Why is it that the previous Victorian Labour government had to use the word "smart" to name the most expensive projects that have defied their names, failed miserably and wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars?  From the myki "SmartCard" travel system that cost $1.35 billion and is still not working, to the "HealthSmart" system, a computer system meant to link hospitals together so that patient information can be used across sites and make inter-hospital communication more efficient.  Perhaps they modelled it off the 1960's comedy Get Smart starring the infamous bumbling spy Maxwell Smart.  Seems about as clever.

It has only been introduced in a couple of test sites, is 5 years late and $35 million over budget.  And it has not been designed to integrate with the new national e-health system (that is meant to link all hospitals and GP clinics in the country). In other words it's a complete failure.

Suffice to say the new Liberal government has been left holding the steaming dog turd that is "HealthSmart", and they have two options, flush it down the toilet and blow the hundreds of millions already spent on it, or start flogging a dead horse, and waste even more money trying to implement a flawed, non-functional already out-dated system.  Either way they lose, and we have John Brumby and the Ex-Health Minister (now unfortunately leader of the Opposition) Daniel Andrews to thank. 

South Australia may be the most boring state in Australia, and Darwin the biggest cultural void, but at least their hospitals have computer links that make working there a breeze compared to Victoria, may be time to Get Smart and move...

This site says it all:

Just one question, why aren't they calling for the assassination of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice and the rest of the Bush administration, who actually ordered the murder of over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men women and children.  They are guilty of genocide.  No-one can actually name or cite a law that Julian Assange has broken.  If you can, with a reference, send it in.  Julia Gillard, the Australian Prime Minister, and a lawyer, can't name one.  The Swedish prosecution team who want him extradited have named some potential sex-crimes but still haven't charged him (an illegal use of an EU extradition warrant), and the US Government & their media puppets, well, all they can come up with are inflammatory statements claiming that what he's done is "unconsitiutional" - without specific reference, or (my favourite - the McCarthy-esque, witch-hunting, tar-brush label) "he's a terrorist" despite clear evidence that no-one has died as a result of the leaks... I hope he lives forever and brings down the insanely hypocritical governments and media organisations that are publicly calling for his death.  Go Julian.

I've been dormant for a few months, working interstate, kitchen renovation, raising a toddler... Boring.  Anyway of course I have to make a brief comment about Wikileaks and Julian Assange - anyone who's read this blog will know what my opinion on this issue will be, and I'll be as concise as possible.

Point 1: The legal farce

Suffice to say he's being held in solitary confinement, with CCTV monitoring, in a jail, in a country where he has committed no crime, based on an allegation of a crime in another country, that even if he was found guilty of it would attract nothing but a 700 Kroner fine.  His bail release has been opposed by Swedish lawyers.  The allegation of the crime stems from him not wearing a condom the 2nd time he had sex with a girl who's house he'd spent the night at.  The woman involved was only concerned about STD testing, not about pressing charges.  Does Sweden extradite, detain, or arrest and commit to solitary confinement everyone that has sex without a condom or who needs an STD test in every other country of the world? I doubt it.

Point 2: The threats

How can it be tolerated that in America (everyone's favourite country), politicians can be allowed to exercise their right to free speech by demanding that Mr Assange be executed?  EXECUTED. They are free to call for the death of a man who has not actually broken any law, who has committed no crime, who has done nothing illegal AT ALL, and this is quietly tolerated.  Let us remind everyone that Mr Assange did not break into government computers and steal these documents.  He has simply published them.  As has EVERY MAJOR MEDIA OUTLET IN THE WORLD.  Are they calling for the execution of Rupert Murdoch and every other journalist in the world who's reproduced, copied, forwarded and published these documents? Obviously not. The term "scapegoat" comes to mind.

Point 3: The "risk"

Sources at the highest levels of governments have declared that despite all the bullshit hype not a single life has been threatened or lost as a result of these documents being published. NOT ONE. Compare that to the approximately 100,000 innocent women, children and men, innocent CIVILIANS that the US has killed in Iraq since 2003. The US government, and George Bush in particular has committed the worst war crime since the Holocaust, they are on par with Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic.  They are murderers, having committed these crimes in a war that everyone knows was illegal and unfounded.  The hypocrisy of this situation kills me.

Point 4: He's Australian

While Julia Gillard is fucking around with Oprah Winfrey, which embarrasingly highlights our pathetic parochialism and reputation as the poor little cousin of America, and she's stated that his actions were "illegal" without beng able to state which law he'd actually broken, an Australian citizen has been forcibly detained in a foreign country for doing nothing more than embarrassing an ally.  This isn't David Hicks who was found in Afghanistan in questionable circumstances relating to fighting in a foreign army (and I by no means condone the abhorrent treatment he received, it was just as bad), but this is a journalist. Who types for a living.  If our government is so subverient to America to the point that they would deny consular assistance to an Australian citizen imprisoned abroad and wash their hands of him, label him a criminal before any charges had been laid and threated to invalidate his passport, then I for one am embarrassed to be associated with this country.  I can't express this passionately enough.  Fundamental processes of justice have been denied to this man, for what?

'Nuff said.  The Ironic Fist salutes you Julian, even if you mysteriously "disappear" at the hands of the US government, you have started a revolution that they can't stop.  And if any assholes from the US government are reading this and you'd like to see what happens when you fuck with computer hackers, then I strongly suggest you go and purchase these 2 books by Daniel Suarez.  God help us all if anything like that happens.  For those that aren't CIA operatives, I still highly recommend that you immediately buy and read these books, they will blow your hippie noodle off your shoulders (and scare the crap out of you) and give you a glimpse of the power of the net and the stupidity of the human race.

Yesterday Kevin Rudd announced the biggest shakeup of the over-burdened, failing Australian health system in 25 years.  Experts on the 7:30 Report on the ABC last night saw fit to "nit-pick" the details and seemed skeptical, however they all concluded by saying "this should have been done 10 years ago" (ie perhaps when John Howard was Prime Minister and the opposition leader Tony Abbott was health minister...?).  Like him or loathe him Kevin Rudd undertook a massive analysis of the Australian health system and has come up with a plan that while clearly not perfect will absolutely remove some of the major inefficiencies and waste in our system.  Ask anyone who's been to a public hospital Emergency Department (patients or staff) in the last 2 years and you'll get the same response - the system is failing.  The State governments (who currently run public hospials) are clearly failing at their jobs, we as staff face intmidation by management to work harder, to not take breaks, to not even go to the toilet and "just hurry up" (which leads to errors, exhaustion and burnout) to make the numbers and KPI's look good, the small amount of federal government money that is delivered to the states to help with hospitals is handed over as a "blank cheque" with no accountability for how it's spent, and Kevin Rudd has come up with a plan to try and improve this situation, in a way that was consultative and at least in it's philosophy, seems to have the best interests of staff and patients far closer to the front than it's ever been.

Compare this to what Tony Abbott was doing yesterday:

While Kevin Rudd was delivering his new health plan, that took 2 years to develop, is aimed at reducing bureaucracy and waste of taxpayer dollars and obviously involved a shitload of hard work, Tony Abbott was lost in the outback, driving around on a quad-bike without enough petrol or water and with a phone that no-one knew how to use.  He then has the gall and the stupidity when he was finally rescued for one of his first comments to be "how can you trust a government that can't run a pink-batts scheme to run the hospital system?".  Um, der, Tony, have a look at the article in The Age today (see below).  This government actually reduced the risk from insulation installation, and has massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption thanks to the insulation scheme, and has at the same time delivered on it's education portfolio, and while doing all this has designed the biggest reform to healthcare in this country in the last 25 years (something you couldn't do while you actually held the position of Health Minister - your only achievement then was to block the introduction of RU-486 because you couldn't separate your own crazy religious beliefs from your duty as a minister...).  And what has Tony Abbott been doing all this time? Whining that Peter Garrett should be "sacked" and getting lost in the bush on a quad-bike, eating witchtety grubs and trying desperately to build a pre-election image as a "true blue Aussie hard-man" (obviously to appeal to blue collar masses), without having any new policy on the table and without any constructive criticism of the urgent health issues facing Australians at the moment.  And you know what, sadly, I reckon if they had the election today, Tony might just scrape through, because we are a nation of morons, tall-poppy choppers, who prefer football and beer to health and wellbeing, who (as Jeff Kennet once pointed out) "don't know how to vote".  We're more impressed by superficiality and image than we are by policy and actual political achievements. More likely to vote for the guy with the best advertisement rather than the best track record.  So who knows what the end of the year will bring, there are major obstacles in the way of K-Rudd's health plan so ot will probably never come to fruition thanks to petty political bickering and parochialism by the State Governments, and we'll all be a whole lot worse off than we were health-wise with crumbling hosiptal system, and Tony "God Bless Him" Abbott, who couldn't operate a mobile phone (but geez did you see him eat that witchety grub?) as our leader.  I can't wait.

There is a federal election looming this year in Australia.  The Rudd government (currently in power) has had a recent run of bad press over a home-insulation scheme that went awry and resulted in the demotion of the minister responsible (Peter Garrett), with the opposition leader Tony "should have become a priest" Abbott has been howling at the media that Rudd should "sack" the aforementioned minister.  All we have heard on this issue is that "Peter Garrett is responsible for the deaths of 4 insulation installers and should be sacked". Over, and over, it's all Tony Abbott seems to have to say on the issue and it's all the media seem to want to report.

Until today.  Finally a journo has actually analysed that facts, and deemed that the rate of house fires from insulation has actually DROPPED after this scheme was introduced, and that the risk assessment that was "ignored" by the governent actually didn't identify any of the risks that have since occurred as being substantial...

Here is one of the more objective pieces of journalism you'll read this year, and I'd encourage anyone thinking of voting Liberal at the next election to read it and have a good think about how stupid Tony Abbott sounds next time he opens his mouth on this issue.

Apologies - lots of swearing in this post... I'm quite upset about this...

This really does take the cake.  It's 2010, they can land robots on Mars that can do their own scientific experiments, we know that the earth is round, that ALL religions are simply a perpetuation of millenia old myths and fables that have no place in a modern world except to incite bigotry, racism and wars, yet there are cunts like Pat Robertson, a right wing "Christian" charlatan who happily brainwashes millions of Americans (who I'm sure are much like these fucking idiots) into believing that if they send him money God will save them.  This asshole has publicly come out and in the face of hundreds of years of scientific proof about what causes earthquakes stated that the Haitians brought their most recent natural disaster on themselves by making a "pact with the devil". I'd like to see this fucker crushed under a tonne of concrete and steel and with his last breath say "the devil did this".  Fucking prick.  I wouldn't be incensed unless I knew what influence bastards like this have over malleable minds.  How do I know?

My mother died 5 years ago from a disease called "sporadic CJD".  Creutzfeld Jacob Disease.  Otherwise known in its contagious form as "mad cow disease".  There is also a sporadic form that happens when genetic machinery in your brain cells get defective and start making a protein that destroys your other brain cells.  My mother was an intelligent, articulate widow, who lived alone in a small country town and was painfully lonely.   She "turned to Christ" and became a dedicated participant at her local "Assembly Of God" church, she went every Sunday without fail. This "AOG" crowd are the idiots that believe in "faith healing" and other "miracles".  They also con their followers into donating vast sums of money to their local churches and then to American TV Evangelists like Benny Hinn (just look how good he is a sucking money out of morons).

You could not have met a more warm hearted, compassionate caring soul than my mother. She was the embodiment of positive living, she ate well, exercised regularly, worked hard, raised my sister & I in a way that I struggle to fault, she never spoke ill of anyone and unfortunately in her loneliness and need for inner fulfillment, became brainwashed by her Church.  She ended up donating tens of thousands of TAX EXEMPT dollars to Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and other TV evangelists in the hope that, well I don't know what the fuck she was hoping for, perhaps the "100-fold return" that they promise, salvation by Jesus...  I wish those fuckers had to sleep in her room for 6 weeks like my sister and I did while we palliated her as she died a slow painful death from a rapidly degenerative brain disease, evetually suffocating to death as she succumbed to pneumonia, gasping like a fish out of water for 3 nights in a row until our palliative care nurse  eventually ended her life with a massive dose of morphine and haloperidol... She was 52 years old.  And you know what?  Fucking Jesus wasn't there. Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and Pat Robertson weren't there.  If "God" is willing to let a faultless, dedicated follower die in such an undignified and painful way, then I can tell you now, "he" doesn't exist.

Having formed the first religious broadcasting TV service in America, Pat Robertson is undoubtedly to blame for the proliferation of these scum, these charlatans that rob money from the poor, the ignorant, the lonely and the desperate in the name of "Jesus", only to line their own pockets and generate excessive tax free personal wealth while delivering nothing but lies, lies and more lies.  So Fuck You Pat Robertson for ever being born.  You know you could have sent a donation of some of your organisations billions of dollars to help the people of Haiti, or expressed how sad you were that anyone on earth was enduring such tragedy, loss and suffering as any truly compassionate religious person would, but oh no, instead you choose to maliciously misinform your idiotic followers that the Haitians are devil worshippers who all deserve to die.  So I guess it's no surprise you're not going to try & help these poor people, I mean neither you, nor Jesus came through for my mother, who donated her life savings to your bullshit organisations, and was left to die a pitiful demented undignified painful death.

Fuck Off And Die All American Television Evangelist Religious Christian Broadcasting Cunts.  Keep your hatred to yourselves.  The world doesn't need you. The only saving grace will be if I'm wrong (and sometimes I hope I am only for this reason) and there really is a heaven and hell, then there will be a special place in hell reserved for these assholes, who will be wonderfully tortured by Satan for all of eternity for their misdemeanours while on earth.  Now I'd pay to watch that.



Here's another great story about our financially brilliant government.  They've gone and bought a bunch of new trains that they can't use (must have got them to match the myki system).  I love the quote from the Rail Tram and Bus Union locomotive president:

''You get what you pay for, and they did: these trains are cheap and nasty overseas shit and drivers aren't happy with them". Yikes.

Do you think the government asked the drivers which trains would be best? Or do you think they formed 5 different committees and 3 levels of bureaucrats who all had to be paid annual salaries and bonuses to write reports and hire consultants at $2000 a day to decide which trains were the best? I wonder...

Go Brumby Government.  More top spending decisions.

The picture on the right is of $1 billion US dollars, which is about the same as $1.2 to $1.3 billion Australian (depending on the exchange rate). If you had this much money...

• You could buy the entire Royal Australian Air Force's fleet of F/A-18A Hornet Fighter Planes (approximately 54 planes)
• You could run three separate Formula 1 racing teams for a year, and probably win the world title
• You could almost buy the Space Shuttle Endeavour, or at least put a nice deposit on it (cost $1.7 billion US)
• You could vaccinate every single person in Africa against measles, TWICE
• You could build a state of the art major tertiary hospital in Melbourne (new Royal Children's Hospital estimated cost $1 billion AUD).
• OR: you could flush it down the toilet...

...which is exactly what the Brumby Labor Government is doing.  The myki "smartcard" (or "stupidcard" as it should be called) system was launched this week, two and a half years late, $850 million dollars over budget (now costing $1.35 billion instead of the original $500 million estimate), only working on trains (which only 20% of public transport users use exclusively) and not working on trams or buses because "they're mobile"... Um, der, did someone forget to tell the dickheads that designed this thing that, um, it's for a public transport ticketing system, so when you install it, it will be "mobile", that's what transport does, it mobilises people, so it will need up to date mobile technology.  My mobile phone works on the bus, hell my google maps app on my iphone works on trams and buses, my car radio works everywhere I go, (I don't have a GPS, but I hear they work in cars...) so the technology is out there, but no we can't seem to get it to work, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this project.  No doubt Transport Minister Lynne Kosky and a bunch of other bureaucrats and over-paid consultants have been on some wonderful junkets to Europe & Asia to look at the technology there, in fact there's probably a whole division of middle-bureacracy devoted to this system who are chewing up our money and not delivering results.  Hmmm, sounds remarkably similar to the health bureaucracy...

I just worked the long weekend over Christmas & Boxing day in our local Emergency Department.  We broke our annual attendance record 2 days in a row for the number of patients coming in to the ED (and remember this is in a year where we had already had record attendances during the swine flu epidemic).  I should remind readers from the Northern Hemisphere that it's summer here, and holiday time, traditionally a time of reduced hospital demand as there's less colds & flu's around and people are at the beach or away on holiday, but as has happened every year for the last several years the "post-winter" decline in attendances is not happening.  This phenomenon is well documented, the statistics are widely published, the government knows it, and is doing nothing about it.  And this is after the same Labor government introduced new "8-hour" rules for our ED's last month meaning patients need to be out in 8 hours, or penalties are imposed...  Hmm demand is going up and up, we're not giving you any more resources (in fact they're cutting the health budget next year) and we want better throughput  from you... Despite Victoria already having the most efficient hospitals in the country, and despite simple facts like the computer I use to access patient information and pathology results is running, wait for it, Windows 2000! We're trying to cope with a record workload with 10-year old computer software!! (remember, myki, completely unnecessary, doesn't even fucking work, cost: $1.35 billion). I bet Lynne Kosky's computer isn't running Windows 2000, or maybe it is, and maybe the myki machines are too... Fucking Idiots.  Did we have extra staffing on for this busy holiday period? No.  Did we have extra beds opened in the hospital to help us cope with the massive increase in admissions? No. Were there more ambulance crews on the roads? No.  Did I receive any sort of thanks from management for avoiding ambulance bypass when there were no beds in the hospital, the ED was full and I was working the last 9 hours of a 5-day long weekend overnight last night? No.  Did I get to eat or go to the toilet last night at work? No. Did I get a Christmas bonus? No.  Could the Victorian hospital system use an $1.35 billion cash injection at the moment instead of a new public transport ticket system that doesn't work when we already have a ticketing system that works just fine? YES.

6 weeks to go until I finally get my specialist qualifications and I can walk out of the Victorian public health system for good.  While I admire the doctors and nurses that stay behind to work in this hopelessly underfunded, over-stretched system while the government is flaunting it's waste of the public's money on idiotic unnecessary ideas that don't work, I have to get out.  I can no longer stand the embarrassment of having to "apologise for the wait" to every patient I see, to patients who are sick & in pain, while there is money literally being poured down the toilet by the government that could be being used to help people in real need. Fucking John Brumby, Lynne Kosky and Daniel Andrews should be there apologising to these people, not me.

If anyone who reads this & lives in Melbourne or Victoria, don't vote Labor at the next election, although you probably will after watching the political ads on TV at the moment that they're also paying for with our money that tell you what a good job they're doing... I wonder how much they cost?

By the way, wondering where you could get $1 billion dollars? Just go to Iraq and steal it.

I haven't posted for while, but this story recently got my attention and I felt it worthy of comment. 

I just got Foxtel and am obsessed with the show Air Crash Investigation on the national Geographic Channel.  I must have watched 20 or 30 episodes now, and admittedly the thought of your 747 catching on fire and plummeting into the Indian Ocean, or your Airbus A320 running out of fuel because the guage was broken and the pilot thought the tanks were full when they weren't isn't everyone's idea of fun.  I mean, who wants to die in a plane crash? It sounds awful, traumatic, violent and panicked.  The reality is most of the time there's only a couple of minutes of panic then a very sudden (and i mean 700km/hr into the ground, bug on a windscreen, SPLAT! sudden).  And I could live with this if the pilot was doing everything he could to avoid or correct a potentially fatal situation, I mean when your number's up your number's up, right?

Well I recently watched an episode about the Lockerbie air disaster, during which a bomb, planted on a Pan Am 747 from Frankfurt, stopping in London and bound for the USA detonated over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21st 1988.  290 people were killed including all of the passengers, crew, and several residents on the ground.  A suspect, a Libyan national was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison.  He was recently released to much international scorn and condemnation as he is dying from cancer.  This story is one of the most well known airline disasters in modern history, if you say the word "Lockerbie" to almost anyone they'll know what happened there.  This crash has helped crystallise views about the middle east amongst western countries for the last decade, and helped provide a stimulus for the "war on terror".  It was an incredible catastrophe, and is enough to make you agree with one woman seen on old news footage who poignantly states, "there is no god".

What most people don't know about is another airline disaster that occurred on July 3rd, 1988, only a few months before Lockerbie.  This was the illegal shooting down of a civilian Iranian passenger jet, Iran Air flight 655, flying in Iranian arispace over the Strait of Hormuz (Iranian waters) by the American warship USS Vincennes.

On an episode of Air Crash Investigation this disaster is explained in meticulous detail.  In short the Captain of the Vincennes (William Rogers) ignored a direct order from his commanding officer (Richard McKenna of the USS Montgomery) to turn his ship around & get out of the area he was patrolling (an area he'd entered "looking for a fight" with Iranian speedboats who were in fact not acting in a hostile manner).  The passenger jet was mis-identified as an F-14 fighter plane by the radar on the Vincennes, and the person in charge of checking civilain flight schedules didn't realise that there were different time zones in the area, and even if he had, he  said he couldn't read the civilian flight schedule as it was "too dark".

While the passenger jet was ascending to its cruising altitude, in Iranian airspace, the radar operator on the Vincennes told Rogers that it was an F-14 that was rapidly descending (or diving) in an "attack" formation.  Rogers, without ever correctly identifying the plane, without checking the radar himself, illegally present in foreign waters, where he had no permission from his commanding officer to be, ordered that two surface to air missiles be fired.  The aircraft was shot out of the sky, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children.

In true American fashion, William Rogers, an aggressive "fight seeker", full of American bravado and stupidity, was not court-martialled or charged with any offences whatsoever. Instead he received the Legion of Merit medal, "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989."  The officer who finally hit the firing button to launch the missiles (after the person who's job it was to do this hit the wrong button 23 times) was also awarded a medal for his role in the firing procedure.

Regarding this incident, President George Bush (Snr) stated "I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are".  This was a frightening prelude to subsequent acts of "war" enacted by the USA in the middle east.  Acts that performed by any other country would immediately be labelled "terrorism" and used as excuses for even more outrageous illegal acts by America.  Acts that have also required no factual basis for instigation and have resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.  Acts that label America as truly the worlds biggest terrorist.

I don't condone the Lockerbie bombing.  No-one deserves to die like that.  However I can fully understand the motivation that fuelled the desire of the bombers to seek revenge.  American Naval Officers were commended & decorated for murdering innocent men, women and children, and the US government not only failed to openly disclose the mistakes they made, but refused to apologise.  Instead they paid out tens of millions of dollars (of which only a small proportion was received by victim's families) in compensation but never accepted blame. 

Imagine that, flying along on a passenger jet, minding your own business, with a pilot flying in the correct airspace, in a fully functional modern jet airliner, on a day of blue skies and sunshine, and the next second you're falling through the sky with 3rd degree burns, possibly missing a limb or two, with shards of metal and glass piercing your skin, having just watched your son or daughter get ripped to pieces in front of your eyes, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be lucky enough to pass out or die before you hit the water at 500km/hr.  I hope that's the image that goes through William Rogers mind each night as he's trying to go to sleep. Or maybe he'll be lucky enough to get prostate cancer soon like the Lockerbie bomber and he can have a nice peaceful death surrounded by his family, drifting off with a morphine infusion blocking out the visions of the deaths he caused, before he spends eternity in Hell.  There may be a Hell, run by the devil and reserved for people like Rogers and the Lockerbie bomber, but one thing's for certain, there really is no God.

Well he made it. Obama not only got voted in but survived his inauguration day (I was sure some lunatic fringe was going to have a pot-shot at him...). It seems Americans have finally had enough of the BS. All we need now is Cheney & Bush to be held accountable for their War Crimes, which will be difficult seeing as Cheney was given free reign to shred whatever he wanted before he left his office. Quite convenient really, especially as it's all meant to be kept as part of the "presidential record". Not that these guys have any problem just breaking the law when it suits them (eg rigged election, Geneva Convention... see the rest of this site for more examples). My wife's due to give birth to our firsy child in a couple of months, and I can't wait for him or her to look back in 20 years and ask "Dad, what were they thinking leaving those megalomaniac capitalist sociopaths in power?"

At least Obama's going to shut Guantanamo and get everyone out of Iraq eventually. And of course isn't it convenient that the GEC (Global Economic Crisis) has coincided with Bush leaving office? Is that simply a coincidence, or was it a political plan by Bush et al to leave Obama with a steaming plate of economic dog turd to start off his presidency? We'll never know, but thankfully my mortgage interest rate is tumbling and while I'm sure they won't be perfect, between Obama and Kevin Rudd there's at least a sense of hope that the world will be ruled with some semblance of sanity, for a couple of years at least.

This is how I feel about the current state of the Victorian Health system: (posted on doctors4hospitals)

Many interesting comments, all of which I agree with.  I too am a disillusioned senior registrar about to finish my Emergency specialty training and upon completion, abandon the public health system for good.  I can't in good conscience support a system that has abused me and my peers in such a systematic and degrading way for so many years.  The $20K CME allowance isn't enough to entice me back and is really an affront to registrars, who can buy 3 textbooks with their $1000, while watching their consultants jet off overseas (business class) to conferences that they don't even show up to, while we have to fight (and often lose) to get our 5 hours a week paid training time. My consultants spend their CME money on flash new computers for their kids, overseas holidays and new i-phones, none of which are used for work. What do I get as someone who actually has to go home each night and study? A couple of free textbooks. What a load of BS.  Maybe if everyone was treated better as a registrar they wouldn't think about leaving and they wouldn't need the $20K CME carrot to keep people in the system.

As far as hoping to change the system what everyone needs to keep in mind are the following facts:
1) Nothing mentioned on this page is "new" information to the AMA, the government or the Colleges.
2) All of these organisations have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and no amount of whining about how bad it all is, to anyone, will change it.  They know IT ALL, and could change it anytime they want, they just won't because it will simply cost too much, and could lose the government the next election.
3) This system has evolved because our predecessors (read "bosses") have allowed it to and we have them to thank for being such pushovers and creating a culture of compliance and dependence on hospitals for our bastardising training system.
4) The reason they haven't fought to change the system earlier is that as you learn more about it, you come to realise that YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE SYSTEM.  No amount of letter writing, petitions, campaigns, haggling, arguing, lobbying or meetings will ever change the system. Why? Because WE CAN'T STRIKE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO BARGAIN WITH. WE NEED THE SYSTEM MORE THAN IT NEEDS US. The only thing yo can do is LEAVE. (As seen recently when ALL the Emergency Physicians in Adelaide RESIGNED, and their demands were miraculously and instantly met). Did the AMA achieve this for them...? No.
5) When you need the hospital more than they need you (ie for training positions) they will always have the power to dictate pitiful working conditions and YOU ARE POWERLESS TO CHANGE IT.
6) When the situation is reversed (ie when they need to fill a shift) you have the power.  Next time you're called by a HMO manager to fill a shift demand $200/hour. Or just say "no". When they laugh at your outrageous request for higher pay, tell them to get stuffed and hang up.  You still have your day off, and they still have an empty roster. (I did this once and they called back a few hours later and paid me the $200/hour as they couldn't get anyone to do the shift).  Or tell them to get the locum agency to call you.  Why accept the lowest locum rates in the country (Victoria) to help a system that won't help you?  Screw the HMO manager, they're earning double what you are and the biggest challenge they'll ever face is filling an empty box on an Excel spreadsheet.  Compare that to your usual day at work. 
7) VOTE WITH YOUR FEET.  Why risk being driven to suicide (as some of our colleagues have been) or depression, or hypertension, or tears, or realtionship breakups? (Heard of any HMO managers or CEO's killing themselves recently because of their job stress?) Why not just pick up and move interstate? Wouldn't you rather have better conditions, better pay, less ill-effects on your health and realtionships, plus better weather, and then fly back to Melbourne once a month to see your friends and family? Do you really see them that often anyway?  Get Skype and you can video-chat with them every night, for free!
8) THE PATIENTS WILL BE FINE.  Don't ever let the guilt of the "but what about the patients?" lobby guilt trip you into accepting substandard conditions. While the public wants free healthcare, then they will get a crap system.  If they want to pay more, then they will get a better system.  It's no use whining about how little you're getting paid - the money has to come from somewhere, and as long as the public refuses to pay more for public healthcare, then your salary will NEVER go up. I can't stand to hear people say "patients are consumers these days" and they "have the same rights as consumers".  I'm sorry but that is bullshit.  If they are consumers then let them pay market rates for my services.  And make them pay for proper equipment and facilities for me to treat them in.  As long as we live in a society where healthcare is seen as a "right", but where people aren't willing to pay for it, then YOUR SALARY WILL NEVER GO UP, AND YOUR WORK CONDITIONS WILL NEVER IMPROVE.
9) "I can't leave as it will just increase the stress on my colleagues".  Don't let the fact that your colleagues are too apathetic to get out make you feel bad for leaving.  If they had any brains they'd be doing it as well.  YOU OWE THEM NOTHING as it's their continued acceptance of piss-poor working conditions that continues to make your work so difficult. Just look after "number 1" (ie yourself) and let the system fall down around the fools who choose to stay.  Or let your boss (who I guarantee earns a least $250-500K p.a.) come in on their day off to write discharge summaries. After all, they created this mess.
10)No private company would treat equivalently educated, trained and skillful employees as badly as public hospital doctors are treated.  Anyone else with equivalent qualifications in the private sector would start on a 6-figure salary, with a phone and a car, and as they progressed they'd get a designated car-park, a personal assistant, a laptop, their own office, free lunches & dinners, and overseas trips for professional development, as well as performance and end-of-year bonuses and if they didn't I'm sure they'd at least be able to, oh I don't know, maybe go to the toilet or eat something during their day at work.  Unfortunately we don't even get these basic food and toilet privileges as public hospital doctors.  Do you think prisoners in Victoria's (privately run) prisons would accept it if they weren't fed and weren't allowed to go to the toilet for 10-14 hours?  There'd be riots...  If patients want professional service THEN START TREATING AND PAYING US LIKE PROFESSIONALS (which as I've clearly explained, will never happen in our lifetimes...sigh). And on this point here's an anecdote: my sister is a corporate lawyer, last year her CHRISTMAS BONUS was more than my after-tax salary for the year... She writes contracts and I save lives...
11) IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.  Demand is going up and up, doctor number are going down... hmm I wonder why.  How do they plan to fix it? By improving my conditions? Paying me what I'm worth and treating me like a valued employee so I'll stay? No.  DHS has spent millions concocting plans to massively increase intern numbers (yet is providing no infrastructure to help supervise and train them... more cannon fodder) and is enticing foreign doctors with incentive packages including free health insurance, rent assistance and spousal employment assistance, (which I assume is cheaper than my currently unpaid overtime) yet most of us would actually stay in the system if they just improve a few of the conditions. Instead they intend to send more lambs to the slaughter, put more kerosene on the fire... pick your own analogy, it's all bad.  For this DHS can go to hell, and so can the Victorian  public for not supporting us.  And they'll all get what they deserve, a crappily designed, dangerous system, run by incompetents, supervised and controlled by morons. Good luck.

My advice? VOTE WITH YOUR FEET.  LET THE VICTORIAN PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM COLLAPSE. Your primary responsibility is to YOURSELF, NOT THE PATIENTS, NOT THE AMA, NOT YOUR COLLEAGUES AND CERTAINLY NOT THE HOSPITAL. Anyone that tries to convince you otherwise is either an agent of the system, or a delusional do-gooder who's too blinded by their "ethical duty" or some other crap to see what's really going on.

If you really want to stay then choose a specialty like Emergency (or even Anaesthetics) that lets you walk straight out of the public system as a consultant and start charging $200-$300 per hour as a locum or private ED specialist.  You can earn $200,000-300,000 per year working 2 to 3 days a week, 8am til 6pm and never be on call. The system does not, has not and will never support you in the public system so why are you sacrificing so much of yourself for it?.  Don't hold your breath for the EBA, because at the end of the day the AMA is a useless organisation, with no leverage and nothing to bargain with.  Cancel your membership and with the money buy a few bottles of nice wine, you'll get more joy out of it, and it might make you feel better after a crap day at work (or you can use it to help with moving expenses, or to buy a new hammock in Darwin, Cairns, Perth, or wherever else you end up). GOOD LUCK!

I live Melbourne in the state of Victoria, in Australia.  It is a great place to live.  It's relatively clean, relatively safe, trees everywhere, national parks that I can go mountain biking in within the city limits, and pretty good beaches within an hours drive of the city.  Every time I go overseas and am flying back into Melbourne I think "gee it's good to live here".  But recently this opinion has changed. Why? Because I'm a doctor working in public hospital Emergency Departments.  The Victorian health system is in a mess.  Despite demand going up 6-8% per annum every year for the last 10 years, there have been minimal increases in staffing and resources.  In fact the number of hospital beds for us to admit patients into has been cut!

Anyway the list of problems and implications facing Victorians is long, and I can't write them all in one go, but recently the Australian Medical Association started a blog site for doctors in Victorian hospitals to have a little rant on, and nicely made it so you can do it anonymously, it's called doctors4hospitals.  Have a look, it's a sad read really.  Doctors are committing suicide, driving home from work in tears every day, being physically and verbally abused by nursing staff, patients and families, working hours and hours of unpaid overtime and being paid a pittance for the privilege. As nice as it is for the AMA to start this up, they already know everything on this page, and it can have no real political sway.  Why? Because we have nothing to bargain with.  We can't strike.  Recently in Adelaide every Emergency Physician in town resigned as they were getting nowhere in their negotiations with the AMA and the government.  The state government even tried to take them to court to make them go back to work and were told, "um, they quit, they're not on strike, they don't work for us anymore and you can't force people to work against their will, that's called slavery". And what happened? Their demands were instantly met.  Unfortunately in Victoria, there are too many doctors to achieve a critical mass of people willing to resign, and meanwhile the AMA dawdles along having conditions dictated to it by the government.  What an appalling state of affairs when we have a federal government (who refuse to intervene in the public hospital crisis as they're run by state governments) who are willing to spend BILLIONS of dollars on failed military hardware purchases, fighting wars that we have NO business being part of in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other defense "initiatives" while slashing budgets and services in the health sector despite record demand, the most obese population on earth, and an aging population. What a disgrace.

Recently the Victorian health minister Daniel Andrews had an official survey from the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine handed to him from ED directors across Victoria, most of whom admitted to fiddling their admission statistics so they wouldn't be hit with funding penalties (as under our great system if your hospital is drowning under record numbers of patients and you can't get them out of your ED quick enough you have your funding CUT!).  So what do you think the man in charge if thie system had say about it?  "I don't believe you". He then issued an official statement through DHS that basically said "I know no-one's doing it, but in case you are, stop it".  This is what we're dealing with.  A bunch of finger pointing, committee dawdling, heads-up-our-arses politicians, bureaucrats, and middle-management who have the gall to say, openly and publicly, when presented with hard data, "I don't believe it".  It's like the mayor of Chernobyl saying "the nuclear plant is running perfectly, we have no problem and I won't be investigating claims of a meltdown".  Well that's nice Mr Andrews but there's one thing you can't ignore.  The fact that doctors are leaving the public system in droves, and like the inevitable cloud of nuclear dust that eventually enveloped Chernobyl and killed it's residents, your health system is going to start killing patients (it is already), and you can pretend for as long as you like that it's OK, and not listen to the doctors who are keeping the system afloat, but when there are none of us left, and all you can get are less well trained overseas doctors to staff your Emergency Departments, and we have all moved to Western Australia or Queensland who have doctor-friendly systems in place, we'll all look back and say "we told you so".  Asshole.  Did you know they already realise this and instead of creating incentives to keep us here, they are already advertising to overseas doctors, (scroll down to "Incentive packages for international medical graduates") with pissweak incentive packages that are no-doubt going to cost them less than it would to keep locally trained doctors here. And why is it that I can't get paid ONE CENT of overtime, yet they are offering free health insurance to new overseas doctors, so they can go to the PRIVATE hospital and not have to get treated in the crap public system??!!

Personally when I get my final specialist qualification next year I'm going to walk out on the public system for good,  I can't in good conscience continue to support a system that intentionally and systematically abuses its most valuable employees.

No this isn't a story about me going to the toilet.  Well, it might be, but only to vomit, and then to start figuring out how to barricade myself in and never come out after John McCain & Sarah Palin win the US election.  Is it any surprise that a "war veteran" (who by the way can't use a mobile phone or a computer) and a religious fanatic are about to become the leaders of the most powerful country on earth?  I mean seriously, it was bad enough when Dubya rigged the last election, but for fuck's sake these moron's are probably going to be voted in, for real, by a nation of morons... and then my friends, they will be the one's with their nervous, computer illiterate fingers on the Big Red Button...  I don't need to carry on about how bad this will be, for EVERYBODY in the whole world, the internet is awash with stories about how deep the merde will be when they take over.  I mean she faked a pregnancy to cover for her daughter. (Note: this amazing article and it's 1900+ comments has mysteriously been deleted... one wonders about the threats invloved...).   Regardless of that, do you really want a "moose-shooting hockey mom" with essentially no qualifications in international relations or finance being in charge while McCain is in hospital having his colonoscopy, or coronary angiogram, or cholesterol test, or hip replacement, or hearing aid check? Do you American idiots realise that fluctuations in your economy have ripple effects across the globe?  That problems with the American housing market caused my mortgage interest rates in Melbourne, Australia, to go up?  No, you wouldn't, but "as long as Jesus says abortion is rawng, then Sarah Palin must be right".  I like how her daughter "chose" to keep her baby... aren't they against "pro-choice"? Hypocritical rednecks.  I've said my piece about how I feel the Americans have handled the "war on bullshit" (oops I mean terror), but do you really think your country will be any more popular with your Muslim brothers and sisters if you elect a couple of right wing Christian fundmentalists into power?  Ironic that I'm writing this on September 11th, a nice little anniversary to remind you fuckers of the havoc wreaked by some seriously pissed off  Muslim extremists, and now they only have a couple of wars, and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent women and children caused by George Dubya & Co to stir them up, so why not elect Dubya's buddy McCain into power and show them Iraqi's what for?  Do the rest of the world a favour why don't ya? I'm currently only paying triple what I paid for petrol before the current American government came to power.  And did anyone else realise that one of the only things that goes up in value during a war is gold?  Funny isn't it that the price of gold has also nearly tripled in the last 10 years, I wonder how much Dubya & Co are going to pocket after he walks away from one of the most shameful acts of political and economic exploitation in modern times?  I know Trailer Park Boys is proudly Canadian and I don't wish to insult the genius of the creators and actors in this show, but when I think of who will be turning up to vote on election day, this is what I see.  Add a couple of Ku Klux Klan hats and guns, and the picture is complete.   America, you have the chance to show the rest of the world just how stupid you really are at this election.  Prove me wrong.  PLEASE.  But really, this is who is going to turn up to vote.  Fat, dumb, gun-toting, right wing, SUV-driving, Christian zealots, with nothing to lose except their pathetic way of life, all of them conned into believing that only God or a right wing US Government will save them from the invisible terrors that lurk around every corner.  I can hear the conversation in the voting que now: "Obama, that sounds too much like Osama".  "Obama, he says he was raised a Muslim".  "Obama, he's black".  I'm writing this like a foregone conclusion, but at the end of the day I will happily eat my words if Obama wins.  But here's a snap quiz for you, who's Obama's running mate?  If it took you more than 2 seconds to think of Joe Biden then the result is a foregone conclusion.  It wouldn't have taken you that long to think of Sarah Palin, because even bad publicity is good publicity.  And Obama's biggest mistake? Not choosing Hiliary Clinton.  For all her and her husband's flaws, she at least had a name you could remember instantaneously.  I'm afraid Obama has flushed his campaign down the toilet, so if you'll excuse me I have to go dig out my gas mask, gaffer tape and the black plastic, as who the fuck knows what's going to happen when the SHTF and the McCain/Palin circus steps in to the white house.

For some far more eloquent reasons not to vote for Sarah Palin click here.  (if the link takes you to the front page look in the top right corner and click the "enter" button).  And for those who may want to argue with me about any of the above points, please click here to register your complaint.  As mentioned in previous posts if you could start your reply with a point form justification for every single death that'd be lovely. 

I haven't logged on to this site to write a post for quite a while now, and tonight I did and had a look at my stats.  In the last week do you know which page/link on my site had the most hits?  My login page. 116 hits in the last 7 days.  Far out, some fuckers want to get in and hijack my site.  I tell you what morons, seeing as I only had about 100 other hits for the week how about you fuck off and find a site that actually has some traffic to hack into, or maybe a porn site, so you can at least get something out of busting someone's username/password combination.  Anyway I'll give you a clue if you're that into it.  My password is somewhere in this post, it's all letters, no numbers, and starts with "f".  There, now see how you go cracking in.  Fuck Off and Good luck.

Well it's been just over 100 days since the election, and I haven't heard Kevin Rudd use the word "terrorism" or the phrase "the war on terror" once (although I'm sure he has...) and he's announced that Australia is pulling out of Iraq in June, and wait... oh, we're all still alive.  Nothing's changed.  We haven't been suicide bombed, we haven't been attacked, no dirty bombs have gone off and our water supply hasn't been poisoned.  Surprisisng that isn't it? Not really, given the fear that Little Johnny had instilled into the population by adopting the Bush-ism of mentioning the word "terror" every time he spoke in the 6 months leading up to the election, as if to remind us that if he didn't the terrorists would get the upper hand in the (imaginary) war on terror and we'd all die, die, DIE! Instead Kevin-07 has focused his public addresses on such issues as the housing crisis, inflation, interest rates, the public health system, and various other things that the general public actually gives a shit about.  Oh, and I almost forgot... he said "SORRY".  A two syllable word that ended 50-odd years of torment and pain for thousands of Aboriginal Australians.  Something that spineless little johnny couldn't do in 11 years in power.  So "sorry" Johnny-boy (see, it's not hard), the world hasn't ended in a terroristic boom because you didn't get elected.  We don't miss you and your fear-mongering, racist, right-wing, conservatism one bit.  Hopefully our new leader can stand up for himself when he meets your mate Dubya in the next few days and tell him we're not interested in having anything to do with him, we'd rather wait til Hiliary or Barack are in the White House, instead of having to pander to a war criminal.  Pity you didn't have the dignity or good grace to mention anything good that Kevin Rudd has done since he ousted you, now that you're on the lucrative public speaking circuit, instead you chose to degrade him in front of 1400 paying guests in America, who probably wanted to hear something more inspirational than a bad loser, whining about what a bad job his successor is doing.  How undignified, shameful and pathetic.  I hope everyone can see you now for what you are, an accomplice in the murders of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. To think that you still persist in saying you think these wars can be"won".  These wars were lost the day the first child died as a result of your decision to invade.  Because of this we can never win.  History tells us that fat, lazy, apathetic, capitalist, consumeristic white people with no religious will and no real political ideaology will never beat fanatical, religious and political martyrs.  Just look at Vietnam.  Look at Israel and Palestine - no-one's "won" that battle yet have they?  They can't beat each other as they have the same thing driving them - fanatacism.  Iraq is the Vietnam of this century.  We cannot and will not win.  And what does "winning" mean in this situation anyway?  You're the ones that have told us that there's a hidden worldwide network of terrorist cells, you've given us phone numbers to call in case we see one, but do you really think you can wipe them all out, that once Osma is dead that it will all end, that there won't be a thousand more people willing to take his place if we do?  Unless we convert the whole world to Anglican Christianity, turn them all into capitalist consumer pigs and kill everyone who doesn't fit this stereotype, then we can't by your definition "win".  To call Kevin Rudd's decision to remove our troops from Iraq "naieve and dangerous" just highlights that only one person has anything to lose if we do this.  You.  What will you lose? Any ounce of credibilty you had.  The rest of us will finally have a bit of security when we travel now as the rest of the world won't see us as such a close ally of George Bush and the USA.  Do you really things could get any worse for the Iraqi's now?  I'm personally glad that John Howard - war criminal and child murderer - is gone, and you should thank who or whatever you believe in that he's gone too.  Hopefully in a few years Kevin Rudd can have a War Crimes Tribunal set up and have Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Howard, Nelson and anyone else involved sent to Guantanmo Bay where they can be beaten, tortured, savaged by Alsatians, water-boarded, with perhaps a couple of them "accidentally" dying, before the rest of them face trial in a civilised and just manner, unlike all the other inmates that went before them.  I really don't see how we as nascent beings that are trying to leave a better world for our children can let these people leave such a dark stain on our history.

Is anyone else bothered by the recent phenomenon of phoenetic spelling of names for new babies?  It seems our English teachers are failing miserably, or as a society we are just getting fucking stupider by the day, and by not banning correct spelling of names for children.  Some people call it "single mother spelling", and here are a few examples (most involving un-necessary Y's)

Jayne, Jayden (what the fuck is a Jayden anyway...), Joolee (Julie in case you missed it), Feenix, Aynjyl (Angel... and who would call their poor child "Angel" anyway, there's no such thing as angels), Jorjia (Georgia), and Jorjeena (Georgina)... Heylee, Brynna, Jaxon (Jackson) Oh Christ I'm making myself nauseous just typing these names.  For a comprehensive list check out the Bad Names Blog.  Anyone who names their child after an American State, a city, a band or a plant should be shot, as should their child to save them the misery of growing up unable to hide the stupidity of their parents - it's spelled right there in their name, forever.

I mean really, just imagine in 50-60 years time, we're going to have nursing homes full ot tattooed and pierced geriatrics with unpronouncable and unspellable  names, talking about the time they got wasted on ice and GBH and they tagged that train in Frankston...  Kill me now.

Are you feeling a little flat by the end of the week?  Need a little pick me up before you head out and piss your sorrows down the local beer pit? Sick of commercial radio, too busy to get down your local record shop or onto amazon to get your favourite CD?  Do you like to rock out at home with a beer can as a microphone and a "who gives a shit about the neighbours?" wail to your voice?  Even if you answered no to all these questions, you still need Gary 7 and Smoke 'em if you got 'em.  Live on RRR FM every Friday night at 7pm.  (That's Melbourne time, unless you're in Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Port Moresby, Jakarta, Tokyo, or anywhere directly north of that you'll have to look here to figue out when it's on, and get online and stream it).  It is without doubt the best 3 hours of radio you'll hear all week.  Almost solid music, very little commentary, and just plain fun. From ACDC to Fela Kuti, Boss Hog to Black Francis, Rare Earth to  Motorhead and The Liars, Gogol Bordello to the Arctic Monkeys... If you don't know who any of these bands are, you need to.  Freaked Out Funk to Southern Blues acapella... it just gives me goosebumps.  Imagine the friend you have who has the best music collection out of anyone you've ever met coming around and setting up in your loungeroom ecery Friday night and playing nearly non-stop "get your dancin' pants on and dust off the air guitar" music.  This man has real taste, and I'm talking vinyl or CD, not one of these new ipod DJ wankers who download 100gig of music from every fucker they meet.   Do yourselves a favour, and rock out with your cock out with Gary 7 at least once, beer is essential and, like the name of the show suggests, smoke 'em if you got 'em.  Guaranteed to put a rocket up your Friday night and will be more fun than the crap you'll hear at whatever skank-hole you'd normally end up at with your drab workmates.  And if you find yourselves with nothing to do for 3 hours beforehand tune in to  The Ghost on The Skull Cave, it's the show before Gary 7, and will definitely get you in the mood.

For more amazing documentaries about democracy (and the lack of it in various places on earth) check out this website.

I 've written quite a few rants that have been triggered by watching documentaries about the US government and the various "wars" they are involved in (Terrorism/Iraq/Afghanistan).  "Taxi to the dark side"  is by far the most disturbing and powerful I've seen on this subject yet.  If you are reading this please try & track it down.  It will change your view on the modern world forever.

Here's the rant: 

There is no link between the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.  George Bush has declared "war on terrorism" however he's declined to apply the rules of the Geneva convention to this war, nor to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.  The US government, in particular Donald Rumsfeld has conveniently redifined their definition of torture to allow them to torture individuals in their custody.  I fail to see how George Bush is still in power after information like that contained in this documentary has been made public.  Why is it that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Bush are not on trial for war crimes?  105 detainees have died while prisoners in US run jails in Iraq.  37 of these have been declared homicides by military coroners.  M.U.R.D.E.R.  US troops and private contractors regularly murder Iraqi civillains in the streets.  Isn't that what Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Slobodan Milosevic, General Pinochet, Hitler and Pol Pot were guilty of?  Can someone explain the difference to me as I can't see it.  These "world leaders" are animals, scum of the lowest order, who not only condone torture, but murder of innocent civilians.  One of the principles of modern criminal law relies on the fact that to be held as a suspect in a crime there must be an allegation.  Without a specific allegation, that can lead to a specific crime being defined, and a specific charge being laid, there is no basis for questioning them nor detaining them, let alone torturing and then murdering them.  93% of Guantanamo inmates have been turned over to US forces by Afghan militia, many of whom receive thousands of dollars as payment.  Only 7% have been captured by US forces.  Human beings are being sold to murderers and torturers, with no allegation other than information from a third party with a vested financial interest in the person being made a prisoner.  Habeus Corpus my ass.  In the muddied waters of this so called "war on terror", the principles of human rights, human dignity, and the order of law have been obscured, and no matter what your opinion on the WTC attack, I can guarantee that none of the 37 homicide victims killed in US jails had anything to do with it. 

Why is it that the world is crying out about the recent atrocities in Burma, yet staying silent about what's been happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba?  I'll tell you why, becuase there's no oil in Burma.

I can't write any more about this, I can barely finish watching the documentary, it's making me feel physically ill.  And can you believe that 35% of Americans believe that torture is acceptable.  Between that and their obesity epidemic I can only surmise that the US is a nation of delusional moronic pigs, with no morals, no sense of justice.  Mind you to see that you only need to have to look at their health system, their drug problem, their attitude to migrants, the homeless and the mentally ill, oh and need I even mention the environment?  For those of you that can see the wrongs that your government is guilty of for fuck's sake get off your obese apathetic arses and do something about it.  At least there is someone out there showing us exactly how not to live.

George Bush used torture as an election campaign issue.  He publicly questioned the meaning of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, saying that "outrages upon personal dignity" is "very vague...  what does it mean?", meanwhile letting the underlings that carried out these atrocities go to military prison, while the officers and politiciams floated above the law.  Well George, read the rest of the  Article, it's not vague, it's quite clear really.  You can't murder detainees.  Full stop.  What decent nation allows this sort of hypocrisy?

83,000 people have been detained by the US in this process.  A significant percentage of these have been kidnapped or sold to the US military, thousands have been tortured, none have been brought to trial.  If these people weren't terrorists before this, many of them will be after their treatment at the hands of the most evil regime on earth. 

And like no other commodity that I consume, I continue to pay twice as much for petrol as I did 10 years ago. 

If you're Australian and reading this remember that John Howard is a "close personal friend" of George Bush.  He condones these actions.  Vote the bastard out at the forthcoming election.

Well I wasn't arrested by the Federal Police, instead I've been held captive at another institution run by the government, my workplace.  I've been flogged at work recently, working in a public hospital Emergency Department these days is like being a hamster on a treadmill.  You walk into work, get on the treadmill and 10-12 hours later you get off, exhausted, having not had the time to eat, rest or even take a leak, with your brain fried and your feet very sore.  Now I won't pretend that my job is as bad as this or this, but at the end of the day the poor tax-paying patients are getting the bad deal.  I mean I can still make my mortgage payments and choose whatever brand of imported beer I like from the bottleshop on the way home, but when I started in Emergency a few years ago you used to have time to say, oh I don't know, eat lunch, or maybe get a chance to have chat to a colleague and get to know them a bit, and perhaps even have chance to teach some junior doctors a thing or two.  Nowadays there's so many patients, so many ambulances queing up, and so few cubicles to put them in, along with the fact that we get fined by the government of we go on ambulance bypass or don't see a certain number of patients in a certain timeframe that you don't have time to scratch yourself.  I've even been give the "less chat, more work" line by one of my bosses for sitting and talking to a junior colleague for about 2 minutes one day.  The Victorian government has no fucking idea what it's like for these poor patients, stuck on ambulance trolleys in cold breezy corridors, or sitting in a waiting room for 8 hours, 8 freaking hours! Can you imagine how much that would suck?  And how much is that really costing us in terms of hours of work lost, I mean people are spending a whole working day sitting in waiting rooms.  Anyway I could rant on for hours, but all I can say is if you care about your health, you might want to write to your local politician and ask them what they're doing about public Emergency Departments, as one day it could be you sitting there with your broken ankle or gastro or chest pain not getting seen.