Beauty In The Debris

All the following images are screengrabs from this incredible high resolution NearMap satellite image of flooded Brisbane on January 13.

Here's some of the things that caught my eye.

On the Queensland and Brisbane floods, here's some thoughts and links from my Twitter feed. It's not a detailed catalogue of the events as they unfolded, it's a bit more random.

January 1, 2011 :

So all those who went ballistic when the Australian military said natural disasters/extreme weather posed bigger threat than terrorists...

do u get it now? Do u understand? Extreme weather events are kicking Australians' butts far worse than terrorists could ever hope to.

Jan 3 :Rockhampton residents approached by "men with guns on their hips", told to evacuate "or else", according to ABCNews

Jan. 4 : Rockhampton, an Australian city of 75,000, completely cut off by floodwaters. No rail, no roads, no airport. http://tinyurl.com/2vpgj7b

Jan. 4 ; Even wild kangaroos understand it's safer in a boat than in the water of the Queensland floods http://tinyurl.com/26qaz5c

I love a sunburnt country, a land of building collapsing flashfloods, of summer snow, of town consuming firestorms, of locust & mice plagues.

January 11 :

Queenslanders told to prepare emergency kits, continuing flood crisis could last "weeks, months" http://tinyurl.com/6lbky6v

State Emergency Workers are incomprehensibly brave : http://tinyurl.com/3yxu29z the look of smiling, stunned disbelief at 00:51.

Car stacking in Toowoomba, by Mother Nature http://tinyurl.com/243z9ah

Watch the white van slam into a tree at 00:35. A man is clinging to that tree. He was rescued. http://tinyurl.com/29jquds

QLD premier Anna Bligh reveals suburbs in Brisbane will be sacrificed to preserve integrity of Wivenhoe dam (stop it overflowing)

Flash-Flooded Creek To Cars : I Will Take You, And You, And You. And That Blue Car, Too http://tinyurl.com/6dpgp29

QLD premier Anna Bligh looks stressed? Imagine being told, after the longest day of your life, "This is now a Queensland MegaDisaster."

Brisbane residents told stay in your homes, off roads, wait until announcement of your suburb being evacuated

Of the 23 SE QLD dams, 17 are overflowing after reaching maximum capacity, and three are releasing water through emergency gates

Australian PM Julia Gillard on the Queesland MegaDisaster, Jan. 11 :

"To people of QLD, I understand the past few days have been very harrowing, but there are dark days ahead.

"...we've seen walls of water smashing into cars & buildings....people hanging on for dear life...

"people are frightened, desperately waiting for news of their loved ones...my thoughts my sympathies are with you.

"...with floodwaters so dangerous, so swiftly moving, we have to brace ourselves for more tragedy."

January 12 :

Journalists nudging closer to asking PM Gillard : "Dozens of people were swept to their deaths, no warning. Who's responsible?"

In some areas of Grantham, flash flood waters rose 20 feet in less than two minutes according to resident on ABCNews24

Love the community spirit on twitter, people offering rooms and help to strangers (affected by #Qldflood). You people rock

Brisbane Lord Mayor warned in Oct. 2010 of looming repeat of 1974 floods http://tinyurl.com/4b2wgm9 'I guarantee it'.

The wreckage of Grantham, in the Lockyer Valley, smashed by an eight metre high wall of water http://bit.ly/dYxyDi

Winner of #WorldsWorstLooter. As policeman discusses looters (on news), TV news montage shows man running with wheelbarrow of gym equipment.

No truth to Channel 9 story re crocodiles on jet skis heading down into Brisbane River to claim flooded streets of Brisbane as their own. Damn.

High rise residential towers on Brisbane River evacuating. Ferry, Riverwalk, party barge to be destroyed to save bridges

Electricity shut off across Brisbane CBD, food shortage rumours, 80,000 without power, fears of water contamination

Raw sewage in Brisbane River, police protecting supermarkets, expected 50 suburbs/40,000 homes/3000 streets affected by floodwaters.

Weird, people dropping out of timelines, suddenly quiet, as phone batteries run down, networks choke, internet access crashes in

January 13 :

It takes too long for newsreaders to announce what parts of Darwin, QLD, NSW, Victoria, Tas. are flooding. Just names places not flooded.

People without power in Brisbane calling ABC612 asking for them to do time announcements, no wind up or battery clocks anymore.

Lokyer Valley hasn't had fresh water since Monday, supplies almost gone. Brisbane food shops don't know whn supplies will get thru

Blackout. 110,000 homes/business without power in Brisbane, low lying areas not expected to get power back on for min. 48 hours.

As terrible as Brisbane will look at dawn, most damage will still be underwater. When waters go Sun/Mon, full scale of destruction revealed.

Must be absolutely devastating to be a Brisbane evacuee in a shelter & 1st thing u see this morning on TV is your home flooded up to the roof.

Sssssss. Phone techs open pit for #Qldfloods repairs, find 5 of the world's most venomous snakes waiting. http://twitpic.com/3phfi9

#MegaDisaster2011 Nearly 12,000 homes in Brisbane/area flooded through. More than 2.5 million people impacted

It's only really panic buying when you're screaming continually as you try to decide between white or grain bread.

Does Kevin Costner have some kind of miraculous machine that can convert sloppy fetid flood mud into beer?

QLDPolice : 60 schools, 7 TAFEs, 19 remote teacher homes and 86 kindergartens/ child care centres damaged/closed

Two-thirds of Victoria to get 10cm of rain in next 24 hours. Incredible, this country is turning into fucking Waterworld.

January 14 :

RadioNational caller airs "rumours" re "armed looters" in Coopers Plain, QLD. Host says police and army in Brisbane to stop this

Emergency workers, ADF, Coroner's office retrieving bodies in Grantham. Nighmare scenes for workers, bodies in cars, trees

Queensland police double looting penalty. Steal water, food, gas bottles = 10 years. Presumably families won't be driven to that

Surreal listening to ABC 612 as Queenslanders detail sleepless night watching water creep into thr homes. "Water goes where it wants to go"

The only official reports of looters confirmed by gov/police in Queensland floods in past few days are about six busted looting alcohol, 3 trying to take boats

January 15 :

20-something Queenslanders already teeth-grittingly annoyed by '74 flood veterans saying, "Yeah, but this one wasn't so bad"

The only way to flood proof a city built on an ancient flood plain would be to rebuild Brisbane on stilts.

January 16 :

When will see the developers & gov. ministers responsible for building so many houses on known flood plains named & shamed?

bitumen your front lawn? http://tinyurl.com/4bsgqnk Victorian flash flood sheers off road surface, deposits it outside house.

3 metre high, 3m wide, 100m long debris pile filled with animal corpses, toxic rubbish to be "dismantled" in search for missing

I expected conspiracy sites to start linking HAARP & Australian floods, that's normal, that's what they do to keep their readers happy...

But I didn't expect to read so many journos going on about "Mother Nature's Fury", her "rage" & capitalising 'Her' as was once done for He as in God

(Pic) Man In Ankle Deep Victoria Floods Reads About People In Shoulder Deep Queensland Floods http://tinyurl.com/6c97rcn

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How Close Brisbane Came

By Darryl Mason

When the Brisbane River, swollen by floodwaters pouring down from mountain ranges and across the ancient floodplains, swollen further by a king tide surging in from the sea, finally hit its peak, it was more than one metre less than predicted. That is, far below the worst case scenario the Queensland government, emergency services and the Australian Defence Force were predicting, and were planning to respond to.

More than 20,000 Brisbane homes are believed to have been affected by the floodwaters. One more metre and the entire sprawl of houses across the centre of the below images would have gone under, along with thousands more streets of homes across Brisbane's suburbs, some to their floorboards some to their roofs. 60,000 perhaps even 80,000 homes, or more.

This was the closest of close calls.

A satellite image of Brisbane from January 13 follows. You can look around the image in greater detail for yourself, here :



And here's a Google Earth image of the normally non-flooded Brisbane :



After everything that the people of Brisbane have been through, everything the residents of hundreds of small towns & villages across Queensland have endured in the past months of what has so often been termed "biblical rains" by the news media and politicians, it seems unfathomable that the worst may be yet to come.

The land is soaked, a decade long dry sponge now squelching with water across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. The rainy season has only just begun, the first cyclones of 2011 haven't even made landfall yet.

The Queensland government, the long range forecasters, as do the Australian Defence Forces, know full well what the worst case scenarios for "biblical" flooding could be this year, and it's a lot more Noah than what we've seen so far.

The Big Surprise will not be that this happens again in 2011, to Queensland, to Brisbane, to riverside towns, farms and villages down through New South Wales and into, across, Victoria.

The Big Surprise will be that it doesn't.

More to come....

The Secret American Life Of Kochie

Now we know where Channel 7 Sunrise host David Koch goes on all those extended vacations :



Either Kochie is lying when he says "I'm actually a bit of a homebody" and is instead secretly jetting off to the US to help The Tea Party shake the American two party system to its core, or someone who put together this piece for TruthOut used the first picture of a 'David Koch' they found on Google Images instead of a photo of the actual American billionaire.

I'm going with Kochie is a rotten lying bastard.

Spotted by @Paris_David

Brisbane Is Being Evacuated

"I'm So Glad I Parked Out The Front Today"

Floodwaters are now entering Brisbane's CBD, and according to locals on Twitter, are rising rapidly.

More than 32 suburbs of Brisbane are now being inundated, office buildings in the city are being evacuated, roads are filling rapidly, with both cars and floodwaters. Some evacuation centres are also reportedly under water. At 1.30m, the emergency message to the people of Brisbane was to stay in their homes, off the roads, until they hear announcement that their suburb is being evacuated.

ABC News : City Under Siege

Incredible. Traffic cam of flooding on Ipswitch Highway :


update : just found out the above is mostly roadworks.



Some evacuating Brisbane are driving on clogged roads that are now also starting to flood.

The biggest king tides of the year are expected to sweep into the Brisbane River tonight.

The worst of the Brisbane City flooding is not expected to peak until tomorrow afternoon.



More footage from the Toowoomba flash flood yesterday, that may have claimed the lives of more than 6 people.

When you hear people on radio describe floodwaters that rose a metre in a handful of seconds, it's hard to imagine what that must be like to see.

Imagine no more.



Watch the white car hit the bridge at 3:00, get sucked under and shot out the other side.

Just Replace 'Plague Of Blood' With 'Feral Pigs'


According to the Daily Telegraph, this will be NSW in 2011

Okay, I've heard some pretty wild predictions about what the results of rapid climate change might be from the likes of Tim Flannery & ABC's Robyn Williams, but I've never seen even the most apocalyptically-fixated warmitarian fear monger claim the people of New South Wales, in 2011, will suffer "the same fate" as Egypt under the alleged 10 biblical plagues.

The Daily Telegraph, of course :


Fuck! NSW is going to suffer plagues of Blood? Of Frogs? Of Gnats, Wildbeasts, Pestillence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, plagues of Darkness & plagues of Dead Firstborns? All in just one year?

Well, not quite.

The Daily Telegraph has its own version of the plagues detailed in the Book of Exodus :

"Rabbits, mice, feral pigs...snakes. locusts, ticks, cockroaches, sandflies, mosquitoes, bluebottles."

Where it gets really freaky is when you get them crossover plagues, where a few ramp up at the same time, and start mingling.

That's when you get rabbits on feral pigs hurling cockroach encrusted bluebottles at fleeing humans.

It could happen.

Maybe.

However, the story does offer up is this all too real and vomitous reality, for night-time wearers of lip gloss and ice-cream dribblers :

...he issued a special warning for women who wear the flavoured varieties to bed.

"They can smell the flavours and to them it's just food."

Cockroaches like to lick and nibble human lips in the dark of night, depending on what your lips smell like.

Remember, the deeper you sleep, the less likely you are to hear those tiny little lapping noises, coming from just below your nose.

It's probably best not to know.

"An Instant Inland Tsunami"

Queenslanders Told To Prepare For Ongoing Flood Emergencies That Could Last "Weeks, Months"

This is the usually calm, sun baked Queensland city of Toowoomba :



This is Toowoomba in the middle of what a police spokesman called "an instant inland tsunami" :



Yesterday afternoon, the central business district of Toowoomba as was as busy as it usually gets on a Monday. Rain began to fall, some took shelter under shopfronts to wait it out, others climbed into their cars with their kids and shopping and expected a delayed trip home.

Then the rain hammered down. Minutes later, a waist-high wall of water swept through the city centre. Nobody knew it was coming. Nobody could prepare for it. Those caught in it hung on to whatever they could, walls, trees, each other.

Within an hour of the rain beginning, the flood was gone, and shocked survivors climbed out of their battered cars, and exited shops and offices rivering water to stare in disbelief at the devastation.

At least ten people (confirmed so far) are dead from the Toowoomba flash flood.

It ripped children from their parents arms and crashed through the front doors of homes and dragged people out into the churning streets.

Watch the white van at 00:32. A man clings desperately to the tree the van is slammed into. He was later rescued.



ABC News :

Resident Joanne Kruger says it was like being in a disaster movie.

"It was like the tide had come in dramatically, like rolling waves across the road," she said.

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

People were stranded on roofs in Grantham, near Gatton, where residents say the water rose about a metre every few seconds.

"As far as the eye can see north, south, east and west is just water," one local resident said.

Water, and even water tanks.



The aftermath :





Cars are Mother Nature's play toys. She will toss them around as she pleases.



The Toowoomba Chronicle :

(QLD premier Anna Bligh) said the waters had hit the communities at "lightning speed".

"Mother Nature has unleashed something shocking..."

As an example, the premier said the river at Gatton, east of Toowoomba, had risen 9 metres in the course of the afternoon.

The Courier Mail :

Through Toowoomba city and down to the Lockyer Valley, the torrent washed houses off their stumps and snapped 4m-high trees at the base of their trunks.

Video footage showed families scrambling desperately to get out of their cars as they were washed away in a sea of water.

Landslides and the wild water picked up cars and tossed them into trees, turning the vehicles some with people still inside into missiles.

People cowered on their roofs and pleaded to be rescued as the water engulfed homes.

The Brisbane Times :

"It only takes 15 centimetres of fast flowing water to sweep a person off their feet and into a flooded waterway..."

"It only takes 60 centimetres of floodwater to push a four-wheel drive off the road. "People underestimate the danger of these waters...

As of late Monday night, up to 50 people are still reported as missing.

Queensland's capital Brisbane will be hit by floodwaters starting Tuesday.

At least four more days of heavy rain are expected over the city, and local suburbs.

Dozens of south east Queensland towns and villages are being evacuated, an unknown number of people are spending the night on the roofs of their houses, hundreds of kilometres of road have been washed away, the premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, has announced the food crops & coal production losses due the weeks of flooding across the state will impact world markets.

Bligh said after weeks of flooding, Queensland was "desperate".

A photo gallery of surreally beautiful evening images of the empty, flooded Queensland city of Rockhampton.

Toowoomba, shortly after 1pm Monday :




UPDATE : The Brisbane Times :

Queenslanders are being warned to prepare for emergencies as unprecedented floods threaten much of the state.

Residents have been told they may need to fall back on their emergency kits in "coming days, weeks and months"...

"This is a very uncertain time for Queensland residents, and even if you don't experience flooding today, it pays to be prepared for the coming days, weeks and months."

"Emergency kits should contain essential supplies of non-perishable foods and water, clothing, medications, torches and batteries, a battery-operated radio and pet supplies."

Headlines from ABC News :

• Brisbane Valley 'inland sea' isolates towns
• Theodore residents 'suffered heartbreaking loss'
• Emerald pleads for government help for flood recovery
• Farmers return to flood devastated land (audio)
• Toowoomba dams filling fast
• Prepare for illness after floods: AMAQ
• Rain dampens cane growers expectations for 2011

The rain keeps falling.

The full hour long version of that interview I linked to below between Australia's most outspoken, courageous journalist and Julian Assange :

Australian journalist John Pilger in interview for his revelatory, truth-telling new movie 'The War You Don't See' :




A short collection of clips from the movie about the government lies the mainstream media pumps out, decade in and decade out, to mindwash people into believing war is not only, repeatedly, necessary, but utterly patriotic :



'The War You Don't See' doesn't have an Australian cinema or TV airing release date, which seems strange. Surely the million or so Australians who marched against the War On Iraq in 2003 would be exactly the kind of audience who'd want to see a movie like this.

Plus the millions more who have since learned the truth of the Australian government & Murdoch media lies, myths and deceptions about the Iraq & Afghanistan wars over the past seven years.

Ahh, Christmas carols.






.

Spooking The Spooks

Very interesting. Seemingly out of the blue, but long overdue :

The ballooning powers and funding of Australia's spy agencies will be interrogated for the first time in six years, with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announcing an independent review of their role.

"The review will ensure Australia continues to have a well-coordinated, appropriately resourced and adaptable intelligence system that supports our national interests," Ms Gillard said.

Check the incredible growth of Australia's six (official) intelligence agencies since September 11, 2001 :

...ASIO has undergone a 535 per cent increase to its funding since 2001...its budget appropriations have grown from $69 million to over half a billion annually since 2001.

...ASIS and ONA have experienced growth rates of, respectively, 344 per cent and 443 per cent.

The Full Story Is Here

Budget cutbacks are obviously on the cards. The intelligence agencies have to prove, presumably, they are vital, useful and cannot afford to have their budgets and staff numbers cut. But how will they go about convincing the Gillard government?

One to watch.

Julian Assange has been freed from solitary confinement :



Via The JAFG

This Is Serious, Mum

UPDATE : Julian Assange has been freed on bail, but with some incredibly restrictive conditions :

£200,000 in security, surety from two people, a curfew, daily reporting to police and surrender of his passport.

Good round up today's events in London, and background on the charges Assange still faces here.

UPDATE : Correction. Julian Assange has not been freed on bail. He has been returned to solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison while British and Swedish prosecutors plot to keep him behind bars until the extradition hearing scheduled for February.


Previously...

Julian Assange is probably the most famous man in the world right now. Surely the most famous journalist. And isn't it good to see someone reaching such a level of prominence for speaking the truth and trying to educate the public, instead of only getting so much media attention because of some sex scandal...oh, right.

Assange has had his life and his son's life threatened. American politicians have called for his execution. He has been accused of being a terrorist. Incredibly, a new term has entered the vocabulary of some politicians and media commentators. "Information terrorism." Assange is an InfoTerrorist. Think about that for a moment.

Distributing Truth Is Now Terrorism.

Assange, at the time of this posting, is in a London court to find out if he will be granted bail, after turning himself into police for questioning over charges he faces in Sweden for "sex by surprise." He has offered to wear an ankle monitoring device, and bail sureties numbering in the tens of thousands of pounds have been offered by journalist John Pilger and documentary maker Michael Moore.

It's interesting that the hammer really came down on Assange within hours of his announcement that he had documents exposing corruption in one of the United States' biggest banks and he was preparing its New Year release.

If he is set free today, Assange will be straight back into preparing that release.

Julian Assange's mum flew to London to see her son. She was refused entry to Wandsworth prison and offered only a 10 minute phone call instead.

Her story:



The Sunshine Coast Daily has a reporter 'embedded' with Julian Assange's mum in London, while her son faces court, and probable further, suspicious, detention. Assange used the phone call with his mother to issue a statement to supporters :

“My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have always expressed.’

“These circumstances shall not shake them. If anything, this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct.

“We now know that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are instruments of US foreign policy. It’s not something we knew before.

“I am calling on the world to protect my work and my people from these illegal and immoral acts.”

Assange said his cell was under 24 CCTV monitoring due to fears of an assassination attempt.

David Frost interviews Assange's lawyer, who warns the United States may be preparing a grand jury investigation, and may seek to extradite him to the US :



Michael Moore :

WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to do their job. There's no time or money anymore for investigative journalism. Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed. They like their secrets kept ... as secrets.

Fellow Australian journalist John Pilger :

"That mindset that only authority can really determine the 'truth' on the news, that's a form of embedding that really now has to change.

"There's no question about the pressure on it to change coming from the internet and coming from WikiLeaks -- it will change.

"Authority has its place, but the skepticism about authority must be ingrained in people."

This is a letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, prepared by The Walkleys Foundation, and signed by dozens of prominent journalists, radio news producers and newspaper editors :

Dear Prime Minister,

STATEMENT FROM AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER EDITORS, TELEVISION AND RADIO DIRECTORS AND ONLINE MEDIA EDITORS

The leaking of 250,000 confidential American diplomatic cables is the most astonishing leak of official information in recent history, and its full implications are yet to emerge. But some things are clear. In essence, WikiLeaks, an organisation that aims to expose official secrets, is doing what the media have always done: bringing to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret.

In this case, WikiLeaks, founded by Australian Julian Assange, worked with five major newspapers around the world, which published and analysed the embassy cables. Diplomatic correspondence relating to Australia has begun to be published here.

The volume of the leaks is unprecedented, yet the leaking and publication of diplomatic correspondence is not new. We, as editors and news directors of major media organisations, believe the reaction of the US and Australian governments to date has been deeply troubling. We will strongly resist any attempts to make the publication of these or similar documents illegal. Any such action would impact not only on WikiLeaks, but every media organisation in the world that aims to inform the public about decisions made on their behalf. WikiLeaks, just four years old, is part of the media and deserves our support.

Already, the chairman of the US Senate homeland security committee, Joe Lieberman, is suggesting The New York Times should face investigation for publishing some of the documents. The newspaper told its readers that it had ‘‘taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security.’’ Such an approach is responsible — we do not support the publication of material that threatens national security or anything which would put individual lives in danger. Those judgements are never easy, but there has been no evidence to date that the WikiLeaks material has done either.

There is no evidence, either, that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have broken any Australian law. The Australian government is investigating whether Mr Assange has committed an offence, and the Prime Minister has condemned WikiLeaks’ actions as ‘‘illegal’’. So far, it has been able to point to no Australian law that has been breached.

To prosecute a media organisation for publishing a leak would be unprecedented in the US, breaching the First Amendment protecting a free press. In Australia, it would seriously curtail Australian media organisations reporting on subjects the government decides are against its interests.

WikiLeaks has no doubt made errors. But many of its revelations have been significant. It has given citizens an insight into US thinking about some of the most complex foreign policy issues of our age, including North Korea, Iran and China.

It is the media’s duty to responsibly report such material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.

See the full list of who signed the letter here.

Finally, here's some interesting thoughts from Julian Assange on privacy, in 1994 :

''Privacy is relative. 'We run perhaps the most private multi-user computer system in the country. Nearly every piece of information can be obtained, depending on how many resources and/or time you want to expend obtaining it. I could monitor your keystrokes, intercept your phone and bug your residence. If I could be bothered.

''As one who's has [sic] one's life monitored pretty closely, you quickly come to the realisation that trying to achieve complete privacy is impossible, and the best you can hope for is damage control and risk minimisation.''

The Guardian has one of the best daily blogs on Wikileaks-related news. Hopefully the focus will soon shift back to the important, history redefining revelations of the diplomatic cables themselves, and away from Julian Assange.

Less than 24 hours after the call went out on Twitter and Facebook for state capital rallies around the nation to voice support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, more than 1000 people had gathered at Sydney's Town Hall.

The grindingly predictable media gatekeepers will insist yesterday's 1pm protest was full of "the usual instacrowd" aging hippies, ferals and anarchists, but that's what they have to tell their mindwashed readers, because the truth is so much harder to absorb.

If anything, "the usual crowd" was in the tiniest minority.

Longhaired hippies and black bloc rioters were all but impossible to find.

Instead, hundreds of young people who work in city offices and businesses gave up their lunch breaks to attend. Hundreds more were middle-aged, or elderly, Australians from the inner city, from the outer western suburbs and from wealthy enclaves like Hunters Hill.

Throughout the crowd there were echoes of the same conversations. "How can they do this to him? Who did he kill?", "Look how they react when we find out what they're really saying to each other. They start jailing people!", "they call him a terrorist for exposing unvarnished truths", "this feels like something big", "Wikileaks will change history, it already has" and my favourite, "How old is too old to become a hacker?"

Julian Assange said the release of more than 250,000 classified US embassy cables will change history, maybe even the world as know it. So far, only about 1000 cables have been released, and clearly some major changes are already underway.

Like the people who gathered at Town Hall, like those who marched in Brisbane and Melbourne, and like the Gillard government, nobody knows yet just how sweeping, how historical, how paradigm-shifting these changes will actually be.

And right now, that unknowable short and long-term fallout is making the Gillard government, and those in the corporate sector with some very nasty secrets they wish to keep hidden, very, very nervous indeed.

And the cables keep coming.

I'll try to find some time next week to dive into the early history of Julian Assange's 'look-see' hacking adventures. It's fascinating stuff.

Photos from today's rally at Town Hall.











Okay, there was one guy in the crowd who you could call unusual, or something of a freak if you had to be so boring. And the man in the middle of the below image just spotted him.





His name is Glen, and he's wearing a Celtic war bonnet.

He believes the true war for control of the internet and digital freedom of speech has now begun.

Who doesn't?

Photos by Darryl Mason

When TruthTellers Are Treated As Terrorists

Australian journalist & publisher Julian Assange :

"I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard :

"(The Australian Federal Police) are assessing the implications for us, so we will work through that."

"I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website - it's a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do."

Attorney General Robert McClelland :

"The release of this information could prejudice the safety of people referred to in the documentation and, indeed, could be damaging to the national security interests of the United States and its allies including Australia.

"A whole of government taskforce had been commissioned to see what action could be taken to reduce any adverse impact arising from the leaks.

"There has previously been a specific defence taskforce looking at defence documentation. But obviously the documentations relate to issues broader than simply our defence strategy."

Most law commentators appear to agree that there is nothing the AFP could nab Assange for, no matter how much Julia Gillard would like them to.

The first of the big #CableGate releases related to Australia (almost 1000 cables) hits in late January, and it's blindingly obvious some members of the current and former governments, and their staffers, are shitting themselves at what may hit the headlines.

Something on the Balibo 5 inquiry, plenty on Israel's frauding of Australian passports and the expelling of the Israeli ambassador, some not so nice opinions on current and former government ministers and cables written by US diplomats, APEC 2007 and the viability of John Howard's prime ministership, and some eye-opening revelations about the approx. five month long window between when John Howard told the White House he had committed Australian troops to fight the Iraq War, and when he told the Australian people.

That's my wishlist anyway, but looking at the clusters of cables around certain dates, there's a good chance all the above will get a mention, some more heavily discussed and detailed, than others.

"Information terrorism" "infoterror" "infoterrorists", three terms I've seen in use, mostly in comments to mainstream media blog sites.

Strange days indeed.

Rock In Peace Pat Pickett

A true legend of the body-breaking behind the scenes world of the Australian rock industry died early Friday morning in Sydney.

His name was Pat Pickett, a veteran roadie, sound tech, lighting tech, inspiring verbal historian of the Australian rock legends he counted as old friends, and (often involuntary) surrogate on the road father to thousands of young, straight from their hometown, musicians and road crew, over the past four decades.

He didn't teach bands to do the best show they could, he told them they had no other choice. If they didn't perform, if they didn't do it for real, if they didn't mean it, the audience would know, and the audience would kill them. Two Australian bands that heeded his advice, gained from decades of seeing, and hearing, what audiences liked, what got them off, are The Hard-Ons and The Screaming Jets. There are dozens of others.

If you've had those periods of your life where you've gone and watched heaps of live rock, then you would have seen Pat Pickett behind the sound desk, or working side of stage. He may have even told you to get the fuck off that sound desk cable you were unknowingly standing on.

This is Pat Pickett a few years ago, holding a postcard from 1977 that his friend Bon Scott sent back from England.



Pat went on the road in the early 1970s, and barely left it.

He saw many friends ground down and spat out by the music industry, crushed under ridiculous demands, sapped of inspiration and creativity from having to play five or six nights a week, for months, years on end, bodies shattered by the demands of the road, 5000 late nights, schedules that only young people can keep.

Pat must have driven trucks full of roadcases, vans full of musos, the equivalent of two or three times to The Moon and back, along every highway, road or spine-rattling dirt track that leads to an arena or a crumbling pub across this massive land.

Pat came back from yet another year on the road a few weeks ago, in time to find out how sick he really was, but with not enough time left to do anything about it.

Now he's gone.

Pat Pickett on the early days of AC/DC :

Angus and Malcolm wouldnt stop playin if they broke a string and it was great cause they were so small i could stand behind them and change it while they were playin. A lot of people don't believe it but its true.

He had so many stories like that. So many tales of life on the road, onstage, backstage. Some were hard to believe because he told them so well, because they were so perfect, the way rock n' roll stories were supposed to be, instead of the dreary PR-mutated droning of today.

When I first met Pat, I used to make notes during gigs I was reviewing for Juke or On The Street. This pissed him off. After the 5th or 6th time he saw me doing this, he walked over, grabbed the notebook, threw it away. "You're missing the fucking show. You don't have to write everything down to remember it. If you don't remember it when you get home, it's not important."

He was right. The time to start reviewing the gig was a few seconds after you got home, with enough of whatever had made you tingle left to stay awake and get it all down.

There probably isn't an Australian band, who've done the hard slog of years in pubs & clubs, who doesn't have a Pat Pickett story to tell. More than a few would cause a riot in the media today, if journalists dared to publish them, which they probably wouldn't anyway.

Pat's life was a life lived hard. But I lost count of the number of times I saw Pat taking the time to talk to people who really needed someone to talk to in the post-midnight hours when the troubled can never sleep. He counseled so many, over beers, on long truck drives, or during those endless hours waiting, at gigs, at hotels, at airports, at truck stops, the waiting that makes up most of the time spent on the road.

A lot of fucked up kids wind up drawn to rock music, some onto the stage, some into road crews, some only ever in the crowd, and Pat Pickett talked to them all when others had no time to. They seemed drawn to him. He was no Mother Theresa, but he did his bit in saving lives, of that I've no doubt, because in the years since I first met him, I've heard plenty tell me how he told them to snap out of their bullshit headspace; do the job they were paid to do; go back home where they belonged; get away from abusive parents or partners, or just to simply lay off the booze, or drugs, because he could see they were taking it too far and he didn't them winding up dead like his old mate Bon.

You were one of the good guys, Pat.

The Australian corner of that bar over there is getting damn crowded these days.

.

How About "All They Got Left Is A Bag Of Loose Change And Some Crisps"?

News.com.au has the exclusive on the sorry state of Liberal Party finances :



But the Daily Telegraph must have decided "last $3 million" wasn't dramatic enough, so they improved it :



It's no great drama. Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott can't pull the corporate donors like...well, let's just say Malcolm Turnbull, and when Tony Abbott is replaced as leader by... well, let's just say Malcolm Turnbull, the corporate donors will return in force.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard in conversation with journalist Laurie Oakes :

LO : There's a lot of talk about a lack of a vision in Labor....Does Labor have a vision? And if you do have, can you tell us what the vision is in words other than "moving forward"?

JG : I do have a vision and of course I will be laying that out increasingly as prime minister for the Australian people. My vision is about a country with a strong economy and opportunities for all Australians. We will be laying out our election campaign and the content of that.

LO : So Labor doesn't lack a soul? Does it lack a core?

JG : No it does not, Laurie.

Election campaign?

Didn't cover much of it here due to extended break from blogging, but this piece from The Guardian, published in August, sums up the Australian Coup to the 2010 Federal Election period perfectly :

Here was a Labor government which had breasted the world financial crisis better than almost any other developed state. Here was an administration facing up to the realities of Australia's environmental situation, the constraints represented by the country's limited water supplies and agricultural land, and its vulnerability to fire, flood, drought and other hazards made worse by global warming. Here was a leadership with plans to impose more realistic taxes on the extractive industries that control the nation's most important assets. Here was a government, in other words, ready to discard the myth of "Big Australia", of a nation that could be pumped up to super-size by immigration and the breakneck exploitation of its mineral resources, and settle for a more modest vision of the future. And this reining-in carried with it the possibility of attending more effectively to the social inequality that had been increasing in Australia in recent years.

In all this it had the broad backing of most of the electorate. So how did this translate into a performance at the polls so dismal that the Australian Labor party is either headed for opposition, or, if it stays in power, will have only a tiny majority provided by a handful of independent MPs and one Green? The answer is a cautionary tale involving the power of Australia's mining and energy industries, the loss of nerve in the face of that power by two Labor leaders in succession, and the determination of the leader of the opposition Liberal National party.

The Rest Is Here

The endangered Montana Merkle bears an uncanny similarity to the Australian kookaburra, even down to the "naturally occurring swastika in its tail plumage" :


Bird Hunted To Near Extinction Due To Infuriating 'Fuck You' Call

The first teaser trailer from the new Australian movie Fuck The War showing Dave Gleeson, singer with legendary Australian rockers The Screaming Jets, in action.



FTW : The Movie is coming to DVD and torrents in November, 2010.