Birds Continue To Die In Seaside Town

Thousands Of Birds Now Dead, Fears Of Mass Lead Poisoning Rock Esperance

Lead Shipments Banned As Investigators Move In


A beach close to the port facility at Esperance.

Are thousands of children in a West Australian town now at risk of brain damage from lead poisoning?

This is one of the chief questions on the minds of locals in Esperance,where some 5000 birds have died from what is now believed to be lead poisoning since late last year. Increased levels of lead have also been found in water supply storage tanks around the town.


Birds are continuing to die at the rate of more than 100 a week in the West Australian seaside town of Esperance, and lead poisoning has been confirmed by the state government as the reason why.

Locals are becoming increasingly alarmed about the possibility that home water tanks have become dangerously contaminated by lead carbonate dust from the massive port loading facility that dominates the town's seafront.

Doctors in the town are now inviting locals to be tested for lead poisoning, and a number of people have been warned not to drink rain water collected in the tanks attached to their homes, due to lead levels found to "excessive" in early testing.

The majority of the birds that died were nectar-eaters, including lorikeets and wattle birds, giving credence to a popular theory that fine lead carbonate dust from the port facility, where it is transported for shipment across the world, had been blown back over the town and settled on trees and flowers used by the birds.

Anger is growing in the town that the state Health Department has been too slow in responding to the concern expressed late last year by the locals, when Esperance fell quiet after virtually the entire local song bird population died out in only a few weeks.

One local GP said the widespread testing for high lead levels should begin with area's children.

Many of the thousands of dead birds were found near the town's schools.

"(Children) absorb lead much faster than grown-ups, particularly with their constant hand-to-mouth contact. The fact that they hardly wash their hands doesn't help," Dr Howard has been quoted as saying.

"Many children affected by lead suffered serious behavioural problems and are usually nowhere near as bright as other kids."

As part of the growing investigation, pigeons are now being shot around the town. Investigators want to find out why the pigeons have been immune to the lead poisoning suffered by thousands of other birds.

The West Australian Department of Environment has begun a full-scale review of the Esperance Port Authority's loading practises, and its licence is now under review.

The Department of Environment has now banned the port facility from handling lead carbonate, which has been brought into the small town at a rate of 10,000 tonnes a month for almost two years, from a mine nearly one thousand kilometres away.

The lead carbonate loaded at the facility has the texture of fine sand and could have easily been blown back into the town on the strong winds that regularly sweep the sea front.

Shire President, Ian Mickel told the ABC fears in the town over the extent of the lead poisoning were becoming increasingly serious.

"Everyone is asking the same sort of questions - when will we find out, what the extent is and when will we know the problem's finished," he said.

There are now very real concerns, according to this report that the toxic heavy metal has contaminated the town's drinking water.

"There is a real sense of urgency about this now," said Ian Mickel. "We really need to know what's happening and what the dangers are, if any, to the community."

The Esperance port loading facility has been a source of controversy in the town for years, but the facility has brought millions of dollars into the area, along with hundreds of jobs. Most of the controversy has raged around the problems of dust from shipments passing through the port blowing across the town, and whether the massive facility is a blight on the local landscape.

Investment in the town's tourism has been growing in recent years, and Esperance is gaining an international profile for having some of the most beautiful beaches in Australia, if not the world.

The area occupied by the port facility is coveted by developers, who see potential for the site to be converted to sea front housing developments and holiday accommodation. If the port facility was relocated, it would substantially change the view from the sea front, making the area more picturesque.

When I visited Esperance three weeks ago, local shop owners said that the port was holding back the town from becoming a booming tourist destination.

Unless there is hugely negative fallout, and lawsuits, resulting from the lead contamination scare, it is unlikely the facility will be closed any time soon.

BHP Biliton now has an enormous nickel and cobalt mine at Ravensthorpe, valued in the billions of dollars, to the west of Esperance, and will use the port facility to ship out hundreds of thousands of tonnes of minerals in the coming years.

Professor Brian Gulson, from the Graduate School of the Environment at Macquarie University, and a recognised expert in lead poisoning in humans, has been brought in by the WA government to "to help with the Esperance problem."

He told ABC Radio that recent studies have found links between anti-social behaviour and high levels of lead in the blood :

"The most important ones these days that are coming out of the studies - especially that have been carried out in the US - are behavioural problems, and they've actually been associating high blood lead levels with delinquency and even... and crime," he said.

"The biggest concern, or one of the big concerns, is the neurological effects, of course, which can affect the learning… give rise to learning difficulties in children."

"The most sensitive people, of course, would be young children, who would be crawling around in the dirt and getting the material on their hands and then putting it in their mouth."

Now that the export of lead concentrate from Esperance has been banned, a 12,000 tonne heap of the powder, worth more than $23 million, has been stockpiled inside"an old shed" at the port.

Locals are now concerned that the fine lead powder will continue to contaminate the town.

The shed is reported to have a small hole in one side, and a multimillion dollar concrete building is being built to fully contain the shed and the lead carbonate inside. Clearly the port facility owners are now treating the massive stockpile of lead carbonate as a dangerous threat to the town.

The lead carbonate was headed for China, where it was used to be in car batteries.

The Esperance port facility is one of the busiest in Australia, with more than eight million tonnes of minerals, coal and other products passing through the port in the past year.

Officers from the Department of Environment and Conservation were seen around Esperance in recent days, taking swabs of windows from at least 50 buildings, including six schools. These swabs were sent to Perth for comprehensive testing.

Lead carbonate becomes soluble in the stomach, meaning the powder is far more easily absorbed into the bloodstream than most other forms of lead.

"Dead Birds Are The Canary In The Mineshaft For Us"

Thousands Of Birds "Confirmed" To Have Died Of Lead Poisoning

Lead Carbonate, "The Most Toxic", Has Been Shipped Through Esperance For 18 Months, "Without Anyone Knowing The Dangers"

Health Department Officials Try To Allay Fears That The People Of Esperance Have Been Contaminated With Lead

Killer Crocodile Movies Set To Terrify

All photos by Darryl Mason, Northern Territory, August 2006


The banks of the East Alligator river, in the Northern Territory, were feet thick with a quicksand-like mud when we visited the area last year. The mud is a trap in itself. Once you step into it, it could suck you into your knees and then h0ld you in place until this 10 foot long monster is ready for a feed. Never, ever, get out of the boat.


The director of Wolf Creek, Greg McLean, is set to scare ten kinds of hell out of tourists and backpackers all over again with his new film, Rogue.

But instead of a shockingly cruel serial killer roaming the outback picking up unwary touros, this time McLean deposits his human cast deep inside the ancient, unforgiving realm of Australian crocodile country.

It's been a long time between feasts for Australian horror movies fans wanting to dine out on a homegrown monster movie, but this year we're going to get at least two, and both deal with killer crocodiles hunting down humans.

The second crocodile thriller is called Black Water, and while Rogue is a $30 million top-cast studio effort, with more than $6 million of the budget devoted to special effects, Black Water barely cost $1 million, and its director promises he's followed the Stephen King edict : the less you show of the monster, the scarier it can be.


Even without his front legs (bitten off during fighting), this crocodile has thrived in a muddy river in the Northern Territory for decades.

As this excellent feature from 'The Australian' explains, Rogue and Black Water are polar opposites when it comes to budgets, special effects, locations and cast, but both promise plenty of chills when they hit cinema screens in the second half of 2007.

Black Water was filmed amongst the mangroves of Georges River, south of Sydney, while Rogue goes deep into crocodile territory in the Katherine Gorge, in the Northern Territory.

The Wolf Creek director said Rogue will be "an old-fashioned horror film". He likens his film to classics like Jaws and Alien, which were monster movies, but were more focused on the characters thrust into the monster's path than just scaring the audience with gore and shocks.

Rogue will show what happens to a boatload of tourists who wind up marooned on a river island as the tide rises and the crocodiles come for a feed.

Black Water, meanwhile, will see a bunch of mates on a fishing trip getting chased up a tree by crocodiles, where they are then stuck for most of the rest of the movie - except for those devoured by crocodiles, who can actually climb trees if they really want to get you.

Can't wait. Don't know about the swamps of the Georges River, but Katherine Gorge and Kakadu (where Rogue was also reportedly filmed) are stunningly beautiful, but also stunningly harsh environments where humans are the least likely to survive when it comes to squaring off against the crocodiles.

If two Australian crocodile horror-thrillers can do some decent box office business, we might get to see more Australian horror movies filling Australian screens. It will be about time.

Young Australians don't spend tens of millions of dollars a year at the cinema watching the endless slew of terribly shit American horror movies because they like crap. They like horror movies. If Australian producers and directors don't make them, they'll watch dirge like Hostel and The Hitcher and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes for want of a thrill and a scare.

Maybe we'll see a new genre of Australian horror movies based around our most fearsome and deadly wildlife.

I look forward to a horror movie about Japanese tourists who are accidentally locked inside a koala park and then have to survive the night while being hunted by eucalyptus-crazed koalas in full drop-bear fury.

For wannabe horror movie makers, some good advice from Wolf Creek/Rogue director McLean in The Australian story, (excerpts) :

"There has to be an idea of genius in there to warrant people seeing a low-budget film instead of a $30 million or $40million movie," says Mclean, who made Wolf Creek for $1.4 million and was rewarded when the Weinsteins spent $7.5million on distribution rights for several countries.

"We had a one-in-a-million shot of being noticed. It had to be so much better structured, acted, and more realistic than all the other horror films out there," he says. "It was designed to reverse audience expectations and generate a feeling of freshness to make them think they had not seen anything like this before.

"Low-budget filmmaking should be a place where people experiment and break rules, not make low-budget versions of boring movies ... It has to be something people have never seen before or something executed so brilliantly and with such precision that it's worth seeing."

Seconds before he slammed his huge head into the tinnie, this six foot long crocodile near Katherine Gorge appeared to be smiling at us.

Out Of Action - For Now

Exploring A Secret Australia With The 'Grey Nomads'

We're travelling through outback WA right now, which makes regular blogging a bit of a difficulty. But we'll back in action on a daily(ish) basis come March 9.

Unfortunately we're nowhere near as technically self-sufficient on the road as some of the 'grey nomads' we've come across in isolated camp grounds on the South West Coast of Western Australia.

Decked out with slabs of solar panels and satellite dishes, some have fitted out their caravans with enough gear and alternate energy power sources they no longer have any need for electrical mains energy. With solar water filtration, they don't need fresh water either. They can make their own out of seawater or literally muddy water from a puddle.

But 50 miles down a dirt track from the nearest village or even wheat farm homestead, these high-tech nomads can dial up the best of world sports, surf the internet (via satellite phone) and live away from civilisation for as long as their food (and booze) supplies hold out.

It's an interesting glimpse into the future of Australia's retirees. There are some 200,000 'grey nomads' rolling down the endless tarmac of Australia's highways on any given day, with more joining their teeming numbers every day. It's literally a new society under creation on the highways and beach camps and byways and caravan parks.

But who represents these nomads? Who governs their society? No-one, for now. But they are mostly cashed-up, teched-up Australians on the road, some of them constantly on the road. We've met many who've haven't been 'home' in one to three years. And they have no intention of ever returning to the cities dotted around our coastline. News of road and fishing conditions, cyclone and storm warnings, or the carving of a new 4WD trail through another isolated stretch of a national park to fresh coastline are the main, and most important, news items to be discussed each morning in the communal kitchens and down by the boatramps.

The politics of Canberra, the concerns of city life in Sydney or Melbourne are almost meaningless to many of these nomads.

And meanwhile, the endless road ahead awaits. Another unexplored marvel of the Australian outback to visit, another campground overlooking a forgotten beach only discussed in whispers to be visited, the ones that aren't in the books or on the net, that you only learn about from other nomads.

Definitely a subject we'll have to write more about in the future...

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 5

Cheney Makes His Case For War On Iran

20% Of World's Oil Supply "Is Vulnerable To Iranian Military Action"

By Darryl Mason

It must be years since US Vice President Dick Cheney sat down for an interview with someone who wasn't a kindly old friend or simply too terrified to actually ask him some tough, uncomfortable questions.

No big surprise then that Cheney's main interview while in Australia was with journalist Greg Sheridan, who just happened to have backed the War On Iraq, through late 2002 and all through 2003 and 2004, with a white-hot fervour that threatened to spontaneously combust his heard.

Just how much of a good friend to Cheney is Greg Sheridan?

They've known each other for at least 16 years, met half a dozen times or more, and once attended a conference together where "a young man undressed on the stage".

Or you can try this description of his old mate for calibration: "...you never find Cheney hiding in the shadows, he's always in the bright light of the day"

Or this :

There is something bracing about Cheney's unrepentant attitude generally

Or this :

(Cheney) certainly presents as the very model of sweet reason...

Good God man, have you no shame?

Sheridan's the chief foreign affairs writer for Rupert Murdoch's flagship 'The Australian' newspaper, so you might think the idea of the United States launching a War On Iran would fill him with unease, even a tinge of horror, considering the near ceaseless slaughter of civilians in Iraq over the past four years of war and the general state of calamity and fallout the war has produced across the Middle East.

Well, you'd be wrong :

US Vice-President Dick Cheney believes a military confrontation with Iran would be a lesser evil than an Iran with nuclear weapons.

Yeah, but they don't have nuclear weapons. In the same way that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons, even though Cheney infamously insisted Iraq did. Again and again and again.

But then, it's not really the the threat of Iran's nuclear weapons that concerns Cheney the most.

Sheridan helpfully cuts through the miasma of standard Cheney 'War on Terror' rhetoric and NeoCon-plated recent history lessons on the Middle East with this lone, floating sentence, which is probably the most important thing Cheney has said in months, and all but confirms a War On Iran will begin with or without the support of the UN Security Council :

Cheney also points out that 20 per cent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and is vulnerable to Iranian military action.

You can pin that quote to the fridge, because you are going to be hearing that reasoning for why a War On Iran is necessary a hell of a lot in the coming weeks.

It also explains why the US currently has two massive battle cruiser fleets near the Strait of Hormuz.

Now that the US can control the flow of 20% of the world's oil supply, by confronting Iran over its non-compliance with UN Security Council backed demands to halt its nuclear enrichment programs, you can pretty well guess what kind of bargaining chip the US will now use to get the backing from China, Russia and the rest of the Security Council for more hardcore sanctions against Iran.

Cheney will soon claim that US action on Iran will help to guarantee the continuing flow of 20% of the world's oil supply to oil-hungry countries like Indonesia, India, China and the US itself.

But that's all for later, let's get back to Sheridan's fawning portrait of the man himself :

...in person he is avuncular, softly spoken, often deploying a little wry irony.

One of Cheney's most appealing qualities is that he tells it exactly as he sees it. There is never a trace of ambiguity in what he says...

Particularly when what he says is 80% distortion and spin.

Cheney had a lot to say to Sheridan, or through Sheridan, and the journalist appears not to have challenged or confronted Cheney on anything, least of all the real-time horrors of the Iraq War. But then, they're both guilty of creating that reality.

And to be fair to Sheridan, time for the interview was limited, and questions from the journalist would have cut into valuable propaganda time for Cheney.

Far be it for me to get in the way, too. Here's some highlights of the interview, where Cheney clearly spells out the case for a coming soon War On Iran :

"We've seen Iran in recent years led by a man who is a radical by most definitions - Mr Ahmadinejad - who espouses an apocalyptic philosophy and has made threatening noises to Israel and the US and others.

"They (Iran) are the prime sponsor of Hezbollah, working through Syria in the conflict with Israel last summer in an effort to topple the Government of Lebanon.

"Working through Hamas they have added to the difficulties of getting some kind of peace process started with respect to the Palestinians and the Israelis. They clearly frighten most of their neighbours.

"We believe they have engaged in providing improvised explosive devices to insurgents in Iraq. We've taken action recently to crack down on identifiable Iranian agents operating inside Iraq. We've made it clear to them that their conduct has been inappropriate."

Cheney also plenty of praise for Australia, for John Howard and Australia's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there's also fresh reasoning from Cheney of why they can't leave Iraq any time soon.

To do so would disappoint all those who believed in, and committed, to the War On Iraq.

People like Greg Sheridan, and others :

"People, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, who've signed on in this global conflict, with our backing and support - the thousands who've signed on to the Iraqi security forces, the millions who voted, people like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and (Pervez) Musharraf in Pakistan - they didn't have to make the choices they've made. They decided to sign on with the US and its allies to fight the extremists. If the US were to decide it's too tough and to go home, it would have devastating consequences, for all of those people who bet the farm on this struggle."

And just in case the War On Iraq turns out to actually be the worst foreign policy decision in the history of the United States, Sheridan supplies a closing bit of praise for his old mate, that utterly ignores the humongous death tolls, destruction and third world living conditions that are now daily realities for more than a third of all Iraqis :

You may not agree with Cheney but he certainly lets you know what he thinks. If the US fails in Iraq, it certainly won't be because he lost his nerve.

No, if the US fails in Iraq it will because Cheney and his old mate, Donald Rumsfeld, denied repeatedly for more than TWO YEARS that the Iraqi insurgency was a reality and was ripping the country to pieces and both of them did nothing to try and stop it, even when veterans back from the war publicly begged them to face the reality.

Instead, Cheney said the "Saddam dead enders" were in "their last throes" and Rumsfeld shrieked about how well-informed people who tried to warn of how powerful the insurgency actually was were "Chicken Littles" crowing on about how "the sky was falling."

And all the while hundreds of American and British soldiers were being blown to pieces in roadside IED attacks and car bombings.

Obviously the most important thing of all in the scale of this monumental tragedy is that Cheney didn't lose his nerve.

Imagine if he had.

That might have constituted a livid horror beyond anything the Iraqis, or the thousands of Americans and Brits who lost family members over there, are now suffering through.

Well, for Cheney and his good mate Greg Sheridan at least.


Iran Vows To Defend Nuclear Program

Cheney Warns Of Iran Strike

Cheney : China's Military Build-Up "Not Consistent With Stated Goal Of Peaceful Rise"

US Keeping "All Options" Open Regarding Iran

John Howard Denies Snubbing Cheney, Twice, "Absurd Proposition"

Howard Announces Australian Troop Withdrawal Strategy Based On "Our National Interests"

Defence Minister : "There Will Be No Victory In Iraq"

Australia's prime minister said before the Iraq War began that he thought the conflict would last "months, not years". He is sharp enough to not make the same mistake again when it comes to the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq.

While John Howard spent the two weeks before US Vice President Dick Cheney came to town lambasting any talk of a troop withdrawal as giving in to Al Qaeda and betraying "our good friends" in the United States, he has changed his tune dramatically in the past three days.

Howard has now decided he must leave himself the option of pulling out Australia's combat troops well before the United States does, and without their permission, and on extremely short notice.

This could be called the "Australia's interest" option, and the key to it may be an outbreak of violence in the troubled island nations to Australia's north, like East Timor.

"If we thought (withdrawing troops) was in our national interest to do so, yes," Howard said during a radio interview yesterday.

The marker for when Iraq is stable enough to warrant a total withdrawal of Australian forces has now been pegged by Howard as a "sustained reduction in the level of violence".

Talk about leaving your options open.

So only five car bombings a week instead of fifteen? Only 200 executed Iraqis found on the street every seven days instead of 600 or 700?

The prime minister, and a stream of government ministers and MPs have been buttering Australians up for a withdrawal from Iraq while the country still locked in explosive sectarian conflict.


Howard now insists it will be up to Iraqi Army and police forces to look after their own security and to end the sectarian conflicts.

"Some level of (violence) will go on, yes," he said. "You can't establish, as a test of whether you ultimately go or stay, a situation where there is no violence at all.

"Some level of violence goes on in a lot of democratic countries."

True enough. But Iraq is currently the murder, kidnapping, execution, car bombing capital of the world.

"We shouldn't set ourselves an impossibly pure standard of non-violence before we decide to go.

"At the present time the level of violence is totally unacceptable, and until the Iraqis are able to contain it to a reasonable level we should stay."

Naturally Howard refused to be drawn on what actually constitutes a "reasonable level" of violence.

So the prime minister has now left himself two options for his strategy on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Firstly, he can withdraw the troops through the wide-open "in Australia's interest" option, or he can claim that Iraq is only suffering from a "reasonable level" of violence and withdraw.

Just to help out his master, Australia's defence minister, Brendan Nelson, meanwhile, has declared "There is no such thing as victory in Iraq."

This means, of course, that Howard will never have to declare victory in Iraq before pulling out Australia's troops.

That "there is no such thing as victory in Iraq" will come as something of a surprise to US President George W. Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney who were stating late last year that "nothing less than total victory" in Iraq would be accepted by the crumbling Coalition of the Willing.

"...the Iraqis who've shown enormous courage to vote on three occasions to elect their own government, they should be the inspiration for what we do," Nelson said, "but there'll be no such thing as victory.

"The most important thing that we do is to make sure the Iraqis have control of their own destiny, and have the moral fortitude and courage to see the job through until they're in a position to do it."This also puts the death-knell on Howard's previous claims that Australia would only withdraw from Iraq when "the job is done". Now it is up to the Iraqis to "see the job through".

Nelson waffled endlessly about "handing victory to the terrorists" in Iraq as recently as February 12.

If he now says that the coalition will never be able to declare victory before pulling out, then doesn't it stand to reason that the insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq would regard themselves as victorious once large scale withdrawals of American, Australian and British troops begin?

Here's Nelson's hyper-charged warnings about what a non-victory in Iraq would mean for, primarily, his own children :

"If the United States is defeated in Iraq...along with the United Kingdom, Australia and other thinking countries throughout the world, my children will face challenges that they will never overcome."

Ten days after that interview, Brendan Nelson announced "There will be no victory in Iraq" on the back of Australia committing to sending another 70 soldiers into the war zone.

The question remains why John Howard and his team of propagandists have so dramatically changed their tune in the course of just one week.

Perhaps it has something to do with the rumours infecting Britain today that Tony Blair was partly motivated to withdraw almost 1/3 of British troops from Iraq due to expected military action on Iran by the US and/or Israel in the coming months.

A sudden and unexpected announcement by John Howard that he is pulling Australian troops out of Iraq (well before the security situation improves) to deal with events related to "Australia's interest" in island nations to the north of Australia may well be the next big surprise from the prime minister.

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 4

Signs Of The Times, And Stupidity

The anti-Cheney protesters in Sydney have displayed an appalling lack of creativity in their sign-making. There were a few good ones, but not many worth mentioning. I did see two, however, that were kind of startling, for different reasons.

The first was the banner below from a small group protesting John Howard's drastic cuts to university funding across Australia over the past few years. Why were they at a protest rally centred around the Iraq War, Dick Cheney and David Hicks? Presumably they thought there would be a good turnout of teenagers, youth and students in general and presumed it might be a good place to do a little recruiting for their cause. But there were more journalists and photographers than their target audience.

Anyway, who'd want to talk to activists who think a banner like this is a good idea?



The image has been enhanced, but if you can't read it, it says "One More Cut - Howard's Throat!'

Clearly, nutbags who have no idea how to find a middle ground audience for their cause.

The second was this interesting sign about Australian Gitmo detainee David Hicks and Dick Cheney :



Again, the image has been enhanced. It reads : "Hicks And Cheney - A Fine Pair Of Dangerous Warmongers."

Certainly this was the most interesting sign at a protest focused around Dick Cheney and the Iraq War, and the five year long detention without charge or trial of David Hicks.

Clearly the sign-maker believe that Hicks and Cheney are both dangerous warmongers, but is this a counter-protest sign, or just dipping the toe in both ponds?

The Cheney & Hicks sign certainly got some very interesting, and troubled, looks from other protesters.

It exposes one of the great ironies of an anti-war protest taking the side of David Hicks. He was a man who wanted to go to war, and did so at least twice, in the Kosovo conflict and in Kashmir. He relished firearms and weaponry and wrote letters to his parents where he described the joy he got from discharging a rifle at his perceived enemy.

How can you be anti-war but support the freedom of a man who is expected to be eventually tried for war-related crimes, according to US prosecutors?

David Hicks has been tortured by the US, held in solitary confinement, deprived of his human rights and used as a political football by the Australian government, and no doubt has proved valuable as a deterrent to other young Australians who may have contemplated joining the jihad in Iraq.

But David Hicks, like Dick Cheney, was no pacifist.

The 'War on Terror' has produced endless ironies, including the fact that a war aimed at stopping terror has led instead to a massive increase in the use of terrorism as a tactic, and the horrors of more than 200,000 dead Iraqis has helped to radicalise millions of Muslims in the process, which is expected to lead to an even greater increase in acts of explosive terrorism for years, if not decades, to come.

The irony of a crowd of anti-war protesters chanting for the release, without trial, of a pro-war Australian is but the latest example of the hypocrisy and duality the 'War on Terror' has generated. On all sides.

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 3

On The Inside Of A "Violent" Protest

Breaking Down The Numbers

Story And Photos By Darryl Mason



There was the usual chanting, singing, applauding, angry speech-making through dodgy crackling sound systems. There were the hand-drawn signs and glossy 'No War' placards bearing the names of political parties. There were the tables covered with Chomsky, Pilger and Che biographies and clipboards of anti-war, anti-bombs, anti-Bush petitions.

There were a spattering of ferals, a handful of professional agitators, a bushel of politically inspired uni students and a few dozen middle-aged to elderly people who wanted Cheney to "Go Home!" and to "Free David Hicks!"

The mostly peaceful protest next to Sydney's Town Hall earlier today, held four hours before US Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Australia, certainly didn't seem to have the makings of Big Trouble.

And there wasn't Big Trouble. Far from it.

Until the MC told the crowd police had refused permission for them to march through the city and declared it was "up to youse" whether or not they wanted to defy the police and "March On!"

The police, by this time, were standing in double-strength lines between the crowd and George Street, filled with early evening commuter traffic.

A few cheers of defiance went up, and the police edged closer.

Then it was on. Kind of. Less than fifty of the protesters decided it was time for some push-me/push-you action. The police never seemed overly concerned. It was basically some 'real-time' training for the riot squad, and a chance for the eight mounted police (all female for some reason) to practice their co-ordinated line up, pull back, line up again equestrian maneuvers.

"I like the protests because you get to see these beautiful horses," said some woman in her 80s, waving a little flag that told us the only thing right about Dick Cheney was his first name.

The police had the few dozen argy-bargy protesters squeezed up against the low sandstone wall of the Town Hall, and just about every goose who decided to shove a cop or shout in his face wound up in the back of the lined up police vans that filled one lane of the busy road.

The action wasn't going off enough for one TV cameraman, so he jostled the camera himself, turning it at sharp angles as he shot the pushing and shoving action. You'd have thought he was riding a rollercoaster while copping a beating from a rugby team. Hilarious. It always looks like those cameramen must have have been neck-deep in the action, risking their lives to get the wild footage that makes the blood run a little faster. Well not this time.

And then there was the freelance photographer who didn't think there was enough action, in amongst the big squeeze, so he shoved one of the protesters trying to get out of the thick of it straight into the wall of cops (or so it appeared from my angle). The cops grabbed this guy, put him down and dragged him protesting loudly to the van. The photographer got the photos he needed.




At one point of the push and shove, if you added together the number of police and riot squad and photographers and network news camera people, you'd get a figure way above that of those actually engaging in this useful act of defiance.

I say 'useful' because it did prove very useful, indeed.

Useful for all those Jerry Bruckheimer-speed flash video edits for the news breaks, as well as producing some gritty images of raging ferals getting in cops faces for newspaper front pages.

Actually, the most aggressive yelling I witnessed came from this couple below :



From what I could gather, they weren't actually protesting and were only passing-by and didn't want to go back and cross George Street twice to get where they wanted to be, a few dozen metres away on the other side of the Town Hall from the Big Squeeze.

They gave that poor young cop a hell of a serve.


Basically, if the protester vs cops push-and-shove didn't happen, and it only lasted a few minutes at that, the only footage the evening news would have had to herald the arrival of Dick Cheney in Australia would have been the absolutely riveting shots of his plane creeping along the landing strip at Sydney airport, in the dark, and the Big Dick himself walking alone down a flight of stairs and stopping to say hello to four people on a wet tarmac.

In the end, 10 protesters were arrested, many confused tourists asked locals "Who is David Hicks?" elderly people got to admire the police horses, the riot squad got some live training minutes under their belt, the media got its mouth-frothing "violent riot" story, and John Howard got the opportunity to blame Cheney-related shutdowns of entire sections of Sydney on a few dozen protesters.

And the protesters did get to have their march in the end.

Once the push-and-shove died down, and those involved caught their breath, the police decided that there were so few people actually wanting to march that they wouldn't need to close the city streets anyway.

The protesters fit quite easily onto the 'footpath' (or sidewalk for our American readers), and then it was down to Martin Place and a bit more yelling, singing and chanting outside the American Consulate.


It's interesting to note that when something close to 500,000 Sydneysiders filled Hyde Park to the brim and flooded the city for blocks in all directions during an anti-war protest in early 2003, the evening news told us there were "tens of thousands."

Today, depending on which news you viewed, there were anything from 250 to 350 "violent" anti-Cheney demonstrators blocking traffic and causing chaos in the heart of downtown Sydney.

I asked one cop what the estimate of protester numbers was.

"Probably close to 500," he said.

"You're kidding," I said. "Are you also counting all the tourists and office workers who just happened to be passing by?"

"It's a crowd," the cop said.

"Do you count cops and riot squads as part of the 500 strong crowd as well?"

The cop laughed.

Television news crews, radio reporters, videographers, photographers and freelance media easily made up 70 to 90 of the people present. There were a good forty to fifty police, another few dozen riot squad officers, and a few dozen more 'crowd co-ordinators' from the local council.

Another 100-150 people there were just onlookers, tourists, officers workers, and people who happened to wander out of the Town Hall station and stopped to see what was going on. None of them were cheering, jeering or holding placards.

If you stripped the 350 (or 500) strong crowd of "Anti-Cheney" protesters down to those who actually turned up to protest, and weren't involved in the organisation of the protest itself, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a number bigger than 80.

And it still made news all the way around the world.

Amazing stuff.

"Violent Protest"?

I've seen more violence in the Seafood Buffet line at the Sydney Casino.

Another protest is set to be held Friday morning when Dick Cheney addresses the Australian-American Alliance at the Shangri-La Hotel in The Rocks.

MORE TO COME....

John Howard One Of The Few Left In The World Cheney Can Rely On To Do As He Demands, Or Begs

Howard Says Don't Blame Cheney For Long Traffic Delays Due To Greenlight Corridor Travel, Blame Protesters

Cheney Protesters Clash With Police

New York Times : "Police Have Attempted To Drive The Anti-War Protests Off The Streets. We Will Not Be Silenced"

Bias Free 'News' Headline : "Cheney Visit Brings Out The Hate In Peaceniks"


Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 1

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 2

How To "Cut And Run" Without "Abandoning Your Mates"

This post was originally published on 'The Road To Surfdom' blog

By Darryl Mason

As expected, the wild and unhinged rantings of John Howard, Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson and Peter Costello regarding the Kevin Rudd plan for pulling Australian troops out of Iraq, is about to bite them back in the worst way.

Tony Blair is but a few hours away from announcing the withdrawal timetable of UK troops from Iraq, with around 1500 to be pulled out within weeks, another few thousand by Christmas and all but a few ‘trainers’ out by the end of 2008.

John Howard’s first comment on the news that Blair was withdrawing troops from Iraq - by his own rhetoric an act of "cutting and running" and "abandoning your mates" - was met with a fear-grinnning “I’ll talk to you guys later” when the media descended.

Yeah, once he sorts out how the hell he’s going to spin his way clear now he and his muck-pack have pre-tagged the British as a bunch of cowards and terrorists appeasers.

Not surpisingly, the British want to focus on training the Iraqi Army up to take care of their own security, and you can expect Tony Blair to announce that such training will take place in Jordan, or Aman, or another neighbour of Iraq.

Of course, this is very much like the plan for Australian troops proposed by Kevin Rudd, and another plan now being considered by the American Democrats.

Despite the bile-drenched spewings of the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, Rudd has made it abundantly clear that he intends to leave Australian troops in place to guard Australian diplomats and visiting corporate executives for as long as necessary, but to shift ‘trainers’ to a neighbouring country to continuing training Iraqi Army units.

Howard recently, and repeatedly, claimed this was as good as abandoning your mates when they need you most, and Downer, Nelson and Costello took the PM’s rhetorical football and ran for the try line, spouting gibberish all the way through the past week.

Downer in particular disgraced himself, and insulted millions of Australians, when he claimed in Parliament that voting for Labor would mean handing victory to the terrorists because an Australian troop withdrawal would follow, and troop withdrawal means “victory” for Al Qaeda and “terrorists” in Iraq, and around the world.

The man is a pathetic moron who continually embarrasses Australia internationally and insults our allies and members of the Australian, British and American military. And he does this repeatedly.


Go Here For The Full Story

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 2

Cheney's Posse Won't Be Forced To Hand Over Their Firearms After Prime Minister Intervenes

US Vice President Dick Cheney is about to arrive in Sydney, and key firearm laws have been over-ridden to allow Cheney's Secret Service army to keep their guns.

The NSW State Government had to rush through new gun laws oh so quietly last Friday so that Cheney could bring his dozens of armed Secret Service agents to Sydney.

Cheney, apparently, threatened to give Sydney the flick if his posse couldn't come to town fully armed.

The super-fast-tracked new firearm laws allow Cheney's Secret Service agents to use their own weapons on Sydney streets to protect the vice president from the thousands of war veterans, doctors, lawyers, teachers, office workers, nurses, homeless people, uni students, children, dogs and confused tourists expected to make up protesting crowds on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

The Howard (federal) government actually had to force through an urgent demand to the NSW government to change the firearm laws at the last minute, when it was revealed Cheney was considering skipping Sydney altogether if his posse couldn't step out on the town armed to their back teeth.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the firearm law amendments were "rushed through specifically for Mr Cheney."

The same specially gazetted gun permits will also be in effect when dozens of world leaders, including President Bush, hit Sydney in September for the Asia-Pacific Economic Convention (APEC).

Previous to last Friday, security details travelling with foreign dignitaries, such as Cheney, were forced to hand over any and all firearms to Australian Customs the moment they stepped arrive in Sydney.

But Cheney's posse can now cruise Sydney with an assortment of firearms and weaponry.

The law would even allow Dick Cheney himself to carry a shotgun, just in case he feels the urge to blow a few seagulls out of the sky.

Not that Cheney is planning to go on a shooting spree, but you never know what mood may strike the vice president.


Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 1 : Sydney Goes Into "Lockdown" Mode

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 3 : Inside The "Violent" Sydney Protest

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 1

Sydney Goes Into Lockdown As Cheney Comes To Town

By Darryl Mason

US Vice President Dick Cheney is jetting towards Sydney as I write this, and the police and Roads & Traffic Authority are rushing to get this place ready for Dick's big visit.

The preparations mostly include locking down entire chunks of the city for most of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, making sure all the necessary surveillance cameras are in working order and co-ordinating with Cheney's huge Secret Service detachment to plan escape routes from the venues where Cheney is holding meetings and giving speeches should anything go explosively wrong.

The authorities have said there is no credible threat against Cheney while he's in Sydney, but then they wouldn't be talking it up even if there was.

Regardless, Big Dick is going to be surrounded by an army of Secret Service agents, undercover detectives, uniformed state and federal police, counter terrorism officers, dog squads and hired on security guards.

How many? One source estimated Cheney may be bringing as many as 50 Secret Service agents to Sydney with him, with more than 300 local police and hundreds more security guards in place to keep protesters well away from the venues where Cheney will be holding court.

Two major protests rallies are planned, for Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

The monster security operation is expected to use up most of the resources of the NSW Police Counter Terrorism Command, the police dog squads, the anti-riot units and and the city-based general police.

How much does it cost to be gifted with a visit from such a widely admired and respected leader of the free world?

Unofficial estimates range from $3 million to $6 million. For four days of Cheney time.

The least the vice president could do is draw the winning tickets at a couple of charity raffles while he's here, but no.

He has more important business to attend to : busting the prime minister's chops over why he will only send a measly 70 more soldiers into Iraq, heaping praise on supplicant journo-
propagandists, listening with utter contempt to the opposition leader, Kevin Rudd's, demands that Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee face justice or be freed, and holding court with Australia's business elite.

Story continues below....

------------------------------------------------

More Blogs By Darryl Mason

Go Here For The Latest Stories From 'The Bird Flu Blog'

Go Here For The Latest Stories From 'The Fourth World War' Blog

Go Here For The Latest Stories From 'The Last Days Of President Bush'

Go Here For The The Latest Stories From 'Your New Reality'

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Major Traffic Problems Expected In Heart Of Sydney For Three Days

You don't often get told to stay the hell out of your own city. But Cheney's coming to town, so the NSW and Federal Police, and the NSW Roads And Traffic Authority have decided to pre-warn Sydneysiders of the vast traffic chaos, gridlock and delays Cheney's visit is expected to cause :

People are warned to avoid the city if they can until Mr Cheney leaves Sydney on Sunday morning.

It's a good thing that protest rallies are being held.

This means that most of the traffic delays and chaos can be blamed on Sydneysiders exercising their democratic rights to express their disgust and horror at the child-heavy carnage the US vice president helped to unleash upon the people of Iraq.

Blaming the protesters for traffic delays means easy avoidance of the fact that the Dick Cheney visit requires entire streets to be shut down, traffic lights locked to green, and side streets searched, cleared and secured so his huge motorcade can whip through the centre of one of the world's busiest cities without experiencing undue delay.

The traffic problems will begin at 5.30pm tomorrow when protesters from the Stop the War Coalition will march from Town Hall and move along George Street.

The protesters will also demonstrate on Friday morning at the Shangri-la Hotel in The Rocks, where Mr Cheney is scheduled to speak to the Australian American Association.

At least three whole streets around Cheney's hotel in The Rocks will be totally closed for three days and nights while Cheney is in town.

The NSW police, burdened with handling most of the nightmarish logistics of closing down, locking down, huge sections of Sydney, regard Cheney as a "high risk dignitary."

Perhaps some of the huge street closures are for the safety of Sydneysiders.

With Cheney in his hotel room, surrounded by dozens of armed Secret Service agents, the vice president might be tempted to start unloading firearms from his hotel room windows at some of the local bird life.

Or lawyer life.

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 2 - Cheney's Posse Allowed To Keep Hand Cannons

MORE TO COME....

Australian Troops Under Fire In Iraq

It is still unclear exactly why the Howard government deems it so necessary to keep details of what has happened to Australian diggers in Iraq away from the public.

While there is an argument to be made for some "classified" status to be put on certain security and operations related details, Howard and his defence minister, Brendan Nelson, could be viewed as hiding the true facts of the Iraq War, as far as Australians are concerned, from the public. Particularly the casualty figures, including an admitted 20 battle related injuries.

As the following story explains, Australian troops in Iraq have fought for their lives against insurgent attacks numerous times. They've been hit by sniper fire and grenade attacks and engaged in full-blown firefights :

In one fight, Diggers were defending their patrol against insurgent positions as a rocket-propelled grenade skidded towards an Australian group that had been under heavy fire.

"The (patrol) was targeted unsuccessfully by an RPG round from a roof top," an ADF message from Iraq to Headquarters Joint Operations Command in Canberra states.

"(It) was also targeted by an RPG round which passed behind the vehicle and bounced off into a vacant area."

More RPGs were fired, as were automatic pistols on a number of flanks as the Australians returned fire, neutralising one building where insurgents were holed up.

In heavy traffic on the deadly roads of Baghdad, Diggers have also been forced to fire on civilian vehicles suspected of being suicide bombers at least nine times.

The exchanges have caused about five deaths including an apparently drunken Iraqi driver, an Iraqi government bodyguard, a US security employee and a soft-drink seller.

Incidents included Australian troops chased and fired on insurgents running along a levee and hiding in a palm forest, after they aimed five mortar rounds towards a Coalition area and an Australian patrol fired on with RPG fire and returned fire, moving through the ambush.

A lone insurgent sniper fired on Australians with an AK-47 from a roof, so they returned fire, and an Australian patrol returning to base was fired on by two mortars and a light machinegun.

Close calls for Australian troops in Iraq came with the territory, Brig. Gus Gilmore said.

"There is no doubt Iraq is a dangerous place, that's why our force protection measures and our training are so important," Brig. Gilmore, back from six months in Iraq, said yesterday.

"Our soldiers are well trained and well equipped and very professional, and that's contributed to our relatively low rate of injuries," Brig. Gilmore said.

"It is important not to understate the risks they face daily."

Brig. Gilmore said major attacks on Australian troops, like the insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades, were to be expected.

"It's just one example of a number of occasions where our troops have found it necessary to repel an attack."

It is a mark of the professionalism of the Australian soldiers that none have been killed in such a hostile environment by insurgents, and civilian casualties, compared to the Americans, resulting from ADF operations are extremely low.

Howard Declared "A National Security Risk"

Kevin Rudd Claims The Iraq War "Is The Single Greatest Security Disaster That Australia Has Seen Since Vietnam"

Prime minister John Howard was clearly shocked when a reporter told him what opposition leader Kevin Rudd had said about him said about him yesterday morning :

"Mr Howard's strategy on Iraq is the greatest single failure of national security policy since Vietnam, and Mr Howard himself represents a national security risk for this country in the future."

"Really?" Howard asked, as a split second of raw terror flashed across his face, followed by a flicker of bulging eyes and a visible flinch.

He couldn't believe it. How dare Rudd say accuse him, the prime minister, one of the closest BushCo allies in the 'War on Terror', of being a threat to national security.

The little bastard.

National security was Howard's territory, not Rudd's. As an issue to divide and conquer his political enemies, national security had been good to Howard. In fact, it had been brilliant. He had used 'National Security' as a security blanket, weapon of mass destruction and blast shield for years.

Now Rudd had claimed 'National Security' as his own by accusing the prime minister of acting in ways that threatened the country's safety, and future.

Rudd didn't retract the controversial claim. He refined it, and repeated it later in the day, with slight variations and greater emphasis :

“Mr Howard is looming as an increasing risk for Australia's long-term national security...Mr Howard can't say that he has learnt any lessons from the Iraq debacle. I think that represents for the future a risk for national security.

“Mr Howard is presiding over the single greatest security disaster that Australia has seen since Vietnam.”

It was a bold, savage and brilliant air strike on Howard, on the same morning that Newspoll revealed Rudd had overtaken the prime minister on virtually every key issue of our time, and had gained ground on Howard's all important 'National Security'.

"Really?" Howard asked the reporter, the disbelief in his eyes so evident he looked like someone shaken awake from a deep, comfortable sleep.

Howard replied to Rudd's accusation with the first thing that popped into his head, and it was miserably hopeless. A mere splutter from the man who had, until only recently, had the most razor-sharp mind-mouth combination in Australian politics.

"I think he's getting a bit full of himself," Howard said.

What kicked off the most brutal exchange of insults seen so far in the unofficial federal election campaign was the announcement that John Howard was about to send 70 extra 'trainers' from the Australian Defence Force to Iraq.

Howard is widely seen as being subservient to the Bush administration over Iraq, and Australian troop deployments, and with US vice president Dick Cheney due here tomorrow, the prime minister had to get in quick to announce the extra troops so it didn't appear that he was caving in to Cheney's demands for more support from Australia in the Iraq War.

Rudd doesn't want to send more troops, or 'trainers', into Iraq. He wants them deployed neighbouring countries, like Jordan, where the Australian troops can more effectively, and safely, get Iraqi soldiers trained up and ready to take over the responsibility of security in their country.

Howard is clearly rattled, not only be the effectiveness of Rudd's attacks, but the steadily increasing public support his plans for the Iraq War and Australia's future are finding with the public.

Rudd's opposition now leads Howard's coalition by a stunning 54 to 46 per cent, according to the latest poll numbers. While Rudd is on the rise, Howard and his government are falling back on last year's numbers, and fast.

When it comes to who the Australian public want to lead the nation, Rudd now leads Howard by a whopping 10 per cent - 47% to 37%.

Rudd's personal approval rating has hit 68 per cent, a 21 year record for an opposition leader.

Rudd and Howard's bloody exchange over the future of Australia's involvement in the Iraq War came after Rudd changed his schedule to follow Howard to Western Australia, where he now shadows the prime minister.

Rudd promised Howard, in an interview two weeks ago, that he was going to "mess with his mind."

The strategy is clearly working.

John Howard not only has to restore confidence in Australian voters that he deserves to become prime minister again, he has to counter Rudd's increasingly effective attacks and rhetoric, and also shake off the growing infection of utter desperation clearly seeping from the pores of senior government ministers like Alexander Downer and Phillip Ruddock.

The arrival of Dick Cheney in Australia is extremely unlikely to boost Howard's numbers. If anything, being seen grinning it up with Cheney is going to foul Howard's numbers even more, and if Cheney makes one wrong move on how he discusses Australia's role in the Iraq War, the public will punish John Howard.

The Australian newspaper ran a bizarre headline yesterday for an editorial discussing the new poll numbers, that showed increasing confidence and belief in the Opposition :

'Rudd Enters Danger Zone.'

Clearly the more accurate headline would have been : 'Howard Enters Loser Zone.'


"John Howard Is In Strife. Real Strife"

Rudd Goes For Howard's Throat As The War Of Words Gets Bloody

Rudd Refuses To Reverse Pledge To Pull All 520 Australian Combat Troops Out Of Iraq

Blogocracy : Howard Is At Odds With The Great Majority Of The Australian People Over Iraq And David Hicks

The David Hicks Hex & Mocking Phillip Ruddock

Originally posted on 'The Road To Surfdom'

By Darryl Mason

It’s not often you get to see a roomful of Australians laughing at the Attorney General, twice, in the space of an hour. And it wasn’t a pretty sight.

No doubt Phillip Ruddock was expecting a particularly uncomfortable afternoon when he went along to the taping of SBS’s Insight forum show debating the American detention of terrorism suspect, and Australian citizen, David Hicks.

You can only imagine Ruddock never expected it to go as bad as it did. How bad?

Absolutely terrible.

Ruddock was given numerous chances to make his case for why the Howard government had not done more, earlier, to pressure the Bush administration into getting the David Hicks military trial underway, or to get him released. But there was nothing new from Ruddock. His talking points were dashed by lawyerly waffle and blame-gaming.

Blame Hick’s defence, blame the other Gitmo inmates who appealed against the earlier, discredited, Supreme Court rejected military trial set-up, and yes, even blame the Americans as well.

Ruddock wasn’t out to save the credibility of the American military trial system now in place. He wasn’t out to save the credibility of the prime minister, or Alexander Downer, or President Bush. Ruddock was there, with his Amnesty International pin in place, to try and rescue the last fading threads of his own credibility. And he failed.

The loudest laugh from the audience, a laugh full of contempt and disbelief, came when Ruddock said the Australian government had never been happy with the time it had taken for Hicks to firstly be charged and then for the military trial rules to be finalised and accepted by the highest court in the United States.

They laughed because they know the Howard government only changed its tune on Hicks once it became clear that his five year long detention, without trial, was the sort of “fair go” issue that could hammer Howard hard at the 2007 federal election. They changed their tune when the polls showing almost 70% of Australians were not happy with Howard on the issue of David Hicks told them they had no choice.

But even worse for Ruddock, his waffly, defensive rhetoric seemed even more cold and empty than usual because David Hick’s dad and his shattered step-mother were sitting only a few seats away. The distress on her face alone made Ruddock’s words seem all but meaningless.
Ruddock looked close to tears himself, on a number of occasions, even though the case against what has happened to David Hicks was argued reasonably, and calmly, by Terry Hicks, former Guantanamo Bay detainees, audience members and Hick’s defence lawyer Major Mori.

It was hardly a gang assault of abuse and shouting aimed at Ruddock, but he still came close to cracking.

He was there to represent the government and his department but he also found himself, as usual, defending the actions of the Bush administration, something he was clearly not happy having to do. But there lies the rub. Ruddock had choice but to try and back up the stance of Bush Co. when it comes to detainees like Hicks. They’re our closest ally, after all. And this is supposed to a war against terrorists, suspected and/or confirmed.

Most in the audience didn’t look particularly angry, just sad, disappointed, worn out by the apparent pettiness of the evidence against Hicks that was raised by his military prosecutor.

Is that it? Is that all they’ve got on this guy?

As terrible as it is that a young Australian went to fight for an outfit as odious as the Taliban, the charges still not formally laid against Hicks, and the case made by the prosecutor (who couldn’t have asked for a more open forum to say whatever he wanted), still don’t add up to enough to make most Australians think Hicks deserves to be held like a rat in a steel box for half a decade.

Let alone be tortured and mind-fucked.

Go Here To Read The Full Story

Treasurer Would Deport Australian Citizens For Not Being Patriotic, If Only He Could

The Australian federal government would love nothing more than to make the coming national election a debate about what it means to be Australian.

It's their favourite non-issue of the moment, and although government minister can usually bag a few minutes of media air time whenever they start spouting off about they categorise as non-Australian behaviour or beliefs, the majority of Australians are more interested in issues the government would rather not have at the forefront of the national agenda - climate change, dwindling water supplies, shocking levels of personal debt, ending the Iraq War, the five year long imprisonment, without charge, of Australian citizen David Hicks in a US isolation centre.

Because they've lost control over setting the subjects of national debate, political figures like the Australian treasurer, Peter Costello, are becoming increasingly sad, divisive and bitter.

Costello has other reasons to be so very sad and so very bitter. Prime minister John Howard had promised Costello, repeatedly, through the early 2000s, that he would hand over the leadership of the coalition government to Costello, but Howard kept changing his mind, deciding to stay on.

The longer Costello feels he has been cheated out of his dream of being gifted the prime ministership of Australia, without having to face an election, the more extreme his rhetoric has become. He can't slam the dishonesty and questionable loyalties of the prime minister, so he continually goes after easy targets : idiotic religious leaders, flag burners, anti-globalisation protestors.

Costello has become the chief bulldog in the fictional, reactionary debate about what it means to be an Australian, and who should, and not be, be allowed to keep their Australian citizenship if they were determined to be, by an undeclared body, acting against the interests of the nation.

I say fictional and reactionary because this debate is one all but created by the government to tamp down the political dreams of Australian Muslims, and to drive wedges into Australia's mostly harmonious and accepting multicultural society.

Now Costello's mind is whirling with plans to deport Australian citizens, even those born here, who he thinks don't past the patriotic muster call.

When he talks about the loyalty of those Asutralians who hold dual citizenships, he doesn't even bother trying to make it sound like he's talking about the hundreds of thousands of Australians who still hold onto their US, Israeli and British passports. For Costello, it's all about those who remain citizens of countries like Egypt and Lebanon.

He is, however, far too cowardly to just come out and say his chief target is Australian Muslims.

"If somebody is an Australian citizen and also, let's say, an Egyptian citizen and that person doesn't support what this country stands for... I think we'd be within our rights to say to that person, well, Australia's not for you..."

But Costello doesn't want to just "say to that person", he wants them gone, and it bothers him greatly that he can't just write up a list of all those he thinks should be deported for being "divisive" and and un-Australian and hand it over to the Immigration Department for fast action.

Costello isn't just talking about dual-citizenship Australians, either. Even those born here, he believes, should be thrown out of the country for not being patriotic enough. He wants to kick them out, but is clearly saddened by the fact that he can't. Well, not yet anyway.

"You get into a difficult situation if they're not dual citizens, because at that point, if you take away Australian citizenship they're not a citizen of anywhere, they've got nowhere to go."

Don't let that stop you, Peter. I'm sure Indonesia would donate one of its unoccupied islands for all those Australians you think should be deported, but can't be because they're not dual citizens and don't have another homeland to be sent back to.

Costello likes to harp on about Australians who still hold citizenship in countries like Egypt and Lebanon. But he never mentions the fact that the vast majority of Australia's dual citizens hold secondary citizenship in the US, the UK or Israel.

He doesn't like flag burners, either. In fact, they make him "sick to my stomach." But again, he doesn't want to make the act of burning the Australian flag illegal because he's afraid that those convicted would become "martyrs".

Costello clearly doesn't view the flag-burning non-issue through the prism of freedom of speech, or one of the rights inherent in a free society, no matter how distasteful the burning of the national flag may be.

To him, it's all about loyalty to Australia. Which is in itself a hypocritical argument to make, as long as Australia remains part of the British Commonwealth, and has the Union Jack eating up one quarter of our flag.

How you can be 100% loyal and patriotic to a country that still has a foreign queen as the official head of state?

You'll know Costello is being serious about his calls for dual citizens to show their loyalty to this nation when he starts calling for those Australians who still hold British, American and Israeli passports, along with those holding Lebanese and Egyptian passports, to give them up and drop their dual citizenship.

Until he makes this call, Costello is being a divisive and hysterical hypocrite.

But then, that is the kind of behaviour that gets him the most media attention.

Youth Drops Pot Habit In Australia

3 Out Of 4 Australians View Smoking Cannabis As "Dangerous"

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Australia was amongst the highest ranked nations in the world for cannabis use amongst its teenagers. Remarkably, in one period during the late 1990s, Australian youth smoked cannabis more regularly than similar age groups in Amsterdam, where cannabis was legally allowed to be grown and consumed in coffee shops

During that period, there was a brazen and open dope culture in Australian cities like Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, with an entire community in the far north of New South Wales that regarded cannabis farming and sales as its primary industry.

T-shirts bearing pot icons like Cheech & Chong and Bob Marley were extremely popular in the suburbs and inner cities, as were images of the Pope John Paul II smoking a huge scud (clearly altered imagery) and in Sydney's outer west, at least, it was considered by some that the epitome of true wit was to wear a t-shirt showing Hitler giving the fascist salute with the tag line "My Plants Are This High!"

Back then, the marijuana leaf was an icon, to be found hand-drawn on school bags, tattooed onto upper arms, emblazoned across caps, jeans, t-shirts and jackets. Whole suburbs were blighted with marijuana leaf graffiti and bongs, stash boxes and joint rollers jostled for space in tobacco store display cases in shopping malls.

But a new report claims that a widely stoned Australian youth populace is a fading reality in the mid-2000s. In short, smoking a joint just ain't considered "cool" any more.

According to this study by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre one third of youth regard cannabis use as "socially unfashionable", in much the same way that cigarette smoking no longer holds the social cache it clearly once did.

"Clearly, it's not as acceptable as it once was to be stoned," said Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the centre at the University of NSW.

But the study survey also revealed that half of all Australians under 30 knew friends who smoked cannabis. The disparity between the public image of cannabis use and the numbers still using it are obviously great.

What the study seems to reveal, primarily, is that a few years worth of media stories and federal government fear campaigns about the mental health related problems associated with regular, or heavy, cannabis use has transformed the way Australians now view the drug previously, and widely, regarded as "mostly harmless".

Of the 1500 adult Australians surveyed, three in four felt smoking dope was dangerous or very dangerous, and half thought it could trigger schizophrenia or anxiety disorders.

About 40 per cent believed marijuana was always addictive, and one in five believed it was always a gateway to harder drugs. Sixty-eight per cent thought cannabis use could lead to other crimes.

"In the 1970s the people who got stoned were cool but now younger people just see a gang of guys who sit around smoking a bong, eating a pizza and watching television," Mr Dillon said.

"There's a general perception they're just 'stoners' and that's a real change."

Dillon also credits school education programs for the raised awareness amongst youth of cannabis' more troubling side effects, while federal government spokesmen prefer to credit their murky, troubled-youth advertising blitzes for the vast cultural shift.

From abc.net.au :

"We're not focusing on the long-term health effects or even necessarily the psychological effects, we're looking more at the social impacts, the way that it will affect your relationship, how will it affect your financial situation - these are the things young people really relate to," (Mr Dillon) said.

"I think we've done a pretty good job of educating, particularly young people, that getting stoned is not a particularly fun thing to do," he said.

While the public at large believes cannabis to be far more dangerous, and less socially acceptable, than they once did, there is little support for those busted with cannabis to face courts. 60% of those surveyed said people busted for cannabis use or possession "should be referred to treatment programs" instead.

The report's only bad news, said Mr Dillon, was that many beliefs people had about cannabis - like the fact it leads to harder drug use - were actually incorrect.

"Cannabis seems to polarise people which gives off a black and white impression of the drug," he said.

"It's spoken of as either God's sweet nectar or the devil's own weed but in reality it's something in between.

It should also be noted that the cannabis in wide use around Australia at the moment is extraordinarily strong compared to that of the early 1990s. And compared to the strains of the 1970s, it may as well be another drug altogether.

The increased strength of today's cannabis is due to high-volume, maximum-yield production methods associated with the mostly hydroponic crops, and the cross-breeding of extremely powerful European strains of the plant.

The strength of this generation of hydroponic cannabis has all but forced the much weaker, more naturally grown New Guinea and Indonesian strains out of the marketplace.

For a teenager smoking his or her first joint, and expecting a mellow, relaxed effect, with lots of giggling, hooking into a joint packed with THC-drenched hydroponic pot is like the difference between drinking a beer and a tall glass of vodka.

The overpowering, sometimes frightening effects of very strong hydroponic cannabis in itself must add to the current negativity surrounding the drug.

For, it seems, as cannabis in Australia has grown stronger and stronger, since the 1970s, its acceptance as a social drug of no great impact or consequence has, correspondingly, changed as well.

Think Your Performance Car Can Outrun The Cops?

Think Again



This is definitely one of the more interesting 'alternative' policing methods tried in the suburbs of Sydney in recent years.

The car company Lotus has donated the above vehicle to Bankstown police on a "long term loan" basis.

It's good for all involved. Lotus gets some top-notch publicity, the cops not only get to cruise around in what must be the best looking police car on the planet, but they also have an excellent way of getting the local car enthusiasts to come over for a chat.

To top it off, the Lotus Exige is leaner and greener than the meaty V8s most police in NSW are currently using.

Gizmag has an excellent, very detailed story, well worth checking out on the Lotus Exige, and the Bankstown police's plans for the vehicle. Here's some highlights :

The lightweight, high performance Lotus Exige sports car will be used by Bankstown Local Area Command for a number of community policing roles over the next six months, including most importantly, helping to build better relations between police and local performance car enthusiasts and youth.

The Lotus also boasts significantly better fuel economy than conventional V8 and turbocharged six cylinder Highway Patrol cars and will bring a new green hue to the command’s vehicle fleet.

Being almost half the weight and with an engine that is less than a third the size of traditional Highway Patrol sedans the Exige is significantly kinder on the environment consuming on average around five litres less fuel per 100km while still being able to accelerate from 0 to 100km/h up to 30 percent faster than the big V8s.

“The Lotus Exige will help break down barriers between our officers and youth in the area, it gives them a discussion point and a way of breaking the ice,” said Superintendent Dave Darcy.

“We have a large proportion of car enthusiasts in the area and it is a challenge to influence them to drive safely. Whilst its easy to give this group tickets to slow them down we would prefer to influence young drivers to take care on the roads."

I think the Bankstown cops better make it clear to the local rev heads that the Lotus isn't on the roads for high speed pursuit.

For some, the temptation to try and outrun this super cop car could prove too much to resist.