to get up before the glue set.
A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman yesterday said the elderly man, who did not want to be identified, was "pretty distressed about the whole thing".
"That sort of thing would be bad enough to go through if you were a young person but for a person of his age it must have been particularly humiliating," the spokesman said.
"I imagine having to go out like that through a major shopping centre on a Saturday morning wouldn’t have been the best and all those emergency services would have gathered a fair sort of a crowd. We covered him up as much as possible."
Cairns Police District’s Supt Brent Carter said he was "ropeable" about the thoughtless prank and appealed for public help to identify the culprit.
"I think it’s probably a prank but it’s a pretty sick sort of a joke," Supt Carter said.
"The humiliation of sitting on a toilet while emergency services are working around you trying to free you … I just feel for the man.
"Then to have to be wheeled out of the shopping centre with the toilet frame still attached to your body is just dreadful."
People actually get paid to research this stuff?Traffic noise could be ruining the sex lives of urban frogs by drowning out the seductive croaks of amorous males, an Australian researcher said Friday.It can't be long until some kook calls for a traffic ban since frogs aren't getting so much action.
A well-projected and energetic croak is the male frog's most important asset in the quest to attract mates to his pond, Melbourne University ecologist Kirsten Parris said.
But competition from traffic noise in Melbourne could be a reason why frog numbers have declined in Australia's second-largest city since her survey of more than 100 ponds began in 2000, she said.
"If there are a number of different males calling, the one that sounds the best often gets the girl," Parris told The Associated Press. "You have to be pretty clear about your assets if you're a male frog."
"Generally, if he's putting a lot of energy into calling — if he's calling loudly or quickly or for a long time or all those things combined — it shows he's fit and strong and generally those things tend to correlate with female choice," she added.
Nothing like being a man and facing your critics. Here we have this bloated bag of wind who has no regular job, traipses around the globe on private jets lecturing the little people about his global warming hoax, and yet when an elected official in the country he's visiting asks for a meeting, well, he just can't quite fit it into his busy schedule.Senator Fielding is trying to score a one-on-one meeting with Mr Gore, who is in Australia promoting several environmental causes, to prove to him that climate change sceptics are right.Run, Algore, run!
Senator Fielding has promised to clear his schedule for any chance to meet the former US vice-president and Nobel Prize-winning environmental campaigner.
"The ball's in his court," a spokesman for the senator said.
The spokesman has said Mr Gore is aware that Senator Fielding holds a crucial vote in parliament and that any major green schemes - such as the Government's model to reduce carbon pollution in Australia - essentially rely on his support.
"(Mr Gore) said 'look, the schedule's tight but hopefully we can work something out'," when Senator Fielding approached yesterday for a meeting on the issue, the spokesman said.
"Al Gore's very aware that Steve has a crucial vote in the Senate."
It is believed Mr Gore will only be in the country for another day or so.
SYDNEY's gang war escalated to new heights yesterday with the youngerNow Ibrahim ain't your normal Aussie name. Of course I just had to dig and sure enough I found that the Ibrahim family is heavily involved in dug trafficking and biker culture in Sydney. They have been able to escape the justice system pretty good down under, but then I found this earlier story.
brother of Kings Cross figure John Ibrahim shot five times outside his
home.
SYDNEY'S Middle Eastern youth gangs have become recruitment grounds for outlaw bikies - with allegiances split along religious lines.
Senior police sources revealed they are extremely concerned about the
emergence of what they call the Muslim "feeder" gangs.
Youths of Middle Eastern background have become easy pickings for bikie gangs seeking to boost numbers to gain supremacy over rival gangs.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement have even dropped the Koran from their colours, replacing it with a Harley-Davidson logo.
Police intelligence identified Asesinoz MC - which
changed its name recently from the Parra Boyz and whose members are mainly Sunni
- as being aligned with Notorious.Asesinoz MC boasts of its extremist Islamic
views on YouTube videos and promotes anti-Australian sentiment including
flag-burning and statements like: "F. . . the police" and "Asesinoz MC is now
targeting Aussies".
the Skinny Blonde bottle features a 1950s-style pin-up called Daisy whose red bikini disappears as the beer level drops and the bottle warms up, thanks to the modern ink technology used on the labels.Of course if you drink too many of these healthy beers you might begin to see pink elephants.
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A LAUGHING police officer told a drunk Aboriginal man to sing and dance while he filmed the act, with the footage later posted on YouTube.The only outrage I have is it's been on YouTube for months but I don't recall seeing it.
The video shows a heavily intoxicated Aborigine lying on the ground in the Northern Territory town of Katherine.
He starts singing The Rivers of Babylon at the behest of a police officer who is filming the incident.
A second officer then drags the man to his feet while the officer taking the footage laughs and tells him to dance and say "Happy Birthday Blake".
The Aboriginal man, who is staggering and appears close to falling, continues to sing and dances about in a circle before being directed towards a police car.
The officer filming the incident then turns the camera on himself and says: "This s... is f....d up, f....d up''.
The video has prompted outrage from some online viewers.
THIS is the man accused of breaking into an adult shop and having sex with blow-up dolls in a bizarre series of alleged crimes in Cairns that made international headlines.
His leg in a cast, the 23-year-old limped from the Cairns watch-house late yesterday afternoon, just hours after police arrested him.
Police have not released his name.
He was charged with breaking into businesses in the CBD, including the Laneway Adult Shop off Spence St three times in the past month.
The man allegedly smashed his way into the shop, had sex with blow-up dolls and discarded them in an alley.
He is also accused of breaking into the Sapphire Bar by smashing a hole near the top of the roof and dropping 15m to the floor.
The hunt for the suspect ended yesterday when he was detained at his home and taken to Cairns police station where he was questioned and charged.
"Following intelligence-based inquiries, we attended a Manunda address and made an arrest," acting Det Sen-Sgt Jason Chetham said.
A DEEP sea submarine exploration off Australia's southern coast has discovered new species of animals and more evidence of the destructive impact of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide on deep-sea corals.Meanwhile, the story just repeats as fact that the earth is warming, despite cooling for the past ten years.
The scientific voyage by U.S. and Australian researchers explored a near vertical slice in the earth's crust known as the Tasman Fracture Zone, which drops from approximately 2 km to more than 4 km deep.
"We set out to search for life deeper than any previous voyage in Australian waters," said Ron Thresher from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
"Our sampling documented the deepest known Australian fauna, including a bizarre carnivorous sea squirt, sea spiders and giant sponges, and previously unknown marine communities dominated by gooseneck barnacles and millions of round, purple-spotted sea anemones," Thresher said.
Vast fields of deep-sea fossil corals were also discovered below 1.4 km and dated more than 10,000 years old.
Carbon dioxide spewing into the atmosphere by factories, cars and power plants is not just raising temperatures, but also causing what scientists call "ocean acidification" as around 25 percent of the excess CO2 is absorbed by the seas.
NATIONALS firebrand Barnaby Joyce has launched a fresh attack on emissions trading, drawing parallels between environmentalists and Nazis.He's right. It won't do a dman thing.
Senator Joyce warned of the rise of "eco-totalitarianism" and said he would not be "goosestepping" along with them.
The Federal Government plans to start emissions trading in 2010 to reduce carbon pollution and take up the fight against climate change.
"The idea that this scheme can go forward and no one's allowed to question because there's a new form of eco-totalitarianism that demands blind obedience, I think that is wrong," the Nationals Senate leader said on ABC radio today.
"One has to fall into lockstep, goosestep and parade around the office ranting and raving that we are all as one?"
Senator Joyce rejected a suggestion he was a climate change denier and drew a parallel with the Holocaust, the murder of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II.
"Climate change denier, like Holocaust denier, this is the sort of emotive language that has become stitched up in this (emissions trading) issue," he said.
Senator Joyce said emissions trading would put Australians out of their homes and out of jobs.
And it would do nothing to counter climate change, he said.
A MAN has smashed his way into an adult shop and had sex with blow-up dolls before abandoning the sex toys in a nearby lane.Talk about love 'em and leave 'em. Not even buying them breakfast!
Business owners in Cairns believe the same culprit is responsible for break-ins and till thefts at the Sapphire Bar on Lake St and three break-ins at the Laneway Adult Shop off Spence St in recent days.Gee, I wonder what that evidence could be?
His method of entry is to smash through walls and squeeze through tight holes, The Cairns Post reports.
The owner of the adult shop, who wished to be named only as Vogue, said that in a first unreported break-in, the man had stolen five dolls and had sex with one of them.
“He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley,” he said.
“It is totally bizarre. It is a real concern that someone like that is out on the street.”
Vogue said a sex toy also went missing in the second break-in and that the offender had a liking for the doll model named "Jungle Jane", which had been taken on both occasions.
He said he was dumbfounded that the burglar also had the "weird" habit of cleaning up the mess he had made after entering the building.
The burglar again smashed through a wall in the roof area of the shop on either Monday night or early yesterday morning but was scared off by a newly installed alarm system.
Vogue and David Sharman, the owner of the Sapphire Bar on Lake St that has a rear entry in the same lane as the adult shop, both believe they have been targeted by the same thief.
Both men said fleeting video images showed the burglar as being a tall, skinny Caucasian. He has left DNA evidence at the crime scene.
Wasted food at Christmas time is now being highlighted as an environmental problem.I wish these nattering nabobs would be more consistent. In one breath we keep hearing how hungry people are, now they're whining that too much food is being squandered. While that may be so in some cases, can we please stop turning everything into a story about this mythical climate change?
Jon Dee, the chairman of Do Something, says gases from leftover food rotting in landfill are 20 times more potent than the carbon pollution from car exhausts.
Mr Dee says there are simple ways to avoid over-catering at Christmas and damaging the environment.
"Australians waste more than 3 million tonnes of food every year and of course a lot of that food is wasted at Christmas," he said.
NEVAEH and Narnia got through but Queensland authorities have drawn the line at parents calling their children Gummy Bear, Coca Cola and King John 1.Actually, I'm not opposed to allowing adults to name themselves whatever they want so long as it's not trademarked or illegal in some fashion. Or some idiotic hieroglyphic symbol like Prince tried awhile back.
They were among the names rejected in 2008 by the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, which is part of the Department of Justice and Attorney-General.
"Parents are able to decide their own spelling when choosing a name for their baby, however in Queensland there are certain regulations governing what the name can be," Attorney-General Kerry Shine said.
"You cannot choose a name which includes an official title or rank ... it also cannot be a trademark, or consist of or include symbols without phonetic significance."
He said all of the names rejected were change of name requests by adults.
'The stranger the name, the more frustrating for a child who starts to think 'why did my parents do this, why did they put this on me?'."Geez, I would think being name Stallion would be more palatable than Number 16 Bus Shelter.
Child psychologist Paula Barrett agreed strange names created a sense of "social anxiety".
"Most children don't like to be different. It's all about fitting in when you're a child," Dr Barrett said.
In New Zealand, a nine-year-old girl called Talula does the Hula from Hawaii, recently won the right to change her name.
Family Court Judge Rob Murfitt also expressed his dismay at the trend to give children bizarre names.
Among those blocked by registration officials included Sex Fruit, Twisty Poi, Stallion and Fish and Chips - for twins.
Those allowed included Number 16 Bus Shelter, Midnight Chardonnay and Violence.
THE Federal Government's human rights arm plans to invent a new official status called "intersex" adding it to male and female as a legally recognised gender.Simply put, this is madness.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission wants people to be able to change their gender on their passports and driving licences even if they do not undergo surgery.
And transgender lobby groups say that even this does not go far enough and are demanding a fourth legal gender called "other" for people who feel like their gender is indefinable or changes from day to day.
PROTESTERS have swarmed the Gold Coast City Council headquarters, and with blaring rock anthems vented anger over a planned Muslim school.
Almost 200 residents turned out for the demonstration, draped in Australian flags and shouting pro-Aussie slogans while Australian rock classics such as Down Under and Great Southern Land boomed across the parkland, The Courier-Mail reports.
Australian International Islamic College, planned for Carrara, has raised the ire of residents who fear it will lead to the local Muslim population withdrawing from the rest of the community.
A rally last week attracted about 400 people, while people turned out yesterday carrying placards bearing slogans such as "no Muslim school, hell no" and "integration, not segregation".
Resident's spokesman Tony Doherty said Muslim schools did not encourage multiculturalism.
"It's segregation, not integration," he said.
"They're not trying to integrate into the rest of society.
"Since we have started protesting against this our churches have been covered in hate-filled graffiti."
He denied it was hypocritical to oppose Muslim and not Christian schools.
"Catholics aren't a different culture," he said.
"They are the same as us."
