The Absurdity of News

The Corbys

I've stayed away from passing comment or judgment on the Corby case in most part because I can remember how Barlowe and Chambers died in the 1980s and think that a jail sentence in the Indonesian jail system has to be much better than the Malaysian noose. The other reason is that the whole Corby family seems to be some kind of feral humanity that brings out the worst snobbery in us all, which in turn brings about the kind of media beat up that Current Affairs programs are so *good* at, and the ensuing media circus is unpleasant to say the least.

Now the media circus has gone to court. The paragon of virtue that is Mercedes Corby filed for a defamation suit against her old friend Jodie Power and Channel 7. Turns out Jodie kept a few photos from when they were friends.

Photographs of Mercedes Corby allegedly smoking marijuana and handling drugs in other situations were released in court today during her defamation case against Channel Seven.

The former best friend of Mercedes, Jodie Power, has told the court this week that she had taken drugs in company with Ms Corby and others and had communicated with her about drugs such as ecstasy, speed and marijuana over several years.

In July 1998 they had travelled to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. In Bali, where they had stayed at a resort, they met a friend, Steve Reuben, and Ms Corby and Mr Reuben were photographed allegedly smoking marijuana through a "penis pipe".

The photographs, including one of Ms Corby with the pipe in her mouth, were tendered into evidence on Wednesday by Tom Hughes, QC, representing the defendants in a defamation action brought by Ms Corby.

More photographs were tendered by counsel representing Channel Seven this morning.

Justice Carolyn Simpson said today that although counsel for Mercedes Corby did not approve of the release of the photographs, they had been tendered into evidence and were therefore public exhibits.

Also tendered into evidence in the Supreme Court this week were letters Ms Corby had sent to Ms Power. Ms Power said that the term "mo" allegedly referred to marijuana, "stoned" referred to being under the influence of marijuana, "e's" referred to "ecstasy", and "speed trip" referred to taking the drug speed, which suppressed appetite.

Ms Power said Ms Corby had allegedly taken a drug called "shabu", and she had taken it as well. When Mr Hughes asked what it was like, she said she and Mr Reuben had had "sex all day". Mr Hughes: "It worked."

In one of the letters, Mercedes also said that she was concerned about losing weight and that she was about to go on a speed diet which Jodie Power said was a reference to taking the drug speed as an appetite suppressant.

It's not a nice picture we're seeing of Mercedes Corby as a person. Or maybe I'm meant to simply accept her as the flower of post-modern Australian Womanhood - self-assured and strong, independent, adventurous and not scared of pulling a few bongs.

Or perhaps it really is the case that the Corbys are a pack of drug-fiends.
Wonderful. Either way, could things get any richer in the news? But wait, yes they can...

Dungeon Dad

The mind-warping story of the week was about one Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and had her pregnant seven times. Apart from having the most aesthetically-challenged hairstyle to grace front pages in a long time, he did a lot of wacky stuff on top of that.

The children born of the abusive and incestuous relationship between Josef Fritzl and his daughter Elisabeth, and imprisoned in a basement dungeon their entire lives, speak to each other in a private language of growls and gurgles, authorities revealed yesterday.

Both Stefan, 18, and Felix, 5, are hunched from the cramped conditions in their 1.7m high cellar and Felix prefers to crawl, although he can walk. Elisabeth reportedly walks with a hunch and appears decades older than her 42 years. Their sister Kirsten, 19, and critically ill in hospital, has lost most of her teeth.

Chief Inspector Leopold Etz, from the lower Austria region, said he was "staggered" to watch the boys initial bewilderment and shock as they found themselves in a world they had seen only on the television screen in their cell and known from their mother's descriptions about the life she had led until her incarceration at the age of 18.

Inspector Etz said when the siblings emerged from their cellar on Saturday night, they thought they were in heaven, having always been told by their mother, Elisabeth, "heaven is 'up there'."

The children were "wide-eyed and open-mouthed" when they encountered police officers; the first real faces the siblings had seen apart from each other, their mother and Josef Fritzl.

Felix is said to have raised his hand to his eyes at the sight of the sun and then taken it away again, as if not able to believe what he saw.

"When the sunbeams struck his face, he squealed loudly," Inspector Etz said.

He said the two boys spoke their own dialect consisting of gurgling sounds: "To say that the children speak is only a part of the truth. It is a mixture of gurgling sounds and noises, a kind of a dialect of their own.

"When they want to articulate what they say in order for us to understand them, they do make an effort - presumably out of politeness. But it does cost them a lot of energy."

Details also emerged from police interviews with Fritzl of his attempts to maintain a normal life with his "cellar family", watching car races on television with them for hours on end.

The Times cited a report in the Austrian magazine News referring to claims made by Fritzl that he would buy the three children toys and play with them while he discussed their upbringing with their mother.

He reportedly told police he took only three children to live upstairs with him and his wife, Rosemarie, because she would not have been able to take care of another child at her age.

It's just too sick. There's so much wrong with this story, it too probably deserves a song but I'm having a bit of a block trying to come up with a chord progression that suits this subject. How do you play incest in the key of 'C', for instance?

What I don't get is the insistence by psychiatrist that the kids are psychologically damaged. As Danny DeVito says in 'Twins', "Well, Obviously!"
What they're not talking about is the possibility that the dungeon kids are sub-normal because they're congenitally fucked, thanks to being products of incest. Why don't they just spell it out?

Anyway, the world is abuzz with the perversity of the whole story so it's not exactly we can tune it out. Wasn't it weeks ago our fragile little minds were warped by the story of the Deaves family where in the incestuous father and daughter claimed they didn't have a problem, but that it was the world that had a problem?
*sigh*

Anyway, speaking of wrong...

What's Wrong With Austria?
Here's this piece I came across.

It is useful in this context to mention some other things going on in Austria that have been overlooked by the international press - including a series of investigations that threaten to envelop the Austrian police. These suggest a force so allegedly riddled with corruption and incompetence that even those responsible for handling the Kampusch case have been implicated.

There is also the country's apparent problem with institutional racism. There is concern over a number of deaths and injuries in police custody of foreign nationals. (There have been no convictions; Amnesty International has made a formal complaint.)

Then there are the controversial photographs that have surfaced of Jörg Haider, the former leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party; the increasing tendency of Austrian politicians to sue journalists who dare to look into their affairs; the BAWAG banking scandal - which resulted in the loss of billions of euros in questionable investments - and the revelation in 2006 that this well-to-do Alpine country had slipped five places in Transparency International's corruption index.

There is a theory that Austrian culture is somehow to blame for the cases of child imprisonment that have come to light. Certainly it is true that in two of these cases, neighbours admitted to reporters that they knew the perpetrators and victims of the crimes only by their surnames.

There is a petit bourgeous formality in Austria, a hangover from imperial times, an assumption that a respectable member of the community - a lawyer or engineer, for example - could never be the author of a serious crime. It explains why a mother of three can take her children out of school without generating much suspicion, for instance. And, conversely, why foreigners - especially foreigners of non-Austrian appearance - tend to be treated with, at best, scepticism. A native of Ghana or Turkey travelling on a Vienna tram can expect to have his or her ticket scrutinised by inspectors far more often than white, German-speaking passengers.

Furthermore, Austrian privacy laws ensure that the private lives of prominent people are rarely exposed. Roman Abramovich retreated to Austria after his divorce.

Data protection means that it is virtually impossible to find out simple things: why a person has received planning permission, for example, or who put the advertisement in the newspaper for which only whites needed to apply.

But there is another reason why such crimes can happen in an otherwise affluent and civilised society. When neighbours of the middle-class lawyer noticed that she took meals only in her car, for example, the authorities were promptly and repeatedly informed. But, for reasons we may never know, they refused to act. No police officer or social worker was forced to answer for having failed to intervene.

It's certainly interesting. Why do these things happen in Austria, home of Adolf Hitler? Or is it one of those, "you just can't say that!" kind of comment?
Let's face it, I think Austria has gotten off lightly for giving us Adolf Hitler, its contribution to the NAZI thing and 'Sound of Music' thing. What if Arnold Schwarzenegger is the best thing they've given to the world, apart from... okay, Mozart. What if there really are sinister social forces in Austria that give rise to Adolf, Kidnappers and Dungeon Dad?

"What is it you cun't face, Maria?"

Are We Still Talking About Maddie?

First it was Natascha Kampusch, and now it's this Fritzl Family Robinson saga; now the McCann's are claiming the rescue gives them hope.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s first anniversary of the night her blonde girl disappeared, Kate told The Sun: “It proves that people can go off the radar, doesn’t it? But they are still there – and you owe it to that person to keep looking. It gives you hope. It’s horrible to think of the length of time, but Elisabeth being found gives you hope.

“It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. You just have to hold on to that hope.”

I guess that's the kind of world it is. Maybe it's not just Austria - People get locked up in dungeon basements for years and years like Natascha Kampusch , the Fritzl Dungeon Kids and Kasper Hauser. It's simply a dog-keep-dog-in-a-cage kind of world. Just ask my parrot. He says "oui oui!"