BaSH PR0MPT

Australian Labor Party politics are a joke. Absolute dogs for shanking the PM who saw us go through the GFC with the strongest economy emergent, and the most popular first term leader ever; backstabbing is a favorite past time in politics though I guess. I’m just disappointed that our first woman PM is through dog tactics and not election.

As loath as I am to get into political debate or discussion on my blog, we’re in a unique position in Australia where we are currently having the leadership of our government challenged by another person who has backing of super sekkrit factions, factions who seem to make decisions on behalf of the Australian people as to who their elected representative is, highlighting the flaws of party-politics as opposed to direct-elected representatives.

Allegedly angered by a morning newspaper report leaked from the Prime Minister’s office, questioning her loyalty, Julia Gillard called senior powerbroker and fellow Victorian MP Bill Shorten. “It pissed everyone in the caucus off,” said a NSW senior factional leader. “And it pissed her off, too. She has been nothing but loyal. And to have that happen was not only stupid but unwarranted.” Sadly actions speak louder than words as our first female Prime Minister–something much overdue–may very well be in power through skullduggery as opposed to free election. This taints all progress of equal rights for women in Australia and will put the potential of our first female PM into a situation where people will point out that it wasn’t the fill of the people.

Just before Question Time at 2.30pm, the Deputy Prime Minister assembled a select group of Cabinet colleagues and co-conspirators. They had been trying to get her to challenge his leadership ‘for weeks’, giving strong backing to the claims from the Prime Ministerial office questioning her loyalty to the elected leadership and the will of Australian voters.

By late afternoon, Shorten, fellow Victorian Senator David Feeney, NSW MP Tony Burke and South Australian right wing factional leader Don Farrell went to see Ms Gillard in her office.

They had been conspiring for the past week and they wanted her to challenge. Powerful AWU boss Bill Ludwig told the ABC Mr Rudd is “toxic”. “We have a better chance of holding government with Julia Gillard that we would have with Rudd,” Mr Ludwig said. Former Premier Peter Beattie has backed Ms Gillard, telling the ABC “she is a very talented woman”. Transport Union boss Hughie Williams said Ms Gillard will prevail. “It’s quite obvious they have the numbers. We’ll have a new prime minister of Australia,” Mr Williams said.

Queensland Senator Barnaby Joyce said the overnight coup attempt against Mr Rudd has been engineered by factional leaders who have taken over the running of the country. “It is running on auto-pilot in the face of faceless people and faceless men who (were) never elected,” Senator Joyce said.

“We’re basically realising that the whole direction and metaphor of this Government was flawed and we’re off to – gosh only knows.”

It is interesting to note that many conservative biased media outlets are painting this as ‘loyal Gillard reluctantly challenges leadership’, media outlets that tend to follow the normative Liberal bias, however it should be noted that the ‘factions’ behind this coup are ultra-conservative Laborites and traditionalists as opposed to progressives.

Shortly after 7pm, Ms Gillard’s office called the Prime Minister’s Office and told them that Ms Gillard wanted to see the PM. The pair had been due to have dinner later in the evening at the Lodge. Mr Rudd was called back from a function to celebrate the 20th anniversary of parliamentary service for Senator Nick Sherry, around the corner from his office in the Ministerial wing of Parliament House.

With Ms Gillard was Defence Minister and fellow left-wing factional heavyweight John Faulkner, a NSW senator.

She informed the PM that she intended to challenge him for the leadership. She wanted a ballot. The pair remained behind closed doors for almost two hours.

As the two were locked in an intense negotiation, interrupted twice by Rudd loyalists Anthony Albanese and Lindsay Tanner, the factional leader from NSW Mark Arbib hit the phones.

Shorten, dining in the Canberra suburb of Kingston with colleagues including Sports Minister Kate Ellis, was also glued to the phone. But by 9pm the conspirators were confident they had the numbers to swing behind her should she decide to do it.

The answer was revealed at 10.20pm when the PM called a press conference and revealed he had been visited by Ms Gillard, and confirmed that the challenge was on, after media outlets erroneously claimed his press conference was because he was ‘resigning as prime minister’.

This morning, at 9am, she goes into a special caucus meeting with the conspiratorial bulk of the members of the NSW Labor Right, the Victorian Right, the South Australian Right and the Victorian Left behind her.

Queensland right-wing powerbroker, Senator Joe Ludwig, was also on board. The deal was that Treasurer Wayne Swan – the man who voted against Rudd in the spill against Kim Beazley – would be Ms Gillard’s deputy.

The Victorian Right had been courting Gillard for the past two weeks, urging her to challenge. “We can’t win with this bloke,” they told her. Ironically, if Labor enact a change in leadership the chance of them winning at the next election, or next several elections is slim to none given that trechery is not really smiled upon by the average punter.

Arbib, the NSW numbers man who put Rudd into the leadership in 2006, had been sounding out support among select MPs for a change.

The internal polling provided by the party’s national secretary Karl Bitar was worse than the public polling, which had already put the Government in a losing position. But some outlets Gillard’s loyalty prevented her from doing the unthinkable.

This is why caucus driven parliaments are corrupt. Kevin Rudd was spoken to by Julia Gillard who brought a request for a ballot of leadership of the Australian Labor Party, a legal bloodless coup d’etat for all intents and purposes. Kevin Rudd was voted in by the people of Australia and yet he is standing down, with a special meeting to be held tomorrow on leadership with a ‘number of factional leaders’ no longer supporting his leadership. Kevin will be contesting at the ballot tomorrow, with Julia Gizzard leaving it until late night to pop her coup. The main issue is asylum seekers, climate change, emissions trading, which is where faction leaders are having a wobbly.

A caucus is something most non-Australians may not be familiar with, but it’s fundamentally a government within a government allowing crazed parliamentarians to push batshit agendas that aren’t representative of Australians or the people who voted for them. The caucus can turn on the Prime Minister and screw him over, as we’re seeing for the first time. Kevin keeps pointing out that he was elected by the PEOPLE of Australia and not factional leaders.

While I’d be chuffed to see Australia have their first woman PM, I don’t agree with Gizzard’s coup, as loathsome as K-rudd can be at times with not following through. This is why we should elect the person, not the party, and vote for WHO we want to represent us, not just a brand name with a random and (obviously) changeable line-up. It’s abhorrent.

Ps: Early rumours that he stepped down were incorrect, there will be a secret ballot held by the Labor caucus tomorrow at 9AM.

As most of my international readers (and let’s face it, that’s like 800,000 per week of you, Australia only has two modems, and we have to share) are aware, our government here have been pushing an agenda to ‘censor’ the internet with a mandatory ‘clean feed’ for some time. There were protests many years ago to try and stop them but the overall response of the average punter back when they could have made a difference was “It’ll never happen.” so as much as it pains me to say it, we kind of do deserve what we get with that. But recent pure asshattery to come from our parliamentarians–who are so detached from reality they can’t even operate VCR’s, which is ironic as you can’t even buy them anymore–is something that explains why anti-virus companies were very pro-filter.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communication (They don’t represent us, just batshit vocal minorities, I assure you) have stated that all Australian’s should be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a ‘new plan’ to ‘fight cyber crime’. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved.

Those are two of the recommendations to come from a year-long multi-million inquiry into cyber crime. They spent all the money on K-Rudd’s crack and then did an all nighter the night the findings were due. Results of the inquiry, titled Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime, were released last night in a 260-page report, there is no mention whether it met copyspace clearance however and may have been plagerised from first year ethics students at UWA.

In her foreword, committee chair Belinda Neal said cyber crime had turned into a “sophisticated underground economy”, before taking a rasping breath from the pipe under the table. “In the past decade, cyber crime has grown from the nuisance of the cyber smart hacker into an organised transnational crime committed for vast profit and often with devastating consequences for its victims,” Ms Neal said. I postulate whether she is referring to the ‘russian mobsters’ who ‘hacked’ a dentists website and ‘uploaded child pornography’ to ‘make money’ as Senator Conman Conroy stated when asked why a dentists office was on the super secret government black list.

During its inquiry the committee heard a growing number of Australians were being targeted by cyber criminals and that increasing internet speeds were likely to make the situation worse. Something we don’t inherently need to worry about in Australia given that we still pay several hundred dollars per month for speeds not exceeding ADSL1 technology branded as ADSL2+ with a lot of fine print that anything over 56k dialup ‘in their terms’ is ADSL2+ (forget international standards here folks).

It also heard the problem was costing Australian businesses as much as $649 million a year. Including dentists with large kiddy porn collections replacing their virtual store front. The committee looked at several different examples of cyber crime, including hacking, phishing, malware and botnets. They intently carried out this research by leeching torrents, using Back Orifice on inter-office computers, and asking each other for their banking details from fraudulent hotmail accounts, such as imnotsenatorconroy@hotmail.com.

Among its final 34 recommendations were:

• The creation of an around-the-clock cyber crime helpline. This, I agree with. I don’t pay for phone calls so I will ring them and chant “Cocks, cocks, cocks.” until the end of time.
• Changes to the law to make unauthorised installation of software illegal. What the fuck, seriously.
• Companies who release IT products with security vulnerabilities should be open to claims for compensation by consumers. This I agree with. Microsoft, give me moneys.
• Another of its recommendations was to create a new “e-security code of practice” that would define the responsibilities of internet service providers and their customers. Cocks, cocks, cocks.
• The code of practice would see companies like Telstra give their customers security advice when they signed up and inform them if their computer ever appeared to be compromised. More fine print we won’t read and will click yes to.

For their part, customers would have to install anti-virus and firewall software before their connection was activated and endeavour to keep the software up-to-date. It pisses me off enough as it is when they ask what kind of computer I’m using to access the net, when half the time I’m not even using a computer at all, nor any OS they’d have heard of. Find me anti-virus software for my xbox, or my iPhone hard-booted to run Lunix (yes, Lunix, no, it’s not a typo)  please K-Rudd.

If a customer’s computer was infected by malware, the service provider could introduce gradual restrictions and eventually cut off their internet connection entirely until the machine was “remediated”. This implies that the Government will not only be ‘filtering’ us, but also packet sniffing our shit in a clandestine way.

This entire thing just makes me want to pre-emptively ring that hotline, or maybe Senator Conroy’s office. In fact, brb, cocks, cocks, cocks time.

An international aid ship en route for the beseiged Gaza Strip was intercepted by Israeli troops, the Gaza-based committee awaiting the vessel said.

“The Rachel Corrie has been intercepted 35 miles off Gaza,” a spokesman for the welcoming committee, Amjad al-Shawa, who talked with the boat, told AFP in Gaza City, the vessel 5 nautical miles off coastal waters, thus pushing the case that these seizures in international waters amount to piracy. “Several Israeli boats surrounded them and prevented them from reaching Gaza,” said Mr Shawa.

“They try to take the boat maybe to (the southern Israeli port city of) Ashdod or maybe to another place,” he said. Mr Shawa said communication with the boat had been “completely cut” but the committee would keep trying to reach them. Martin Quigley, a Dublin based spokesman for the vessel, which is carrying 15 people and tonnes of aid for Gaza, could not confirm the information and said he had not been in contact with the boat. “They had agreed to call us the minute they spotted any Israeli ships,” he said, saying he had not been able to reach the passengers on the satellite phone. “It sounds like the phone is off the hook.”

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army denied the boat had been taken over, telling AFP: “No… we are not aware of any information about that”.

Israeli governmental credibility is on the ropes after autopsies on the bodies of nine Turks revealed most were shot in the back of the head or the back, the Turks were killed in an Israeli raid on an aid ship bound for Gaza found they were peppered with bullets and many were shot at close range, a British newspaper said Saturday.  Citing Yalcin Buyuk, the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice on Friday, the Guardian said the men were shot a total of 30 times.

One 60-year-old man was shot four times – in the temple, chest, hip and back, Buyuk said. A US-Turkish citizen was shot five times at close range in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, Buyuk said.

Israel has said the commandos only opened fire after they came under attack with clubs, knives, guns and other weapons, although no weapons other than deck poles were found on the vessel, and night vision footage taken by the IDF revealed that the crew only began to try and repel the attackers once weapons fire had already commenced against the unarmed civillians on board the ship.

Bulent Yildirim, head of the Islamic charity Foundation of Humanitarian Relief, which spearheaded the Gaza aid fleet, said activists used iron bars in self-defence after Israeli soldiers fired indiscriminately when they stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara.

A $5 million dollar bike share has been announced by the state of Victoria in an attempt to make their state seem more ‘revitalised and european’. Gordon Oakley RACV Member & Motoring Services was interviewed regarding it and pointed out some utter failures of the system, you have to bring your own helmet (in Australia it’s illegal to ride a bike without a helmet) and if you ‘subscribe’ you can only use it for half an hour at a time. So, it’s a $5m white elephant state project as the target audience has been marginalised dramatically and it’d barely get used as opposed to what it could achieve.

It’s a brilliant idea, given how many ports they’re setting up for them, however it’s 2010, if they had even half a clue the helmet would be attached to the bike and ‘unlock’ for use when the bike is released from the port, and the bikes would have rudimentary electric motors (I believe the going rate of such a bike in China is about $50 AUD IIRC.) and would recharge from a simple solar cell added to the base station.

Who knows, maybe some company searching for keywords during the data mining part of their marketing team research might see this and pick up the game in the corporate sector providing a real transport solution for their state.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…”
Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science (1882), s126.

Long have we theorised the above line by a madman bearing a labtern not to be talking about the literal God believed in by so many theists. Instead, we interpret, he is talking about what this god represented for European culture, the shared cultural belief in God which had once been its defining and uniting characteristic.

So to has man thrown off the yolk of theism, every element of the divine has been replicated at large through science, trickery, art, illusionism except one final element; the creation of life.

Until yesterday when flamboyant geneticist Craig Venter held true to the pledge he made nearly 15 years ago, unveiling his magnum opus. This landmark of scientific progress, published in the Journal of Science, stands on the shoulders of his race to decode the human genome in his own laboratory, egotistically his own DNA I might add.

The madman carrying this lantern has indeed created the first instance of purely synthetic life, opening the doors nanoscience falter at with the potential to create designer microbes for special jobs such as production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, through to filtering contaminents from air and water.

“This is the first synthetic life that has been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromasome, made with four bottles of chemcals on a synthesizer from information on a computer,” Dr Venter said.

Lauded as a tour de force by Prof. Mattick from the Australian Research Council, Dr. Venters work is as ground breaking as science gets these days, the applications for man made life are phenominal and limited only by our imagination. That being said, mans imagination can often be self destructive, so think of all the fantastic synthesized zombie viruses the US military will make with this!

The bacterium used decoded DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides imprinting the synthetic DNA and inserting it into living bacterium, in this case Mycoplasma capricolum, allowing the bacterium to flourish with both it’s own and the synthetic DNA within, then finally using an antibiotic designed to kill all but the synthetic DNA allowing only the synthesized organism to proliferate and produce protein strands from the original Mycoplasma mycoides creating, simply, artificial life.

Klatu barada neck-tie?

Dear K-rudd,

You know, that almost makes you sound like a rapper. I am writing this merely to mock you, knowing the people reading it will appreciate the tongue in cheek as I illustrate the ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’ you’re dishing out to smokers. I’m aware you’re about as detached from reality as a politician can get, but I do know the 12 year old korean sweat shop workers you have in your off shore PR department will read this and hopefully also get a chuckle at your expense.

Smoking, filthy habit, right? Some say it’s as hard as heroin to kick. In Australia, the land of the ‘surprise tax’ as I like to call it (we’re already one of the most taxed nations yet we have ‘stamp duty’ tax on … everything, which is usually 10% (see: bankrupting on your first home or car purchase by surprise tax) as well as road tax, breathing tax, you fucking name it tax) but now we have taxes on taxes. Cigarettes were always taxed at a premium, where a pack of fags would set you back $7 in the 80′s and early 90′s as opposed to $1-2 outside Australia.

Smokers clog up the healthcare system, right? What with their dying all the time and stuff, why not tax them? Fine. Smokers pay a lot more tax than any other Australian, with almost 90% of the price of them being ‘tax’ all going to the medical system. But fuck giving them organs, they’re smokers. Hell, let’s tax them more. Now we’re nearing $1 per cigarette, and what happens? The price of ‘quit smoking aids’ which always work out to cost more than cigarettes go up too.

As much as governments pretend to want us to not smoke they realise that the tax they can milk out of us by keeping us alive an average 10 years more is far less than what they can by taxing our addiction. I say this as an intermittant lifelong smoker, who quits as often as he restarts, but fairs fair this new tax has gone way too far.

Heroin addicts get shooting galleries, social support, free housing, $380 a fortnight and FREE methadone to inject instead. Smokers get mortgages, bills, two point seven five children, two cars, and a fuckload of surprise tax on top of their taxed taxes of cigartaxes and placebo ‘quit’ substitutes that freely state in their instructions that they won’t give you the ‘fix’ or ‘buzz’ of cigarettes (and thus never last more than a week in a smokers addiction).

So, I propose this K-rudd, rather than making heroin far more appealing to Australian’s, how about you cut back on the smoking tax, or even it out across the three big killers, obesity (being the biggest killer in this nation) and alcohol (and see how long it takes until parliament house is burnt down and you’r nailed to the flag pole given how crazed Aussies seem to be about drinking (coming from a non drinker here)), which I might add are two elements I do not participate in. Maybe we should have photos of the mega-litres of fat sucked out of womens arses and thighs and the horrible chaffed cellulite gone necrotic fat people get attached to every edible product? Why stop there, why don’t we up the gore level and throw up some awesome pics from ogrish of splatter deaths from drunken road kills of people?

Or better yet, maybe repeal the tax and stop being a cunt, eh?

Much love,

BaSH (Your #1 Fan) PR0MPT

Ps: Why the fuck did I vote for him? I guess he was Obama before Obama, he looked good because the competition was horrendous, and promised the right things, then backflipped on all of them.

“Absolute political cowardice… an absolute failure of leadership.”1 That’s what Kevin Rudd said just months ago about those who wanted to delay action on climate change. He was right.

Yesterday Kevin Rudd betrayed his promise to act on climate change, deferring action until 2013: six years after he called climate change the moral challenge of our age.

So what can we do about it? To start, we have to ensure this doesn’t go unnoticed – doesn’t go unanswered. Every Australian who took the Prime Minister at his word should see this video of his climate backflip.

The Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was a mess of a policy: a paltry 5% target, and what the Govenrment’s own advisor, Prof. Ross Garnaut, called “one of the worst examples of policy making we have seen on major issues in Australia.”2 But this is about far more than another policy delay.

Time and again, Kevin Rudd has betrayed the support Australians gave him last election. And yesterday, he broke faith with us on “the great challenge of our time.”3 It is time to say enough. It is time to take a stand and declare a vote of no confidence in Kevin Rudd’s leadership on climate change.

We could say a lot about this latest backflip, but Kevin Rudd himself perhaps said it best. Here’s what he said just months ago about delaying climate action:

“….When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices – action or inaction.”

“…The resolve of the Australian Government is clear: we choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action. Action now. Not action delayed.”

“…the eighth excuse cannot be far away – which will be to wait until the next year or the year after until all the rest of the world has acted at which time Australia will act.

“…What absolute political cowardice. What an absolute failure of leadership. What an absolute failure of logic.”4

The Prime Minister said it right, what absolute cowardice. And as he said in that same speech:

“It’s time to remove any polite veneer from this debate. The stakes are that high.”

Right again: it’s time to remove the veneer and speak truth to power. Please share this post with friends, and click below to join the vote of no confidence in Kevin Rudd’s climate decision, just a warning though do NOT donate to GetUp!, their donations are spent how they see fit and it is VERY rare they will put much of the funds to use on the topic at hand. One example was the anti-censorship issue, they raised $300,000 and donated $1,000 to the cause and spent the rest on self promotion under cause-oriented guise.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/climateinaction

PS – On refugees, on human rights and now on climate change, Kevin Rudd has broken faith with all Australians.

–Sources–

1The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Distinguished Speaker Series, the Lowy Institue, 06/11/ 2009.
2Prof. Ross Garnaut, The 7.30 Report, ABC, broadcast: 12/10/2009, reporter: Kerry O’Brien.
3The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Opening Remarks to the National Climate Change Summit, Parliament House, Canberra, 31/03/07
4The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Distinguished Speaker Series, the Lowy Institue, 06/11/ 2009.

Online entrepreneur Daniel Tzvetkoff faces 75 years in a US prison after being charged in relation to $584 million money-laundering scheme.

The 27-year-old was arrested in Las Vegas on Friday and appeared in a federal court, where he was detained until a bail hearing on Wednesday (US time).

A relative unknown only two years ago, Ipswich-born Tzvetkoff shot to prominence in 2008 as the founder of online payment processing company Intabill.

Tzvetkoff’s lawyer, Mace Yampolsky, told The Sunday Mail his client was “distraught” and would apply for bail.

According to a 15-page indictment, Tzvetkoff faces charges of money laundering, money laundering conspiracy, gambling conspiracy and bank fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office allege Tzvetkoff assisted illegal online gambling companies to launder about $US540 million ($A584 million) into offshore accounts.

Tzvetkoff allegedly duped banks – which have bans on internet credit card gambling – into believing the gambling transactions were actually ordinary transactions.

He was then able to use what is known as the “Automated Clearing House system” (ACH) to run hundreds of millions of dollars between the US and a web of companies in the British Virgin Islands.

Emails obtained by the FBI, and detailed in the indictment, allege an unnamed co-conspirator boasted they had hired programmers to develop “unique” websites for shelf companies so if someone was “checking the companies out there is absolutely no way to tie the companies together”.

A minute later, Tzvetkoff replied: “This is all perfect!”, authorities allege.

At its peak, Intabill employed 120 people in its Milton office.

Tzvetkoff made The Sunday Mail’s 2008 Rich List, with a personal wealth of $82 million and appeared to have it all – including an 18-month-old son and partner.

But his world rapidly unravelled last year, when he was hit with a $100 million law suit by business partner Sam Sciacca.

But now he faces an even more serious fight, far away from the rolling surf of the Gold Coast. According to the indictment, he created a number of shelf companies in the British Virgin Islands – complete with phony websites and unrelated names.

Emails in the document allege Tzvetkoff took a lead role in telling Intabill employees to lie to banks about the business.

Another email by Tzvetkoff directed an employee to “buy some shelf companies that the BVI’s (apparently a reference to the British Virgin Islands) will own . . . We need to then rename each company to be called something process related.”

Tzvetkoff’s father, Kim Tzvetkoff, said he was unaware of the unfolding events surrounding his son. “We will do everything we can to support Daniel,” he said.

THE RISE AND FALL OF DANIEL TZVETKOFF

AUGUST 2001: BT Projects founded

FEBRUARY 2007: Online payment company Intabill registered

MARCH 2008: Tzvetkoff buys Hedges Avenue mansion for $28 million. Has additional property portfolio of more than $21 million

AUGUST 2008: Features on Sunday Mail Rich List worth $82 million

MARCH 2009: Buys V8 supercar team, Inta Racing

APRIL 2009: Sacks 96 staff at his Intabill office

JULY 2009: BT Projects placed in liquidation with debts of $80 million

JULY 2009: Business partner Sam Sciacca sues Tzvetkoff for $100 million

JULY 2009: Online poker house Kolyma sues for $52 million

JULY 2009: Sells partnership in Zuri nightclub

AUGUST 2009: Sells 30m superyacht Maximus

NOVEMBER 2009: Hedges Ave mansion sold for $17 million

JANUARY 2010: Files for bankruptcy

APRIL 2010: Charged by US authorities with money laundering. Faces 75 years in jail

Overnight a ‘Young Liberal’ (for non-Australians, a member of a youth aged party of our bipartisan system over here, the more conservative side) labeled Barack Obama a ‘monkey’ and made a series of slurs against him. I quite like Obama, but to be honest I’m shocked that this has roiled the vapid cyber stalkers of the more left of center websites. To clarify, I’m more a centrist, so I think both the left and right are batshit fucking insane.

‎sleemol‎ – Twitter – 4 minutes ago

	Should Nick Sowden have been expelled from the Liberal National Party? Read his defense, and have your say! … – More » Nick Sowden Speaks Out – Menzies House‎ – menzieshouse.com.au

‎Menzies House‎ – Facebook – 4 minutes ago

	RT @BigHarto: Pleased to announce young Nick Sowden joins the Courier-Mail. He’ll be live-blogging all World Cup matches in South Africa.

‎Gluckman‎ – Twitter – 6 minutes ago

	RT @latikambourke: The LNP has expelled Nick Sowden from the party for bring the party into disrepute with this Obama ‘monkey’ tweets.

‎D_Keating‎ – Twitter – 6 minutes ago

Sowden received an email from Joel Harrop, Liberal National Party president, this afternoon. It said a meeting had been convened and a unanimous decision taken to withdraw his membership after he branded US president Barack Obama a “monkey” last night.

Harrop said Sowden had been found to have brought the LNP into disrepute and engaged in “conduct severely harmful to the best interests of the party”. He has been sacked from the LNP and the Young LNP organisation.

What exactly were his tweets?

@nicksowden Im not sure why they paid kerry to fly to America, if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a Ferry to Taronga would have sufficed.

@nicksowden If i wanted to see a monkey on TV id watch Wildlife Rescue. #justsaying #obama730

@nicksowden Also, why did we pay Kerry to go to US when Obama is coming to Aus in June? #flail

Amidst a lot of other general shit talking, this guy clearly illustrated his ability to offend. Now I don’t for one second apologise for, nor agree with anything this kid has said, but what I truly and honestly feel is that these wannabe cyber-social justice administrators are equally worse, just because their target isn’t someone high profile, their attempt to systematically destroy this kid just for him spouting off like a moron is ridiculous.

“I do not agree with what you say, but I will die for your right to say it.”

Free speech is something which both the lefties and the righties will say is of the utmost importance for a democracy. Free speech comes hand in hand with offense, offense is the cost of democratic thought. Offense is something that those who are offended need to build a bridge and get the fuck over, because I’m 100% positive Obama has copped worse shit from real nasties in his time and his shown time and time again that his skin is thick enough to not need sycophantic sociopath wankers with machine gun keyboards to come to his defense.

It is a bit scary that this guy is going to be a doctor one day. I wouldn’t want him looking after my health.

If he can’t understand that broadcasting his racist and sexist views across the internet isn’t a good idea, even if it is in jest (like he is now trying to claim), then how is he going to have the mental capacity to diagonose and treat paitents correctly?

I think I’m going to start a list of future doctors to refuse treatment from.”

How fucking narrow minded does one have to be to discriminate as to who provides them healthcare? If you read through all these comments flaming this tool you’ll find that each person seems equally batshit mental in their own ‘special’ little way.

Amusingly enough I’m watching a show about early punk bands that would have a hammer and sickle on the stage just to ‘piss people off’ even though they weren’t commies, yet pointed out that communist thought was worse than child molestation, drawing jeers of ‘get off the stage faggot’, offense for the sake of offense is as ancient as the hills, from the philosophers of rome, through to pop artists, or half the music scene; but if you’re trolling but not on a stage apparently that’s the new ‘child molester’ categorization these days.

Click here to watch a live Google stream of the crazy internet hate machine at it’s finest.

One comment the kid mentioned in his defense I entirely agree with, albeit it may be one of the few things I entirely agree with that he’s said:

I know that the work I DO, is much more worthwhile than the veil of political correctness that those hiding behind their blogs will ever achieve to end disadvantage.

I was reading several articles on the usual rah rah fight the power stuff you see about the internet filter, along with typical neo-conservative bullshit as to why their morals should be enforced on all of society, then I read the following few paragraphs: -

“The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet. This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

Under Australia’s existing classification regulations this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television. Refused Classification material is not available on Australian hosted websites.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and will probably have this thrown in my face at a later date, but … ever wonder WHY the internet is so popular? Because you can’t get good porn in a newsagent, fuck, when have you EVER seen a porn flick in a cinema? Or on TV? Maybe 60 year old pollies can get their budgie smugglers in a bunch over softcore nipple slips, but seriously.

It’s 2010, let’s all be mature here. Permit me another copy-paste: -

“Hunt’s 1974 study suggests that the demographic changes led to a significant change in reported occurrence. Males in 1974 were 4.9% (1948: 8.3%), and in females in 1974 were 1.9% (1953: 3.6%). Miletski believes this is not a reduction in interest but a reduction in opportunity.[9]

Nancy Friday’s 1973 book on female sexuality, My Secret Garden, comprised around 190 fantasies from different women; of these, 23 involve zoosexual activity.[10]

In one study, psychiatric patients were found to have a statistically-significant higher prevalence rate (55 percent) of reported bestiality, both actual sexual contacts (45 percent) and sexual fantasy (30 percent) than the control groups of medical in-patients (10 percent) and psychiatric staff (15 percent).[11] Crépault and Couture (1980) reported that 5.3 percent of the men they surveyed have fantasized about sexual activity with an animal during heterosexual intercourse.[12] A 1982 study suggested that 7.5 percent of 186 university students had interacted sexually with an animal.[13]”

This is ganked straight from Wikipedia. Another quote from Wikipedia on HUMAN sexuality: -

“The largest and most thorough survey in Australia to date was conducted by telephone interview with 19,307 respondents between the ages of 16 and 59 in 2001/2002. The study found that 97.4% of men identified as heterosexual, 1.6% as gay and 0.9% as bisexual. For women 97.7% identified as heterosexual, 0.8% as lesbian and 1.4% as bisexual.”

So whilst I’m well aware that the statistics used were from the US, let’s also point out that they were in the 70′s, before the internet has opened the minds (and beds) of billions of people to freaky shit.

Now let’s just take a minute to evaluate things. The ACMA is trying to enforce morals and values of the average Australian. What is the average Australian in 2010 with internet access? Do we find bestiality that abhorrent? It’s popularity in no way validates it as being moral, or right, nor does it’s immorality imply it is inherently wrong as let’s face it, on my shelf in my study I have a book published in the 70′s of human psychological problems and paraphillias, and listed amongst all kinds of fucked up stuff is homosexuality. That’s 30-40 years ago. Attitudes change, society becomes more open minded, or at least tolerant of the fact that it’s no ones business who fucks what in the where as long as it doesn’t involve abuse, harm, or illegality, right?

I’m not so much defending merely bestiality; let’s face it sexualised violence is NORMAL in porn. Be it Rocco Sifreddi turkey slapping the neighbourhood bike through to gently-gently spank me I’ve been bad crap it’s absolutely beyond any doubt blown into the mainstream with BDSM becoming almost ‘trendy’.

So what do we do here? Do we blanket arrest people who participate in bestiality and sexualised violence? I’m not even going to TOUCH on the issue of kiddy fiddling that is indefensible, however the pedo’s will still be trading their filth on CD’s in flea markets or where ever rock spiders hang out these days, but the fact of the matter is that blanket arrests seem dumb for people who like spankings, right? So to does the idea of censoring MILLIONS of internet users access to the net at a MANDATORY level of ‘RC’ content when your concept of ‘RC’ is so fucking outdated that it makes your tie look en vogue.

In conclusion, Senator Conroy and the nanny state Waffen-Shutzstaffel … kindly fuck off.

I’m hypnotized by the Australian Christian Channel, Hillsong for Kids, it’s SO fucked up. It’s like Hi-Christ, or Christwiggles. It’s Latin mass on mesculine chased with amphetamines with a side order of cult. There’s a fine line between what one considers tasteful, I’m the first to defend religious freedoms even when I disagree with a lot of elements of the faith in question. Part stems from wanting to believe in sky fairies in the same way I’d like to fuck a unicorn one day, part from the fact I’m aware that if people didn’t think there was a reward past this life for them there would be chaos of everyoe refusing the social order that religions enforce passively on societal freedoms and mass logos from a narratological point of view.

I do however feel the compunction to call a spade a spade when I sit and watch a thousand plus brainwashed toddlers acting out all the movements to cultish songs of devotion with primary motiffs of promoting the religion to others and ‘saving’ them (see: tithe pyramid scheme) in doing do. This from a multi-million dollar ‘church’ which has been asolutely debunked as a criminal cultish entity that has been rocked by scandals as well as exposed supressing all kinds of misconduct.

The worst part is, just like the Church of Scientology (which it’s fine to grill apparently, even baselessly), it’s all about making the heirarchy rich to show your ‘devotion’, using peer pressure and love bombing to discipline the ranks, ex-communicating and disconnecting family members who don’t tow the line.

Seeing the zealotry of these children would make any intelligent adult sick to the stomach. A healthy belief system, spirituality, or atheism is fine; a crazed obsessive cult forcing kids through peer pressure to behave in bizarre way– eyes closed waving to heaven swaying in catatonia seeking oblivion of individual thought to be a communal cog in the Christ machine–makes me as a Christian (albeit a somewhat agnostic Catholic) ashamed and disgusted.

If the Government bows to the pressure of all the equally batshit mental and outspoken haters of the Church of Scientology want and hold an inquest into their behaviour, I submit that the next target must be Hillsong or it’s millions of derivative small cult front groups of Assemblies of God Ministeries et cetera.

The Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 arrived in Tokyo today with the first New Zealand prisoner of war to be transported to Japan as a political prisoner since World War II.

As soon as his foot touched Japanese soil, Captain Bethune reestablished himself as a national hero in New Zealand and an international hero in Australia, France, Britain, the United States, and every other country whose citizens deplore the continued illegal whaling activities of the Japanese whaling fleet.

The situation is a comedy of over reaction by the Japanese. The Japanese ship Shonan Maru 2 deliberately rammed and sank Captain Pete Bethune’s New Zealand registered vessel the Ady Gil without any penalty, not even a reprimand. Captain Bethune boarded the vessel that destroyed his ship, politely knocked on the bridge door, and presented himself to the Captain.

Scores of police and TV camera crews on the pier awaited the arrival of the harpoon ship Shonan Maru 2, while nationalist protesters flew Rising Sun flags and rude and abusive signs demonizing Captain Pete Bethune as an “eco-terrorist.”

Japanese nationalists have seized the whaling question as an opportunity to broadcast their anti-western sentiments. Sea Shepherd looks on this as an opportunity to use the Japanese nationalists to further illustrate the illegality of Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is prepared to back Captain Peter Bethune with a top legal assistance team and the Society will work to use this extraordinary case to further expose and embarrass the Japanese government concerning their whale poaching operations in the Southern Ocean.

Captain Peter Bethune understands the consequences that may face him for the courage he has displayed in defending endangered whales. He told Captain Paul Watson that, “you don’t change the world by sitting on your ass and being afraid to do the right thing.”

Simply being arrested took the Shonan Maru 2 out of the whaling operations for a month so they could return Captain Bethune to Japan. That was an enormous cost in fuel to transport one prisoner to Japan from Antarctica and it saved the lives of dozens of whales at the same time.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is confident that the operations of Operation Waltzing Matilda saved the lives of over 500 whales this year. Despite the loss of the Ady Gil and the taking prisoner of Captain Bethune, the campaign has been an awesome success.

“Ships are expendable, the whales are not,” said Captain Paul Watson. “My crew is prepared to risk their lives to save the whales. Compared to that, being held as a prisoner is easy stuff.”

The Sea Shepherd ships will return to the Southern Ocean in December for a seventh campaign to defend the whales of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary should the Japanese whalers insist on continuing their criminal operations.

I was watching 60 Minutes here on Channel Nine / NineMSN and was astonished at how tabloid it’s become. They were sensationalizing the car v bikes issue, and all the footage was very ‘worlds craziest police chase’ with dubbed in car wheel screeches and an entire orchestra of car horns.

It was done in such a blatant way that only the most ignorant of viewers (which admittedly is the majority of their viewers) could possibly believe tha any of the audio is legitimate. Every car depicted turning did a mongrel burnout noise without any wheelspin, and every congestion on the road type shot led to a chorus of fake car horns. How do I know they were fake? American car horns are in the key of F, Australian car horns are C-E (German imports rebadged Holden are E, most Asian imports are D or D sharp, and Fords are C for the most part) and the soundbytes used were all American.

They ought to sack their sound guys. There was also this spectacular shot, including a cut-to of the presenter in ‘peak hour traffic’ when it was a car in a studio with green screen windows. Their entire narratives by the hosts are SO amazingly corny, is there no quality review before publication?!?

You can help embarass them, send this post to your friends who watch lame tabloid shows, and email 60minutesmail@nine.com.au to bring this post to their attention.

As we learned last summer in Iran, whenever a dictatorial regime senses trouble in Totalitarianville, one of the first things it does is tighten its grip on the media. And whenever the thick walls of censorship go up, Twitter is there to slip through the cracks.

Case in point: Venezuela, where we may be witnessing the signs of an Iran-like brouhaha. With its economy floundering, crime rates skyrocketing, and civil unrest escalating, Venezuela isn’t exactly the happiest place on Earth these days. In the face of this discontent, President Hugo Chavez has decided to step up his propaganda game and has unleashed a major campaign to suppress any oppositional media outlets. When five cable stations recently refused to broadcast one of his speeches, Chavez ordered them to shut down operations, a decree that set off a firestorm of protests, police intervention, and the eventual death of two student dissidents.

The catalyst behind most of these protests is, of course, Twitter, which anti-Chavez activists have used to organize demonstrations and to spread their cause internationally. Dissidents have also taken to Facebook, where a group titled “Chavez esta PONCHAO!” (“Chavez, you struck out!”) is already 80,000 members strong. Chavez, not surprisingly, has undertaken efforts to squash this social media mini-revolution, going so far as to equate Twitter, the Internet, and text-messaging (?) with “terrorism”. As FOX News reports, Chavez has promised a “radical” response to the Twitter-fueled uprising, and has already “launched an army of Twitter users to bring down online networks and try to infiltrate student groups.”

Chavez used his weekly propaganda television and radio show ‘Alo Presidente’ to rally Latin America behind the ’cause’ of his Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner by making a direct demands to Buckingham Palace.

“Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I’m talking to you. The time for empires are over, haven’t you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people.” ignoring the fact all occupants of the Falklands are British citizens and don’t want a bar of South America and their petty dictators.

Still addressing the Queen, he went on: “The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then.”

He described British control of the islands in the South Atlantic as “anti-historic and irrational”.

Mrs Kirchner sought to win new allies in Argentina’s claims to the islands when she made a direct appeal for support at a meeting in Mexico of the Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Venezuela and Nicaragua rallied to Argentina’s side even before Mrs Krichner’s appeal, and it was reported that Brazil was ready to support any resolution backing Argentina’s sovereignty claims.

Argentine anger is likely to increase after Desire Petroleum, the British oil company that has towed a rig from Scotland to about 60 miles off the north of the Falklands, announced on Monday it had begun drilling, the natural gas and oil surrounding the Falklands are naturally the only reason Argentinians suddenly interested, as most South American countries are in dire financial shape.

Argentina is attempting to hamper oil exploration, insisting last week that all vessels using its ports must now seek permission if they plan to enter or leave British-controlled waters. Argentina wants other South American countries to impose its transport restrictions to the Falklands but it is unlikely to win support from those closest to the islands such as Chile and Uruguay.

Chile, Argentina’s traditional enemy, has long been a major supplier to the Falklands. An operations manager of a Uruguayan shipping agency who came out to Port Stanley on Saturday to discuss business was dismissive about the effectiveness of the latest Argentine decree.

Meanwhile, passengers from the British cruise liner Star Princess disembarked at Port Stanley on Monday for a day trip after the vessel reported leaving Buenos Aires with no demand for permission to sail to the Falklands.
Stepping on to the jetty for a few hours watching penguins or touring one of the battlefields from the 1982 war, passengers said the ship’s captain had reassured them several days ago it was “perfectly safe” to get off at when they reached the islands.

However, Maurice and Sylvia Bellamy from Felixstowe reported some unusual Falklands-related advice had been issued over the ship’s tannoy system.
“They told us we had to refer to the islands as the Falklands when we were there but as the Malvinas when we were in Argentina,” said Mr Bellamy, 74.

Argentina wants other South American countries to impose its transport restrictions to the Falklands but this would mean that they, too, could miss out on the lucrative profits from providing refining and port facilities if, as drillers believe, large amounts of oil and natural gas are retrieved off the Falklands.

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I am astounded that we have walked on celestial bodies devoid of atmosphere far from our planet. We have crossed all oceans, ascended all mountains, mapped, charted, surveyed most of the known world. We have advanced in science and technology beyond even our own limited imaginations. And yet, in the year 2010, we still have ignorant fuckwits in our society and we still have the naivity to humour them or otherwise skirt around their patent nonsense.

I am guilty myself, having a friend or two who practice yoga–which isn’t a mere stretching class, but a cult of pseudo-hindu hippy tripe about opening your chakras and giving each other a jolly reach around under the guidance of a yogi (see: fuckwit who did too much acid in the 60s-70s enough to believe the shit they spin) and is all about ‘healing energies’–alas I digress.

The Internet brought us many wonders. Free porn, Viagra without prescriptions, free porn. Uh. Okay, so it brought us some cook stuff, but it mixed with the cataclysm of ‘cool to be daft’ 90s culture blended to encourage tin foil hat conpiracy theorists and coffee shop intellectuals all pushing their batshit agendas down the throats of anyone who’ll stop and listen.

Bonus critical thinker points for those who drew a comparison of the above to my soap box here. However, I base this on common sense and observation as opposed to the cryptic rantings of deranged desert nomads or heroin shooting hack sci-fi authors and submit to you all that it’s time we all make an effort to shun nutjobs.

I am a prolific softy. Recently I had the displeasure of dealing with a few unstable people who go from sycophantic to telling you you’re pure evil within hours. I got to wondering how these people travel through life without appreciating how bizarre their behaviour is. The reason is that we humour it.

A call was made for mass vaccination before school begins here in Australia, specifically against the swine flu. Instantly there are anti-vaccination nutjobs who put their own pathological mental disorders before the lives of their children jumping up and down. Vaccinationa are safe, ‘big pharma’ is a myth, and YOU are just deranged.

I recently had a few nasty comments put to me by some zany trailer park living born agains at my being a Freemason, espousing the usual ‘if you’re not in my sect of a cult of a church of a faith you’re going to get buttfucked by black men with giant dongs in hell’ type stuff. S’cool, once you go black and all. But yeah, again hair brained lack of critical thought nonsense, usually linking ALL the worlds fraternal or secret societies into one mythological entity; an entity however you as a member are clearly not yet aware of yet. There is no illuminati. Fluoride saves your teeth and isn’t a mind control drug, and YOU are just deranged.

I see vitamins and suppliments sold at insane prices on TV, academic google search; unless you’re mad malnourished to take vitamins in doses for therapeutic effect you’ll be mainlining liters of it. Heaven forbid ‘detox’ an equal con. Just do the induction to the Atkins diet, same effect and a millionth of the price. Or hell, whatever happened to shoving your fingers down your throat fatty?

WHY do we as civilized individuals allow this bullshit? Wouldn’t it be FAIR for the Department of Fair Trading to demand all ‘claims’ made be proven under double blind conditions in an empirically measurable way? That way only REAL things can be sold and bullshit can be canned. There goes chiropractors (another cult that believe in healing energies and curing by alignment) or homeopathy, or psychics, feng shui? I’ll feng your shui baby.

Try it out for a month. Let’s get real and stop humouring nutjob fuckwits. Hi, I’m calling to notify you that your reality check just bounced!

UPDATE: Submissions to the Government close on February 28. Once this closes, it may be many years before Australian’s get a chance to raise this issue again.

EB Games has launched a petition, which you can sign at any of their 350 stores, urging the Government to bring in an R18+ classification so that games deemed too graphic for the current MA15+ rating can still be sold without massive edits that impact on gameplay.

Despite the average age of a gamer being 30, Australia remains one of the last major territories in the world in which an R18+ rating for gaming does not exist. As a result, games that fail to get the MA15+ rating are either banned or require editing to pass the Classification’s Board’s strict guidelines.

Last year the Federal Government released a discussion paper on whether or not an R18+ rating for games should be adopted and called for submissions. EB Games managing director Steve Wilson said the company started the petition after finding overwhelming support for R18+ ratings from customers, News Ltd. polls depicted a 98%+ demographic demanding a fair go and an EB Games poll on the R-rating attracted more than 50,000 respondents, with 84 per cent voting in favour of an 18+ game rating.

Submissions to the Government close on February 28.

“Once this government paper is closed, it could be many years before we get another chance to voice our opinion on this issue.” Mr Wilson said the call for an R18+ rating was not to gain access to more violent or sexual content in games.

“This is not a call for violent video games but rather a call for a better classification system that brings Australia in line with the rest of the world and other Australian entertainment industries, such as films,” he said.

Recently the Classification Board overturned a decision to ban up-coming title Aliens Vs Predator after game publisher Sega appealed against the decision while refusing to edit the game in any way, stating that their game will turn better profits in nations where their Governments believe their citizens are mature enough to evaluate their choice of entertainment for themselves without Government interference.

Games edited for Australian players include Left 4 Dead 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV – the latter broke sales records in 2008, both of which on many platforms include impacting gameplay butchering which leads to incompatible play with international players, especially along the Xbox Achievement and Gamer Point reward system.

Google has agreed to remove from its search index links to a satirical website that allegedly promotes racist views of indigenous Australians.

Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt recently discovered the US-based site by searching “Aboriginal and Encyclopedia” in the search engine. He tried to modify the entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica, what the Australian media called ‘a satirical version of Wikipedia,’ but was blocked from doing so.

Hodder-Watt then undertook legal action, that resulted in Google removing the offensive site from its listings. However the site itself remains available by navigating directly to it, naturally.

His lawyer, George Newhouse, said the site was “one of the most offensive sorts of racial vilification you could possibly find”. “It portrays indigenous Australians in the most unsavoury light possible, and you wouldn’t want a child stumbling across it,” he told ABC Radio.

Newhouse said Google agreed to take the link down after he filed an official complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission. “Lo and behold they agreed last night to take down the sites.”

Newhouse later told AAP that he believed any material found to contravene the Racial Discrimination Act should be blocked under the federal government’s proposed internet filter.

The Federal Government plans to introduce legislation this year requiring all service providers to ban “refused classification” material.

What does this mean? Any website with a channer noon spamming ‘niggerniggernigger’ or linking to Electric Retard, etc will get that site blocked by the great Australian firewall?Fuck that, address the problem, don’t ban us all from seeing crap. As much as racism shits me, censorship shits me much, much more. Censorship erodes every demographics rights regardless of age, gender, sexuality or race; it punishes all equally for the sake of the moralist minority.

If it offends you, don’t fucking look at it. Once we start the OMG OFFENSE game on the Internet it’s game over to free speech. Besides, there’s a lot of us out there who enjoy trolling racists, that being said I’m not sure whether ED is inherently racist or more offensive for the sake of causing offence, I’d probably say the latter.

Interestingly the article on news.com.au was pulled due to the comments field being flooded with trolling from btards. :P

After super conservative fuckwits jumped up and down while the mainstream media was being ambiguous about the ramming of the Ady Gil, originally referring to it as ‘allegedly rammed’, more video has come to light, and even the mainstream media are releasing the footage from the Ady Gil’s cameraman around about the place that shows without doubt the Japanese vessel moved to ram the Ady Gil, which was floating dead in the water with all crew on deck taking a break, including the captain.

Earlier in the week, Japanese whalers and their puppet ‘research’ groups in New Zealand (who have, off the record, been showing strong pro-whaling flags backing Japan, in exchange for Japanese funding of course) claimed that the Ady Gil pulled in their way at the last minute causing the collision and went as far as demanding that Australia intervene against Sea Shepherd.

Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd announced that $170,000 was pledged in the first few hours after the incident while more was flooding in following the screening of a Sea Shepherd advert featuring Transformers actress Isabel Lucas to replace the $3,000,000 dollar stealth yacht the whalers sunk.

Captain Watson also praised Australian Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard – who has been accused by Japan of inflaming public opinion and making diplomatic resolution of the whaling dispute harder to realise – for speaking out. “Julia Gillard is the only politician who has had the courage to say something about the illegal activities Japan has undertaken; the rest of them are hiding behind Japan’s kimonos as far as I can see.” It’s a fair call given pre-election promises by Kevin Rudd that he would engage the Japanese illegal whaling activities under the guise of research, amongst other intra-political matters along the employment lines, and delivered on none of them.

Captain Watson was especially scathing of New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, who has said it was not the NZ Government’s responsibility to send armed vessels to protect people “determined to break the law”. “The Minister of Foreign Affairs has made ignorant and unsubstantiated accusations and he should apologise and if he refuses to apologise he should be asked to resign,” Mr Watson said. A fair call given the almost blatent public backing of Japan’s piratical acts over the past decade in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

“How dare he take Japan’s side in this issue against his own citizens? If a Sea Shepherd ship had rammed and sunk a Japanese ship, there would be no hesitation in sending a Navy ship to the Southern Ocean with a warrant of arrest.” It’s unfortunate no governments are taking any action, especially in light of the new evidence that the Japanese vessel intentionally rammed and sunk the yacht.

Below is the only footage to go by prior to the release of footage from the Ady Gil’s cameraman, yes you have to click this to view it, but here’s two views, one from a Sea Shepherd ship and another from the pirate whalers (language warning ahoy): -