Charlie Sheen and Two And a Half Men

Actor Charlie Sheen reminds me of that old original picture "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. On the outside, the 45 year old's face is still young and unlined while underneath is seething with sin and depravity. He was taken to hospital on Friday night with severe stomach pains and is now in rehab - again. His father, mother and ex wife Denise Richards were all at the hospital with him so it must have been fairly serious.

He is one of the highest paid actors in America, having signed a deal last year for $1 million an episode. But it hasn't made him happy. If rumours are true about his personal life - that he likes spending time with beautiful adult porn stars and taking drugs, he's a pretty sad case.

It's hard to understand why the show is still so popular. The theme - having sex with as many beautiful women as possible and drinking to excess must surely have run it course by now but Two and a Half Men is still the most popular comedy on American tv. I must be missing something.

WikiLeaks Mutiny Within

Daniel Domscheit-Borg was once Julian Assange's right hand man but not anymore. He accused Assange of being a control freak - too autocratic and "some kind of emperor or slave trader" who refused to consult with his team on important decisions. So Domscheit-Borg and a few other defectors started OpenLeaks.


Assange is also on the outer with some important media heavyweights. He threatened to sue Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and New York Times chief editor Bill Keller called him "elusive, manipulative and volatile".

But here's the important bit - Domscheit-Borg resigned from WikiLeaks after it released 400,000 classified US documents relating to the Iraq war. The reason? He felt Assange released them too early without taking the time to edit names of US informants properly.


A transcript of an online chat published by Wired.com reported that Domscheit-Borg said to Assange "You are not anyone's king or god" and Assange shot back that he was suspending him for a month and if he wanted to appeal "You will be heard on Tuesday." That's when he resigned and began work on OpenLeaks. He is also writing a book about his three years with WikiLeaks.


But Australian journalist Andrew Fowler will probably beat him to it. He's writing Assange's biography titled "The Most Dangerous Man in the World" due for release later this year and the movie rights have already been snapped up.

Charlie Teo - Neurosurgeon

Charlie Teo is a famous Australian neurosurgeon. He rides to work on his motor bike every day and has become known as something of a miracle worker. This has angered his peers who say he is too radical and offers false hope to patients who have incurable brain tumours located in dangerous places. He takes the cases his fellow neurosurgeons consider hopeless and this has caused ill feeling. Teo resigned from the Neurological Society of Australasia and said that delaying a patient's death from an incurable brain cancer is definitely worthwhile.





Now he's in trouble again. To raise money for children's cancer research, last October Teo offered as a prize - a whole day to be spent in his company which included watching him perform brain surgery. It raised $1,500 for the charity. But University of Sydney public health professor Simon Chapman has written a scathing critique about it in the British Medical Journal. Now the executive director of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, John Quinn has said that he doesn't like the idea at all, he's worried about the privacy and vulnerability of the patient and says that "surgery is not a spectacle".

Wife and 4 daughters

Doctor Teo said he offers similar auction prizes about 4 times a year. The winner can stand beside the patient during anaesthesia and recovery but observed the procedure itself on a screen in the same room, about three or four metres away from the patient. He said that professor Chapman's views were valid - "I've often thought about it myself" he said. About 10 per cent of his patients refuse permission and there is no coercion. Most people who won the prize gave it to a young person in the family who was thinking of studying medicine - it gave them the opportunity to see surgery first hand.

Dr Teo was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) this week for his services to medicine.

Nadal's Shock Defeat

It was hard to believe what was happening in the quarter final last night - Nadal was losing to his good friend David Ferrer. If it's possible, he endeared himself even more to his Australian fans when he soldiered on for two hours so his Davis Cup team-mate would have the satisfaction of beating him on the court and not because of injury retirement. Ferrer now goes on to play Scot Andy Murray in Friday's semi-finals. Ferrer said "It's not easy because Rafael is a gentleman and he was playing with an injury."

Nadal said after the game he didn't know the exact nature of the problem "I can't tell you exactly because I don't know" he said. "I didn't feel the best, I had a problem at the very beginning and after that, the match was nearly over." He hated last year's memory of withdrawing against Andy Murray at the same stage of the Australian Open 2010. "I hate retirements, I didn't want to repeat that" he said.

The Spanish superstar arrived with a virus he picked up in Doha on the way to Australia.

Australia Day should be called Invasion Day

1906

Aboriginal people believe that Australia Day should be called Invasion Day and the facts are hard to ignore. Jay McDonald is an activist with the Tasmania Aboriginal Centre in Launceston, and wrote this article about Australia Day which appeared in greenleft.org.


Australia Day is traditionally the most racist day of the year for Aboriginal people. When people celebrate on 26th January, there is no escaping the fact they are celebrating the day that one race of people invaded another race of people's country and took control of Aboriginal lands and tried to dominate Aboriginal people. Invasion Day, as it should be called, celebrates the dispossession of land, culture and way of life of Aborigines.

Aborigines and members of the wider community should not allow this to continue. Otherwise we are saying that it was okay to try to destroy the Aboriginal way of life, to murder Aborigines and to attempt cultural genocide. True reconciliation cannot be achieved and a just society cannot be built if we continue to celebrate the gains of one race at the expense of another.

Invasion Day is a day to remember the wrongs that were commited against Aborigines, a day to remember the injustices forced upon one race of human being by another. This is no day for celebrating, it's a day for mouring, a time to reflect, and a time to steel ourselves for the ongoing battle for a better society.

http://greenleft.org.au/node/46475

Australia Day 2011

Tan Le is one of Australia's most successful business women and she was also a refugee. She says she hates blond haired, blue eyed yobbos prancing around in the Australian flag intimidating people who don't look like them on Australia Day. She was insulted in Chinatown last week by an Australian bigot and regrets her missed opportunity to give him a piece of her mind before he walked away.


"I wish I'd told this ignorant bastard that he was an arrogant so-and-so and that if the truth were known, we are all migrants to this country. I wish I'd said that he should be grateful that by the grace of God, he was born in this country and not in Iran or Afghanistan or wherever - but I didn't and I will always carry the shame of a lost opportunity."

So are we a racist country? Yes of course we are and I think it could be something to do with jealousy. Thanks to the White Australia Policy, we don't want to share our country with anyone but our own. It's pretty selfish really and it's about time we got over it. But our children are going to save us. Little kids don't understand or care about colour or race, they just hook up with other kids in the playground that they like. And hopefully these friendships will endure over lifetimes and the racist problem will be fixed forever - it will just take a while. By then, the worst bigots, the older folk, will be dead and buried along with their racist beliefs. Too simple? Maybe, but on the eve of Australia Day, I wonder how different ethnic groups feel about this important day - they could be as proud to be Australian as we are.

Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith

The Victoria Cross for Australia is the highest award in the Australian Honours System. It was created in 1991 and has precedence over all orders, decorations and medals. The first medal was awarded on 16th January 2009 to Trooper Mark Donaldson and yesterday 32 year old SAS Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was the second Australian to receive this honour.


It was awarded for "conspicuous gallantry in action in circumstances of extreme peril" and together with the Medal for Gallantry he won in 2006, the VC makes him the most decorated member of the Australian Defence Force. With his family - his mother and his father who was a former major-general watching, Corporal Roberts-Smith stood proudly before Govenor General Quentin Bryce at SAS Headquarters in Perth yesterday.

He was an impsosing figure, 6ft 6in tall. He sat next to his wife Emma - they have twin 9 months old girls. The VIP crowd which included other surviving VC winners Keith Payne and Corporal Keith Donaldson, applauded Australia's 98th Victoria Cross Holder.

On the 11th June 2010 in the village of Tizak in Kandahar Province, two soldiers were wounded as their unit was pinned down by heavy Taliban machine gun fire. Corporal Roberts-Smith said "I just looked across and saw my mates getting ripped up. I decided to move forward because I wasn't going to sit there and do nothing - I thought I'd have a crack."

Former SAS sniper and author Rob Maylor served with Roberts-Smith for over a decade and said he was always destined for big things. "He's always had it in him, it really didn't come as a surprise. He's one of the best, very professional, down to earth, very good at his job and a good thinker. The further he goes through the ranks, he's going to become a great leader. He's a very humble bloke. Obviously it will change his life but it won't change his personality and character."

Corporal Roberts-Smith said a number of his colleagues would be recognised at a later date for their bravery that day. "It's like being a football team - you go as hard as you can until the game is won."

In this case the score was 60 dead Taliban.