Slashdot Mirror
Competition To Find Aussie PM's Email Address
Internet Ninja writes "While we can all send anti-war emails to 'president' of the USA and even the Australian opposition, nobody can email the Prime Minister of Australia. So the opposition party started a competition to track it down as reported in Australias Sydney Morning Herald."
as Paul Hogan at the Oscars
john_howard@aph.gov.au
Once the PM's email is made public, he will get tons of spam.
How long do you think it will take them to write laws to kill spam and execute spammers?
Fight Spammers!
It Soviet Russia, Prime Minister's email address finds you!
Ya, email will stop America from doing what needs to be done. You fucking hippies need to get a clue...
...or does there seem to be an awful lot about Australia on /. these days? And a lot of those stories are pushing the boundaties of relevance, as far as "Nerds" and "Geeks" are concerned. Not that I'm accusing anybody of bias or anything... ;-)
By Alexa Moses and Ben Wyld
January 20 2003
They seek him here, they seek him there, the NSW Labor Council seek him everywhere. No, not the Scarlet Pimpernel but John Howard, and they're after the Prime Minster's email address.
The Labor Council, via their LaborNET website, has set up a "Where's John?" competition to nail down Howard's email address and flush him out of his "virtual bunker".
The Labor Council issued the challenge after starting a "No War" campaign - an avenue for those who oppose possible military action against Iraq.
Via a form on the site, protesters can send messages to the President of the United States of America, George Bush, his deputy, Vice-President Richard Cheney, and the Leader of the Federal Opposition, Simon Crean - who all have publicly available email addresses.
There is one abstainer, John Howard, who, the Labor Council says, is in "virtual hiding".
"Whether it be the Australian Parliament House website, John's personal website, his official PM site or the Liberal Party site, you won't find an email address for John Howard," the LaborNET website says.
"Sure you can fill out some forms on these sites and hope that they reach the PM but the point is that many voters can't or prefer not to visit these sites."
We checked out Howard's various online lairs and couldn't locate an email address either. Although his personal home page does have a survey form, and messages can be sent via email on the Prime Minister's website, no email address is given.
But that's about as close as cyber-sleuths will get to finding the exact email address a spokeswoman for Howard says.
"It literally is the Prime Minister's email, and hundreds of people avail themselves to that facility every day," the spokeswoman told Spike yesterday.
Anyone who does discover the email address will receive a typical computer geek's prize of a case of Coke and $100 of Linux merchandise.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, sig changes you!
No email address = no spam.
Someone there thinks sneakers are sexy. Woohoo, halt the presses.
Anyhow. Ok, I know it's humor and all that, but what's the big deal? Not like he's actually reading it before it gets screened anyway, right? Some poor secretary in his cabinet is gonna get inundated with penis enlargers, firmer breasts, money making scams and of course, $$$FREE MONEY$$$$$*.
I can ponder a guess though:
didgeridoo2@hotmail.com
*Not valid in PA, NY, and ND.
Sent from your iPad.
Seatbelts won't be the only things taken off once the pilot on Naked-Air switches off the sign.
Passengers aboard a May 3 chartered Boeing 727-200 flight from Miami to Cancun, Mexico, dubbed "Naked-Air", will be allowed to get their kit off and move around the cabin au naturel once the plane reaches cruising altitude, Reuters reports.
Castaways Travel, a Houston-based travel agency which specialises in "clothing-optional trips", is offering what it bills as the world's first all-nude flight, for $US499 ($840) return.
Though mile-high club antics are barred on the flight, the possibility of encountering turbulence during the flight could make for some compromising stumbles.
Now I'd love to get a seat on that flight...
Providing a Feedback form rather than just an email address is a very good way of limiting the spam that the PM would receive.
this is a pretty funny publicity stunt.
as the labor party is well aware, federal politician's email addresses are pseudonyms and changed quickly if they fall into the 'wrong hands'.
furthermore all senior federal politicians have access to the other email addresses, so the labor party already has johnny's email address.
You can e-mail the Prime Minister by following the steps set out if you folloe this link . .
http://www.pm.gov.au/your_feedback/feedback.h tm
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
John Howard is a scrawny old closet white supremist. Assasinate the fucker. He's just a puppet of Bush and a minion of the GLOBAL TERROR STATE.
I've recently received chain-letter-like anti-war petitions, stating that they origin from the UN that are in the process of gathering signatures.. (Why they would want to do that is beyond me). These are hoaxes, but how do I convince the people that send me these, that this is the case? I have tried pointing them to the page at the UN that explains that they don't do petitions, that didn't work.
Could it be, that these mails have some effect, despite they are not from the UN, I mean, do they end up on someones desk, or in a killfile?
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
...Oh spare me your bombastic pomposity, you knob-knuckled, change
jingling, bulbous lipped, shulgus wearing, furled guinous. Just stop
speaking. Nothing escapes your drooling, gaping maw but gibberish, you
are unintelligible, your sense went swirling away with the rinse
cycle.
You have no business interacting with the conscious, your very
presence gives monkeys headaches. I can't believe that diminuitive,
dried up peach pit that rattles around in the space where a normal
human's brain should be is able to direct your palsied and wasted
limbs to achieve locomotion.
Your very personage is abhorrent to see in daylight. You ears are
blue-veined and freakish horrors of aerodynamics, your forehead has
creases so deep they are a haven for unclassified flora and fauna of
mysterious origin.
Each wheezing breath you take uses oxygen that by rights would be
better utilized by an autistic chimpanzee, and each exhalation fouls
the air with so vile a stench as to bring birds crashing down dead
from defoliated trees.
You wompler, you fraldersnash, you eater of curried laundry lint. You
have the audacity to daily inflict your existence on the innocent
people of this planet. HOW can you stand to be you?
J.Howard.MP@aph.gov.au
Taken from an old usenet posting when he was still a MP, and it doesn't bounce, so I'm assuming its good
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
What's with the sudden upsurge of Australian related stories? And people say slashdot is too US-centric. bah!
Why not fork?
The Bali bombings and the Canberra fires...why have these events so shocked the world community? The first Australians were nothing but ex-cons and their descendent harbour the genes of criminality. Australians should consider the innocent victims of the crimes they have perpetrated (or will undoubtedly perpetrate in the future) before they expect the rest of us to turn a sympathetic ear towards them when the Almighty God reckons a grand punishment upon them.
Your search- J.Howard.MP@aph.gov.au - did not match any documents.
Goddammit. I am European and vehemently oppose the current American policies like the new pro-active/pre-emptive/whatever foreign policy, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism, but even I am getting tired of the low-brow anti-Americanism that seems to be rampant these days. This flamebait of an article is a perfect example of the kind of hysterical and irrational "political awareness" of a mob that has been whipped up into a feeding frenzy by our politicos only to improve their status.
Yeah. We disagree with the USA on many fronts, but we have a lot more in common. GWB's election might not have been the most glorious day in the history of the democracy but nevertheless the man was elected fairly according to the laws and accepted customs of the land. He might not be the smartest or the most diplomatic president the USA ever has had, but he is still the president of a sovereign and friendly country and we should respect at least the office if not the man.
If you want to change things, chanting anti-American slogans is not a good way to do it. Whipping up the anti-American sentiment is just counterproductive, populistic and naive.
The owls are not what they seem
hear, hear
Now slashbots aren't even reading the title of a story anymore. gee this site really needs idiots like you.
doing a search on yahoo.com (people search) is normally a pretty good start, and, a few interesting ones i found in the list of 200 or so are:
gstjohnny yahoo.com.au
john_howard_pm_2000 yahoo.com.au
pm_john_howard hotmail.com
johnhowardmp yahoo.com
nakedhornyguy yahoo.com (hahaha)
now, first - i have to apologize to all those other John Howards out there (yes, even the multiple in australia) for having to share this name - i really cannot believe the guy is still in power.
oh.. and, how many guys will respond for a measy crate of coke and $100 or linux software? (isn't most linux software = free?). maybe someone at SMH just wants john to be spammed.
Respond to them with photos and video footage of the infants and babies and toddlers and women laying sprawled out on the street as a result of Saddam Hussein's gassing of his own people a few years back.
He is a back to the 50's "all the way with LBJ (whoever he/she/it is)".
Don't mistake me. He is as quick as a snake on a hot plate and has less scruples. He just doesn't get modern media (look at Australian media laws...). He does get the current situation however and he wants cheap petrol to keep the people happy, which will be 100% effective if he can manage it.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
Dears Champion,
With gratitude we must thank you for finding my email, which was created and forgotten years ago.
I'd be much grateful if you'd also join the next competition - To Find Aussie PM's password to his own Email Address. The first price would be another thank you letter and three years waive of mandatory anal inspection for people who don't vote dearest Howard(laws will be passed along with other Internet laws later this year), second price is two year...and so on.
This is a life-time offer you wouldn't want to miss.
John Howard,
Prime Minister of Australia
Is that legal in Australia?! Ohh... wait... maybe they mean Coca-*Cola*... Nevermind.
Yes, I know I sound harsh, but I just had to point this out before everyone with moderator points goes overboard in rewarding this karma whoring.
Since we know that email to Johnny is to be sent via this page, if people are determined to send him email via an email address, why doesn't somebody set up an email->cgi gateway? It would be pretty simple to set up an email address that posts the content to http://www.pm.gov.au/admin/pm2/feedback.cfm, or replies with instructions if the required fields aren't supplied in the original email.
He's obviously running the site himself to throw everyone off!
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Seems to me as though this isn't going anywhere anyway, i mean, how will we know that its the right address??
Who me? Crazy? Never.
Fark is running a make fun of slashdot photoshop thread -- simply priceless.
I bet you can't find my email in this post.
Comic predicts Bush will declare war on Iraq via SMS messaging!!! Giving the recent story on SMS messaging, I don't know if that's a good idea.
Other headlines on that page:
Man, sometimes America can seem quite boring in comparison...
Maybe the "Spam Queen" can help us find his e-mail address ;-)
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
To war or not to war, that is the question... for Saddam Hussein.
And the Australian PM has what say in this conflict??? The peaceniks might as well be bugging CowboyNeal. Here ya go: cowboyneal@slashdot.org. That will have just as much effect on the war. Seriously.
monkeybutt@iWantaBeAPresident.gov.au
This brings us to the question, does he have an email id?? Maybe everyone just writes to the PM's office (maybe his personal assisstant's or some other bureaucrat's address or something) which in is turn screened and the important mails are given to the PM in hardcopy. The PM then dictates the replies to the secretary who then replies to people.
Not very efficient, I know, but then he is a politician!!!
Perhaps they should try this tactic ?
is with the quotes around president? Yes people, George Bush is the president of the United States. You may not like him or agree with his politics, you may even think he's a moron, that's fine you aren't alone. He is, however, the president and of that there is no debate.
...it's nice, but I'm tight with it
enjoy
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Based on some of his tech policy, the Australian PM hasn't yet figured out that the Internet exists, yet alone got an email address.
Remove all the "not"s from your statement and you have described Australia's capital (before the fires of last weekend).
If four dead Australians and 400 burnt houses stop us going to war then it is worth the price even though it was my own house and my own self.
Bah! Only worth doing for the case of Coke and AUD$100 of linux merchandise. Like they will listen. Info can be found on the challenges official web site Where's John?
johnny69@hotmail.com
Shouldn't that be a case of Mecca Cola...
Be pro-war, especially when it deals with an axis of evil like Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. All three are the equivelant of gansters. America can take care of the threat to prevent innocent lives being lost. Iraq has already attempted to assinate former president George Bush (Sr). Iraq has also funded the families of palestinian suicide bombers. North Korea is developing nuclear weapons to sell to the highest bidder. Iran is just fucking crazy. Write your politicans declaring your support for military action against these nations of evil. Be a team player
Why email Saddam Hussein? If you have followed recent news you will find that it is the US that is about to invade Iraq, not the other way around.
I bet that the coming US invasion of Iraq will end up in this list pretty soon...
Considering Linux Conf.au kicked off today, maby the Labour Council is just looking to give geeks something to do between presentations ?
Seriously though, this is just a cheap publicity stunt for the Labour Council and should be treated as such.
The original submission is wrong. It's not the opposition party that's searching for his email address (duh, they work in the same building for *#(%'s sake!), it's the Labor Council of NSW, that represents unions in Australia - that is searching for his email address. The page offering the reward of AU$100 worth of Linux merchandise and a case of Coke (to geeks nonetheless!) says it all.
What is the point of the internet?
PresidentDownunder@hotmail.com
j.howard.mp@aph.gov.au might be the correct address, but I would guess it just forwards to whoever is looking after whatever Mr Howard's portfolio was at that time (you didn't give a date to the usenet posting).
A little birdy told me (I briefly worked in the Australian Federal Public Service a long time ago, and I have a few friends that still do) to try pm@pm.gov.au instead. Though I'm betting it forwards to the same place that web site form seems to go to - webmaster@pm.gov.au.
Anyway, I don't really see the point of this "competition", even from a publicity stunt point of view. No one REALLY thinks that the Australian PM (or the US President or the French President etc) sits at his desk each morning, opens up Outlook/KMail/whatever and checks his incoming email, do they?
Maybe they think the PM opens all his own mail too. And that he really does write every word of every document that has his signature on it...
Let's shoot 4 more and take the whole week off!
- Strom Thurman
The US has reportedly launched a military and intelligence effort to track down and possibly kill Saddam Hussein.
The plans emerged as the chief UN weapons inspectors ended two days of talks in Baghdad, during which they again urged Iraq to co-operate with their disarmament efforts.
USA Today newspaper said US special forces, CIA paramilitary units, satellite imagery, radio intercepts and airborne reconnaissance are all being used in the operation against Saddam.
After reading Slashdot, the CIA has also said that anyone who does discover the location of Saddam will receive a typical computer geek's prize of a case of Coke and $100 of Linux merchandise.
[snip]
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Obviously the Austrialian PM's been aubducted by those UFO's spotted by by the SOHO space probe! :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'd like to know where to send my anti-dictatorship e-mail. Anybody got Saddam's e-mail address?
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
Surely? :)
If you have seen a pic of little Johnnie you would know why no-one in their right mind (/.'s naturally excluded?) would do this. Almost made me physically sick to even think of it. It wouldn't even be funny. Also Oz has some nasty defamation laws with the PM's legal bill paid for taxpayers. Need another beer now. Also I have already submittedmy entry - $100 will buy me a decent nex linux book with distro. For the record my bet is johnhoward@johnhowardmp.com. johnhowardmp.com is where his electoral website is hosted. Can't be sure as I am not expecting a return email.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
What about Tony Blair's email address then?
The guys at Bloggerheads have been doing a similar task to find the email of Tony Blair (British PM for those not in the know).
Slightly different as Tony promised that he would release his email address, but so far has not. Quite funny, worth a read.
Do I get my prize now?
i have the address . who is going to confirm my answer is correct or not?
How on earth did this get modded insightful and not funny?
It was a bad joke referring to the fires in ACT.
...it has to be
bruce@ something
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
http://www.pm.gov.au/your_feedback/feedback.htm appears to be a form to email the australian PM. Unless I'm blind and the words "Email the Prime Minister" don't mean that anymore.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
John Howard doesn't have email, I win! Seriously, as hard as this is for everyone to imagine (including me), he probably doesn't have an email address. Besides this small point, what politician actually checks their publicly accessable email? They all have their secretary or campaign manager scan and reply.
Sorry, but the man is an unspeakably vile and stupid little twerp. He's a cockroach, born to be trodden on. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest his erogenous zones. May all his sons have many fathers... All right, I'll shut up :-}
While we can all send anti-war emails to 'president' of the USA...
I shall take this moment to send an email to our president thanking him for the courage, in the face of opposition, to stand up for freedom of not only this country, but the freedom of the oppressed in other countries as well. But I guess you'd call that a pro-war email. Never forget those who died for freedom. Whether they be soldiers in the middle east, or an average Todd on a captive airliner.
Let's Roll.
I am MuchTall
Despite whether I agree/disagree, this post seems like bait for arguing the merits of a war with Iraq. No place for that in this story - I encourage mods to do the Right Thing and for posters to refrain from replying.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
I'd like to send him an email telling him he has my full support to do whatever necessary to protect the people of the world.
If we cant find the address, perhaps hes Anonymous Howard?
Once the PM's email is made public, he will get tons of spam.
He's probably more concerned about getting "flamed" right now.
For all you non-Australians out there, I'm guessing you haven't heard of the horrific bushfires plaguing our capital city (Canberra, where the Prime Minister lives, hence the PM getting "flamed". I hate it when I have to explain jokes). Maybe the 4 dead and 400 homes razed to the ground (the last I heard of it) doesn't warrant air-time on your news networks compared to "let's go to war!"
Typical, us Aussies had 11/9 plastered on our tv sets for weeks, and !@#$!@#$
Sorry, teen angst.
~Duane
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Um, what happened on November 9th?
If it makes you feel any better, I don't watch much news of any kind. I tend to read stuff online though. I probably should watch the news on the BBC-US channel that my cable company has.
(BTW, I am aware he's using the international date format up there.)
IMarvinTPA
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
But the PM has a lot less power than the president. It's my (limited) understanding that Bush can do pretty much whatever he wants providing he puts it in a presidential order thingy. Offically, Blair isn't allowed to do anything without parliment's go-ahead. However you get leaders, both systems work (kinda).
Duane, it's not that we don't care about Australia. It's simply that we get brush fires in the south western U.S. every freakin year where lots of people are killed and hundreds of homes are destroyed. Believe it or not, those stories get very little airtime too (except on south-western t.v. stations). With all the war crap going on I doubt they'd get any airplay right now either.
:(
Not to mention the fact that a brush fire that killed 4 people does not compare to what happened on 9/11 (or 11/9 as you would say in Australia).
Marc
p.s. Believe it or not there's a lot of us in the U.S. who don't want to go to war with Iraq (but that doesn't get much airtime either).
bruce@bruce.bruce.au
(No Poofters!)
Source: USDOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 2000.
(See Also)
Still think the US it the "land of the free"?
I also think anyone who wants to send one should have to present an Honorable Discharge from the military in order to be considered qualified to make a judgement on the matter anyway.
-(Signed) A Veteran fed up with peaceniks.
votenowar.org is a real site set up by International ANSWER (Act now to stop war and end racism). They organized a protest where a few hundred thousand showed up at Washinton DC this saturday. You might want to tell the people chain mailing you that their chain mail is probably fake and point them here.
I believe that Aussies use the form dd/mm/yyyy for their dates.
DISCLAIMER: I LIVE IN THE USA.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
bruce@gov.au
If that doesn't work, try
bruce2@gov.au
etc.
No offense, but that happens all the time over here.. A few months ago, there were three fires started in the span of a few days (all accidental or natural), that put LA under a nice cloud of smoke.. One of the fires was within 5 miles of where I was staying.. Another was South of LA. I had the pleasure of driving out to a home there.. It was kinda surreal when your entire field of view in front of you is fire, and then realize it's still miles away..
When I was a kid, I grew up in nowhere, Florida. Pretty much, grab a Florida map, and figure out how much space is at least 100 miles from any city with a population over 1000.. There's lots of it. There'd be fires all the time, caused by lightning strikes, or stupid people not putting out camp fires.. LA's fires make the news, because they're close to major news offices.. The fires in Florida would sometimes be huge, and maybe make a 5 second blurb on the nearest cities news channel.
4 dead, 400 homes isn't international news. Well, it would be, but it ranks right up with little Timmy with his hand stuck in the toilet (again).
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I use scare quotes around "president" because I consider the U.S. presidency to be an elected position. I do not believe that George W. Bush was fairly elected to the position. I do not use scare quotes when referring to any other recent presidents, whether I dislike them or not, since I believe they were fairly elected.
Uh, blame the Australian education system for that. My friend hates Linux because it has too much 'Saftey'. (Someone please tell me how to panic a kernel safely so I can prove him wrong)
;-)
;-) Besides, I don't see any reason what Latin American dances have to do with Australians being geeks ;-)
2 ways I know to do this--
1-- Make a bootable CDROM without support for any filesystems in the kernel (kernel panic when trying to mount root).
2-- Turn off APM in your BIOS, use an APB-based kernel, and then halt your system.
Neither of these means have any possibility of harming your system
As for where does Samba come from? Samba is a dance form from Latin America
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Joshua Mbungu from Nigeria has already found his email and sent him a very urgent proposal to transfer $28,000,000,000.00 (Twenty Eight Billion Dollars) to the National Bank of Australia.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
No, the president just enforces and implements the laws congress passes (i shouldn't say "just" :)). Bush can't make laws, he can issue directive however, but they are not the same thing and do not carry the same legal weight.
How can a first non-fp post on an article be redundant?
If you look at the code for the feedback form:
You'll notice that mailto has no value, I'd say it doesn't submit anywhere.
Maybe it's more likely that Slashdot has been hijacked by people with a nationalistic barrow to push (Hi Tim! Hi Chris! Hi...). Let's transfer the site over to www.slashdot.org.au where it now firmly belongs, and find ourselves a new site, where the news is what matters, and not where it comes from.
And in 1775, George III was King of North America, and of that there was no debate.
You see, the thing about politics is that there's always a debate, and just because some guy called George declares himself my lord and master doesn't preclude me from saying that he's a thieving parasite with no more mandate to rule than any other monarch appointed by a partisan Council of the Wise rather than a popular vote.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Do some reading. The US Constitution is available online and defines pretty narrowly what El Presidente is allowed to do (not that it stopped Bush from committing the US to war - sorry, "regime change" - with Iraq before consulting with the Senate, but the principle is there). Now try and find out what the limits on Tony Blair's powers are. Any luck? Didn't think so.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The fires have been on the national news in the US. Many stories. Last years fires were as well.
Q.
The brushfire stories have been on the national news in Canada as well. Although you are alone in dealing with them of course, you aren't ignored--not like that's any consolation though :-(
When it comes to how people voted, he did win the majority in Florida, as has been constantly demonstrated.
I'm really not all that keen on him (I voted for Brown), but the fact remains that George W. Bush is our president. The leftists who try to pretend that he's not (incl. Michael Moore, whom I saw on British television making near-treasonous comments regarding Bush) need to get lives. But then, that applies to all leftists.
If we don't fight it, the rest of the world is going to be under a Muslim rule. As a Christian rule, I will die rather than forsake God.
There is no god but God. Abraham was his prophet. Moses was his prophet. Jesus was his son and prophet. Muhammad was his prophet. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God. The core of God's commandment (love God, and love one another) is consistent across all religions. Thus, if Europe and America fight the Middle East in World War III, the battle of Armageddon, it will be a war fought over trivialities.
I Am Not A Theologian, but here's my advice: Just prepare for the end times and accept God into your life.
Will I retire or break 10K?
On the other hand, if you want to Slashdot the PM, go ahead, or ask Joe Baptista about how to fax the entire government of a province or email the US government.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The man is a technology morom, he does not have an eMail address. He also does live in the National Captial. Imagine if the Pres of the USA didn't live in the White House. He is not worth the time of Day, let alone eMails. Aknowledged by his own party as the worst treasurer in Oz history.
Actually, John Howard is notable for being the first Prime Minister to not actually live in our national capital.
:-)
He lives with his family in the Sydney's historic Kirribili House, not in the traditional Prime Ministerial residence, the Lodge in Canberra.
dickhead
400 homes isn't international news? That's all kinda relative I suppose: being in Australia, we hear about any relative large fire in the US where homes are destroyed, as well as tornadoes etc.
So maybe 400 homes isn't international news in America, but in a lot of other places it is.
Especially when we are talking about 400 homes in our capital city. We're not talking some pokey town in the middle of the bush. If Washington DC had 400 homes burn down in bushfire, would you expect us to know about it?
I've wondered a few times why it would be that we seem to hear about any fires over there, and yet you guys seem to not hear/care about anything over here. I suppose the first instinct is to say (like, unfortunately, most things) "Well, what do you expect? It's not happening in America, so it's not really happening...", but maybe it's also more a matter of what we are tuned to. In Australia, no matter where you live, from a very young age you are taught about bushfire safety and survival. They're so common that it's assumed that you will need to know how to survive/deal with one at least once in your life. So when there are bushfires overseas, we feel for that a lot more, and so show it on TV.
Don't know: as far as I'm aware, there's no real way of doing a good test on that at the moment. We can't really compare that to anything happening over here that you guys would be feeling for right now.
Then again, part of the reason we heard so much of your bushfires last year at least was because of the number of firefighters we sent over to help.
John Howard chose to keep "Kiribilli House" on Sydney's north shore as his primary residence. He was the first Prime Minister for about 30 years to reject the official residence "the lodge" in Canberra.
I've been posting on the net since 1994 and I still haven't come up with a good sig!
Have the web form printed out and read to them.
Almost all politicians are crooks at heart and any system that involves them is doomed to become corrupt over time no matter how well designed it is initially. "Who watches the watchmen?" is the eternal question in representative democracy and the answer is always "no one" in the long run.
It happens than I don't think that the American system is better even in theory but it is not important anymore as both systems have now failed utterly from their ideals; neither Americans or Britons have any real involvement in what are becoming two of the the world's greatest Plutocracies.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
is eParliment eHouse, eCanberra, e2600 :)
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Yeah I always wonder that too when people go on about 9/11 ...
an aussie
If you check out the average American news source... there is very little international coverage. Contrast this to news in Australia, Canada, the UK etc and you will see why it is easy for a US citizen to be unaware of the world around them. Hell, most news shown on TV seems to barely make it out of the state, let alone the US!
Fact is it doesn't make financial sense to cover the world events because
1) Americans don't know or care about most of the places that will pop up in news stories
2) It is much more lucrative to be focusing in on the murders and local news.
The world news you supposedly follow is most likely "US Iraqi conflict" and nothing more.
Swap CNN for the BBC or the Sydney Morning Herald and you'll start to see a bit more of world news and events.
Easy
foul.little.turd@onenation.org.au
Nah mate, its the truth. I read it in a Murdoch paper.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Mr. Moore (http://www.michaelmoore.com) often puts it in quotes.
It's not about disagreing with his politics (which many do) or thinking he is a moron (ahem, ditto) or anything else. It's about if he is infact an elected presedent or if he installed himself in the position with the help of the courts, a big wad of cash and daddys old mates...
Download this:
j pg
:-0 /me ducks
http://www.pm.gov.au/images/newsroom/head_shot.
Print it on nice paper and use it for whatever you like, you can even talk to it
Just hire one of the spam companies to send all of Austrailia a "Refinance", "Herbal Viagra", "Lolita" or "Kangaroo Sex" email, with an opt out in it.
By crikey its the real thing cobbers!
We've already had one Prime Minister go missing. Went swimming one day and the body was never found. Rumour has it he was picked up by an American submarine ...
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
If I can recall, the American government wanted to ban guns several times, but were restricted to do this by their constitution.
Anyway, my opinion of this is that if someone is free to kill someone then the other person should be able to be free not to be killed.
I wonder how many people we sent over to there to help you?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
http://www.pm.gov.au/your_feedback/feedback.htm
:P
This took me all of 15 seconds to find.
Well that's the idea anyways. In practice Johnny seems to spend most of his time in Sydney, ostensibly because his kids go to school there but I think they've left school by now.
What was the name of the little dog in the Bugs Bunny Show who used to urge the big dog to go beat up some cats and ended up facing the Kangaroo.Johnny Howard???
Well, none. But us Aussies are quite gratefull of the letters (we read in newspapers) from american firefighters offering (and being frusturated about not being able to repay the aussie firefighters by coming over and helping).
;) [note for international kids;- Aussies tend not to be precious about our politicians.. So the nothing-sacred humor should be taken in that context]
I recon if politicians had as much international solidarity as firefighters seem to, war'd be an arcane memory from the history books.
We sure do get alot of fires down here, heck australian fires are probably the hottest (Eucalyptus trees oft burn at many thousands degrees +(celcius) , but this canbera thing is rather ungood.
That said there was a part of me that was hoping to see parliment on fire
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
There is a vocal minority on /. that is very defensive about the fact that Gore did not win the 2000 US Presidential election. More to the point, Bush knew the rules and was a very observant politician knowing that it wasn't popular votes but rather electorial votes that got him elected. He decided to go along with that strategy and won.
The whole thing in Florida wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been able to get so many other electorial votes from other states (think Mondale in 1984).
In regards to the electorial college being disbanded, I think there are some very good reasons to keep it around:
1) Just in case of a serious accident. If the president-elect were to die somehow before being sworn into office, there is no constitutional provision to deal with who should take his place. The electorial college would then have a free-for-all in deciding a new president (although I would guess that it would probabally be from the same political party as the president-elect in this case).
2) The electoral college gives smaller states a larger voice in the presidential elections. A voter in Wyoming, for instance, has three times as much voting power (or more it could be argued) than a voter in California or Texas. That is the way it was set up when the constitution was written, because states like Deleware and Connecticut felt they were going to be left out whenever a federal election was going to occur.
It would be interesting to see parliament on fire, if only to see how many people really wouldn't piss on a politician, even if they were on fire...
How is this flamebait. Hey moderator, ever been to Australia? You'll find every word wombat wrote is true!
You know what they say:
Light a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Light a mon ON fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
>We're not talking some pokey town in the middle of the bush
Never been to Canberra, have you?
Bushfire in DC?
...cause if u are...
whats gonna burn...
The President?
are you making a threat?
that's it
WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!