The Guardian 26 October, 2005
Dingo bytes
The song Our Don Bradman was a handy piece of nationalism during the 1930s Depression, Bradman even then being cricket’s premier batsman. The Bradman Foundation was set up in 1987 to promote cricket as a "valuable cultural and sporting force within the community", but the Foundation has overstepped the mark, using Bradman’s name to flog chocolate chip biscuits on the sub-continent and Britain. "Bradman’s Chocolate Chip Cookies", manufactured in Melbourne by the company Unibic, are set to go on a trial sale in India. The Bradman family has stepped in to halt the move. In a statement they said, "Sir Donald is a loved and missed family member, not a brand name like Mickey Mouse."
In the promotion of militarism in Australia that has been undertaken by the Howard Government, perhaps the most outrageous and at the same time idiotic is the proposal by Liberal MP Dana Vale to have a replica of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, built at the end of Mornington Peninsula, in Victoria. It would be a memorial park that "replicates as a closely as possible the Gallipoli battlefields, memorials and cemeteries" said Vale. Gallipoli’s significance is about the memory of those who died being used as cannon fodder by British imperialism; the blood that was spilled on its soil. Vale’s Disney theme park is an insult. A Wilcox cartoon in the in the Sydney Morning Herald hit the nail on the head: a man and his son are standing at "Pseudo-Gallipoli" and the man says, "Son, this isn’t where your great-great granddad fought and died for us", and the son says, "I’ll always remember what he didn’t do here".
One third of Australian children are overweight or obese. Thus, The Parent’s Jury, a network of parents working to improve the food and physical activity of children
CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. The potentially catastrophic H5N1 avian bird flu presents such a clear and present danger that governments around the world are organising ways of dealing with it. Here in Australia GlaxoSmithKline holds the exclusive licence for the antiviral drug Relenza. Another drug giant, Roche, was earlier forced to allow manufacturers to copy its antiviral drug after an Indian company announced its intention to manufacture a generic version of it. But not GlaxoSmithKline, which intends to hold onto its exclusive licence, and hence its profits.