Is This How The Flu Pandemic Begins?

Virulent Flu Epidemic Fills Australian Hospitals


UPDATE : ABC News Australia has reported this evening that a 29 year old woman and her five year old child have died from suspected bird flu in Bali in the past week. A two year old girl, from the same small Balinese village, has been hospitalised with bird flu symptoms.

A two year old Sydney boy is believed to be the latest victim of the deadly Influenza A virus.

Below is one of the absolute nightmare scenarios for the hundreds of doctors, scientists and medical specialists in Australia who've spent the past three years preparing for an influenza pandemic in Australia :

An Indonesian travels to Bali for holidays, or business. They feel a bit under the weather on the short flight to Bali, but not enough to visit a doctor, or a hospital, when they arrive in Denpasar.

Within days of arriving in Bali, they fall seriously ill, high fever, lungs rapidly filling with fluid. By the time they get to a hospital, it's too late. The next morning, the person is dead. Tests confirm that the person died from the bird flu virus, and the media carries stories about huge numbers of chickens dying from the virus in the dead Indonesian's hometown.

In the three or four days before the person died in Bali, they moved through dense, tourist packed beachside suburbs, like Kuta, coming into contact with people from all over the world.
One of those tourists was a young Australian from Queensland.

Before he left for his holiday, the Australian had been feeling terrible, like many of his friends and co-workers, he had been struck down by a particularly virulent influenza virus. Not wanting to cancel his holiday, and miss all the fun, he loaded up on Codrals and made his flight. In Kuta, still feeling rundown and bone sore from the influenza, the Australia walks past the H5N1-infected Indonesian, who sneezes in the Australian's vicinity.

The Australian tourist inhales some of the sneeze cloud of H5N1-dusted moisture from the Indonesian. Inside the Australian's lungs, or in his throat, the H5N1 virus meets Influenza A. They breed, they mutate, they swap genes, becoming an easily transmissible version of the bird flu virus.

On the flight home, after a week's holiday in Bali, the Australian is feeling really, really sick. He just wants to get home and get to bed. He sneezes on the plane, into his hands, then staggers to the toilet, touching seats and surfaces along the way, looking for privacy to give his nose a good blow.

Other passengers heading to Australia breathe in his bird flu-infected sneeze droplets, or touch the same chairs and surfaces that he touched, leaving behind the virulent virus which can now survive outside the human body for hours, perhaps even days.

Other passengers rub their tired eyes, after touching the seats the sick tourist touched, and the bird flu virus infects them, too.

When the plane from Bali arrives back in Sydney, the passengers split up for flights on to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, the United States, England, Germany. Dozens of people on the flight picked up the H5N1-Influenza A hybrid virus and will be sick, and close to death, within days. But before they are sick enough to require isolation, or treatment with anti-virals, they will each come into vicinity or personal contact with hundreds of people. The now easily transmissible bird flu virus spreads across the world.

Back in Australia, the human bird flu pandemic is already underway. Within 10 days, a few dozen will have died from the virus. Within a month, the fatalities will top a few hundred. Within two months, a few thousand. By the time, the deadly viral spread is called a pandemic, tens of thousands of Australians have become infected, if not hundreds of thousands.

That's the kind of realistic 'what if?' scenarios that helped to shape the planned response by federal and state government and health agencies to potential human bird flu infections in Australia, and what steps would be taken to contain the spread of H5N1, and to disable as much as possible the growth of a bird flu pandemic.

Here's a round-up of news relating to the above, from today's headlines :

Australian health officials are on the alert amid fears a fatal strain of bird flu may have spread to Bali, after the deaths of a woman and her daughter on the holiday island.

Doctors are awaiting results of tests on a woman and her daughter, who are believed to have been killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus on the Indonesian resort island.

In Australia, a spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Health and Ageing said the "situation is being closely monitored".

From Reuters :

Samples from an Indonesian woman who died on Sunday on the resort island of Bali have tested positive for bird flu after an initial test, officials said on Monday.

A second laboratory test, which is now being conducted, is necessary to confirm the initial findings, Joko Suyono of the health ministry's bird flu centre said.

The woman, 29, from a village in the district of Jembrana in western Bali, was suffering from a high fever before dying of multiple organ failure, said Ken Wirasandi, a doctor at the Sanglah hospital in the Balinese capital Denpasar.

Suyono said there had been sick chickens around the woman's house and many had died suddenly in recent weeks.

"The villagers didn't burn the carcasses. Instead they buried them or fed them to pigs," Suyono added.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus.

The woman had started showing symptoms more than a week ago, but was only admitted to hospital six days later.

From the Courier Mail, under the headline 'Killer Flu Claims Another Two Lives' :

Another two adults, both in their 30s and both from Queensland, have died after developing flu-like symptoms.

Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young will hold a news conference at 3.30pm.

The deaths follow those of a four-year-old boy and 37-year-old father-of-three Glen Kindness in Queensland in the past two weeks after they developed influenza A.

Premier Peter Beattie said today the Queensland Government would make its stockpile of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu available to ensure everyone who needed the drug would have access to it.

The Premier said he would be asking Prime Minister John Howard to follow Queensland's lead to provide stocks of Tamiflu from the national stockpile to residents of aged homes.

Releasing Tamiflu to cope with an Influenza A epidemic is not unusual, but because the threat of a bird flu pandemic is so real, and so possibly devastating, there is a reluctance to use limited stocks of anti-virals to fight the yearly outbreaks of influenza.

Mr Beattie may be acting with caution, fearing further deaths, or he may be aware of information not yet made public, from which he shaped his decision to dig into the Tamiflu stockpile and to ask the prime minister to do the same.

While the latest deaths of children and people under 40 years old from Influenza A are making headlines, the media has dropped all references to the already high death toll the influenza epidemic has clocked up so far, as this report from July 22, in Sydney's Daily Telegraph details :

AT least 150 elderly Sydneysiders have died from the most serious flu outbreak to hit the city in four years. The victims have all died this month after suffering complications, mainly pneumonia, caused by the influenza A virus, a Health Department report reveals.

Babies and young children have also been hard hit. Hundreds have required specialist treatment in hospitals.

Although the elderly are particularly at risk in winter, he said the full extent of cases was not known as many people did not seek medical treatment for the influenza A virus.

At Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick, the number of youngsters at the emergency department with viral infections has soared by 200 per cent compared to last year.

Respiratory illnesses have risen by 70 per cent.

Doctors in Sydney held an urgent teleconference with West Australian colleagues last week following the death of a fourth child there.

So severe and prevalent are the cases of influenza A and bronchiolitis that babies such as seriously ill Liam Wolthers had to be placed in an adolescent ward until a bed became available at the Randwick hospital.

What began as a runny nose quickly escalated to breathing difficulties. He was rushed to hospital where he required oxygen for six days.

Dr Adam Jaffe, head of the respiratory department at Sydney Children's Hospital, said there had been a peak in cases of bronchiolitis and viral pneumonias compared to previous years.

In WA, doctors are desperately trying to discover the reasons behind the four child deaths.

The media is now focusing primarily on the deaths of children from Influenza A. Why have they dropped all references to the figure cited above of more than the 150 elderly people who have died in the past few months?

MORE TO COME...


Balinese Believed To Have Fed H5N1 Infected Chickens To Pigs - Bird Flu Experts Horrified

Go Here For The Latest News From The Bird Flu Blog

Australia Prepares To Withdraw Troops From Iraq

Howard Tries To Blackmail Maliki Government

Pass Contentious Oil Law Now So Australian Energy Giants Can Feast On Iraq's Oil-Rich Future

Facing political obliteration at the November federal elections, prime minister John Howard is preparing the Australian public, and the media, for an announcement, within weeks, that Australia will withdraw most of its combat troops from Iraq in the first half of 2008. After the election.

John Howard spoke with US president George W. Bush during the week and apparently got the okay to begin talking up an Australian troop withdrawal.

The conditions for Australian troops to stay on in Iraq are impossible for the Maliki government to achieve and Howard knows it :

"...prompt, concrete measures are needed not only to secure Iraq's future, but also to ensure regional stability and continued constructive international engagement".

The opening sentences in the story published in today's issue of 'The Australian' are remarkable for displaying the utter disrespect and contempt with which Howard now views the democratically elected government of Iraq. The threatening nature of Howard's letter to Maliki is clear :

John Howard has demanded the Iraqi Government make faster progress towards resolving the country's political differences...

In the letter, Mr Howard urges Mr Maliki to move decisively on political reconciliation within Iraq, and outlines a number of measures he should take.

Naturally fast-tracking the vastly unpopular new Oil Law is one of the chief "measures" Howard demands Maliki get sorted. Now. Or face troop withdrawals. It's almost blackmail.

If the Maliki government actually cared.

Iraqi government ministers who don't laugh out loud at this will just be insulted.

Prime Minister Maliki and senior ministers of his government said earlier this year that Australian troops were not essential to Iraq's security, and they could be withdrawn at any time.

While the Oil Law is meant to see a greater sharing of the pre-war level oil revenues amongst the majority Shia, the Kurds and Sunnis, it will also allow great swathes of Iraq's oil infrastructure to be handed over to foreign-owned oil corporations, including Australian oil giants, whose investment is needed to repair all those pipelines and refineries handily targeted by insurgents, or outside agents, and degraded by almost a decade of crippling sanctions.

Sanctions that were backed heartily by the Howard government, while simultaneously turning many blind eyes to the shockingly corrupt bribes worth hundreds of millions of dollars handed over to Saddam Hussein by the Australian Wheat Board from the late 1990s up until just before the invasion and occupation of Iraq began.

Howard's letter "demands" Maliki get his political shit together. The "demands" are mostly for the benefit of his Australian audience. Which is why the supposedly "Top Secret" letter from Howard to Maliki was leaked to The Australian's Greg Sheridan.

From Sheridan's story :

The top-secret letter was transmitted electronically to the Australian embassy in Baghdad and hand-delivered to Mr Maliki's office by the Australian ambassador to Iraq, Mark Innes Brown. The hard copy was later sent in a secure diplomatic bag.

So how did Greg Sheridan get his hands on it? Did he crack the electronic encryption of a diplomatic cable? Or did he run a pen scanner over the letter before it was tossed into the embassy mail bag?

Sheridan recently shed his last claims to credibility when he wrote lengthy, swirly tributes in his newspaper for disgraced NeoCon warpigs Paul Wolfowitz and 'Scooter' Libby. Naturally, he forgot to mention the extent of Wolfowitz and Libby's lies and propaganda in the pre-Iraq war hard sell period.

Sheridan is still good, however, for launching election-positive propaganda campaigns on behalf of his good friends John Howard and Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer.


Of course, Howard will likely choose to announce his new "cut and run" policy before the election, with the proviso that "events on the ground" in Iraq would determine the actual date for the troop withdrawals to begin. This would allow Howard to say before the election that he is withdrawing combat forces from Iraq, quelling another massive voter negative, and then change his mind and keep the troops in Iraq, by claiming security needs demand the troops to remain, if he somehow manages to win the election.

The proviso in Howard's own words :

"Our military commitment (is based) not on a timetable but on security conditions and capabilities of the Iraqi security forces."

But it's not all grim. Howard tried for some outright humour in the Maliki letter. Minus the irony :

Mr Howard warns that if the Iraqis fail to make progress, the public support for Australia's military deployment to Iraq may not be sustainable.

Some 70% of Australians opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and more than one million Australians marched against the war in hundreds of events around the nation. More than 500,000 people filled Sydney's centre during a march in February, 2003, and in some small Australian towns, more than two-thirds of the entire population turned out for anti-war rallies.

Howard responded to the unity of the Australian public's demands for a non-violent approach to the problems in iraq, and the involvement of thousands of World War 2, Korea and Vietnam war veterans in the marches, by claiming they all were giving "aid and comfort" to Saddam Hussein.

The same dictator who, as we noted above, was being propped up at the time by the delivery of duffel bags from Australians stuffed with millions of dollars in cash, that Howard somehow didn't bother to notice, even though diplomatic and military phone lines ran hot for years with the news that the Howard government was allowing Saddam Hussein to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes. Dozens of memos and letters warning him of the AWB bribery corruption crossed Howard's desk. He claims he saw not one such letter or memo.


There are other factors figuring into Howard's decision to withdraw Australian troops. They are needed back home to deal with local problems, primarily.

East Timor, where the Fretilin party won the majority of votes, but was stripped of its parliamentary power by a UN-backed presidential appointment, looks set to spend 2008 struggling with a low-level insurgency. Australia has to provide security in order to gets its big fat slice of East Timor's oil and gas reserves, despite the fact that the East Timorese people are some of the poorest in the world. If Australia doesn't provide security, no billions in oil and gas revenue will come our way.

Also, by mid-2008, the NeoCon propaganda campaign to rally support for attacks on Iran will have reached its climax, with strikes on Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure looking more likely by the week. If Australian troops are in Iraq when US-Israel strikes on Iran commence, they will become key targets of Shia militias and terrorists.

By admitting that he fears Australian will vote him out of office over the Iraq War, Howard has acknowledged that he really does use the Australian military like political pawns, and is prepared to "cut and run" and "abandon Iraq to terrorists" - to quote foreign minister Alexander Downer.


In recent months, Howard has been forced to limit his media-heavy tours of Australian military facilities due to growing disapproval and dissent amongst both senior and junior ranks. The rumour runs in a number of military family heavy communities that some army bases have refused, outright, to provide meet-and-greet walls of green for Howard during the election campaign. If he wants to visit, fine, but no media in tow.

Some 1500 Australian soldiers are now in Iraq, including 500 combat troops.

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has already committed to withdrawing Australia's combat troops, and states the Labor position clearly on a recently launched website :

...we want a phased withdrawal of our combat troops from southern Iraq, in consultation with our allies and the Iraqi government. This would be part of a broader diplomatic effort to urge opposing Iraqi factions to resolve their political differences and end the civil war.

In conjunction with Howard's plans to announce "phased" troop withdrawals from Iraq, expect to see the spread of a new soft propaganda campaign from Howard, his ministers and his media supplicants on why Iraq has gone to hell :

"It's all Iran's fault."


Naturally, this will echo the current BushCo. and NeoCon anti-Iran propaganda campaigns. President Bush's office has probably already e-mailed the list of talking points to Howard and Downer. Who will, of course, then pass them onto handy journalists like Greg Sheridan at The Australian.


John Howard Finally Admits Iraq Was A War For Oil

Alexander Downer Hit Up Washington And Baghdad For BHP Iraq Oil Riches Only Weeks After Iraq War Began

Dec. 2006 : Stunning Drop In Australians' Support For Iraq War - Half Demand Troop Fast Troop Withdrawal

January 2007 : War Weary Nation Ready To Drive Howard From Office Over Iraq

Howard's $200 Million War On The Internet

Porn, Violence, 'Terror' And Social Networking Sites In Firing Line

Prime Minister John Howard has announced a war to "clean up" the internet. With a proposed budget of almost $200 million, and plenty more to come, Howard's internet war will be one of the most expensive programs in the world to filter, censor and screen internet users and content.

Howard used an internet-televised speech to some 100,000 Christians to launch his war, claiming he wanted to help parents to protect their children from unseemly content and online predators.

Oh, and he also wants to block and/or ban "terror" and "violent" websites :

Every Australian family will be provided with a free internet filter and the federal Government will enter an unprecedented partnership with service providers to filter pornography at the source. Communications and Australian Federal Police resources will be boosted immediately to expand checks on internet chat rooms to detect child predators, and privacy laws masking sex offenders on the net will be altered.

Last night, as Mr Howard talked about Christianity and family values, he revealed the government plan to upgrade the protection for families from internet pornography, violence and sexual predators.

As well as practical tools to help families put internet pornography beyond the reach of children, the Government will form partnerships with leading computer providers in upgraded steps to block porn sites and detect predators using popular websites such as MySpace and Facebook to contact children.

Of the $189 million, $43million will be provided immediately to double the size of the online child sex exploitation branch of the AFP and establish a working group to find ways of getting around privacy laws that protect sexual predators.

A "black list" drawn up by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which covers Australia-based pornographic and terror sites, will be expanded internationally after consultation with the Attorney-General. The AMCA will also receive 14 additional internet regulators.

Behind the clearly good intentions of stopping online predators and children from being exposed to pornography and violence, there will likely be second and third waves of content control connected to Howard's war on the internet.

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More blogs by Darryl Mason

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The Howard government's plans to roll out broadband across the nation provides them with the opportunity to do what China, Iran and other countries have tried to do : block content they don't like, or that they deem dangerous, or threatening, or even too dissenting.

The Australian anti-terrorism laws has already led to the banning of books and DVDs that are claimed by the Attorney General, Philip Ruddock, to "glorify" and advocate terrorism.

That the Howard government wants to do the same across all internet content reaching Australians is hardly a secret.

But the definitions of what constitutes 'terror' or 'glorification' of violence are broad and open to vast interpretation.

The Tamil Tigers and Hamas are classed as 'terrorist' groups by the Australian government. But does that mean Australians would be blocked from reading their press releases online, or visiting their websites?

Columnist Tim Blair's blog has allowed thousands of comments from readers, over the past three years, discussing ways they think politicians, community leaders and even actors and musicians and Muslim taxi drivers should, could or can be killed and tortured. Would the blog of Tim Blair, opinion editor for the Daily Telegraph, fall under such anti-violence, anti-intolerance and anti-terror related bans on internet content?

Or would it just be those of Islamic extremists discussing terror and violence?

Would future bans on religious intolerance or 'hate speech', both of which the Howard government are considering, apply to all religions?

Or what about the blog of Herald Sun opinionist Andrew Bolt?

In a post today about a New York Times blog where readers were invited to concoct terror attack scenarios on America, Bolt's commenters said the New York Times should be bombed or that journalists should be killed. Clearly such comments are said in jest, but could they also be deemed to be advocating both violence and terrorism? Would Andrew Bolt's blog then be subjected to filtering regimes and bans on its content, and comments?

We also covered the New York Times blog on thinking up terror attacks on the United States over at Your New Reality. Would the New York Times blog post, and Australian websites discussing such a post and open discussion among commenters fall under anti-terror and anti-violence censorship and content control?

To take but one example of successful historical terrorism, the Zionist Irgun group launched dozens of terror attacks on Arab civilians, and army bases and hotels filled with British nationals in Palestine in the late 1930s and the 1940s, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent people. There are numerous websites that openly praise the Irgun terrorism that helped lead to the establishment of the state of Israel. Would such websites be blocked from the eyes of Australian internet users because they glorify and justify the use of terrorism?

Or will bans and blocks only apply to groups advocating and justifying terrorism in the current 'War on Terror'? And what about state-sponsored terrorism?

As with any censorship, particularly censorship of new media, the slippery slope is easy and tempting to climb onto, particularly under the positive auspices of blocking online predators and children's exposure to pornography. When told technology exists to control and censor internet content, control freaks like John Howard are easily tempted.

But once the 'Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?' argument has been used to break down public objections, where do such controls on content, and outright censorship, stop?


'Terror' Books, Video Games And Movies To Be Banned Under Extraordinary New Censorship Law

Books, Movies, Videos Games That Glorify War Won't Face Ban Under New Censorship Laws

Downer Rattled By 17 Year Old's Questions On Climate Change

Aggressive Politician Verbally Attacks Teenager


You can read a blog here to learn more about the Australia-Korea Energy Forum, which brought together Australian and Korean students to talk climate strategy, and saw them visiting Kakadu, and the Ranger Uranium mine, amongst their many adventures. They then winged it back to Canberra for the Talkback Classroom debate, which resulted in Alexander Downer making a complete fool of himself, and allegedly directing unsavoury comments towards the Korean students and the insistent questioner Alex Meekin.

Climate classroom debater, and student, Tina Pahlman explains what happened during the 'Alexander Downer Incident' :

...we didn't ask everything we wanted to and Mr Downer tended to speak far too much on things other then our direct questions----we never mastered the cut in technique...but all in all I think the audience was engaged we had Downer on the edge of his seat and we raised some important issues...

What a sad, pathetic man Alexander Downer is.

From news.com.au :

Age is no protection when Alexander Downer is in a combative mood.

ACT student Alex Meekin got a taste for the thrust and parry of political life when he took the foreign minister to task over climate change during a session of Talkback Classroom at the National Museum of Australia today.

The Narrabundah College student was part of a panel grilling Mr Downer on energy and raised the minister's ire on a number of issues.

Mr Downer at first batted the tricky questions away, diplomatically sidestepping whether he agreed with climate change sceptics in the Government like Finance Minister Nick Minchin.

Mr Downer's tolerance started to slip when the 17-year-old asked about the moral imperative involved in addressing climate change, suggesting there had been similar economic arguments against ending slavery 200 years ago.

"We're not trying to have some sort of polemic debate," the minister said.

...when Alex questioned whether Australia could have much impact given its refusal to ratify Kyoto, Mr Downer hit back: "It sounds like your questions come from a familiar source".

"A source I'm very familiar with, I'd say they've written them well for you," the minister said, suggesting he thought the questions were supplied by Labor.

Talkback classroom producer Stephen Cutting said the students had been briefed by a variety of sources, including Mr Downer's office, Labor, the federal parliamentary library, business and industry.

"I think comments like that underline the effectiveness of how these kids learn the issues, they've met with many experts, they've been briefed by everybody including Mr Downer's own office," he said.

Downer refused to answer genuine questions from concerned teenagers. Teenagers concerned about how climate change will impact on their lives and the lives of their future children. They wanted to know if Downer's government are really committed to trying to control the growth of global warming. They wanted to know if Downer, as foreign minister, accepted the reality of climate change.

The students wanted straight answers, but Downer refused to answer. He didn't "bat" the questions away. He refused to answer them.

Instead, Downer tried to smear a 17 year old as a Labor stooge, and accused him of not writing his own questions.

Downer owes Alex Meekin, and the other students, an apology. And he still owes them truthful answers to their very valid questions.

So just how paranoid is Alexander Downer these days? Utterly.

Few Australians know how widely disrespected Alexander Downer is on the world diplomatic stage. Particularly in Asia. Diplomats can often be seen rolling their eyes or laughing to themselves when Downer enters a room. Others visibly tense up in his presence, or grit their teeth in grim smiles.

Downer is widely viewed as rude, impertinent and absolutely arrogant. He bullies Pacific nation leaders, and dismisses the concerns of Central and South East Asian leaders over Australia's involvement in the BushCo. missile defence shield, all the while demanding they do more to "fight terror".

Prime minister John Howard is not the only Liberal federal politician now shifting into meltdown mode after seven months of appalling polls. Downer has become a snow man in the sunlight.

Downer's woeful performance at the students' debate is another in a long string of embarrassing public spectacles, including his recent appearance on Lateline, where he was clearly drunk, slurring, and repeating himself.

Really, what sort of federal politician can't take a few hard questions from a 17 year old student without starting to whine, sulk and then go on the attack?

The sort of politician that is increasingly sad and pathetic and knows he will soon lose his job.

The sort of politician that is Alexander Downer.

There will be many a loud cheer sounding in embassies and parliaments across South East Asia when they learn, after the election, that they no longer have to tolerate Downer in order to keep up good relations with Australia.


Downer On Lateline : Drunk, Slurring, Repeating Himself

December, 2006 : Downer Expresses 'Sympathy', Then Urges Fijians To Stage Resistance Against Well-Armed Military

Downer Okays Uranium Sales To India - Formation Of Asia Pacific Alliance To Contain China Moves Closer To Reality

Downer And Howard Spattered By 'The Blood Of Iraqis' In Cartoonist's Christmas Card

The Final Nail In Howard's Political Coffin

Interest Rates Hit 10 Year High

Journalists Laugh At Howard's Excuses During Press Conference

"Rising interest rates dominates everything else when it comes to family security. Just a tiny upward movement in interest rates more than devours a few dollars of taxation relief..."

John Howard, September, 2004

The above image is a screen grab from a TV ad the Howard government ran for weeks during the 2004 federal election campaign. More than $100 million of taxpayers' dollars were spent pumping this, and other messages, in a fear-based campaign to convince Australians that if they voted for Labor Party, they would see the economy plunged into turmoil. Their wages would fall, inflation would increase, interest rates would rise and their mortgage payments would soar.

There was nothing subtle about anything connected with the 'Low Interest Rates' ad campaign. The Howard government would keep interest rates at "record lows". Vote for Labor and it will cost you, and your family.

Today, the Reserve Bank decided to raise interest rates for the fifth time since the 2004 election.

The average Australian family will now have to find yet another chunk of money from rapidly depleting household funds to meet their mortgage payments. For more than a million families, already suffering 'mortgage stress', this latest increase in interest rates will destroy their already meager household budgets :

Homeowners were dealt more mortgage pain today with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) lifting interest rates to a 10-year high, amid rising inflation.

Most economists expected the increase which saw interest rates rise by 25 basis points to 6.50 per cent, the highest they've been since November 1996.

Interest rates up, inflation up. The Howard 'Plan' promoted in 2004 lies in tatters.

Voters believed Howard would "keep interest rates low" and he has clearly failed to do so.

The Howard government knew this was coming. Their early reaction? Blame the states. Almost every Australian financial institution and credible economist who has commented so far on the 'Blame The States' claim has dismissed it as worthless garbage :

This week, the Federal Government blamed state government debt for putting upward pressure on interest rates but economists say strong economic growth and Treasurer Peter Costello's latest tax cuts are more likely to have fuelled inflation, paving the way for a rise.

ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake said there was little connection between state government borrowing and interest rates.

"It's true state governments will be borrowing money over the next four years but there's very little historical evidence between government borrowing and the cash rate," he said.

"It's political propaganda. It's not economic analysis."

And Howard's personal reaction? He continues his absurd and irrelevant claims that interest rates are still lower than they were at their highest during the Keating government in the early 1990s.

Pathetic, and downright insulting to every Australian family who now have to ind another $50, $80 or $100 a month to hold onto homes. The Australian public no longer buy this line of spin from Howard, or from the Treasurer, Peter Costello, though they are both likely to keep pumping it.

The latest interest rates rise should prove to be the final nail in Howard's political coffin.


UPDATE : Tim Dunlop, at Blogocracy, unearths the mother of all Howard quotes from his "Who do you trust to keep interest rates low?" period in 2004. Open mouth, insert both feet :

"My friends, we all prize the financial security of our families. Let me say this, and it’s not just my view, but it’s a view frequently expressed to me as I move around this country talking to Australian families. Nothing threatens that security more directly than the prospect of rising interest rates. Rising interest rates dominates everything else when it comes to family security. Just a tiny upward movement in interest rates more than devours a few dollars of taxation relief or additional family benefits. There is no economic credential for office more crucial than a capacity to keep interest rates low."

It's almost unfair how easy it is for Labor to use Howard's own words to crucify him now. Howard was told by key advisers prior in the build-up to the 2004 federal election to tone down the "keeping interest rates low" talk, because they knew it would come back to haunt him, and the Liberals in general. Consider them to be now well and truly haunted.


UPDATE : Matt Price reports that during the joint Howard-Costello press conference held an hour after the interest rate rise was announced :

For the first time I can remember, press gallery members began laughing during a Prime Ministerial answer.

A Canberra source tells us that journalists are already trying to find ways to avoid having to join the 'Howard Bus Of Hope', or whatever it will be called, during the election campaign.

It appears most of the Canberra press gallery have already decided Howard will lose, and they want to hang out with much younger, much more fun, Kevin Rudd crew.

As Howard's Hope Bus winds through drought-devastated rural Australia, and Howard finally realises that he blew it, that he missed his chance to go out on top, and that he will be forever remembered as a loser, it won't be a cheery team to be spending any kind of time with.

Let alone a month or more.

It'll be like a 40 day long wake, without the free booze.

We're still betting that Howard will delay the election until February or March, 2008, or cancel it altogether, in the event of a national emergency.


Howard's "Who Do You Trust?" Line On Interest Rates Will Haunt Him All The Way To Election Day

The Reality Of Interest Rates

Statement From The Reserve Bank Governor

Economists Grim Warming : Expect Another Interest Rate Rise, And Soon

For Sale Signs Go Up All Over Sydney

Jet Fighters Equipped With Eye-Blinding Lasers Target Cars

'Class Four Lasers' Used In Fighters Also Listed As 'Laser Cannons'


The Australian Air Force claims it had a bit of a problem with its F/A-18 jet fighters during a training exercise on the North Coast. For almost a minute the fighters targeted cars at an intersection outside of Forster with laser beams strong enough to permanently blind the unfortunates who got in their way :

The pilots thought their laser targeting system was turned off for the training flight. Unfortunately it wasn't and the powerful light beams, known as class four lasers, were shone twice on to a road intersection for a total of 43 seconds.

The lasers used by Hornet fighters as target designators are the most powerful laser beams used by the air force.

While the likelihood of injury is rare, the powerful beams of compressed light have the potential to damage the retina permanently. According to the department, the symptoms of laser damage would be easy to recognise and investigate. If exposure had occurred symptoms would include glare, dazzle, a sudden bright flash (similar to a camera flash), and potentially pain and watering.

"Blurring and loss of vision may also be experienced. This could be temporary or permanent," the department said. "Visual changes would depend on amount and location of injury; small changes may not be obvious without specialist eye assessment."

Big changes however would be obvious. You'd be blind.

The incident happened back in mid-May. So why has the RAAF come clean in a press release with no prodding from journalists? Has there been an outbreak of sudden blindness amongst locals on the North Coast?

Or is there something just a bit more sinister to this story?

This page on laser safety makes 'class four lasers', as cited in the above story, sound more like a focused light energy weapon than simply a jet fighter's targeting tool :

Class 4 lasers are harmful to eyes and skin, even diffuse reflections are hazardous. Class four lasers may also present a fire hazard. (Examples: laser welding machines, laser canons)

That laser safety page also says that even being in the vicinity of an activated laser as powerful as a 'class four' can be very unhealthy, even if it's not burning through your retinas.


More on Ray-Gun Reality and lasers as weapons of war here.

And a story on how airborne lasers can track missiles in flight, and even one day be used to destroy them...maybe.


If the headline above sounds a wee bit tabloid-esque, it's because we've just finished writing a lengthy tribute to the infamous Weekly World News, which is closing after almost three decades, over at Planet Of Strange Things. We fear dipping into the WWN archives may have rubbed off a bit tonight. Goodbye Bat Boy.

The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt

Betrayed By Murdoch Over Global Warming, The Bolter Now Pulls His Punches

By Darryl Mason

Andrew Bolt, of Melbourne's Herald Sun, and a self-titled blog, finds himself in an interesting and career-stalling quandary. For a few years now Bolt has found great success in railing against the occasionally exaggerated predictions of climate change activists, and has filled hundreds of columns and blog posts with demands that the "debate" over global warming be more balanced.

How balanced?

For almost a year, Bolt demanded that the theory that solar activity be considered as responsible for climate change, instead of human generated carbon emissions. Let's just say the 'Blame The Sun' theory hasn't exactly set the scientific world on fire, particularly after the hopeless documentary that Bolt championed, The Great Global Warming Swindle, got an airing on Australian TV.

Bolt simply didn't believe that global warming of the kind promoted by scientist Carl Sagan in the mid-1990s was a reality, and often barked about it all being a huge scam, a cult, a new religion.

Bolt still rails against climate change true believers. Well, sort of. Then again, not really. He's now clearly lost his enthusiasm for the battle against the generally accepted truth that climate change is real.

There's a bevy of very simple reasons for why Bolt has toned down his attacks on all those who accept the reality of global warming induced climate change. John Howard backs it as policy shaping fact, as does President Bush, and virtually every major world leader. But most important of all, Bolt's own boss, Rupert Murdoch, backs climate change reality so devotedly he is reshaping his entire world media operations and content around spreading the message that climate change is real and the world must unite to fight it.

Murdoch has stated that climate change is now beyond debate, and it's time to find solutions. Being a good Murdoch employee, Bolt won't mention his boss's embrace of carbon trading and had next to nothing to say about Murdoch's May 9 acknowledgement that climate change was real, and that the debate had now shifted, at least as far as Murdoch and most of the Western world is concerned, to finding ways to solve the problem, and even stop its worst effects from becoming a terrible, centuries long reality.

Bolt spent years haranguing any scientist who dared to say our future prosperity and viability was in peril from climate change. But Bolt clammed right up when Rupert Murdoch said this :

'Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Murdoch told his employees and stockholders that would use his worldwide audience of hundreds of millions of people, on five continents, to look at the problems of climate change as "exciting" and he promised to "weave this issue into our content, make it dramatic..."

In the next season of Fox's '24', special agent Jack Bauer will leave the terrorists alone long to somehow fight climate change. Presumably the bad guys this time will be heavy polluters, or perhaps there will be some Bond-esque bad guy using HAARP-type technology to speed up global warming to claim the mineral and energy riches of the melting Arctic.

Whatever the storyline of '24' is, Murdoch will use the show's popularity to ram home the threat of climate change, and the overwhelming need to do something about stopping it. Jack Bauer will do his bit, but it is also likely there will be extensive promotions tied into the new series telling Americans how they can be like Jack Bauer and help stop climate change.

The '24' website is already pumping Murdoch's message to the masses, and Jack Bauer himself, Keifer Sutherland, is pre-empting the focus of the new series by appearing in public service announcements on behalf of Rupert's mission to save planet Earth from "clear, catastrophic threats".

Will Andrew Bolt rail against Fox Television falling victim to the global warming "scam"?

Of course not.

You only have to leaf through The Herald Sun, which carries Bolt's columns, to see how heavily the Murdoch promise "to weave this issue into our content" is already being fulfilled.

Has Andrew Bolt whined and wailed and demanded more debate in the pages of his own newspaper, in opposition to the stand taken on climate change taken by Rupert Murdoch?

Of course not.

Bolt only takes pot shots at the easy targets.

When Rupert Murdoch gave his now famous speech on May 9 about acknowledging the reality of climate change, and announced his plans to restructure all his media operations to reduce News Corp's carbon footprint, Andrew Bolt claimed that he wouldn't be cowed and he would continue to hammer the 'Climate Change Is Real' crowd for being a bunch of gullible drogues.

But Bolt has been cowed, of course. And it only took a couple of weeks, punctuated by a Bushesque five week long holiday.

When Bolt now writes about the climate change "preachers" he chooses his targets very, very carefully. He says little, or nothing, about the Howard government's embracing of climate change as an election issue, or President Bush's proposals to reshape American industry and the economy to become more 'green'. And he certainly does not attack Rupert Murdoch.

For years, those trying to warn of the very real dangers and threats of climate change were called mentally ill by Bolt. If they weren't mentally ill, they were "hysterical". Or they were falling victim to "the "warming faith", "the irrational faith", or the "new apocalyptic faith".

Here's Bolt on May 3, referring to global warming as :

"...a religion that already shows signs of falling apart."

Here's Bolt on Thursday, May 8 :

"I repeat, it’s a religion, and with that old-time hook - Repent, for the end of the world is nigh..."

Here's his boss, Rupert Murdoch, on May 9 :

'Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Yeah, we all had a great laugh over that one.


Sometimes, when not being particularly creative, Bolt referred to what Rupert Murdoch was in the process of embracing as "the global warming scare".

True believers were all "cultists" and, my personal favourite, they were busy promoting "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

As Rupert Murdoch cranks up the anti-global warming promotions and campaigns through his TV shows, newspapers and cable stations across the world, Bolt now calls those fighting global warming merely "preachers" and "planet wreckers", which is so comic as to be all but harmless.

When he's particularly hepped up, Bot might even lash out with a claim that some anti-global warming advocate is an "Alarmist". But that's about as far as Bolt will go these days.

He might truly believe that climate change is some vast left-wing conspiracy to help clear cities of pollution and create new energy industries, but Bolt is not going to accuse his own boss, Mr Murdoch, of being insane and hysterical and a member of a superstitious pagan cult.

Bolt clearly wants to keep his very well paid job, and if he has to tone down the rhetoric, stifle his conspiratorial beliefs and swallow his pride and dignity to do so, then that's exactly what he will do. Over and over and over again.

Bolt must be thanking all the gods that his beloved prime minister, John Howard, is only a few months away from losing the election.

When Kevin Rudd takes control of Australia, Bolt will be re-born. No longer will he have to play along and praise the prime minister at every turn, and make silly excuses for hundreds of very clear and obvious failures of judgement and downright open deceit of the Australian people, as Howard did again and again through the years Bolt has been writing and blogging for Rupert Murdoch's once firmly pro-Howard Australian media.

By the end of the year, Bolt will likely have a whole host of federal Labor politicians in power to attack and smash and trash and flail, and he will finally be able to let go of the 'Global Warming Is A Superstitious Pagan Faith' nonsense, just as Murdoch now wants him to.


Andrew Bolt Attacks : "Hating Howard To Death"

Rupert Murdoch's Speech, May 9 : "Climate Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats"

Andrew Bolt Anticipates An Australian Terror Attack So Howard Can Display "His Firmness" In Dealing With The Aftermath

Australia To Hand Over $30+ BILLION To US War Industry

Australian Defence Companies Drool Over Arms Sales To Middle East Dictatorships And 'Enemies' Of Israel

It's just like the 1930s all over again. A wider world war looms, as economies crash and burn and powerful military nations move on weak states with vast energy and mineral reserves, while Australia, the US and the UK are busy flooding the world with bombs, bullets, jets, tanks and vast arsenals of new weaponry.

BushCo. recently announced some $73 billion worth of military hardware sales to Middle East "allies" and Australia's defence industry are now hankering to get their slice of this international arms race.

As this story in the Sun Herald explains, to get in the action, the Howard government will appoint its own international arms dealer to flog our "war machines" to allies and potential future enemies alike :

Defence experts said the most likely Australian-made military equipment that could be sold to Persian Gulf states included fast troop-carrying catamarans and the Bushmaster armoured vehicle.

"Australian defence firms could get a slice of the action as we have developed some excellent niche technology and equipment," said Greg Ferguson, editor of Australian Defence Magazine. "The new government unit will use the muscle and reputation of the Australian Defence Force to push the overseas sale of Australian defence products."

Professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, Hugh White, said the massive US arms deal to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and the Gulf States opened up opportunities for Australia.

"The aim of the US is to armour up these countries to contain Iran, which has a long coast on the Persian Gulf. It would be ideal for the Australian-built high-speed catamarans which could be used for military transports," he said.

Thank goodness for Iran's mullahs acting so crazy and supposedly claiming they want to "wipe" Israel off the map. Otherwise, Australia's involvement in the US effort to "armour up these countries to contain Iran" might look...well, dangerous, or even grossly irresponsible.

Nearly all the Gulf states our international arms dealer will be sent off to schmooze do not officially recognize the existence of Israel, like Hamas, and impose horrific human rights violations on their people, while jailing and torturing dissenters. Nor do most of these future arms trading partners of Australia allow fully democratic elections, even though the United States continually claims it is pressuring countries like Egypt to give its people more freedom and liberty.

But forget all that, we're talking billions of dollars of arms sales here.

The Saudis and Egyptians know that one of the best ways to get the United States to shut up about human rights and democracy is to commit to mega-billion arms deals with the US, or its arms-producing allies. Like Australia.

According to the Sun Herald, and other media reports, the Howard government has committed to pouring more than $31 billion dollars into the coffers of American defence contractors in the coming years, for transport planes, jet fighters and second-hand tanks.

The top 40 defence firms in Australia turnover $6 billion per year. At the moment, they sell $400 million worth of guns, bombs and bullets internationally. A figure that is set to rapidly escalate should our new arms dealer be able to score some of the American action in arming up all those Middle East countries.

Interesting how the fact that Australia, a nation of only 20 million people, is funneling $31 billion into American defence contractors, and currently has a "defence" budget of more than $21 billion a year, barely rates a mention in the American or British mainstream media.

Australia and the US had a virtual shitfit last year when it became known that China, a country of more than 1.3 billion people, had raised its annual defence spend to some $40 billion.

Australia's move to help in the mega-arming of Middle East countries is all part of the US-Israel-Sunni Middle East Alliance against Iran. In part, this is also a future front against the Russia and China, who are now tied to Iran through recent oil and natural gas deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars.


Australia's Massive Plan To Become A Military World Power

Australia's Future Role In Helping To Contain China

Our New Arms Trading Partners : The US-Sunni-Israel Alliance Against Iran

Family of Australian Terror Victim Brushed Off By Downer

Why? She Didn't Die In A "Mass Casualty" Terror Attack

Families Of Bali Bombing Victims Sent "Insert Name Here" Form Letters

Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, feels it is completely ethical to use the threat of terrorism, and the horrific deaths of more than 120 Australians from terror attacks over the past seven years, to frame his arguments on why the War On Iraq must continue, why Australia is a part of the 'War on Terror' and to explain why Australians must get used to having their civil liberties torn away as part of that war.

But the shattered family of one Australian terror victim were told by Downer that they would not get any help from the government to meet the costs of bringing home the body of their dead daughter, who died in a terror attack in Turkey.

They needed $16,000, and thought they would get help, because the Australian government had compensated the families of Australian terror victims who were killed in Bali, in Indonesia, in London and in the 9/11 attacks on New York City.

But the distressed, mourning family were brushed off by Downer, then ignored. Then they were sent an insulting letter.

Why?

Because their daughter didn't die in a "mass casualty incident"

Why should that make any difference at all?

Because Downer's clearly not interested in one dead Australian terror victim here, or a couple there. He only wants to know about the terror attacks where dozens of Australians are slain, because that's what grabs the headlines, and that's the kind of horror and terror that supplies the political capital he needs to justify the War On Iraq and to attack political opponents for supposedly being "soft" on terror.

Alexander Downer is beyond repulsive. and as inhuman as all the other despicable creatures who use terrorism for political, religious or personal gain.

Just when you think Downer can't get any lower, he'll prove you wrong.


And then there's the generic form letters sent to the Australian families of terror victims by Downer's office. You can see the letters for yourself here :

...the email version came with a number of documents, apparently sent by accident. They included a six-page summary of occasions the Government had helped Australians, such as reimbursing the cost of repatriation of remains for Bali bombing victims, $5000 for funeral costs, the cost of air fares and accommodation for close relatives to go to Bali and financial help to attend the first anniversary of the bombings and the trials of the accused terrorists.

Another attached document was a generic Foreign Affairs letter for Bali bomb victims' families, with spaces to "insert address here" and add "first name" here.

If Downer and John Howard can find the time to spend entire mornings preparing for their purely politically motivated attacks in Parliament, ranting about the threat of terror and why Australia is supposedly fighting in the front lines of the 'War on Terror' in Iraq, then they can surely find the time to write all the families of terror victims proper letters, and deal with their inquiries in a humane and decent way.

Beyond chilling.

Bureaucracy as its coldest, and most heartless.

Explosives found in a parked, unregistered car in Melbourne during police stop. Possible terrorist leaving a car bomb in a city street? No, he was white, and not a Muslim. Therefore, not a suspected terrorist. But talk about being fully busted. This is what the police claim they found in this guy's car :

an extendable baton, a can of pepper spray, eight mobile phones, a large amount of amphetamines, nunchuckas, an unregistered handgun...

Plus the explosives. And more explosives were found when they searched the suspect's home.


Russell Crowe likes to try to boost his rugby league's team morale with lots of positive talk, declarations of love and hugs. Some of the players are less than impressed, calling his morale building methodology "bullshit". Clearly men hugging other men is far too wussy for these guys. They're rugby league players. Macho guys. Who get paid to grab other men, climb all over them, insert their fingers up each other's bums to try and make them drop the ball and grope each other's genitalia. But hugging? God no!

Annabel Crabb, the rising star of Australian political journalism. Sharp, funny and dead on. Here she imagines Christmas-based policy option discussions about whether the Rudd child should, or should not, be gifted a bicycle. Brilliant.



John Howard used a fear campaign based around interest rates to win the 2004 election. In person he famously promised to keep interest rates low. In advertisements, he said he planned to keep interest rates at record lows.

Now interest rates are about to go up again, for the fourth time since the last election, putting extreme financial pressure on millions of already hard-hit Australian families, Howard says his government is not responsible for interest rates. Well, not when they go up. Make up your mind, mate. Voters already think you're sneaky, now they're going to think you've completely lost your mind.


Jack Marx writes the usually entertaining, and sometimes damned extraordinary, Daily Truth blog. Now he's been forced to actually post daily, instead of two or three times a week, he makes our blog roll. Jack's blog is well worth checking out. Daily.


You need to find ten minutes, right now, not later, and go here and read the full story that goes with this downright Australian urban legend :

...mad scientist "Monkey Jones", obsessed with finding the secret of eternal youth, had spent the wild years between the wars transplanting monkey testicles into the scrotums of aging male human beings, thus transforming the isolated Lake Macquarie hamlet of Dora Creek, nearby the doctor's clinic, into a kind of sexual Shan-gri-la, where old men at the end of their days matched sexual vigour with fresh young women. The honeymoon ended, says the legend, when the doctor died, the experiments ceased and everything - to the relief of the township's elderly women - returned to normal.

Now go here and read the Jack Marx story on the truth behind the urban legend. In many ways, the true story is even better than the legend. Guaranteed, this is the greatest, most eye-opening, jaw-dropping story you will read anywhere this week. Now go for it.


Would it surprise you to learn that a pedophile who carried around a kitten to draw in children also kept a locked dungeon in his backyard? Probably not. Chilling, nonetheless. Apparently, it's not illegal to build and keep your own backyard dungeon in Australia. It's only illegal when you keep people inside it, against their will.


'Downwards adjustment' : That's the terminology used by the National Gallery of Victoria to describe what has happened to the value of a Van Gogh painting they've proudly displayed for decades...now they've found out that it isn't a Van Gogh painting. It was probably painted by someone apprenticed to the Dutch master, says the NGV, or Van Gogh contemporary. Not a chance in hell, says the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. The NGV will still display the painting because, they claim, "it isn't a forgery" and it is still "interesting".

Yes, particularly interesting to the those hundreds of Van Gogh addicts and completists who've traveled from all over the world to Victoria, through the decades, to gape in awe at this remarkable Van Gogh, that isn't actually a Van Gogh.


John Howard has ruled out the judicial inquiry now being called for by Opposition leader Kevin Rudd into what the hell happened went down between the Australian government, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian mainstream media over the smearing and fearing of Dr Mohamed Haneef. Why no inquiry? Because, Mr Howard said, the...oh crap. Read it for yourself. It's too late in the night to try and make sense of Howard's bizarre logic train.


Phillip Adams finally comes clean. He's slept with the prime minister's wife. Twice.


We're still betting that one of the coming federal election slogans from the Howard government will be a variation on "Better To Be Safe Than Sorry." It's so adaptable. They can use it for terrorism, to argue why straggling voters should not switch over to Kevin Rudd, for keeping Australian combat troops in Iraq and for trusting the Howard government to keep interest rates at record lows, well kind of low, sort of...if you're rich.


The Howard Huggers in the Australia media continue to dump their idol as reality dawns like a bucket of ice water in the face. Andrew Bolt is all but begging the prime minister to leave now, so as to allow the government the slimmest of chances of winning the election. In fact, a recent column demanded "Howard Must Quit".

Fellow News Limited Howard-hugger, Tim Blair, is already anticipating Kevin Rudd's first 100 days as prime minister.


Australia's Hillsong church has got itself a very powerful and captivating whistle blower. A former lifetime member of the fundamentalist, extremely wealthy church has written a book which is bound to be a bestseller. In it, we learn that Hillsong is about money, getting money from its true believers, getting more true believers into its churches to get more money out of them, all of whom are expected to hand over 10% of their wages. In 2004-2005, the church made $50 million and paid no taxes.

Hillsong has been very successful in accumulating wealth. The church recently purchased a piece of luxurious Sydney property worth $28 million. Clearly, they must have skipped the part of the Bible where Jesus talked about how it was harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Get rid of all your possessions, Jesus said, and give them to the poor.

Hey, what the hell did Jesus know? That was 2000 years ago.

The Aboriginal Romeo And Juliet

This story was told on SBS a few weeks back through a short documentary, with some stunning historical footage of the couple discussed below.

Why this beautiful and sad story of love, tradition and incredible survival in the harsh Australian outback has never been made into a full-scale movie, starring many of the superb indigenous actors, is beyond explanation.

From the UK Independent :

They were an Aboriginal Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers who eloped into the desert because tribal law forbade them from marrying. And for 40 years they roamed, living off kangaroo meat and bush fruit, happy with their own company and the red landscape.

Warri and Yatungka were perhaps Australia's last nomads, leading a traditional lifestyle long after their Mandildjara tribe gravitated to urban settlements. They abandoned the desert only in 1977, when a severe drought dried up the waterholes, and tribal elders, anxious for their welfare, sent out a search party.

Warri and Yatungka met in the 1930s, but were from different "skin groups", so their relationship breached tribal law. Rather than separate, they ran away together. They had three children.

By the 1960s, with mining companies and pastoralists encroaching on their land, most Mandildjara moved to towns such as Warburton and Wiluna. British nuclear tests conducted in the Outback during the 1950s had also blunted Aborigines' desire to live in the desert. But Warri and Yatungka stayed there, leading a solitary existence, apart from occasional encounters with tribe members and white anthropologists.

It was not until the drought that they struggled to survive. It took the search party, led by an Aboriginal tracker, Mudjon, and a white explorer, Bill Peasley, several weeks to find them.

The couple were naked and stick-thin. As well as having to walk for days to find water, they had not eaten meat for a long time. Warri had a leg injury and could not hunt.

The couple, still inseparable, were close to starvation. They agreed to come into town, although they feared they might be punished. In fact, the elders had forgiven them.

However, Warri and Yatungka yearned for their peripatetic existence, which was how Aborigines had lived for 40,000 years.

In 1979 they died within weeks of each other.

A remarkable story, and a unique portrait of shared Aboriginal and Australian history.

Police : "Testing The Power To Arrest Anybody"

Coming on the back of a flurry of alarming stories about police and state and federal governments pushing for new powers to enter homes without warrants to plant surveillance devices and monitor any and all internet activity; of new laws that will allow police to conduct full body searches on anybody they don't like the look of during September's APEC conference; detaining possible "troublemakers" during APEC in a fleet of "mobile prison" buses, and the more recent detention of a suspect who was held without charge for twelve days and then released, without charge, this "accidental" e-mail release could not have come at a worse time.

This morning, the Sydney Morning Herald received an e-mail that stated, ominously :

"Testing the power to arrest anybody".

Naturally, the NSW police claim this was all a big "mistake".

Perhaps so, but the explanation offered up to the Herald makes the "mistake" sound like anything but :

"The email was accidentally generated when a member of our IT [Information Technology] department was doing some testing on the back-end of our website, while looking at ways to improve the distribution of our media releases to you," said Tim Archer, media manager at NSW Police.

"The email was not generated by the Police Media Unit and was not relevant to any police operation or announcement. It was a simple internal test using random text which should not have been sent externally, so apologies if it caused some confusion in news rooms."

The SMH said the email arrived this morning, was three lines long and started with the words :

"Test - Arrest anybody".

Then came tomorrow's date. And then the line "Testing the power to arrest anybody."

"Random text", eh?

The more believable version might have been that the IT people testing the media release service were having a bit of a joke, and wrote the disturbing line and then accidentally fired off an email to someone on their media list. In this case, the smh.com.au.

But with all the other Big Brother-ish, police state-like new laws and opportunities for arrest and detention coming online for police for September's APEC summit, the "mistake" email actually sounds like an internal memo that got loose.

One that was alerting other police that they were going to conduct a test tomorrow, where they would arrest "anybody", as a way of testing the new powers being given to them.

Weird.

We'll see who gets arrested tomorrow in Sydney, and for what reason.

Sydney Turns 'Big Brother Police State' Into A Cliche

If you haven't been to Sydney for a few years, and you're familiar with Communist-era East Germany, you will be shocked at what you see if you happen to be in town come September.

September is, of course, the month that central Sydney is turned over to 21 of the world's most powerful regimists, dictators, Communists, war makers and mega-capitalists. In short, 21 of the world's most powerful leaders.

Sydneysiders will be greeted by police and soldiers sporting machine guns, checkpoints, sniper nests, random full body searches and special badges that restrict the movement of people through the centre of the city where the APEC summit is being held.

Although the State government denies it, the APEC summit is also the reason why light poles and traffic lights in 40 locations around Sydney are now being fitted with large speaker systems, just like in the China of Chairman Mao, from which messages of warning, instruction, control, conformity and behaviour modification can be blasted, thrummed and inaudibly toned.

APEC is the reason the speaker systems are going up, but "unspecified emergencies" is the reason why they will still be there, long after the world leaders have gone home.

First you will hear a wailing siren, then you will hear the messages telling you what to do, where to turn, where to hide, in the case of an "attack", straight from Police Central.

Are we living in Israel now? Is Newcastle or Wollongong about to start launching homemade rockets into our suburbs?

Less detail is know about the 'Text Message Boards', which will also spring up in time for APEC, and will allow police, or Chairman Iemma, to relay glowing, flashing instructions to the people of Sydney from a mobile phone.

Tied in with all this is the fact that the public and private surveillance cameras, red light cameras and traffic cameras are now being united into a combined surveillance system stretching the length and breadth of Sydney and its suburbs.

Terrorism is the excuse. The mega-billion dollar security industry is the reality.


All of the above also gels nicely with extraordinary new super police powers :

Police and security agencies will be given unprecedented "sneak and peek" powers to search the homes and computers of suspects without their knowledge under legislation to go before Federal Parliament next week.

The extensive powers - which also give federal police the right to monitor communications equipment without an interceptions warrant - come amid growing public disquiet about counter-terrorism powers following the bungled handling of the Mohamed Haneef case.

Under the laws, officers from the federal police and other agencies would be able to execute "delayed notification warrants", allowing them to undertake searches, seize equipment and plant listening devices in businesses and homes.

Police and security officers will be able to assume false identities to gain entry and conduct the surreptitious searches.

But the person affected by the raid does not have to be informed for at least six months, and can remain in the dark for 18 months if the warrant is rolled over.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the handling of Dr Haneef's case served as a reminder that law enforcement and intelligence agencies made mistakes, and already had extensive and intrusive powers.

"Given the Haneef debacle, now is not the time to be giving more powers to the Australian Federal Police," she said.

The bill also deals with "controlled operations" - undercover operations where federal agents are permitted to undertake criminal activity in order to further their investigations.

Privacy Is An Illusion.


'Mobile Prisons' Readied For APEC Summit

APEC To Cost A Staggering $24 Million Per Day For Security - Sydneysiders To "Leave Town" During Summit

Detentions Without Charge, Random Body Searches, Machine-Gun Armed Soldiers To Hit The Streets Of Sydney

"Old JellyBack" - Downer Steals Trademark Keating Insult To 'Wet Lettuce' Rudd

Foreign minister Alexander Downer refuses to yield to easy temptation of trying to score desperate political points off the terror-related issues, and the Dr Haneef fiasco :

"I think we could sum [Opposition leader) Mr Rudd up in one word – and that word is jellyback," he said in Manila, where he is attending a regional security meeting.

"This is somebody who has decided to change his position because of the media controversy," Mr Downer said.

"If Mr Rudd would have become a prime minister of Australia, I think we have a pretty clear idea that old jellyback would just do what the media said. And actually that's not the best way... to run a country."

Can't say that "Jellyback" is a slang term I've heard used all that often. But Googling around I came up with some interesting examples of its usage in the past.

According to the Urban Dictionary, 'Jellyback' (Jangler) can mean grabbing a woman's breast, twisting it and then slapping it.

Perhaps not the definition that Downer was reaching for. But then again, this is the same person who thought it was funny to make public jokes about horrific incidents of domestic violence.

The search for 'jellyback' got interesting when I narrowed it down to Australian references.

Lo and behold, who was the famous user of the insult "Jellyback" before Downer resurrected it?

Why Paul Keating, of course.

On more than a few occasions, Keating called former prime minister Bob Hawke, "Old Jellyback", just like Downer called Rudd.

And then in 2005, it started popping up in online forums all over Australia. But this time in reference to then Labor leader Kim Beazley, again with the "Old Jellyback".

So Downer is reduced to digging through old slang terms from, and for, former Labor prime minister to come up with something he can try to smear Rudd with?

How sad. How very Alexander Downer.

Downer and Tony 'The Cleaner' Abbott keep trying to come up with a nasty little name for Rudd that will stick, but nothing seems to stick. At least, not in the public mind. Well, nothing except for the reality check that Downer and Abbott are acting like a couple of moronic teenagers, with nothing more important to do than to call people names.

And it's refreshing to see Downer not reduced to trying to score any desperate political points off issues related to terrorism that he can. Downer would never do that. The threat of terror is far too important to be sidelined as a mere political issue, or a political cricket bat with which to donk your opponents on the head. Downer's said so himself, many times.

Speaking of Keating, here's some of the insults he tossed at John Howard when they were at war in Parliament in the 1980s and 1990s :

"He's wound up like a thousand day clock..."

"...the brain-damaged Leader of the Opposition..."

(Of his 1986 leadership) "From this day onwards, Howard will wear his leadership like a crown of thorns, and in the parliament I'll do everything to crucify him."

"He is the greatest job and investment destroyer since the bubonic plague."

"But I will never get to the stage of wanting to lead the nation standing in front of the mirror each morning clipping the eyebrows here and clipping the eyebrows there with Janette and the kids: It's like 'Spot the eyebrows'."

"I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not slither out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot..."

"He has more hide than a team of elephants."

"I do not want to hear any mealymouthed talk from the Member for Benelong."

"The principle saboteur, the man with the cheap fistful of dollars."

What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him."

I bet the "dead carcass" line above still makes Peter Costello laugh, and wince.

And poor little Alex. He wants to be as fast and funny and savage as Keating was, but all he can do is steal his best insults. Word for word.

Will "Better To Be Safe Than Sorry" Be The Liberals Election Campaign Mantra?

The only line about the Dr Mohamed Haneef fiasco dumber than John Howard's "better to be safe than sorry" dismisser, was Alexander Downer's pathetically sooky "Get real" whine.

But was Howard actually giving the Liberals federal election campaign slogan a bit of an early airing?

Howard claimed that when it comes to terror, "It's better to be safe than sorry". A line that, if it actually held water, could be used for virtually any injustice, false detention or personal smear campaign by the Howard government that had even the barest of linkages to the 'War on Terror' or national security. It's a disturbing precedent.

Some Muslim bloke gets shot dead for wearing a backpack that looks a bit suspicious?

Better to be safe than sorry.

An innocent man gets detained and held without charge for a few weeks or a few months, or in the case of David Hicks, a few years?

Better to be safe than sorry.

Billions of taxpayers' money pulled out of education and health and re-directed to unjustified foreign wars and completely invasive homeland security?

Better to be safe than sorry.


Michelle Grattan lays out the facts of John Howard's involvement in the Dr Haneef fiasco, under a headline that asks if the 'War on Terror' really does mean that anything goes now :

By yesterday, however, Howard was circling the wagons, as was Alexander Downer, who bluntly told sceptics to "get real". Howard said there'd be no apology, and mistakes happen.

The message is, if you are dealing with allegations to do with terrorism, forget highfalutin notions of accountability.

Here's the embarrassing Alexander Downer sookfest quotes in full, after being asked if Dr Haneef was owed an apology from the Australian Federal Police or ministers in the Howard government :

A request for an apology seemed to offend Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

"What do you expect them to do, fall on the ground and grovel - eat dirt - I mean, get real. This is a quite common situation," he said.

Mr Downer shrugged off the critics of the bungled case as political operatives with an axe to grind.

"[It is] an attempt here by Howard-haters to try to paint the Government as having conducted the investigations unsuccessfully and this was all some political stunt - I think that's pretty reprehensible," he said.

What's wrong with Downer? Is he mentally or emotionally unstable? Why does he get so easily wound up and unfurl such patently ridiculous answers to simple questions from reporters? It's clear Downer is losing it. He should be drip-fed valium during the APEC summit in September so he doesn't embarrass himself, and the country, in front of world leaders.

The only thing more laughable than Downer's whining is his government's repeated use of the Andrew Bolt line that anybody who dares to question the motives of the prime minister is automatically a "Howard hater".

That Downer has been reduced to viewing any criticism or finding of faults in the actions of the Howard government as being part of some broad conspiracy, or proof of hatred, is another sign of the crippling paranoia infecting the government right now. They are beset with The Fear, and it shows every time someone like Downer has a hissy-fit.

What Downer is actually saying when he calls millions of Australians "Howard Haters" is that he thinks the government should not be held to account, and should not have to tolerate genuine, and well deserved, criticism.

Absolutely pathetic.

The Howard government could try and cling to its hold on power with a $100 million advertising blitz in the weeks before election day ringing out its "Vote Liberal. Better To Be Safe Than Sorry" message.

But the polls clearly show, in the huge numbers of former Howard voters now backing Rudd, that plenty of Australians are already sorry about the choice they made back in 2004.

It's unlikely Howard can say, or do, much now to win them back.

And trying to fear up the electorate, when more than half already clearly trust Kevin Rudd, is not going to work.

If Howard & Friends go for The Fear this time, it will show just how far out of touch they really are with the Australian people.