Pray cast your eye across the street. Our mutual friend with the cap. Going down to lay a little something on the TAB unless I'm very much mistaken. I have often seen you chatting with him. And I'll bet you a dollar he talks about the government because there's nothing else he can talk about. Is he a personal friend?
No. I would call him an acquaintance.
Well, I am real glad to hear that, because I'd advise you to make it your business to be on the other side of the street whenever you see him approaching.
Is that so?
Why, yes. He's not the simple man he makes himself out to be. Not on your nelly, mate. That acquaintance of yours is a One Nation supporter!
There is a funny idea abroad (by which I mean, of course, in this dry brown land in which we all do dwell) that there exists a minor figure of such truthful grit that every attribute of ordinariness is congealed within their being.
This entity, I am led to believe, is now thought to be putting aside a characteristic reticence and a mug of tea, throwing the Akubra into the ring and stepping flat-footed into the political arena.
Their mission? To wake up Australia.
As soon as I heard that such a quintessential creature was out and about, I went to great pains to locate it.
Alan Broughton is a biological agriculture researcher and organic farming teacher based in Eastern Victoria. He has had extensive experience in farm management and setup both here in Australia and overseas.
I had a chance to discuss with him some of the assumptions being made about livestock as climate change drivers and how a new approach to grazing animals can impact on the sustainable ecology of agriculture.
It is a tragic irony of Australian existence that a country -- a continent -- the size of Europe can be so much the same shore to shining shore.
Among its 23 million peoples there is seemingly very little difference one person from the other.
We speak the same language. Deploying the same accents. Follow the same sports. Watch the same TV channels.
We are Rupert Murdoch’s play things. Hell -- he’s one of ours.Local boy makes good.
The most monopolized media networks in the western world make sure that the political debate doesn’t drift too far to the left.. We may have a national broadcaster -- modeled on the BBC -- but that too is very much under threat today.
In this mix is the long standing national expectation that this is indeed ‘the lucky country’.
Aside from a comparatively buoyant economy sustained by the boom in mining and mineral prices, we have not known civil war, famine, political cataclysm, invasion or relentlessly bad cricket scores.
Stuck in the South Pacific -- a first world country surrounded by various foreign lands we seem blessed. Despite the turmoils to the north over the years, the mass slaughter of at least half a million communists next door in Indonesia in 65/66, the Vietnam War savagery, the long term genocide of the people of East Timor…Australia could go about its capitalistic business as though its marooned in fairyland.
The wee scattering of islands to the east in the South Pacific may be sinking under rising climate-change driven seas but all we see on our shoreline are sandy beaches and an excuse for a suntan.
This sense of containment has been fueled for over 200 years by the overbearing dominance of Anglo Celtic peeps as the root stock of the country’s existence. The keen attempt to wipe out the indigenous population may not have worked as it was intended but for most of its existence the country has had a White Australia policy.
Supposedly ‘we’ know who we are. As the Labor Party immigration minister quipped in the 40s, “Two Wongs don’t make a white’.
This sameness is sustained by xenophobia. Fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’ was utilized as a backbone of Australia’s foreign policy for decades. The nation ignored Asia and preferred to mix it with 'ole Blighty. If anything Asia was seen as a series of land masses that only served as potential stepping stones for godless communism.The domino effect dominated national consciousness.
To defend the land from the occupation of the REDS -- Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian or Malay -- Australia made a pact with the United States and the ongoing alliance has ensured that there is hardly a bang up shooting war worth fighting that Australian hasn’t got a hand in.
Our government cheer-squaded any and every US invasion. It garages its bases. And defers to its foreign policy interests.
When the country sought to top up its population in the post war years it begrudgingly allowed non English speaking Europeans into the place and later engineered the demographics under cover of the nationalist ideology of multiculturalism. And lo! folk started migrating here from all over. This shift didn't have anything to do with opening up the country to ‘huddled masses yearning to be free’ but it was a gesture to those markets --like Asia, the local bourgeoisie sought to draw their profits from.
Walking through the Central Business District of any Australian state capital today you’d think the place was some melting pot of all the world's peoples. In the street would be people of Chinese, Arab, Slavic, Maori, Italian...or whatever descent. You’d presume that fortress Australia -- the chronic isolationism of the country -- had been drowned in a melting pot of mixed ethnicity.
You’d be very much mistaken.
Australia is much more racist today than it has been for over 50 years. A conscious tag team exercise, sponsored by both the country’s Labor Party and the local Tories, has bought back a xenophobia under sponsorship of the War on Terror.
And in an irony of political manipulation there is a new push to base the national identity on its Anglo Celtic past rather than its ‘multicultural’ present.
Indeed if you were wondering what ever happened to the old South Africa with its apartheid habits and sharply divisive racism -- I tell you: it crossed the Indian Ocean and now resides in Australia.
This country may not have a crudely xenophobic racist outfit like UKIP rising in the polls. We don’t need it. The duopoly of the two main political parties -- the ALP and the LNP -- are doing a fine job of racist bashing and blaming by themselves.
If you check out Australia's standing on human rights -- according to the United Nations -- in the way the country incarcerates asylum seekers, manufacturers and treats ‘terror suspects’, or suppresses the aboriginal population -- we’re up there among some of the most autocratic countries on the planet.
Way to go Australia: Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!.
We’re not just good at sport, making Kylie Minogues or servicing Dame Edna Everidge with anecdotes...Australia has engineered a very nasty attack on civil liberties at a time when the true depth of austerity and economic downturn has not hit.
How smart is that? We have a boss class that thinks ahead.
The Reserve Bank in conjunction with the federal Treasury is making arrangements for turning the whole country into a limited liability company.
And lucky you:every Australian citizen will be offered shares in the float. The new enterprise will take over the country as a going concern, together with all available assets, pre-existing good will, gold reserves and debenture stocks.
This novel initiative is a logical consequence of the currently very popular trend towards privatisation.
We're fast-tracking it, that's all.
The formation of Terra Australis Proprietary Limited and its listing on the nation's stock exchanges is intended to shore up the local share market at a time when investors could do with an injection of confidence.
The present zigging and zagging of the All Ordinaries does no-one any good. Your everyday, run-of-the-mill Aussie battler-type person could do without such uncertainty.
Furthermore, the overbearing pressure of state debt will be a thing of the past. This way we settle up and wipe the slate clean in one swoop without having to put up with all this relentless year in year out budget rigmarole.
GOOD NEWS! I have survived another year. The smiling dial that marks me out has not changed one smidgin in yonks. I'm ageless, that's what I am. I'm still the same bloke I was way back when ; still my dear old mother's son, the crème de la crème of the Highett Rileys in the prime of his wonderful life.
How can this be, you may ask. Surely one day he must be touched by cruel time?
My resilience from the toll life levies rests on a little-known feature of my existence: I'm the second son of God.
(Duration: 2:45 — 3.0MB) Music: Hopeful Ambience -- Richard Culver September 9th, 2013 (FreeSound)
I am not usually one for public confessions, but I feel that something must be said. You can imagine how difficult this is for me to admit to. I am just an ordinary Joe Blow trying to make their own way in the world. There's nothing special about me. And since there's not, maybe what I have to say many of you can relate to.
I'm different, perhaps, because in this matter I'm more in touch with my feelings than you are (or maybe it's just the way I was bought up). When the consequences of my actions dawned on me I, personally, found the guilt overwhelming.
In order to seek some relief, at least allow me to confess what I have done.
You know that huge budgetary shortfall the new federal government is talking so much about? The one that seems so hard to addres without financial pain and suffering...
I caused that. Little ol' me — through my own carelessness and selfishness — drove this country so deeply into debt.
But how can one person, you ask, be responsible for debts of such a grand scale? I, on my lonesome, of course, wasn't that wasteful. But me and a few million others like me can do a whole lot of damage when we throw caution to the wind.
Pick a day — any day — and there is sure to be a lot of human semen entering the world from private parts unknown. What it gets up to — when it gets out there — is anyone's guess.
Each day there's buckets of the stuff discharging forth half a teaspoon at a time. If we were to check the manifest, despite the current trend for low numbers, 200-300 million spermatozoa are on board bravely going where no wriggly thing has gone before. Just imagine how many sperm are sent on a mission each Saturday night! What with one thing and another, most of them are going to be dead by breakfast.
Such is life ... for sperm.
Lest we forget them.
If it wasn't for those few who make it, where would the patriarchy be today. For millennia we just thought milking males for semen was a fun thing to do. We didn't know it could help make babies. And now that we do, every sperm is suddenly so very sacred — so sacred that we are encouraged not to spill a single drop.
Here we are, somewhere in the South Pacific. That's the big picture: a big brown stain in a puddle.
Those in the know didn't know about this spot for some time. It was terra incognito — the secret country.
The first civilised person (by that I mean someone who wore underpants) to visit these shores was Lemuel Gulliver.
I’m sure you have read of his adventures.
His visit down-under was to the outback settlement of Lilliput, which was located in the inland region of what is now known as Western Australia.
See if I'm right. Gulliver's first journey ignored the big dry bit in order to have himself pegged out on a beach at some distance from the briny and within cooee of Uluru.
This spot is not now listed on any Admiralty chart, but back then it must have been.
Kathump! Gulliver lands in WA and the cute little Lilliputians take him to their hearts. They feed him and clothe him, and besides the bits that get edited out for the sake of the kiddies, a good time is had by big and small.
I wonder if I could have a few moments of your time?
I feel that it is my responsibility sometimes to remind the reading public that a society such as ours goes about its everyday business often with strict regard to certain well-established norms of behaviour.
In this regard, I wonder if I could prevail upon you — it will only take a moment — to reach down between your legs and see if you can locate something to grab onto. You don't need to go far — just keep searching at arms length in a region often referred to as the crotch.
More than likely you'll know what I'm talking about as many of you no doubt find an excuse to visit this locale several times a day. In your hand is a tackle box. If you don't possess this item of anatomy, I need trouble you no longer. You can go back to the crossword.
The rest of you should not take this opportunity to spend an undue amount of time down there exploring a structural component which you are perhaps already quite familiar with. You can adjust it. Hitch it up. That will do. All I'm interested in is reminding you that it's there.
There are some in our society who live off the labour of others.
Don't get me wrong. Most of us get along without recourse to such means, but there are an anonymous few who exploit their fellow human beings without compunction — and, what's more, they have been doing it unchallenged for years.
Does that seem so fantastic? Here is a conspiracy going on under our very noses, and no-one owns up to it. You won't read about it on the front page of the local daily, nor has Sixty Minutes covered the story.
But these types do exist.
About 2000 people gathered at Roma St Forum in Brisbane for the Peoples' March against the G20 Summit on November 15.
Aboriginal activists kicked off the speeches and a march, surrounding by heavy police presence, followed.
Multiple issues were raised at the protest, including Aboriginal deaths in police custody, demand for action on climate change, support for renewable energy, and highlighting the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, while the Mexican president is in town.
Protesters also opposed the corporate agenda the G20 meeting was pushing.
I reckon I'm pretty much reconciled.
Yep. I'm much more reconciled than I was last week.
Reconciliation is all the go. I'm reconciled. You're reconciled. We are all reconciled. Oh, it's just lovely. Brings a tear to my eye it does.
You wouldn't by chance be Aboriginal would you?
Not even the teeniest?
Because if you were I could reconcile with you and you could reconcile with me and it would be like the real thing.
In a standard working day of eight hours, it may take me four hours to produce the equivalent of my wages. If the time needed to cover my wage packet is reduced from four to two hours, then the bit what's left increases from four to six hours.
It is the bit what's left that makes free enterprise what it is today — exceedingly profitable...
These interviews conducted during the recent Baiada Poultry Factory strike are POV gems that remind us that unions and struggle still matter.
Stick Together Show:Today’s show focuses on the ongoing strike by migrant workers at the Baiada poultry factory in Laverton, Melbourne. We discuss the Herald Sun’s negative coverage of the strike, followed by interviews with a Baiada worker, and a farmer who grows chickens for Baiada
This is a very useful over view of what is happening in the Web 2.0 share and I don't care universe. I don't care, but do you?
The privacy paradox - Background Briefing
Generational change and the power of social media has dramatically altered notions of privacy and as personal data files expand, our lives are going public by default. Will our data footprints strip us bare, or set us free?
Stephen Colbert: But shopping and sex, surely we can be more invasive than that. How about a site that Tweets when you crap? Or, better yet, folks, we can combine them all into one site called 'Knowny', which records ever interaction, every movement of every person on Earth and posts them online like a storm of random data points that shouts out to the blind, indifferent universe: We exist! We exist! Please! Please let this mean something! Then we'll be fully known, except for who we really are, because that's kind of personal.
This program from the ABC's Health Report is a horrific story of complicity and diabolical consensus which tags the extent that racist and eugenic views can be embedded into sectors of any population and then rationalised and excused even years after they were found top be "ethically wrong".
The Health Report: lack of medical ethics - from the 19th century to Nazi Germany
This program is a very disturbing look at the lack of ethics in the history of the health profession. Medical historian Professor Paul Weindling takes us through a journey starting in the 19th century right through to Nazi Germany and the crimes committed by the medical profession during that era.
To listen to individual episodes online, click on play icon located next to each audio file download link. To download the audio to your computer, right click on file link.
Democracy Now!: Debating the Crisis in Thailand: Is Red Shirt Movement a Genuine Grassroots Struggle, or Front for Ousted Ex-PM, Billionaire Tycoon?
In Thailand, the government has rejected an offer by anti-government protesters to enter talks after a bloody week in Bangkok that has left at least thirty-eight protesters dead. Some fear the standoff could lead to an undeclared civil war. The protesters are mostly rural and urban poor who are part of a group called the UDD, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, more commonly known as the Red Shirts. We host a debate between Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a Thai dissident living in exile in Britain who supports the Red Shirt movement; and Philip Cunningham, a freelance journalist who has covered Asia for over twenty years.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Thai dissident living in exile in Britain. He was a university lecturer in Thailand before having to flee after writing a book criticizing the 2006 military coup. He is a Red Shirt supporter.
Philip Cunningham, freelance journalist who has covered Asia for over twenty years. He has taught at Chulalongkorn University and Doshisha University in Thailand. His writings frequently appear in the Bangkok Post.
Aboriginal poetOodgeroo Noonuccal, formerly known as Kath Walker, from Stradbroke Island in South East Queensland, was one of Australia's best-known writers and leaders. What is not commonly remembered is her experience on a hijacked BOAC aircraft in 1974 when Palestinian terrorists threatened passengers and took the life of a young German banker.
Kath Walker pleaded for the banker's life and the lives of the other passengers. The experience and the man's execution haunted her deeply. Brisbane writer and academic Sam Watsonis Oodgeroo's bloodline nephew. He has been inspired by her stories and her poetry throughout his life and in 2009 his play Oodgeroo: Bloodline to Country was performed in Brisbane. This Encounter tells the story of the play and Sam Watson's own experience of Aunty Oodgeroo for her time and his own.
This morning (April 20th) marked the official inauguration of the People’s World Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Tiqupaya, Bolivia. Organizers are calling it an alternative to last year's failed Copenhagen talks - one that puts front and center the needs and concerns of poorer nations many of which are expected to be hit hardest by climate change. FSRN's Jessica Camille Aguirre and Aldo Orellana report.
To listen to individual episodes online, click on play icon located next to each audio file download link. To download the audio to your computer, right click on file link. 
