The CCP wasn’t about to let the Australian leg of the ill-fated torch relay be dominated by voices for a free Tibet. When it was made clear by the PM that Chinese security wasn’t going to be allowed to manhandle Aussie crowds, the CCP bussed in less official bodies– and a hell of a lot of them- to bash their way through the Tibetan and sympathetic protesters in Canberra:

Alistair Paterson, 52, from Lake George outside Canberra, said he was standing with his seven-year-old daughter on Limestone Avenue with an older couple, their teenage son and two other young women when they were attacked by a group of about 50 people draped in Chinese flags.

Mr Paterson said he was holding a “Free Tibet” banner and the older couple also had a pro-Tibet placard, which angered the group as it ran along the crowd side of the barrier.

“I got a flying kick in the leg, another bloke was hit in the head with a stick with a Chinese flag attached to it and our banners were torn down,” Mr Paterson said.

“When I looked around there were three or four guys who I can only assume were Chinese who wanted to fight me.

“This gang of thugs rolled right through us and we had kids with us. My daughter was still shaking an hour later and is very quiet even now.

“I don’t normally get angry but I am so angry right now.”

I’m angry, too.

Up to this point, I wouldn’t have advocated a boycott- but if the CCP think they can pull the same bullshit in Canberra as in Tibet- and that’s EXACTLY what this was- Australia should withdraw its Olympic teams from participating in Beijing. Anything less is tacit approval of China’s international bullying.

-weez

John HoWARd’s gone like the sabre-toothed gibbon, but I took up his $2000 bribe for a $3000 LPG system for my 20+ year-old, $1500 yoot anyway- and didn’t even have to vote for him.

Petrol’s $1.54/L today but gas is just 62c. What would the price of petrol be absent the ill-considered Iraq war? At least now my motor fuel comes from the Bass Strait instead of Basra.

Less pollution will come out of the tailpipe but there’ll still be oil spots on the driveway.

The future’s bright.

Kinda.

-weez

Julian Burnside never fails to come up with blindingly elegant ideas.

Make lying unlawful for politicians? Brilliant.

A must-do, right up there with banning corporate political donations.

Thanks again, Julian.

-weez

In a move that seems either completely uncalculated or calculated to cause the Labor Party to be a laughingstock, Deputy PM Julia Gillard has announced that employers will be given powers to snoop employees’ emails without notice.

That employers would or could have the ability to read their workers’ emails is not a real surprise- I would really rather expect that employers, if they maintain a computer network for a business purpose, should (and probably already do) have the right to read emails sent or received via their facilities. Anyone who has a computer on their desktop at work should not presume it to be a private conduit- and anyone who does think it’s a private terminal is a bit of a nong.

However, the part that is so laughable is that Gillard is claiming this is to be used as a terrorism countermeasure. What proper terrorist settles in at his or her desk after raiding the last of the biscuits in the tea room at smoko time, only to go online to discuss world domination?

How ponderous.

-weez

Brendan Nelson says:

“[…] I assure you I’m going nowhere.”

No shit, Sherlock.

-weez

The following is a guest post by @ndy of slackbastard. @ndy’s main website is presently offline (but his backup isn’t). We here at machinegunkeyboard.com are only too happy to provide some alternative space in the interim.

@ndy writes:

As a result of technical issues, slackbastard @ anarchobase is moving… In brief, my previous blog was subjected to legal threats by the ‘anonymous’ owners of mathaba.net, who viewed the contents of the post below as being in some way ‘defamatory’. More details later. By the way, my email isn’t working, my computer is a piece of shit, and I’m a Luddite. In the meantime:

Having read a recent missive from “Media Alert Transmission Hub Advanced Broadcast Application” (MATHABA)* on the subject of its having documented a revisionist conference in Sydney on the subject of 9/11;

Having bugger-all response to a previous post [temporarily unavailable] on this issue; having a few hours to kill, maim and torture; I thought I might as well scribble a little more on local neo-Nazi Welf Herfurth’s media outlet of choice: mathaba.net. (more…)

The good news: South Korea have successfully launched their first astronaut into orbit

The bad news: The rocket is a Hyundai, gearbox went out after 50,000km

The result: Capsule was torched for the insurance, burned out hulk now in orbit around moon

Kidding, the South Korean astronaut went up on a Russian Soyuz, from Baikonur as usual.

Unfortunately, the Russians STILL have no sense of style.

The Buran 002 space shuttle is to the real deal what Superman is to Bizarro… Everything swoopy in the (still rather lumpy) US space shuttle is blockish and weird in the Buran. I actually thought this was a spoof- perhaps a city bus in space shuttle camouflage…

Stranger yet is the copy of the US layout now that the US shuttle program is wrapping up and returning to a vertically stacked rocket configuration for human spaceflight as the side mounted fuel tank seems to get a little bit explodey and loss-of-foamish causing poor flying characters occasionally.

Time marches on…

-weez

And considering Heston did an NRA rally on 4 May 1999 in Denver, near Columbine High School and only days after the 20 April 1999 massacre, it’s well past his due time. Most of the gun victims Heston belittled and dismissed didn’t get a quarter of Chuck’s 84 years.

I hope Heston gets all the hell he believed in.

-weez