My David Hicks checklist by J W Howard

Expedite David's trial to save face before election - Check

Ensure guilty plea to justify mistreatment - Check

Ensure David cannot profit from telling his story - Check

Sentence to six years so David is behind bars till after next election.

Repatriate David before election; look like hero.

Release Mr Hicks from prison; smear.

JoHo and Friends Part 1

JoHo with reclusive Sydney bussisman Eric Krecichwost, the founder and owner of failed finance business, Fincorp.
Fincorp is in administration owing $300 million to financiers and investors.

Fincorp advertising and The Age

Last weekend, Fincorp, one of Australia's most prominent property finance companies was placed in administration, with debts of three hundred million dollars.

Fincorp has been offering unsecured high interest to investors willing to part with their money; money used to fund property development projects.

Fincorp is now dead in the water and most investors have done their dough with little hope of recompense. Most investors approached Fincorp directly because the company was a big advertiser. Unlike the Westpoint debacle, there was little referral from financial planners, the middle-men who may be held responsible for the Westpoint losses. Simply, there will be no-one to sue.

Financial scribes including those writting for The Age "Money" liftout on Wednesdays have been warning investors to be careful of such "mezzanine" funds for some time.

However as recently as last week, Money has been running large advertisements for Fincorp.

In today's edition of Money, John Collett has written an article "Trouble at Fincorp", outlining the company's woes.

I hope Collett's readers didn't respond to Fincorp's ad last week.

ASIC has advice about investing with this type of company.

AFL player manager blues

AFL player welfare officers spend a lot of their time pulling players out of scraps and out of pubs and nightspots.

Helps to protect the player, the club and The Game.

Whilst inconvenient, its usually not that difficult  to enter a pub, way after curfew, kick 'budding-champion' in the backside and lead him by the collar back to Mummy's.

Not so easy at the West Coast.......

 

Player manager knocks on door of bikie club headquarters.....

Large metal door opened by large, annoyed bikie-type....

Player manager - Good morning. I'm the player welfare officer from the West Coast Eagles.

Bikie - Grrrrrrrrr

Player manager - Are any of our players here??

Bikie - Grrrrrrrrrr

Player Manager - Its past their bedtime..........

Bikie reaches for baseball bat.

Player manager - Can I have my players back.....Please.......If that's OK.

Bikie - Grrrrrrrrrrr

Closes door.

John Howard on Drugs

JoHo waded into the illicit-drugs-in-sport debate this week, criticizing the AFL approach to the issue.

His comments were predictably short-sighted and reactionary - calling for an "overdue review" of the policy and for a "zero-tolerance approach to illicit drugs".

One wonders whether JoHo, who knows little about the AFL and has historically shown no leadership in drugs policy, saw an opportunity to score some points against Andrew Demetriou, the League's CEO, who delivered scathing criticism of JoHo's government in a speech in 2005.

In fact, JoHo may have confirmed this as his motive by denying it thus, "I am not taking the opportunity to have a go at Demetriou or the AFL Commission, it's not an easy job".

Pauline Hansen tells all

Oh........










Oh .........









Oh.........









Oh........









Oh David......no..................

Bolt says pull troops out of Iraq

Andrew Bolt, appearing on Ross Stevenson's 3AW breakfast show this morning, said that Australian troops should be withdrawn from Iraq prior to this year's federal election.
Good on you Bolta, I knew you'd come round.

How's your War on Terror looking?

 

Feeling more comfortable with your War on Terror.

The West slowly getting the upper-hand? Huh?

The world's becoming safer; more peaceful. Right?

You want fries with that?

This is the Coalition of The Willing's  drive-through war. Quick, healthy and piping-hot victory against the threatening hordes.    

Yep.  

McVictory!

 

Paul McGeough, Fairfax Journalist, currently in Islamabad,  offers a sobering review of the War on Terror here.

Sorry to spoil your day.

Save the Tasmanian Devil

Isn't this a cute little critter.

Named for their fearsome growl and their horrid table manners, the Tasmanian Devil is the Apple-Isle's last remaining native mammal.

Unfortunately, Devils are under threat from a malignant mouth ulcer disease that is spreading throughout the Devil population.

As research continues into the cause (likely to be a micro-organism), plans are being made to isolate a population of healthy beasts to protect against extinction.This may be in captivity or on Marie Island on Tasmania's west coast or on the Tasman Peninsula, south of Hobart.

Help Save the Tasmanian Devil.

See Devils at play here.

More info on Tassie Devils.

Sign a petition to help save the Devils.

Cracked Coconut

Australia's PM, John Winston Howard (from here on referred to as Joh-Ho) is starting to look just a little nervous.



Sacrificing Human Services Minister Ian Campbell, in order to smear more Brian Burke dirt on Kevin Rudd seems to have backfired, with the muck falling away from Rudd like fried egg from a teflon saucepan.

Joh-Ho's army of sycophantic cyborgs - Ruddock, Abbott, Nelson, Minchin - will continue to spew the Government's doctrine, but some of the government backbenchers must be uneasy.



Its only 241 days till the next election - Thanks Ms Fits .




Backbencher 1 - "If the big coconut doesn't stick his finger in the dyke, it the end of me."

Backbencher 2 - "I don't feel like being flushed down the U-bend with that big turd........cant we do some thing."

Backbencher 1 - "We can't put Costello in charge.....The iceberg won't survive being towed to Canberra.......not enough substance"

Backbencher 2 - "Public won't buy it.....look at that smirk....you think he'd get that surgically corrected."

Backbencher 1 - "No-one else....we're stuffed.... the cabinet's full of frickin apple-polishers. No talent"

Backbencher 2 - Except......

Backbencher 1 - You thinking about.......

Backbencher 2 - Yep.....

Backbencher 1 - He's in a hurry. He's not interested in support positions. He's.....

Backbencher 2 - A republican! Yeah...........Joh-Ho's battlers will like that!

Backbencher 1 - Turnbull....you bloody lifesaver!

Real Apple Innovation

Whilst Apple Inc often claims innovation, the current rumour that it may be about to introduce a flash memory based notebook would be real innovation.

Flash memory has the advantages of ruggedness and low power consumption compared to traditional hard-drive storage.

The hard drive is the staple storage medium because it has huge capacity and is very cheap. Hard-drives though,are fragile and prone to failure.

A scaled-down notebook with flash-memory and a full-sized operating system would be a real breakthrough (also the final nail in the coffin of the PDA and a real threat to the smartphone).

Confusing headline

 

"Turkey slaps ban on YouTube"

 

What?

 

No more turkey-slaps on Youtube?

 

Am I going to have to start watching "Big Brother" again?

 

Apparently not.

Some sub-editor at The Age is basking in the glory of this amusing double entendre after the Turkish national telecommunications provider, Turk Telekom, was ordered to block access to Youtube by a local court.

Prosecutors alleged that videos on Youtube had insulted the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ataturk is famous, in Australia, for his quote:

 

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives.. you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours..

You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom and are in peace.

Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

 

 

The statement was popularised by Midnight Oil in their song "Blossom and Blood".

QC Lets Fly

As the tide of public opinion turns in favour of David Hicks, Robert Richter QC launched a stinging attack on Ruddoch, Howard, Downer and Co. here in the article from The Age 18 Feb 2007

Hypocrites breaking our law at every turn

More power to him.

Rate Your MD?

Now this is strange...kinda fun though.

Canadians rate their doctors for all to see.

Some of the feedback is interesting.....

 

"NEVER ON TIME!"

"I waited a year and half to see him because of endometriosis, only to have him tell me to give up my career and get pregnant. "

"It really bothers me how many prescriptions she currently has me on, and I don't even know what they are for."

"I find the Dr. very disorganized. This Dr. needs a palm pilot."

and I REALLY love this one.....

"Inexperienced; inefficient; surly bedside manner; rough and incompetent during physical exam (in 50 years I have never been told by any doctor that they couldn't FIND my cervix!)"

This website is pure GOLD.

http://ratemds.com/canada/index.jsp

Things I Once Enjoyed

Ageing is by definition both insidious and relentless.

Whilst you hold on, in desperation, to those memories of experiences dear to you, the influx of new information crowds, distorts and hides them.

Occasionally, the dam of irrelevant trivia will burst, allowing memories to flood your sensorium. The trigger might be a smell, a sight, a sound or some other prompt.

I recently had the opportunity to lay on the beach, in the sun, undisturbed.

How I loved doing this years ago. The warmth on my skin. A faint cooling breeze. The silence.

Other things I liked, but never do now...

Sleeping in till 12 noon.

Walking to the City and back for no particular reason.

Talking to someone I don't know  in public.

Reading at the park.

Photographing stuff.

Playing music REALLY loud.

Walking around at home in my jocks.

Eating raw carrots.

Rockwiz Star

You might have seen a delightful performance by Kate Miller-Heidke on Rockwiz last Saturday night.

I'm not familiar with this Australian singer-songwriter, but her solo at the start of the show was excellent.

She followed up with an interesting duet with Paul Dempsey, singing a Wham! classic from the Eighties.

What a great new talent. There are some free music downloads on her website.

Demand and Supply.

A Meo245 cd available on eBay at $65.

Is that good value?

Right Wing Art?

 

I came across a short article recently where the author lamented children not being exposed to right-wing poetry at school. Our scribe opined that such is the prevalence of left-wing writing, the young of today may not even be aware of the existence of such verse.

I was gob-smacked.

Like today’s neglected youth, I too am ignorant of this great body of work.

The odes of Andrew Bolt, verse of Franco and the limericks of Ronald Reagan have all escaped me.

To give them their due, they must be some wordsmiths these conservative poets. It’s no easy task finding words to rhyme with 'detention centre', 'xenophobia' and 'axis of evil'.

Hmmmmm.

There is no shortage of topics though…….. environmental scare-mongering, dangerous refugees, single mothers, university drop-outs, abortion, sedition and those pesky indigenous races…..all grist for the mill for an eloquent bourgeois lyricist.

 

Could be a dollar in it……..

 

Newscorp and Fox need content…….

 

Let’s try…..

 

There was a young lad from SA,

Captured in Kabul one day,

Alas Mister Hicks,

For your terrorist tricks,

In Cuba you’re going to stay.

 

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Monday Movie Review

It was a busy day at the Nova Cinema in Carlton today. 

The lovely weather and discount price attracted plenty of punters.

However, "Breaking and Entering" was a major let-down. Certainly, the most daft film I've seen for some time.

Photographically beautiful and with a strong cast, this piece of fluff was let down by woeful story-telling.

Major plot twists, seemingly at odds with the prevailing circumstances, were largely left unexplained.

One sideline ended inexplicably and might have finished on the editing-room floor had it not provided the only good humour in a gloomy two hours.

While I wasn't too sure of the message here,  it appeared to be either that a good hug will fix anything or that, if you are rich and stylish enough, it is okay to exploit those less privileged than yourself.

Mind your P's and Q's

Mathew Dunkley reports in the Financial Review (Saturday 10 Feb) that there appears to be an increase in plaintiffs claiming damages, due to defamation, against authors of web-sites and blogs.

The conventional 'retraction' is also being tested in the courts in a case involving the Managing Director of the Housing Industry Association.

Bloggers may be well advised to keep to establisherd facts when expressing their opinions online.

Further, comments from readers should be reviewed and, if necessary,  edited as soon as possible.