The Howard Legacy :

Australian's international competitiveness is under threat because up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs.

The nation's 11 Industry Skills Councils will today call for a new campaign to tackle endemic numbers of workers with poor reading and writing skills, launching a report detailing the problems being faced by industry training bodies.

And :

"International studies have shown that over the past two decades, Australia's literacy and numeracy skill levels have stagnated while those of other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, have improved.

More :

Mr Taylor said industry had been complaining about the poor quality of literacy and numeracy among school leavers looking to enter the trades for more than 10 years and there had been no improvement.

Prime Minister John Howard left Australia as a nation of coal diggers and fruit pickers, where sports stars are valued more highly than scientists and buying a home is more important than a sound education.

Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra On Touring Queensland In The Early 1980s :

It's the state that's referred to, in other parts of Australia, in hushed tones, because it's so openly racist and repressive. It's run by a state dictator, a kind of Huey Long, named Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His National Party hardly holds any power anywhere else in Australia because they're considered the right-wing lunatic fringe. But at home he's been able to keep in power by outrageous forms of gerrymandering, and is widely rumored to have rigged every election. He has beefed up the police force, and given them carte0blanche to do what they want to keep people from questioning things.

In Australia, there is no constitution and no laws about search and seizure, so the cops can, and do, kick in your door, and smash up your house, if they want. They've been known to break up conversations on the streets involving three or more people, cause they didn't want any assembly on the street. I met many people in Sydney who had fled Brisbane because they were being pulled over and detained for a holf hour or so every day. I met a lot of very warm people there, very radical in the head, but very afraid to talk. I felt safer walking around on the streets of East Berlin than I did in Brisbane.

Brisbane is also where Darren, our drummer, was picked out of a crowd of about 15 white people, and arrested for drinking in public, even though his can of beer was unopened. When Ray, our guitarist, tried to intervene, he was thrown in another police car and taken away. Also, Bjelke-Petersen's people are trying to take away the Aborigine's right to vote and own land, claiming they "haven't gotten that far up the evolutionary scale." And still, his party is kept in office. Some of his cronies, in fact the head of the Chamber of Commerce, wants to enact forced sterilization laws to kill off the Aborigines.

Summing up Brisbane, all I can say is it was the closest thing to a heavy, heavy, junta-style police state I've ever been in. I was looking over my shoulder a lot!

Biafra also supplies a state by state roundup of the Australian rock and punk music scene in the first half of the 1980s.

Julian Assange, Reykjavik, 2010 :

Just 15 years ago, reading the following lines would have meant you were perusing science fiction, not anymore :

...criminals were using online virtual worlds to communicate and transfer funds around the world.

...federal and state police had deployed resources to investigate virtual world money laundering....

...there were "a variety of means of online communication that criminals can engage in and also a variety of methods of laundering funds and ... virtual worlds create opportunities for both of those for criminal groups".

"What identity do you have? A game tag? There are cases of people buying others' online gaming identities..."

Mr Dyson would not comment on whether NSW Police had infiltrated any criminal groups operating in virtual worlds other than to say that NSW Police had an "ongoing presence..."

The Full Story Is Here

They're Just Giving Aid And Comfort To Global Warming

By Darryl Mason

If you're going to take on a sitting government with protests against that government's most high priority policy, you have to be prepared to cop a whole load of ugly shit from politicians, the media and opinionists. Think of the appalling abuse heaped upon the thousands of World War 2, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1 veterans who joined hundreds of thousands of other Australians to protest the Howard government's War On Iraq in early 2003. They weren't just called extremists by politicians, they told by their own prime minister they were merely a "mob" and were "giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein."

And just like all those veterans, elderly people and young families who attended protests against the War On Iraq, the thousands of Australians who attended the No Carbon Tax Rally in Canberra earlier this week have now discovered what it's like to be uniformly smeared for the actions of the extremist few who also joined their protest.

Unlike 2003, however, there are now numerous ways for protesters to get their message out to wider Australia without having to rely on the mainstream media to speak truthfully of their motives :



The next big No Carbon Tax Rally will be held in Hyde Park, Sydney, on April 2.

Finally, someone explains the Labor and Liberals parties positions and policies on the greenhouse economy, carbon tax and carbon trading in a way that can be easily understood :

One month on, a reminder of the devastation unleashed on Christchurch by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on February 22, killing more than 230 people :



The above video, from the day of the quake, shows many of the buildings where hundreds were trapped, and where many died.

A detail from a larger image of Christchurch shortly after the February 22 quake struck :



Rebuilding continues.

Below, the Fukushima nuclear plant after the explosions. My Japanese isn't so good, but I'm pretty sure the words "That place is absolutely fucked!" are in there somewhere. Or should be :

'God' Versus Greens

By Darryl Mason

Cardinal George Pell and some of his lackey bishops aren't happy with The Greens. Now there's a surprise.

Maybe 'aren't happy' isn't an accurate enough description. More like, 'Terrified'.

And, curiously, for an institution that is supposed to avoid getting involved in political campaigning to retain their non-taxpaying status, the Catholic Church is now demanding what remains of Australia's Catholics, at least those who bother to listen to anything Pell has to say, not vote for The Greens in next week's NSW elections.

Leesha McKeeny and Anna Patty in the Sydney Morning Herald (excerpts) :

Catholic bishops have warned the faithful against voting for the Greens in the state election, saying their policies were of ''grave concern''.

A two-page document entitled The Green Agenda is being circulated by Catholic agencies and through schools. It states the party's human rights and social policy areas are in direct conflict ''with the beliefs and values of virtually all religious people, and the beliefs of many other people as well''.

It also warns against voting for candidates who might share similar views, pointing out that some MPs in the main parties had voted for ''bad legislation'' such as same-sex adoption.

The letter outlines eight areas of ''grave concern'', including the Greens' treatment of personal drug use as a health and social issue ''and therefore acceptable'', and its efforts to legalise gay marriage.

But of course, as is usual with Pell's Catholics, it's really all about money.

The Full Story Is Here

Miranda Devine spellchecks Twitter because....oh, who knows why :

A quick Twitter survey found similar pet pronunciation peeves. "Knowen" instead of "known" was one. "Lyberry" instead of "library" was another, as was "aks" instead of "ask", although that, I think, is beyond the pale.

She gets paid for that.

This is 'The Ring Of Fire' :




This is The Ring Of Fire lighting up with dozens of huge earthquakes, in just one week :


(click to enlarge)

The Ring Of Fire :

....sweeps in a horseshoe shape up through the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, The Philippines, Japan, across to Hawaii, then to California and down the long coast of Chile.

The clashing of tectonic plates around this ring produces valuable anomalous minerals, including gold. It throws up spectacular mountains...

The Ring of Fire also comprises the most unstable zone in the earth's crust, beneath which pressure constantly builds, causing volcanoes to erupt and earthquakes to roar.

About 90 per cent of the world's earthquakes occur around the ring.

More On The Ring Of Fire And Tectonics at This Dynamic Planet

Millions Of Americans Will Not Be Killed By Nuclear Fallout In Two Weeks, It's Just A Fake Map

By @DarrylMason

Australian Radiation Services finds itself inadvertently caught up in a fast spreading online hoax, following the unnerving explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, after yesterday's 8.9 earthquake and 10 metre tsunami.

This is the hoax :



The authorative looking logo was stolen from here :



The Nuclear Fallout Map is fake simply because Australian Radiation Services don't issue such maps. It was likely chosen before ARS offices are closed until Monday, as they are most weekends.

This unsourced and likely dodgy chart (nausia?) is being heavily circulated, on social networking sites, forums and email, along with the fake Nuclear Fallout Map :

0-50 rads - No obvious short-term effects

80-120 rads - You have a 10% chance of vomiting and experiencing nausia for a few days

130 -170 rads - You have a 25% chance of vomiting and contracting other symptoms

180-220 rads - You have a 50% chance of vomiting and having other severe physical effects

270-330 rads - 20% chance of death in 6 weeks, or you will recover in a few months.

400-500 rads - 50% chance of death

550-750 rads - Nausia within a few hours ; no survivors

The fake map shows a huge nuclear fallout cloud of 750 rads engulfing millions of Americans by March 22. So, if you were a West Coast living American, the fake map and the above numbers might lead you to believe you and all your family and neighbours will be dying within 6 to 10 days.

But there are some interesting things happening on social networking sites and public online forums about that map.

First off, there are thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook shouting down claims this Nuclear Fallout Map is the real deal and pointing out exposure to 750 rads will not "cause nausia within a few hours; no survivors".

Also, discussion pages, linked in Google search to 'Nuclear Fallout Map, claiming the map is very, very real and The Truth Is Being Suppressed By The Media are disappearing or turning up blank. Google also appears to be jigging their search results so searches for the map will expose users to sites pointing out its utter fakeness.

But at the same time, at least a few dozen Twitter spam accounts (fake accounts pumping exact same tweet & link) are busily flogging the Nuclear Fallout Map, also claiming it's very, very real, and the truth is being suppressed, presumably aiming to spread panic in the United States. Most of these fake accounts only became active shortly after the fake Nuclear Fallout Map started circulating online.

It would seem that someone more powerful than a fukwit photoshopping hoaxer and his friends want the Nuclear Fallout Map to be viewed as a horrifying reality.

Who would want to do this? Who benefits?

Of course, attention and discussion focusing on the Nuclear Fallout Map hoax distracts many from the real truth about the Japan earthquakes, and particularly the quakes that seemed to be closing in on the Fukushima plant, and this real truth needs to be immediately revealed.

Here it is :

Al Gore used his earthquake machine to destroy the Fukushima plant and paranoid up the whole world about nuclear energy so everyone turns to alternative energy instead.

You know it, I know, but most importantly, Al Gore knows it. And now he knows you know!

Anyway, James Bond villianish conspiracy theories aside, the real truth about the March 11 Japan earthquake is this is turning out to be the worst, the most deadly, most devastating, in modern Japanese history.

Cities, towns, tens of thousands of people swept away. A disaster now of a scale beyond the imaginations even of Japanese disaster management specialists, the most earthquake paranoid people on the planet, who seem mostly stunned, broken, dazed, at press conferences. Who can blame them. The massive earthquake and horrifically devastating repeat tsunamis are beyond the worst scenarios ever workshopped or modeled, a surreal nightmare has become their reality.

The death toll may climb to over 30,000 within days, and top 100,000 within a few weeks.

At this moment, there are at least 1300 Australians visiting or living in Japan who are unaccounted for. This number is likely to fall as communications are restored.

Destruction So Vast, So Comprehensive, Your Brain Can Barely Register What You're Seeing As Reality


Recently On The Orstrahyun....

When Australia Had Elephants & Giraffe Camels, Apparently

Global Warming Is The New Hitler

Julian Assange : Nobody's Buying The Smears



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here

Tsunamis Destroy Cities On Japan's Coast








(screengrab via ABCNews)



UPDATE : The first tsunami wave sweeping across Miyagi, Japan. Cities, towns & farmlands gone, cars full of fleeing people swallowed up, those running in the streets disappear in the debris. Hundreds died under this wave. Simply terrifying :



Earlier....

One of the most devastating earthquakes of recent times has hit Japan, a massive 8.9 magnitude. Tsunami waves are killing thousands, destroying entire cities along the coast.

Tsunami waves are now radiating out, and will travel halfway across the planet. No official warnings have.been issued, yet, for Australian coastlines :




To the right of the Miyagi coast in Japan is the massive undersea fault that tore apart earlier today.