buggery.org

The south-western Queensland town of Augathella is urging young men to enter its ‘Miss Outback’ quest, reports the ABC.

The male-only competition is in its second year and organisers say they are looking for entrants who do not mind having fun and who are in touch with their feminine side.

Trisha Arden from the Augathella Cultural Association says it is hoped Miss Outback will provide some light relief from the severe drought in the region.

“The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of victors …

The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess …

The blanket presidential order deprives them all of any rights whatsoever. As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice.”

Britain’s third-most-senior judge, Law Lord Johan Steyn, in a speech in London this week.

Australia currently has 94 children held in immigration detention camps. Another 90 children are held on the island of Nauru under Australia’s “Pacific solution”. As well as being morally abhorrent, the detention of children in these camps, most of which are located in the most inhospitable regions of Australia, breaches international treaty obligations including the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser is the sponsor of an online petition which calls on the Australian government to end the imprisonment of children.

This is not how we as Australians want to treat families. The needs and rights of children must be put first. We the undersigned call for an immediate end to the detention of children. We call for an immediate change to regulations that enforce separation between parents and dependent children. We call for changes in legislation that will protect future children arriving unauthorised on Australian territory or in Australian waters. Damaging children is not acceptable to us as Australians.

Anyone from any country can sign the petition.

Close to 31 million people have died of AIDS to date, according to UN figures released today. About 40 million more are living with HIV, most of them in Africa and most of whom will die within a few years due to the failure of the world community to give a damn about the lives of black people … again.

My AIDS clock has been updated to take account of the latest data.

Headline in the Sydney Morning Herald: Resistance targets police, killing 16.

Is this the first time a mainstream newspaper has used the word “resistance” in this way? Will the US armed forces in Iraq now be called an “occupation force”? Is the wind blowing in another direction today? I hope so.

I may have been remiss in not posting sooner about the Rugby World Cup which has Australia transfixed at the moment, and it’s probably a bit too late now that the French team has been eliminated by the crafty Poms, but let us take a moment to acknowledge the French fly-half, Fréderic Michalak…

Schwing.

This is one of a series of three “racy” posters currently being plastered up in the lavatories of gay bars across Québec.

Supposedly they’re meant to shock people into practicing safe sex (the epitaph on the tombstone reads: “AIDS. Still here 1981—”) but they just make me want to grab Brent and head for the nearest cemetery.

You can see the other two pictures and read a crappy article about them (the heterosexual couple in another poster are “making love” while the boys at right are pictured “in an act of sodomy”) here.

Also from the same article:

“People don’t talk about AIDS any more,” [the executive director of the Comité des personnes atteintes du VIH, an AIDS support group, Luc] Gagnon said. “We have to tell people that even with AIDS cocktails, people die and they suffer. The cocktails prolong life, but they also have very serious side effects. And in the end, people still die.”

In the end, people still die. How true.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, says George W. Bush “is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen.”

“The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.”

Livingstone is organising an official reception “for everybody who is not George Bush,” who he says he won’t formally recognise as US President “because he was not officially elected.”

Massachusetts’ highest court has ruled that the state must give gay and lesbian couples the legal rights of marriage, which could make the state the first in America to legalise gay marriage, ABC reports.

The decision is based on a state law prohibiting the creation of second-class citizens. Unsurprisingly, the christians, who are heavily in favour of second-class citizens, have come out against the decision.

Evelyn Reilly, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Family Institute, said: “In this radical, reckless decision, four political appointees in black robes are attempting to redefine the biological reality that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”

Marriage is a “biological reality”? And here was I thinking it was a social contract.

“Traditional marriage is one of the last obstacles to the complete normalisation of homosexuality in America,” said the group’s president, Roberta Combs.

You’re darn tootin’, honey! And once we’ve destroyed traditional marriage and normalised homosexuality, we’re coming for your kids.

The American occupying forces are killing 44 Iraqi civilians a day, easily outstripping the 36 Iraqis who were killed each day by Saddam Hussein.

[via James]

An increase in demand for tropical aquarium fish is stripping small colourful fish from the reefs of Vanuatu.

The demand has surged since the release of the animated film Finding Nemo, according to this ABC report.

A new report estimates that up to 55,000 Iraqis died in the 2003 war and the occupation so far. 10,000 of these are Iraqi civilians, a number that corresponds pretty closely with the figures carried on iraqbodycount.net.

The president of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Sue Wareham, says the study has independently examined the war’s impact.

“The numbers of dead represent merely the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

[via ABC]

Did anyone consult the bisexuals to see if they want him?

Actually, I think Chucky would make a great switch-hitter — after all, he’s pedantic, tedious, redundant and he thinks everyone hates him.

(Bisexual readers please note: it’s a joke).

It’s a funny old turn of events when Charles has turned queer and Edward’s a dad … what’s next? Fergie gets a job? Phillip joins AA? Harry passes a drugs test?

If a married person has extramarital gay sex, is that adultery? Not in New Hampshire.

According to The Drudge Report, a hastily-pulled story was briefly published on the New York Times website which detailed the “top secret” scandal which the British royal family is trying — furiously — to cover up. According to Drudge, the report stated that Prince Charles was caught in flagrante delicto with a male member of his staff.

Exactly who was rogering who isn’t clear at this stage, but we can be assured that, if it’s true, this story will run and run and no amount of effort on the part of Clarence House will cover it up.

The crusties of the British aristocracy are unlikely to be fazed over the news that our future monarch takes it up the bum — that’s the kind of thing that chaps have been doing for generations — but with a servant?!? That won’t do at all.

We are home from the tropics. Narratives from the last fortnight can be found below … film at eleven.

The Captain Cook Highway winds its way north from Cairns to the Cape, hugging the coast all the way. The scenery out the window and at every stop is idyllic: ivory sand, opal sea, cobalt sky. All around us is the rainforest, it grows with such vigour that you can’t see more than a few metres into it.

Road signs everywhere warning drivers to watch out for the endangered, flightless cassowary, and warning signs by every stretch of water to remind us that the cost of dipping your toe into the water could be death. Nature red in tooth and claw. (more…)