Behind the picture

In Europe, a Ukrainian feminist movement protests against prostitution and for women’s rights by getting their tits out, donning long blonde wigs, putting flowers in their hair and getting in lots of trouble.

Femen’s latest protest ended with the KGB arresting an Australian filmmaker, and three other women were reportedly forced to strip, doused in petrol, and abandoned in a forest.

While it has ended badly for the individuals, the movement itself has worldwide coverage of its uncovered members and its causes.

Continue reading "Naked protesting: Is it world’s breast practice?" »

Welcome to a new semi-regular segment on The Punch, where we try to extract something meaningful from the week that was.

In yet another week dominated by the carbon tax and financial turmoil, the other big story was the guilty verdict on Michael Jackson’s personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who slowly poisoned Jacko with a toxic mix of anaesthetic and sedatives.

Jacko wanted a cure for insomnia so he could rest up for his imminent comeback tour. The thing is, why did he need drugs at all? According to the man himself, dancing could solve all problems. Let’s examine the video evidence…

Continue reading "This week’s lesson: Dancing will not solve your problems" »

It’s on again. The Melbourne Cup. The race that stops the nation. Or at least, the race that stops the nation working.

This year’s Cup is like no other. Well might we say “stop the boats” as refugees seek asylum on our shores, but maybe we’d do better to stop the planes. This year, more foreign raiders than ever before are trying to steal our riches and destroy our way of life. It’s just not horse racing.

So who’s going to win? The Punch proudly presents Australia’s most devastatingly honest and accurate form guide to help you decide for yourself.

Continue reading "Australia’s bitchiest Melbourne Cup form guide" »

Gaddafi’s dead. Good. We got Osama and now we got this creep. As The Sun in Britain said: “That’s for Lockerbie”. And as I myself often say: “begeeeeerrrrk”.

While the world is rightly celebrating the death of the tyrant Gaddafi today, here in the chicken coop the mood is more sombre. Across the world, millions of my fellow hens continue to be slaughtered daily in the name of another colonel.

These two colonels lived different lives, on different continents, in different eras. But the hens and I had a scratch around in the dirt today, and we came up with a few similarities. Begeeeeerrrrk!

Continue reading "Gaddafi vs Sanders: a comparison of colonels" »

I’m tired, cold and smell like a tin of cat food. This is my first taste of life as a deep-sea fishermen. Twenty-four hours on a fishing trawler outside Sydney Heads with Paul Bagnato, a fourth generation skipper.

The Bagnato family have run six trawlers out of Sydney since the 1960s, delivering Sydney’s freshest seafood to the Fish Markets every day of the week.

“We are on standby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” he says. “It’s a tough life out here.”

Continue reading "Trawling for photos down the East Coast" »

Yesterday, News Ltd national defence writer Ian McPhedran argued that it’s our moral duty to stay the course in Afghanistan, both to honour fallen diggers and for the sake of the mission itself. Many ordinary people took exception, arguing the best way to honour the fallen is to withdraw from the whole exercise.

In any war in which Australia is involved, mainstream public figures rarely question our commitment to the conflict. To do so is seen as the equivalent of saying the fallen died for nothing.

Ordinary people know better. In war, as in life, the ground shifts. The perfectly valid reason you got involved several years back may no longer hold up today. Funny thing is, war movies have long echoed this theme. Maybe it’s time our leaders took a trip to the video store…

Continue reading "Six famous war films, and their lessons for our leaders" »

A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of their well-loved pug sleeping companionably underneath their sleeping baby’s cradle.

“Protective pug”, she posted, and a flurry of exclamation marks followed in reply - pug and baby were bonding, our friends’ fears were allayed, their household was harmonious, everything would be fine.

As any dog person will tell you, this was an important step. Dogs need heaps of love, care and attention, especially when life is apt to change.

Continue reading "Puppy love and pampered pooches: It’s a dog’s life" »

A pair of sixty-oners they may be but two things Julia Gillard and US President, Barack Obama definitely do not share are: a love of Vegemite, and an understanding of Australian rules football.

Or perhaps that should be an understanding of Vegemite, and a love of Australian rules.

Either way, both came to the fore yesterday as one 49 year old ribbed the other for nearly busting a valuable Oval Office statue of an American icon and beloved saviour of the Union, Abraham Lincoln.

Continue reading "Obama delivers Gillard a handball in the Oval Office" »

In a letter to IOC boss Jacques Rogge, Iran’s Olympic Committee chief Mohammad Aliabadi has today declared the London 2012 Olympics logo racist, because apparently, you can see the word Zion in it, if you twist your neck 45 degrees and drink half a bottle of the kind of spirit which is heavily frowned upon in Iran.

The obvious cynical, Western reaction is to point out that Iran is trying to distract its own populace from overthrowing the state by drumming up anger about yet another trumped-up fiendish Israeli plot.

But here at The Punch, we’re not so sure. We think the Iranians may actually be onto something. Because if you look at Olympic logos down the years, it appears many of them were trying to tell us something we were all too swept up in Olympic fever to notice.

Continue reading "Is the London 2012 logo a racist, Zionist plot?" »

The Egyptian protests that have led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak have produced some incredible media images, by photographers who often put their own lives in danger to bring us scenes from the streets of Egypt.

Here are some photos from the last two weeks, which culminated in celebrations on Friday night as Mubarak announced he would end his 30 year term.

Continue reading "Images of the Egyptian revolution" »