Friday, February 17, 2006
WORD IS BOND
“Let’s just say Dad had a tendency towards occasional impatience.”—James Packer farewells father Kerry at yesterday’s memorial service. James’ speech, writes Paul Barry, was “by far the most moving because it was truthful and warm.” Another extract:
My father believed unshakeably that a man’s word was his bond. There was no contract in the world more binding on him than the one that he gave when he shook your hand.
It’s interesting how a company’s personality follows that of its boss. Many people on the Packer payroll are there through a handshake deal (I was one of them, when I freelanced). It’s a harder contract to break—for different reasons—than anything written on paper.
UPDATE. Idiots turned up:
Police have charged eight protesters arrested outside a state memorial service for late media mogul Kerry Packer at Sydney’s Opera House today ...
Organiser Duroyan Fertl said the protest was peaceful and a success.
Mr Fertl said demonstrators wanted to raise their objections to Prime Minister John Howard using taxpayers’ money to pay for the service.
I look forward to their protests against taxpayers’ money funding media identities who aren’t even dead yet. Incidentally, Duroyan Fertl—an honours graduate in Celtic Studies at Sydney University—is “a regular feature of the Summer Solstice ceremonies at Djanbung Gardens”. I’m betting that the total amount he’s contributed in taxes wouldn’t fund a funeral for a goldfish.
NON-CHILLING MILESTONE REACHED
Congratulations to the Environmental Republican, stomping around the internet now for three years. Take a look at this recent post and you’ll look forward to three more years, at least.
In another blog milestone, Juan Cole has attempted a joke.
OPEN THREAD
I’ve been busy. More posts later. Any big news happening? Report from your local areas in comments.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
TWISTER UNSPUN
Popular Mechanics, which last year debunked 9/11 conspiracies, now debunks Katrina myths.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
COLUMN DOESN’T MENTION MOHAMMED (PBUH, ROFL, BBQ)
This week’s Continuing Crisis Column for The Bullletin was written several decades into the future. And not by me. Also in The Bulletin: photographic magic from past Winter Olympics.
GAWENDA GETS IT
Former Age editor-in-chief Michael Gawenda launches into duck-witted cartoonist Michael Leunig:
In the article published in The Age, Leunig says nothing at all about this competition, how vile it is, how racist, how it shocked him that anyone would ever think that he would have anything to do with such an outrageous campaign.
The journalist who interviewed Leunig characterises the competition as one designed to “find a cartoon on the Holocaust insulting to Jews”. This is a downright depressing way to characterise this competition, for it isn’t a “Jewish” issue, a matter that concerns only Jews, just as any form of racism is not just an offence against the people against whom it is directed.
But there is nothing from Leunig on all this, not even a moment’s reflection on the fact that the competition’s organisers thought his cartoon—which is not a hoax—was a perfectly fine entry for this racist exercise.
Indeed, Leunig goes out of his way to praise the Iranians who were “courteously apologising, they had been co-operative. They cared.”
Read the whole thing; Gawenda was, of course, the Age boss who rejected Leunig’s cartoon in 2002 (by the way, how hard to please is Leunig? His cartoon doesn’t get published, so he bitches that “Michael Gawenda just didn’t get it”. The same cartoon does get published, and he demands it be removed. Make up your damn mind, woolhead). Subsequent to that courteous climb-down from his caring Iranian pals, Leunig received a second apology:
Editor of the Chaser website Dominic Knight admitted a writer “acting alone” one night sent in the cartoon to Iran’s biggest-selling newspaper Hamshahri which is holding a contest asking for people to send in cartoons of the Holocaust ...
“He (the website writer) has spoken to Mr Leunig and I understand Mr Leunig accepted his apology,” Mr Knight said.
The writer, Richard Cooke, says Leunig “mainly seemed to be relieved that it wasn’t a neo-con pressure group who had posted the cartoon”. So, with all these apologies flying around, shouldn’t one be made to the aggrieved pro-war neo-con blogger-columnist community? For days we’ve suffered Leunig’s cruel slurs as he sought to blame the pro-war lobby and columnists for this Holocaust scam. “It’s part of a political campaign,” the cartoonist alleged, without foundation. Why, he even told the ABC:
There are a number of columnists and bloggers who have been particularly hateful to me for quite a long time and have suggested all sorts of hurtful and hateful things towards me. And you know, the mind jumps towards all these kinds of people.
We are innocent, you mind-jumping McCarthyite smear machine. Apologise at once. Or thousands of ducks—yes, the precious ducks you love so much—will pay for your crime with their blood, beaks, and feathers.
This holy directive—a quackwa, if you will—shall remain in place until our demand is met.
UPDATE. No apology yet from Michael; let the killing begin! Stuart Rintoul and former Leunig friend Piers Akerman have new reports.
UNREMARKABLE IMAGE
Nothing much to see here. Just a nice house. Newly built. Big garage.
Before you hit the link, try to guess where this house is located.
UPDATE. A claim is made in comments that the picture is a fake. So Bulletin creative director Jeff Young, who is able to detect photo-bogusness the way ordinary people might detect airports or golf courses, checked out a hi-res version.
Verdict: genuine.
NOBODY PUSHES THE SMH AROUND
America doesn’t want you to see these photographs, but that won’t stop the Sydney Morning Herald! They’ll never surrender to censorship demands from foreign regimes. This is a free land, and the SMH aims to keep it so; if that means upsetting a few Americans by publishing images they’d prefer not be published, well, mister, that’s exactly what the SMH will do.
Sure, they could have taken the easy way out and simply described the images, but that isn’t the SMH way. Nor will the television network SBS buckle before any bullying and threats. As executive producer Mike Carey says, people need to see these pictures so they can understand what happened.
Damn straight. Here’s to SBS and SMH, and I hope not too many of their staff are killed in the rioting.
UPDATE. Posted on February 4: “They won’t publish cartoons, but they will run anything they can get out of Abu Ghraib. Both sets of images provoke Islamic anger; note how the media behaves when that anger is directed at them.”
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
LOON HOAXER EXPOSED
Michael Leunig’s Iranian cartoon hoaxer is revealed! It wasn’t a pro-war blogger or right-wing sociopath after all, according to Crikey.com.au (subscription only):
Julian Morrow, writer, performer and executive producer of the television satire The Chaser last night said: “It appears now that a writer from The Chaser website submitted the cartoon. It was something that happened without my knowledge.”
The identity of the hoaxer came to light after some snappy detective work by Age legal eagles (who also happen to sometimes represent Crikey) – they googled a phone number included in the hoaxer’s email and – Voila! – up came The Chaser website.
Leunig—pronounced LOO’-nig—is said to be consulting with lawyers this afternoon, following some compassionate head-tilty therapy. In other Loon developments, reader Joe Cambria points out that he is the emailer Leunig cites in this interview:
Um, yes I’ve had a few emails recently, kind of anonymous emails, you know, taunting me to enter this competition, saying come on, you’d be a natural, said one of them.
“That was me,” writes Joe. “I said he would be a natural in the email. Leunig says it was anonymous. It wasn’t. I used my regular email address.”
LEUNIG LATEST
Michael Leunig, prankishly entered in an Iranian newspaper’s mock-the-Holocaust cartoon contest, continues whining:
JON FAINE: Do you think you might know who’s behind the hoax? Don’t name anybody, but have you got in your mind any theories?
MICHAEL LEUNIG: Um, yes I’ve had a few emails recently, kind of anonymous emails, you know, taunting me to enter this competition, saying come on, you’d be a natural, said one of them. You know, these taunts come at me all the time and, look, it could be any number of people.
There are a number of columnists and bloggers who have been particularly hateful to me for quite a long time and have suggested all sorts of hurtful and hateful things towards me. And you know, the mind jumps towards all these kinds of people. But I must refrain from imagining anybody in particular. It could be, it could be a kid.
It could be, it could be a duck! Or any other of the vicious entities whom Leunig never names! Nigel Henham, The Age’s communications director, says his stupid newspaper is absolutely appalled:
Well, The Age is absolutely appalled, as is Michael Leunig, that someone would choose to fraudulently use some of his work, and also represent his words that are simply not his. This is a serious hoax, someone has acted fraudulently, and we are quite appalled by it, quite frankly.
Appalled. Got it. Absolutely. Let’s hear from Leunig himself, in a piece bearing the modest headline Amid the pain, God puts his hand on my shoulder:
After my dinner on Monday evening the telephone rang and the senior deputy editor of The Age asked me if I had made a submission to the Iranian holocaust cartoon competition.
The senior deputy editor of The Age didn’t immediately realise this to be a prank. Hmm.
There is a moment of confusion that is almost religious as the mind tumbles about grasping for meaning and reference points but really, you are in free-fall at this moment and the stomach feels weightless for a time as you descend suddenly into the special underworld where you now must spend some unscheduled time.
Just exactly what did you eat for dinner, Michael?
This is what happens when the fact slams into me that I have been secretly and maliciously set up and framed and that the story will soon be on the wire and the twisting and distorting of my life is about to become extreme and that the consequences for me and my family could be dire.
Oh, right. Vengeful cartooniacs want to destroy Leunig’s life. Imagine how spooked this boy might have been if The Age had published certain Danish motoons.
What I had wanted to do was go out into the peaceful garden with my children and the dogs, to smell the fragrant evening air drifting in from the bush like a great consoling anthem, and to hear the kookaburras settling down for the night and the parrots chattering their way home and to watch the ibises rising slowly from the dry grass to their roosts high in the giant old eucalyptus skeleton that towers over the paddock that runs down to the dark treeline. This is something I believe in.
Personally, I don’t believe in children, dogs, air, kookaburras, night, parrots, grass, or paddocks. And especially ibises. But if Leunig wants to base his life around these otherworldly concepts, well, good for him.
You see, I’ve had more than a gutful of hostility and hate mail in the past three years, all because I have resisted the rise of fascism - the idea of war.
Yet Leunig urged us to pray for Osama bin Laden, who doesn’t share Leunig’s resistance to war. In fact, he begins war, and is a fascist.
I can identify with the Von Trapps, particularly so tonight; they meant well but got a hell of a hiding for it and were forced to flee. But they sang so beautifully, so harmoniously. In their own way they made sense of the chaos in the world around.
Expect Julie Andrews to be a prime witness in Leunig’s case against his wicked hoaxster.
Sleep came but then faltered about 3am, so I rose in the solemnity of this grim hour and wandered out into the brilliant moonlight to see if God was out there in the paddock somewhere. Yes, God is there.
I was awake at the same hour with a screaming sinus headache. Yes, pseudoephidrine was there.
I wandered back inside and in a reckless moment I opened the laptop lying on the kitchen table and went to the Iranian website. Lo and behold, the cartoon and the fake words were gone and God came in from the paddock and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
God edits Iranian cartoon sites?
An email popped open; it was the Iranians. They were courteously apologising, they had been co-operative. They cared.
They are GOD!
Somewhere the perpetrator of the hoax rubs his hands with glee, just as arsonists do. Tonight I will water the garden.
You do that, Michael. Water your little head off. Hey, looks like The Age has a lead on the pro-war monsters who may have perpetrated this Godless arsonist hoax:
Age lawyer Peter Bartlett, from Minter Ellison, said a phone number connected to the email sent to Hamshahri was connected to the satirical website The Chaser, although this did not mean that people connected to The Chaser had sent it.
Julian Morrow, writer, performer and executive producer of the television satire The Chaser, said that he knew nothing about the matter and “it’s nothing to do with the television show”.
This is getting more interesting by the minute.
(An earlier post on the Leunig lunacy is here; editorial and comment from The Australian here and here.)
DEATH AND LIES
Bali Nine ringleader Andrew Chan has been sentenced to death, along with co-ringleader Myuran Sukumaran. Heroin mules Martin Stephens, Michael Czugaj, Renae Lawrence, and Scott Rush will likely die in prison. From the second link:
On the drug runners, Mr Howard said it was beyond him that anyone could be “so stupid”. His voice quavering, he said: “Can I just say to every young Australian, please take notice of this. I even beg them not to take the terrible risk that these young people have done.”
Court appearance photographs here. In other legal news, ex-Gitmo inmate Mamdouh Habib wins the slightest of defamation victories:
The verdict came after Mr Habib sued Nationwide News over articles published in The Daily Telegraph and The Weekend Australian in 2002 and 2005, which he said defamed him ...
The articles damaged Mr Habib’s reputation by suggesting he was a terrorist, a liar, a fund-raiser for terrorist organisations and a follower of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, [Habib’s barrister Clive] Evatt said.
After deliberating for less than a day, the four-person jury today found only one of those imputations was defamatory.
An article published in The Daily Telegraph in February last year contained the defamatory imputation that Mr Habib had knowingly made some false claims, the jury found.
Outside the court, Mr Habib said he was pleased with the result.
“I’m very happy,” he told reporters.
“I’m here to prove I’m not a terrorist, that’s it, and that’s the main thing to me.”
Too bad, Habib, that the jury didn’t think the same.
COMMENCE THE FORBIDDEN ACTIVITIES
Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate, Ganesh Sahathevan sends a translation of this cheery Valentine message from Malaysian news agency Bernama:
Islam forbids the celebration of Valentine’s Day, said Muhammad Ramli Nuh, the deputy chairman of the Committee for the Development of Islam Hadhari, Terrenganu State.
He explained that celebrating Valentine’s Day may be perceived as an affirmation of an enemy of Islam because Valentine, or Valentinus, was involved in the planning and attack on Cordoba, a Muslim civilization.
Hence to celebrate Valentine’s Day is to affirm the acts of one who destroyed the Islamic civilization of Spain.
Sounds like a good reason to celebrate even more. And here’s another:
He added that Valentine’s Day meetings could also lead to couples engaging in forbidden activities.
MO’ MOTOON NEWS
Denmark tolerant? No way, writes Denmark’s Martin Burcharth:
What foreigners have failed to recognize is that we Danes have grown increasingly xenophobic over the years.
Stupid foreigners. Meanwhile the Guyanese have their say on The Great Motoonifada, including this from Nafeesah Kadir:
Muslims don’t go around condemning other religions.
Whatever you say, Nafeesha.
Monday, February 13, 2006
GLOBAL LEUNIG
It’s international Michael Leunig mania! The celebrated Australian peacenik’s entry in an Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest—in fact, Leunig’s work was submitted by a prankish Leunig activist—has won worldwide notice, from Le Monde to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig has submitted the first entry in a controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust launched in Iran today in a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that have enraged Muslims worldwide.
“As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust,” Leunig was quoted as saying on Irancartoons.com, the website organising the competition with Iran’s biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri, triggering outrage in the US and Germany in particular.
Leunig has also earned coverage in the European Jewish Press, Islam Online (love the pic!), Melbourne’s Herald Sun, the Middle East Times, and South Africa’s News 24.
Well done, Michael! In other Leunig news, the Euroa Gazette reports he recently drew a large cartoon in opposition to a waste disposal facility planned for Violet Town.
UPDATE. The fun is over:
Renowned The Age cartoonist Michael Leunig says a cartoon apparently submitted in his name to an Iranian newspaper seeking entries on the theme of the Holocaust is a fake.
Leunig has demanded that the cartoon and words written under his name be removed from an Iranian web site.
UPDATE II. Items falling for the Leunig prank also ran in Bahrain, China, and Italy—although the latter has since been withdrawn.
UPDATE III. Leunig and his newspaper are extremely concerned:
Mr Leunig said he first heard that some of his cartoons had been submitted to the competition following a call from a concerned executive at The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
“I learnt last night that some of my cartoons from a few years back have been submitted as an entry in that competition,” Mr Leunig told ABC radio.
“The Age is extremely concerned because The Age newspaper was also mentioned on the website (Irancartoons.com),” he said.
Ha! The Age earlier ran the same wire item as everyone else, announcing that Leunig had entered the Holocaust contest. Maybe they’ll sue themselves.
UPDATE IV. Leunig is a victim of war:
Mr Leunig says the email may have come from Australia and he is dismayed by what is a hurtful act.
“I’ve been set up horribly, maliciously and to me it denotes what it means to stand up against this conflict and this warlike sort of state the world is in and you know, it’s difficult,” he said.
UPDATE V. Incidentally, the line above from The Age—that the submitted Leunig cartoon was fake—is wrong. The cartoon was genuine.
UPDATE VI. Leunig is hot on the trail of his hoaxer:
The artist said he had “various theories” about who submitted the work but preferred to go no further. However, he said he suspected involvement by the “pro-war lobby ... to discredit me”.
Interesting tactic; discrediting someone by submitting their unmodified work.
“There’s been a number of columnists who are always inciting people to act against me and I’ve always been really perturbed about that,” he said.
“You can shrug it off but it’s a worry when you’re on the receiving end and I don’t bear those people very much good will.
“This is part of a long series of grinding, malicious attacks I get in the mail, on email, in columns. I’ve taken an anti-war position, as I did in the Vietnam War and now in the Iraq war. If you take that position you end up on the end of a hell of a lot of malice (and) ill-will.
“I’ve found ... pro-war people in this country have been very vicious and peronal in their attacks, dirty tricks and campaigns against individuals. I don’t think the same has happened from the anti-war side.”
Australia’s Shakespeare sounds like he needs a hug. Of course, what must really be eating at Leunig is that a Holocaust-mocking contest instantly accepted his cartoon, and that the global press found such a circumstance so plausible.
TOONS SPOKEN OF
Arrived here via Media Watch? Seeking forbidden acts of Danish cartoonery? Look no further.
I thought the Media Watch segment on the cartoons was very fair, especially to me (this follows several years of entertaining combat, certain to be resumed during the year, or perhaps next week, or maybe today). Many readers, as you’ll see in earlier comments threads, thought otherwise. Some quotes from the segment deserve another look:
* New host Monica Attard: “You’ll have noticed by now that we haven’t shown any of the cartoons. ABC Managing Director Russell Balding says that we can’t.” Can’t? CAN’T? What the hell?
* ABC Managing Director Russell Balding: “The ABC believes it is not essential to include explicit depictions of the original cartoons.” Much of that broadcast by the ABC is “not essential”. In fact, some ABC programs are defined by their non-essentialness. Was this essential four years ago?
* Channel Seven director of news and current affairs Peter Meakin: “We faced an invidious choice between the right to publish and exposing our staff and the public to unnecessary risk. With regret, we played it safe.” I’m hearing that from a few local media types, who are perhaps realising too late they missed their chance to publish. It’s interesting that the cartoons were given a wider run in Islamic countries than they were in Australia.
* Host Attard: “[The cartoons] were after all commissioned by the paper to test the limits of Islamic tolerance.” Really? As Brussels Journal reports, via reader 13 times:
The newspaper published the cartoons when a Danish author complained that he could find no-one to illustrate his book about Muhammad. Jyllands-Posten wondered whether there were more cases of self-censorship regarding Islam in Denmark and asked twelve illustrators to draw the prophet for them.
* Brisbane Courier-Mail editor David Fagan: “The one cartoon we used accompanied a story about the reaction to the original publication. Our aim was to find the balance between informing our readers of a significant and legitimate international news story without gratuitously inflaming or offending those that might object ...” This is Fagan’s first comment on his paper’s publication of the cartoon, which News Ltd. insiders say wasn’t his decision. Fagan is welcome to clear this up at any time.
So, Media Watch 2006. Your early verdict in comments, please.