Dolphins caught on camera "kicking" jellyfish in the air soccer-ball style. Found at Asylum Australia. Open thread below....

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(Healthcare Debate 2007 - Australian for slugfest)

How the rest of the world views Health Care is pretty enlightening. If you get past the notion that the rest of the world thinks we're pretty strange, and that they are actually several years, if not decades ahead of us in the minutiae of Health issues.

During the 2007 elections in Australia, where Labor (center-Left) swept to power after an 11-year run with the Liberal Party (center-Right) falling out of favor with the electorate. I managed to run across a debate regarding the state of Health Care Down Under from October 31, 2007.

Special thanks to my colleague NonnyMouse, who steered me in several right directions in trying to sort out the issues.

This debate, which almost didn't happen, features Shadow Health Minister Nicola Roxon and incumbent Liberal Health Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott, it appeared, had finished delivering a series of Mea Culpas earlier in the day over a remark he made regarding an Asbestos related Cancer sufferer whom he chided for "publicity seeking".

After a 30 minute delay, Abbott appeared in the studio and the debate picked up.

Nicola Roxon (Labor Party): “The future challenges that are facing our health system are significant. We have a growing burden of chronic disease, we have an ageing population, we know that there are increasing costs of new technologies, and there is waste and inefficiency generated by the buck-passing and blame shifting that characterizes Commonwealth/State relations. Honestly, if the Commonwealth/State relationship were a marriage, the partners would be in counseling, the states would be seeking maintenance payment in the courts, and the parties would both have a strong case for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty.”

Tony Abbott (Liberal Party): “The idea that the Prime Minister could personally run the public hospital system is bizarre. And only in a slightly surreal political contest could Kevin Rudd (Labor PM candidate) have got away with making this bizarre claim. But someone does have to be in charge, that’s absolutely essential. And that person should be responsible to and accountable to local people. Now I think every public hospital should have boards. I don’t say the public hospitals would work perfectly if they had boards, but I tell you what, they’d work a lot better if they had boards, particularly if they had boards with doctors and nurses and former patients on them. The Government will be announcing a major public hospital policy in the next week or so. The details will be revealed then. But I certainly think that every hospital should have a board, and you’ll see what the Governments precise policy is in just a week or so.”

Roxon: “Well, I think the Minister has shown that he really hasn’t got a clear plan at all for what these local boards will deliver for Public Hospitals. In fact, we spent quite a bit of the time on the phone yesterday dealing with the problems that the Minister has created in the takeover with the Mersey Hospital. I’m sure the Minister didn’t particularly want to talk with me, but the Caretaker Conventions require that he does, although he doesn’t need my agreement.”

After the debate it got nasty.

You may wonder why I am including this. It's another country with an established Public Healthcare system (in addition to a private one), and these issues may seemingly not apply to us. The deal is - Every country in the world has some form of Universal Healthcare and we are the only ones on the planet resisting it, mostly out of ignorance or fear brought on by interests not working on behalf of the people they are entrusted to care. To witness other debates from other places, and hear how problems are being solved from other perspectives casts a more informative light on the argument at hand.

And it doesn't hurt to know what other people are doing about it.

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(Alfred W. McCoy, author of A Question of Torture, interviewed on Late Night Live - ABC Radio National, Australia. March 15, 2006)

Note: This is a re-post from May - considering the current events in the torture issue, it seems apropos to take another look at it now.

I'm always amazed at how, in order to get any information about my own country, I have to listen to the radio or watch the news from another country in order to find out what's going on.

If you aren't familiar with it, ABC Radio National is Australias public Radio network - it's the equivalent to the BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada. Like the other two, ABC National offers a massive amount of information and news that just doesn't make the mainstream media here.

Case in point - I ran across this episode of Late Night Live, while downloading a group of podcasts from 2006. It features torture/interrogation expert Alfred W. McCoy. He explains at length our history in the field of torture, the techniques used and the reasons why most of them don't and haven't worked.

It was conducted in March of 2006, shortly after the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. There are some fascinating insights to be found, especially in light of recent developments and soft peddling to the contrary.

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(Vanda and Young - The voodoo they do so well)

Last night I mentioned one of the members of Grapefruit actually being the younger brother of George Young. When Grapefruit dissolved, Young took off for Australia to work with his brother on a new project.

The project became The Marcus Hook Roll Band. You could sort of call this the mid-point between The Easybeats and AC/DC - but definitely a link. The Vanda-Young team were on a roll.

Marcus Hook only last a little over two years (something about bands lasting two years . . ), releasing numerous singles and an album, which finally came out in the States via Capitol in 1974.

This track, issued in 1972 was "Natural Man". It did well in Australia and moderately well in Europe and the UK, but did nothing in the States, as did their album.

It was probably because of that a re-group and reinvention took place and what emerged was the winning combination.

And of course, nobody ever looked back.

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Australian comedy show The Chaser's War on Everything travel to the United States to visit a couple of the more well-known torture proponents, John Yoo and Dick Cheney. Donning a familiar costume, Yoo is confronted while giving a lecture in a classroom. Yoo lectures at UC Berkley and Chapman, and was a key member of the Bush administration's justification of torture. (A complete mystery as to why Yoo isn't in jail yet, but as Richard Armitrage advised, it's probably not a good idea for Yoo to travel outside the United States.)

And in another familiar costume, our intrepid faux reporters travel to Dick Cheney's bunker compound house to get some unpaid royalties. Unfortunately Dick wasn't at home, and it wasn't long before local authorities and the Secret Service were called in to intervene.

This clip is from their July 15th show. They came to prominence with American audiences during the 2007 APEC conference.

It's been a short week but this weekend can't get here fast enough. Whenever I'm feeling that way on a Friday, I post a Friday song.

"Friday on My Mind" by Australia's Easybeats came out in 1966 and was a massive hit. The band fizzled out soon after, but guitarists Harry Vanda and George Young hit paydirt a decade later as producers for a significantly louder band featuring George's younger brothers Angus and Malcolm.

Happy Friday -- the club is open.

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In a sign of just how toxic the Bush administration has become for Australian politicians after years of former PM John Howard's all-too willing servility, current prime minister Kevin Rudd gets into trouble at home for "conduct unbecoming of an Australian prime minister" by saluting Bush at the NATO summit.

Greens Leader Bob Brown was also unimpressed, accusing Mr Rudd of belittling Australia and being subservient. "There is a streak of John Howard's 'deputy sheriff' in Kevin Rudd's slip-up," he said. "We are not the 51st state of the United States of America and Mr Rudd's salute carried a subservient connotation many Australians won't like."