Howard Spends More On Industrial Relations Propaganda Than National Security Awareness

Australian Public Furious Over The Millions Howard & Co. Waste Praising Itself Through Relentless Advertising

The John Howard government is quickly spiralling into a pit of no return over widespread public outrage centred on the vast amounts of taxpayer money being spent on government propaganda.

The outrage yesterday was centred around a second, probably more expensive, series of advertisements trying convince the public that changes to their working conditions and pay are good for them. This new campaign comes after an earlier advertising blitz by the government that tried to sell us the same fantasy, at a cost of some $60 million.

But the majority of the Australian public made it clear, months ago, that they don't like 'WorkChoices' and no amount of flashy, wall-to-wall propaganda is going to change their minds.

Howard seems absolutely mystified about this reaction, as though he can't comprehend that Australians know when they are being fed outrageous lies and spin. After 11 years, and more than $1.7 billion worth of government propaganda, or 'awareness campaigns', it appears the vast majority of Australians have now fully woken up to Howard's use of taxpayer funded advertising to attempt to shape the minds and guide the opinions of the people.

It's clearly not working anymore.

The Australian government finally realised last week that the 'WorkChoices' brand name it gave to its widely unpopular industrial relations reforms is absolutely worthless, and had to be dumped.

So they decided to rename the program of reforms, as though they believed the Australian public would think it was all something new and different, instead of the same reheated degradation of their working lives.

From the rage and disgust being vented across talk back radio, letters to the editor and thousands of blog comments, it is clear that millions of Australians are insulted by this latest Howard trick.

In just seven days, the Australian government will have spent more than $4 million of taxpayers money on advertising new changes, and a new name, for its beleaguered reforms of the Australian workplace. That is, the reforms of the reforms that only two months ago they said would not change at all.

In comparison, the Australian government spent only $4.8 million over 16 months in advertising related to national security.

Wasn't terrorism supposed to be the greatest threat to the Australian public? If the government's rampaging advertising splurges are to be believed, it now considers its own workplace reforms to be the greater threat.

Or at least, it believes the public widespread rejection of the reforms is the greatest threat to the government's existence, and chances of being re-elected come November :

A Senate estimates committee heard yesterday the Government would spend $4.1million of taxpayers' money on a single week of advertising about its plans to introduce a fairness test as part of its Work Choices laws, while it had spent $4.8million on a 16-month campaign on security.

The spending revealed "quite a lot" about the Government's spending priorities, ALP senator John Faulkner said. He calculated the IR ad spending would cost $28,472 an hour.

The attack came as John Howard rejected Labor's criticism of the Government's $111million spending on advertisements, accusing Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd of hypocrisy.

And the wasting of taxpayers money doesn't end there. The Howard government is now planning an 'awareness campaign' related to climate change that will shake more than $50 million out of the taxpayers.

$50 million to tell us about the reality of climate change? Are they out of their f..king minds?

Or will the 'climate change campaign' be something else altogether? Yet another publicly funded exercise in the government patting itself on the back?

Of course it will be. Haven't most of the government's advertising campaigns been, either directly or indirectly, a way of shouting to the Australian public "Lookit! We did good! Lookit! Thank us! Praise us! We trieds real hards to be good! Lookit!"

Whatever happened to just shutting the hell up and getting on with your job? It used to be the Australian way.

Howard & Co, however, just can't stop talking about how great a job they think they've been doing, all the while ignoring the obvious fact that Australians now work harder, and longer, than they have in a century, and this is one of the chief reasons why the economy is doing so well right now.

Not according to Howard & Co. It's all because of them, and they won't let you forget it.

The remarkably sensitive Howard government needs all the praise it can get, even if it has to praise itself. At the expense of the taxpayers of course.

Australians are clearly sick of the government wasting their money like this, and, quite bizarrely, the use of taxpayers money to fund political advertising may now likely be one of the more controversial issues of the coming federal election. This is, of course, the time when the government spends more money than usual on advertising.

How will the Howard government counter Labor claims and piles of proof of the money they've wasted in the past 11 years on advertising?

Perhaps with another round of advertising. Yes. That's the ticket. Another $50 million worth of ads telling us why they don't waste our money on advertising.

The rising tide of absurdities and ironies now dragging the Howard government down into the deepest, darkest depths grows larger by the day. And this time, they won't be able to ad-spend their way out of trouble.

The Australian public are well and truly onto them now. And they're bloody pissed off about it.

As they well should be.


UPDATE : A rough estimate, by my reckoning, says the $50 million the government intends to spend on self-praise over its alleged plans to combat climate change would outfit more than 3500 Australian homes with a pretty decent solar power set-up, and a rainwater tank.

3500 homes on solar and rainwater for the cost of a Howard government ad campaign that will tell us nothing we don't already know, or can't find out for ourselves, if we're interested enough to want to know more.

3500 homes!

Ahh, you can only dream they'd spend the money in such a practical way.



More Outrageous Howard Splurging Of Public Money : $540,000 To Renovate A Dining Room - Cancelled After Public Airs Its Disgust

Howard Admits Coalition Faces Annihilation At Federal Election - Says He Has No More "Rabbits" To Pull Out Of His Hat

A Small Slice Of The Public Opinion On 'WorkChoices' And Howard's Changes To The Australian Workplace - Sad Tales And Horror Stories

Howard Splurges $20 Million On Maintaining Two Homes When He Only Needs One

Rudd Promises To Restrict Government Spending On Advertising Campaigns

Army Will Be Deployed To Streets Of Sydney For APEC Conference

City Centre To Become Mini-Police State For Up To Two Weeks

Random Body Searches And Detentions Without Charge

For up to two weeks in September, a huge area of Sydney's central business district, and tourist shopping mecca, will be blockaded by hundreds of police, security guards and Australia's military. Soldiers, armed with assault rifles, will allegedly be given "shoot to kill" rules of engagement to deal with security threats.

Black Hawk helicopters will patrol the skies, snipers will be positioned on the rooftops of some of Sydney's landmark buildings, train stations will be closed down and checkpoints will screen each and every person who tries to enter 'The Zone'.

In a quick series of announcements earlier this week, the state and federal government unveiled the first slab of details revealing just how severe the ultra-security will be when more than 20 world leaders, including Presidents Bush and Putin, descend on Sydney for the APEC summit in September this year.

The publicly released plans read like scenarios culled of the Orwellian police state portrayed in the movie 'V For Vendetta', and Sydneysiders are already expressing their anger and frustration at an event that they know will paralyse the city centre, while they still have to go to work and try to live their lives.

While news that Australian soldiers carrying assault rifles will be patrolling the streets of Sydney was jaw-dropping enough, we've also now learned that special legislation will be introduced, allowed under anti-terror laws, to allow police to pull people they deem to be a possible security threat off the street and detainee them without charge, for days at a time. Other Sydneysiders can look forward to the possibility of being subjected to random full body searches :

...a giant security triangle will envelop an area marked by the Sydney Opera House, Government House and the Sydney Convention Centre.

The corridor to Sydney Airport is also expected to be a declared search zone.

People who venture into the areas will be subject to random body searches during the seven-day conference, with security peaking from September 7-9 when 21 world leaders arrive to Sydney.

Additional legislation will also be introduced to allow security agencies from foreign governments to enforce their own security arrangements while in Australia, News Limited reports.

Bizarrely, the New South Wales premier, Morris Iemma, spun out a fantastic fantasy about how good the APEC summit will be for promoting Sydney internationally as a tourist destination.

Yeah, if your idea of a tourist destination is a place where the streets are locked down by armed checkpoints, where military patrols roam freely and the sky is criss-crossed by thundering Black Hawk helicopters :

Prime Minister John Howard and New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma met today to discuss transport and security for the meeting of 21 world leaders, including US President George W Bush.

The (security) measures mean three city circle train stations – St James, Museum and Circular Quay – will be closed for three days from the Friday, which will be a public holiday in Sydney.

Many other measures have yet to be made public, but other areas of the city centre will also become restricted zones and heavy security will be in place at a number of hotels.

The Sydney Opera House, Government House and the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre will be the key APEC venues.

Mr Howard and Mr Iemma said they hoped the Sydney Harbour Bridge would remain open and that disruptions on the Cahill Expressway, leading to the bridge, would be minimal.

"Some disruption is unavoidable; the only way you avoid disruption is to say that Sydney is closed for business as far as major international gatherings are concerned," Mr Howard said.

"We intend it to be a great weekend for Sydney and Australia and it will be ... both being Sydney boys, we intend to make sure it works."

Mr Iemma said Sydney would gain economically from hosting the summit and from worldwide exposure.

He said during the three days of the event Sydneysiders should attempt to live their lives as normal, but be wary of the closures and lockdowns.

"It's a balance between ensuring a successful conference, a successful gathering and ensuring the safety and security of those who will be participating," Mr Iemma said.

"And at the same time to minimise inconvenience and disruption."

This level of security is moving beyond the absurd, and is an affront to rights of Sydneysiders to move freely about their city.

Here's an idea : choose one of the dozens of isolated island resorts off Australia's east coast, rent the whole thing for a week, deploy the Navy, establish a security zone around the island and hold the APEC conference there.

It's remarkable to think that John Howard thinks APEC will stand as the jewel in the crown of his 11 year long stretch as the leader of Australia.

With free citizens being randomly selected for full body searches, or snatched off the streets of the city and bundled into vans and then held without charge, not to forget the weeks of 'rehearsals' where Black Hawk helicopters will buzz Sydney and its suburbs with thundering flights just above the tree tops, and 'persons of interests' being hauled in for questioning, Sydneysiders are going to get a full-scale taste of what it's like to live in a mini-police state.

The only Sydneysiders looking forward to the APEC summit, and all the delays, hassles and rights violations that will result, are the prime minister and the premier.

Of course, neither of them have to worry about being stuck in gridlock for hours at a time, while fleets of police-escorted presidential motorcades plough through the city centre, as they can always hide away in the back of a speeding ambulance to get to where they want to go. It wouldn't be the first time either of them have beat the gridlock using this method. Solely for "security reasons" of course.


UPDATE : No doubt one of the key security concerns now plaguing the minds of those who must ensure the safety of visiting presidents is the fact that six or more anti-tank rocket launchers, stolen from an Army barracks last year, are still missing.


Go Here For More On The Lost Rocket Launchers

Gillard Tries Her Hand At Stand Up Comedy

And Lands Some Hilarious Blows On Howard & Co.

While prime minister John Howard, and his senior ministers, desperately try to shake off the post-traumatic stress resulting from the worst poll numbers of the 11 year reign of the coalition, federal deputy opposition leader Julia Gillard has been having some fun. At their expense.

The Howard government were publicly humiliated, by themselves, yesterday when they tried to remove the stench-laden word 'WorkChoices' from their vocabulary. Problem is, it's their word for their deeply unpopular changes to the working lives of most Australians. Now they don't want that word used at all anymore.

They seriously think Australians are dopey enough to not realise that the same legislation will be the same legislation, even if it gets a sparkly new name, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars thrown at its new marketing campaign.

The government burned up more than $44 million of taxpayers money, earlier this year, in an advertising blitz to sell WorkChoices as the best thing since convict workgangs were cut free from their chains. They bombarded us mercilessly with WorkChoices ads, full of happy-smiley people telling us why we were all so lucky to be losing overtime and weekend pay rates.

And it was all for the good of the Australian economy, of course.

During a speech yesterday, Gillard seized on the government's attempt to wipe away the WorkChoices mud and blood, and went in hard.

Most Australian politicians are notoriously bad at cracking jokes, or even saying anything that raises a hearty laugh, so Gillard was skating the thin when she decided to drop a flurry of one liners during a speech in front of diners from the finance and banking industry. From what we've heard so far, she succeeded.

Let's hope there's more laughs, and blitzing one liners like these, during the rest of what is sure to be a bitter, and blood-soaked (from the desperate ranks of the coalition government anyway) federal election campaign :

"It has become clear today that John Howard has now banned the use of the word Work Choices," Ms Gillard told the group.

"I just want you to understand that John (Howard's) changing of the language isn't going to stop there.

"We will no longer refer to the Iraq war, that will be referred to as the Iraq peace.

"Helen Coonan will no longer be the Minister for Communications – she will be referred to as the minister for truth.

"At the same time the Treasurer (Peter Costello) will now be renamed as the minister for plenty.

"And further tax cuts will be referred to as Pete's plenty payments.

"And, unfortunately, your industry is not exempt, you will be required to go through long documents and paperwork and after the word 'interest rates' you will need to insert 'at record lows due to the Howard Government' ... "

That final blitzer from Gillard is right on the money. The Howard government still doesn't understand just how infuriated most Australians feel when they get home from a 12 or 14 work day, turn on the TV and see John Howard, or the Treasurer, Peter Costello, gloating and ego-tripping about how it is due only to their sheer brilliance and masterful ways that the Australian economy is doing so well.

Never a word from either to acknowledge that the majority of Australian workers now work harder, and longer, than their parents or grandparents did. Never a word of thanks from the prime minister to all those working families who barely get to spend any time together any more.

In the fantasy world of John Howard and Peter Costello, Australia's workers have nothing to do with the strength of the economy. It's all thanks to them. And they'll spend millions more dollars in advertising to tell us all how good we've got it, and how they are at giving us back our own money.

And they're mystified as to why they're plunging in the polls?

Get a clue.

John Howard said, a few months back, that because the economy was going great guns, Australians have never had it so good. It's a statement that is already coming back to haunt him, and will likely be used by the opposition government during the election campaign to show just how out of touch, and uniformed, John Howard is to the very tough times being experienced by millions of working Australian families, many of whom are struggling to hold on their homes, while others are struggling to find a home they can afford to buy.

At least, Howard, and Costello, are now getting an idea what it's like to be hitting the hard times.

Have no doubt, for the federal government the good times are now officially over.

They are hastily rebranding, rewriting, reshaping their key policies and desperately trying to win back the support of the Australian public, while the front ranks of the opposition, like Julia Gillard, are cracking jokes at their expense and clearly enjoying the self-demolition of the coalition government.

There is something extremely Orwellian about the way the Howard government brands and re-brands their messages and policies. And Gillard nailed it in her jokefest. In Howard's newspeak, war is peace, no choice is choices and tough times are good times.

Even the good news from the government, like most of the recent federal budget, comes coated and sly talk and sticky with spin. Most of it completely unnecessary. The good news is lost in the head-thumping demands from Howard and Costello for us all to recognise how kind they have been to us. Australians are clearly sick of this "Don't thank you, thank me" mind game from the government. And they're telling the pollsters exactly that.

Why they see a constant need to treat Australians like morons who don't understand what's going on is beyond me. Other governments have fallen into this trap before, and paid the price. Australians were legendary around the world for most of the 20th century for not tolerating bullshit, and railing against hypocrisy.

Have we changed so much that we now don't mind when the leaders of our nation try to put one over us? No, we haven't. Of course we haven't. The bullshit detector is still active in most of us, and the Howard government is setting off its shrill alarm at least once or twice every day now.

That wouldn't have mattered so much in the past - we are smart enough to know that politicians twist the truth like dogs like their own balls - but Howard and his crew now struggle under the burden of a solid decade of lies, distortions, scandals and gnawing spin. Children overboard, the Iraq War, AWB, WorkChoices...the list is long, and there's something in it for every Australian to be disgusted and dirty about.

If there was ever a time for Howard to plug the flow of lies and spin, now is that time. Actually, that time is well past overdue. But, as the rebranding of WorkChoices shows, he still doesn't get it.

The more Howard, and his senior ministers, treat us like a bunch of idiots, the lower the government drops in the polls.

You'd think at least one of Howard's 60 or more advisers would have gotten in his ear by now and told him that just because someone is willing to smile and shake his hand, or give him a wave in the street, doesn't mean they don't walk away muttering, "What a tool, what a phony, there's no way in hell I'm going to vote for that clown again."

The Car Bomb Of Love

A 27 year old Sydney woman is to stand trial for allegedly planning to detonate a car bomb in Sydney, to show her jailed boyfriend the depth of her love and devotion.

The woman is said to be "obsessed" with her boyfriend, and has had his name and "corrective services inmate number" tattooed across her body.

The story, according to police documents, goes that the boyfriend told the woman that he would marry her, but only after she undertook a 'mission' for him, to prove her love. If her 'mission' was successful, then he would marry her.

The alleged 'mission' was that the woman would build, place and then detonate an explosive device inside a vehicle in Sydney's Kings Cross.

The woman has been charged with "conspiring to commit murder and conspiring to cause explosives to be placed in or near a public place." She faces trial in the coming months.

The woman, according to the police statement, has denied the veracity of the main charges laid against her.

From news.com.au :

The statement referred to conversations between them in March last year, which police believed related to Courtney's "mission".

"Police investigations have revealed the accused had previously approached a number of people, requesting their assistance in the preparation, purchase of materials and manufacture of improvised explosive devices."

On March 3 last year, NSW and Federal police executing a search warrant at her home seized various items which police said could be used in the construction of an improvised explosive device.

They allegedly included a timing kit, chemical lists, rolls of tape, a receipt for two litres of ammonia and electric motors.

There's a number of terrorism-related trials underway in Australia right now, and more in the process of reaching the courts, but this is the only one where someone is alleged to have plotted to commit an act of terrorism in the name of love.

Usually, the alleged motivation is hate, revenge or intolerance.

Melbourne Has Driest 12 Months On Record

Climate Change Predicted to Hammer Victoria In Coming Decades

Melbourne has just experienced its driest twelve month period in the 150 years since such records began being kept. Less than half the yearly average amount of rain fell. This is now, according to reports, the 10th year in a row that Melbourne has experienced below average rain falls.

While Melbourne gradually runs out of water, climate change looks set to hammer Victoria in the worst way in the coming decades :

An alarming new report on the impact of climate change in Victoria has warned of risks to some of our most basic services and necessities — including water, electricity, transport, telecommunications and buildings.

The report, obtained by The Age ahead of its release, says water supplies and major infrastructure will be "acutely vulnerable" to climate change in coming decades, even if greenhouse emissions are cut steeply.

...the report found that by 2030 power, telecommunications, transport and building infrastructure would also be at much higher risk of damage from hotter days, bushfires, storms and floods.

Key risks highlighted include:

* Higher water, energy and telecommunications bills to cover the growing damage to infrastructure across the state.

* Worsening water shortages, as temperatures climb and rainfall is reduced.

* Power blackouts and potential fatalities during heatwaves.

* Coastal buildings and infrastructure, including ports, being hit by storm surges.

* Less water for hydro and coal-fired power plants, and more erratic wind generation.

* Longer and more frequent telecommunications outages from stormier weather, potentially hampering emergency rescue and clean-up efforts.

The report cites scientists' predictions that by 2030, average daily temperatures across Victoria will rise by between 0.5 to 1.5 degrees, compared to 1990 temperatures, and by up to 5 degrees by 2070.

Project leader Paul Holper told The Age that Victoria's climate was likely to change dramatically over the next few decades, and that "we have to plan as if we'll be living in a different country".

"I've been working in this field since 1989, and it surprises even me how strongly climate change has begun to affect us already," said Mr Holper, who co-ordinates the CSIRO's Australian Climate Change Science Program.

As population grows, average temperatures are predicted to keep climbing while rainfall is cut, putting water supplies under more pressure. Potential solutions nominated in the report include catching and re-using stormwater, or "costly, large-scale and politically sensitive infrastructure developments such as desalination plants or dams".

More Australian Towns Running Out Of Water

Town Water Supplies Being Diverted To Farms And Mines To Save Local Jobs

Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney are running out of water. The majority of dam levels for all four cities are falling to lows not seen for three or four decades. But Australian cities are not yet completely dry. The same, however, can't be said for more and more rural and outback towns. From my own research - there aren't any official figures - at least 20 towns with populations of 800 to 2000 people in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have only one to four weeks worth of locally sourced fresh, drinkable water left. A few days of good rains will help, but months of regular rains are needed now, and no long-term forecasters are expecting such rains in the immediate future.

From the Sun Herald :

A number of outback NSW towns will run out of drinking water within weeks and be forced to truck it in, officials have warned.

Tilpa, on the Darling River, is no longer pumping water from the river for drinking and is relying on the last reserves in domestic rainwater tanks and bottled water.

General manager of Central Darling Shire Council Bill O'Brien said Wilcannia, once the third largest inland port in Australia, would have no water left in its weir in about a month and would have to switch to using salty bore water.

"The alternative was to try to buy water from Menindee, if any was available, and truck it in tankers over 165 kilometres of dirt roads at a cost of about $25,000 a week," Mr O'Brien said.

At Ivanhoe, which normally gets its water from the Lachlan River, bores are being used. Drinking water at White Cliffs is coming from rainwater tanks.

Mr O'Brien said the wellbeing of several thousand people living on the Darling and Lachlan was at risk because of continuing upstream water allocations for agriculture.

Tensions are increasing in these towns as they watch their water supplies being diverted to other "priorities", be they farms, towns facing more dire water shortages, or local industry.

And this is where the harshest choices of all will likely have to made.

Towns need drinking water, but do you shut off water to the local farms, thereby cutting back on crop yields and seeing job losses follow?

A local publican at Tilba reckons they've got only a week of water left. He drains water from the tanks at a local medical clinic, and 'trucks' it back to his pub on his motorcycle to fill the hotel's coffee urn.

Orange is home to thousands of people, and the local goldmine provides jobs for more than 500, as well as helping the local businesses and the community in general to stay alive.

But the Cadia goldmine needs water :

Council staff have endorsed the request for emergency water supplies to prevent the mine's closure, saving at least 500 jobs.

If the recommendation is adopted, water will be provided on a monthly basis and limited to five megalitres a day.

To save the local jobs, and the local economy, water that would go to homes has to go to local industry. It's a massive Catch 22 for all concerned.

If the jobs dry up, as the water supply dries up, how will people be able to stay in these towns, when there is both no jobs and little or no water?

Both the federal government and the opposition government are making big promises about rolling out rebates so that just about every Australian family can install a rainwater tank at home. But unlike the cities, many Australian rural and outback towns never got rid of their rainwater tanks, and they're still just about out of water.

Anyone know any good rain dances?

The "Armageddon Solution" To Mega-Drought - Two Queensland Towns May Have To Evacuated

When Australian Cities Run Out Of Water, Will They Have To Be Evacuated?

Pray For Rain : Melbourne Running Out Of Water, Dam Levels At 40 Year Lows

Drinking Beer Causes Climate Change?

Murdoch Media Wastes No Time In Blaming Working Class For Global Warming


"Drinking beer, driving the car, and mowing the lawn all contribute to climate changes.." claims news.com.au front page

By Darryl Mason

Less than 48 hours after News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch announced that his worldwide media corporation was Going Green, and that he intended to reduce his corporation's "carbon footprint" to zero by 2010, he's lived up to his promise to transform the thinking of News Corp's audience by guilt-tripping the Australian public over the amount of beer they drink and how they cut their grass :

Having just one schooner of beer after each working day costs the planet 120kg in greenhouse emissions each year.

Working fathers doing traditionally male household jobs like mowing the lawn and odd jobs around the home produce almost 3.75 tonnes of emissions each year.

Yesterday it was revealed Australian mothers juggling child-rearing responsibilities and housework pumped out more than four tonnes of emissions a year.

Simon Hunter, a father-of-two and owner of a wood-fired pizza restaurant in Seaforth, usually does two separate trips in his car each day - one to the bank in the morning and one 20-minute drive to work in the afternoon.

He uses a toaster and kettle at breakfast, as well as his computer.

The household's big energy guzzler is the airconditioning system, which he said would be switched on twice a day every second day.

"I make sure that lights are turned off when they're not being used because that's obviously money being wasted and it affects the environment," he said.

As the public debate on climate change heats up, Mr Hunter is thinking more about the latter.

"Everyone has to contribute, not just government but businesses and the individual," he said.

It's beautiful propaganda - inspiring, responsible and guilt-laden. Get used to it, the flow of similar articles and news products from Murdoch's media will only get thicker.

Murdoch was remarkably frank in this speech on May 9, about how he would use News Corp to transform the way the public thinks about climate change, "carbon footprints" and the why we must transform the way we live and work. Naturally, his speech was covered extensively across Murdoch's media spectrum :

Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours...

That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer.

We cannot do it with gimmicks. We need to reach them in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

Murdoch made it dramatically clear that he would use his media reach of some one billion people (via his cable, newspaper and online media companies) to change the way his mostly Western audience live their lives.

He intends to use his News Corp media assets to simultaneously inspire, guilt-trip and fear-up his worldwide audience about their impact on climate change and the future faced by their children and grandchildren.

But Rupert knows he has to do it subtly, less Fox News or the Sydney's Daily Telegraph become the embodiment of the environmental and green lobby groups so many of his journalists have long despised, mocked and relentlessly hammered :

We must avoid preaching. And there has to be substance behind the glitz. But if we are genuine, we can change the way the public thinks about these issues.

...the debate is shifting from whether climate change is really happening to how to solve it. And when so many of the solutions make sense for us as a business, it is clear that we should take action, not only as a matter of public responsibility but because we stand to benefit."

Guilt-trip the public and profit handsomely at the same time. It's the News Corp way.

Tasmanian Aboriginals To Bring Home Remains Of 17 Ancestors From British Museum

Aboriginal elders, and representatives, from Tasmanian tribes will return this weekend from the UK with skulls, bones and teeth of their relatives, after the British Museum relented over a long-running battle to have the remains returned to their homelands for proper burial, as Aboriginal custom demands :

After three days of mediation proceedings in London this week, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) and the museum agreed on the repatriation of the remains - including teeth, skulls and bones taken from Tasmania in the 19th century and held in the museum's research collections.

Under the decision, all of the remains will be returned and the museum will no longer be able to extract genetic material from them or conduct invasive tests.

TAC delegate Greg Brown said he was pleased with the outcome.

"We're happy with what's been agreed because we've been able to stop any additional testing, which was our ultimate aim when we first came over," Mr Brown said.

"Our belief system is that any remains of the dead need to be kept on the land, in traditional country, and that any separation of the two means that the spirit of that person remains restless.

"We need to bring both back together ... we have a cultural obligation to ensure that happens."

The remains were originally stolen by white settlers.

Aboriginal remains are also currently held by Cambridge University, Oxford University and institutions in Scotland. So far, these institutions have refused to hand over the Aboriginal remains they once displayed like trophies.

The Lord Is My...Stockman?

It's taken 30 years and the work of some 100 linguists and translators, but the Bible has finally been translated into an Aboriginal language, Kriol, a pidgin variation that was used by stockmen, and spread far and wide through the Northern Territory.

Only 200 or so other Aboriginal languages to go.

While the Kriol translation will no doubt be read, and welcomed by some Aborigines, it's not exactly going to be a record breaking print run for this version of the Bible. The Anglican Church, who commissioned and oversaw the translation, are showing great ambition, however, by planning to distribute some 30,000 copies of the Kriol translation through the Northern Territory in the coming months.

One of the reasons why it has taken so long to finish the translation is that numerous Bible stories and tales had to be rewritten so they made more sense to traditional Aborigines.

The Dreamtime tales traditionally passed down through the generations by oral storytelling are usually short on examples of Christian-based morality and concepts of kings and individual ownership. Many such stories don't have beginnings, middles and ends, as Western stories usually do, and for the most part were tales told for the benefit of learning how to hunt, what plants and roots were safe to eat, how to read the wind, the clouds and the landscape to forecast the coming season(s), and generally how to survive.

There was also the problem that Aboriginals tend to worship the Earth, more than some formless, all powerful entity. After all, it was knowing and loving and respecting the Earth that enabled them to survive in some of the harshest climates on the planet for more than 60,000 years.

The stories of the challenges faced by the linguists and translators are fascinating :

Peter Carroll, a linguist who worked on the translation, said the phrase “to love God with all one’s heart” was a special challenge. He said: “The Aboriginal people use a different part of the body to express emotions. They have a word that is, broadly translated, ‘insides’. So to love God with all your heart was to want God with all your insides.”

Margaret Mickan, another linguist who has been working on the translation since 1984, said: “If you want to get to the deep things of life and talk about meaningful things, about your beliefs and those sorts of things, then you need it in your own language. What has meaning is something that really touches and speaks to you in your own language.”

Those working on the project needed to check constantly with far-flung communities that their interpretations of language and Biblical concepts were correct – and they were often surprised to find that their offerings had vastly different meanings from what they had intended.

Here's an example of how the "Lo, tho I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death" passage from the Bible now reads, after re-translation from the pidgin English Aboriginal language Kriol :

Yaweh, you are the best stockman. You care for me continually, and everything I have comes from you. I can’t want more.

You care for me just like the stockman who takes his sheep to rest in a quiet place with lots of grass and spring water.

Every day you make me strong. You show me the way to go because I trust your name to do what you have promised.

Even if I go through a very dark place where anything could kill me, but I am not frightened because you are always with me. You have your spear and long stick to always protect me.

'Right To Die' Movement Grows, As 'Pro-Death Choice' Seniors Smuggle Illegal Drugs And Establish Backyard Laboratories

Justice Minister Promise To Hunt Down And Prosecute More Than 800 Elderly Drug Makers

They are planning to get together in groups of eight or ten in secret locations in at least four Australian states. They are all over 60, and some are as old as 90. They're setting up backyard laboratories and these elderly Australians are planning to cook up illegal drugs, barbiturates in fact, strong enough to kill.

But these old folks want the drugs to kill them. That's why they are ready to defy the law and make the drugs. So when they decide it's time to die, then they take drink down a mouthful of the drug and expire, within minutes, if not seconds.

The drug is called Nembutal, and it's the drug of choice for those who want to practice "self-deliverance" or auto-euthanasia.

More than 100 elderly people are alleged to have illegally smuggled the drug into Australia from Mexico, where it is legally available in veterinarian supplies stores.

In an extraordinary documentary aired on ABC TV last night, a new hidden world of Australia's elderly was revealed - a 'Right To Die' movement that may number in the tens of thousands.

They don't want to go to nursing homes. They don't want to suffer in pain, or humiliation, as their minds and bodies fade and malfunction. They want to have the choice to die at a time of their own making.

There's little doubt that the drug of choice for these elderly people is effective. That's why it's so illegal in Australia, for human consumption anyway. Veterinarians use the drug, or a very similar kind of drug, to euthanize dogs. If it's acceptable to give respectful, quick deaths to dogs, their argument goes, why aren't they worthy of the same?

The documentary carried some terrible stats : More than 1100 elderly people have hung or shot themselves in Australia between 2000 and 2005. Hanging was not an option ruled out by some of those interviewed, but they dreaded what they would leave their children or neighbours to confront when their bodies were found.

The Australian government, backed by powerful Christian-aligned, "Right To Life" lobbyists, have been fighting a running battle against euthanasia in recent years.

The documentary, and an enormous talk back radio and online comment reaction this morning, revealed the extremely controversial subject of helping the terminally ill and elderly to end their lives may become a powerful issue in the upcoming federal election.

We have the right to vote, the right to drink, the right to exercise free will, but we do not have the right to die. Why? It's a question that has sparked flurries of controversy in Australia in recent years, but the issue looks set to become a national debate, with a promise by the federal justice minister that police will investigate and arrest any and all people, including the terminally ill, who attempt to smuggle the drug into Australia, or cook it up in backyard laboratories.

But many of the people interviewed in the documentary, 'Final Call', said they were prepared to go to jail to stand up for their right to die a quick and dignified death.

Once police start arresting 92 year old World War 2 veterans for making their own euthanasia drugs, it will become a story too big to ignore.

From ABC News :

An investigation by ABC TV's Four Corners program suggests there is a growing number of elderly Australians prepared to flout the law to commit suicide.

The euthanasia group Exit Australia has told the program more than 100 people have imported the prohibited sedative nembutal to Australia from Mexico while 100 more are preparing to do the same.

Exit Australia says 800 are interested in making the powerful sedative themselves.

Ninety-six-year-old Fred Short has told Four Corners he was part of a group that set up a backyard laboratory in the New South Wales Southern Highlands.

"I think there should be a legal means for people to choose their own time and place of death and to die with dignity," he said.

He says he is not worried about going to jail.

"It never has worried me - mind you at my time of life I probably wouldn't be there very long," he said.

It is alleged the backyard laboratory has successfully manufactured the drug.

John Edge has told Four Corners he took part in the exercise.

"It was really the blind leading the blind because what chemistry we learned at school has long been forgotten," he said.

How can a documentary about old people wanting to kill themselves be so inspiring?

Simple. It showed that if you have a bottle of the drug tucked away at home, you never need worry about getting so old and frail that you can't look after yourself anymore. The dread of being locked up in a nursing home disappears. The terror of having to undergo 'life-saving' operations only to face months of gruelling recovery evaporates.

You can beat nature, and God, with a simple twist of a bottlecap, one big swig and then lay down to (presumably) quietly accept your fate. Hopefully, with your family members, or close friends, by your side, or as recent visitors.

One of the most incredible scenes I've watched in either documentaries or fictional films in recent years unfolded the Four Corners report last night : a near-frail old man sits at his dining room table and unpacks a kit he has put together that will, with a flick of a switch, suffocate him.

It appears the man has designed and built the basic machine himself, because there is no legal version of it on the market. He talks about how he has to "test" the machine to make sure it will do what he built it to do. He doesn't want the machine to fail when he decides it's time to go.

Give me a choice, the man said, and I won't have to use the self-suffocation machine. Like every other old, and clearly sane and mentally alert, person in the documentary, this man wanted to get his hands on the drug that would guarantee a far less painful and horrible final exit.


From news.com.au :

Hundreds of elderly Australians planning to end their lives when they can no longer care for themselves, are conspiring to manufacture an illegal euthanasia drug.

The ABC's Four Corners program tonight said about 800 elderly people across Australia are waiting to get involved in making the drug nembutal in backyard laboratories, with at least four to be established soon in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Wollongong.

About 100 other older Australians were engaged in illegally importing the drug to Australia from the Mexican border town of Tijuana, close to the US city of San Diego.

Illegal possession of the prohibited drug carries a maximum penalty of two years' jail.

One of the illegal manufacturers, Bron Norman, said the drug should be available for those who wish to commit suicide when they have outlived their useful life.

"It's outrageous that we've been forced into this position because we can't legally obtain a drug that will give us a peaceful death when we want one," she told the ABC.

"It's not illegal to end your life. Why is it illegal to have the drug that will do it?"

The ABC TV message board discussing the documentary contains hundreds of comments from health professionals and elderly people demanding the laws be changed so those who decide it's time to go can do so, painlessly and effectively.

Some of the stories about the suffering experienced by sick, elderly people in Australian nursing homes are heartbreaking, as are the tales told by hospital staff, who are forced, by law, to subject some terminally ill people to "life-saving" operations they neither want to give, and that their patients do not want to endure.

In the face of hearing directly from those nearing the end of their lives calmly, sanely discussing why they want to die by their own hand, the pro-life lobbyists and activists' arguments of morality sound weak and pointless.

Why should an elderly person who is ready to go, and has no thirst for further life, be forced by lack of an alternative to shoot or hang themselves?

The only reality-based answer is : they shouldn't.

Pathetic arguments about how "Jesus suffered on the Cross" so therefore we must suffer as well, in order to be worthy of eternal life, are an insult to the elderly people of our society, and a fevered distortion of any teachings attributed to Jesus Christ.

As one elderly man in the documentary pointed out, why did his generation fight in World War 2 for the freedoms now enjoyed by all Australians, when he is denied the most important freedom of all : when to decide it's time to live, and when to decide it's time to die?

It's a powerful question, and one that both the Howard federal government, and the Rudd opposition government, are terrified of being forced to answer.

As millions of Baby Boomers move into their senior years, and become one of the most powerful voting blocks, it is a question any future government will no longer be able to avoid answering.


Justice Minister Says Elderly People Who Smuggle Or Make Illegal Death Drug Will Be "Brought Before The Courts"

Full Transcript Of The 'Right To Die A Dignified Death' Documentary "Final Call"

Kath Day's Secret Solo Album?



Chilling.

Could it be true that before finding fame in the documentary series Kath and Kim, Kath Day recorded a solo album of romantic ballads?

The above album cover comes from a collection of the worst album covers of all time. Be prepared, there's some true shockers to be found here.

Aborigines Use Ancient Weather Forecasting Methods To Predict Coming Rains

For more than 60,000 years, Australian Aborigines have been reading the land, the clouds, the stars, the plants and the animals to predict how the cycles of nature would affect their hunting and gathering in the season ahead.

Using that ancient knowledge, some of the world's longest surviving cultured people are seeing a bit of good news in the natural world for some areas of Australia devastated by mega-drought.

So don't start evacuating the cities just yet, drought breaking rains might not be as far away as previously thought :

With wattle trees blooming across southeastern Australia and native birds and cockatoos on the wing, Aboriginal weather watchers say rain is on the way – giving some hope to parts of the country ravaged by drought.

"The cockys are flocking everywhere. That's usually a good sign that rain is coming," said Jeremy Clark, from Victoria.

"The way the flora and plants and shrubs are starting to react, I'd certainly be expecting rain."

For the first time, the forecasts from Clark's Brambuk community, which covers five Aboriginal homelands, are being taken seriously by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology as it looks for different ways to better understand the changing climate.

Bureau climate meteorologist Harvey Stern said the traditional Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring seasons have little relevance in Australia's tropical north – or even in the temperate south, where aborigines have six seasons based on the weather and changes to the natural environment.

The bureau's Indigenous Weather Knowledge programme taps into the Aboriginal philosophy that all of nature is connected, and subtle changes to plants and animals can give clues about the climate and weather.

Mr Clark, chief executive of the Brambuk community which covers most of western Victoria, including the Grampians mountains and national park, said Aborigines have always had different ways of looking at the weather, reading landscape rather than a calendar.

"It's still practised. We won't go fishing for eels, for example, until wattles start flowering and the animals start moving, and the full moon comes. Then you know the eels are running on the migratory journey to the sea," he said.

Australia Accused Of Helping Fund And Arm Tamil Tiger "Terrorists"

If it wasn't enough that the Howard government helped keep Saddam Hussein supplied with enough cash to buy more human shredding machines and testicle shock kits - by repeatedly turning many blind eyes to the flood of memos pouring across the desks of the prime minister and foreign minister all but screaming out "Pay attention morons! Your wheat contractor is bribing Saddam with hundreds of millions of dollars!" - now the very same government is accused of not only allowing the Tamil Tigers to raise funds in Australia to fight their insurgency in Sri Lanka, but also stand accused of helping them to arm up and put together their own air force as well (as minor as it is).

If this keeps up, Australia is going to become a prime target of the 'War on Terror'.

After all, it was John Howard's good mate President Bush who has often said that if you hide, feed, supply weapons to, or help fund, terrorists, then you are as bad as the terrorists.

Just like when dump trucks full of cash were backing up to Saddam's palace gates in the late '90s, and early 2000s, Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer knew all about how the Tamil Tiger sympathisers were raising cash and buying equipment that could be adapted to fight their insurgency in Sri Lanka :

...Downer admitted yesterday the Government had been aware for some time that money raised in Australia was being siphoned to the Tigers' cause in Sri Lanka.

Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna says the Tigers have been procuring aircraft, arms, explosives and other technological devices from Australia for more than a decade.

Dr Gunaratna says Australia's involvement extends beyond just fundraising.

"The failure of Australia and other countries to act in a timely way enabled the Tamil Tigers to procure aircrafts and other capabilities that have enabled them to develop a successful terrorist air wing."

"For Australia, it was never a priority to curb the non-Islamist terrorist groups operating in Australia," he said.

Wait a minute....non-Islamic terrorism?

Could there really be such a thing?

If the regular propaganda stream pouring from the mouths of the prime minister and foreign minister, and their media droogs, is to be believed, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there wasn't such a thing as non-terrorist Islam, let alone non-Islamic terrorism.

So Australia has been helping to fund and arm Tamil Tiger "terrorists"?

The 'Axis Of Evil' will clearly have to widened to the 'Quadra Of Nasty', so Australia can be included.

If only Australia had major mining or business interests in the disputed Sri Lankan territories that the Tamil Tigers are claiming as their homeland, we would have put these insurgents out of business a decade ago.

Australia Faces World's Most Extreme "Climate Change Challenge"

Two Australian Cities Face Ruin Without Rain

How Long Before The Mass Evacuation Of Cities Begin?

How dry does an Australian city or major town have to get before the state and federal governments consider mass evacuations?

The evacuation of the entire human population, by force, of at least two Queensland towns is now on its way to becoming a reality. It sounds like hype, but it's not, read the truth for yourself here.

But what about the bigger towns? What if an entire city of a million or more Australians ran utterly dry of drinking water supplies?

What then?

Without fresh water, any large town or city becomes uninhabitable. You simply cannot truck in enough water to keep a city of a million or more people alive.

The Queensland town of Killarney currently has its drinking water trucked in, at a cost of some $8000 per week. Eight grand a week for a town of less than 2000 people. What dry city could afford an 'imported' water bill clocking up a few million dollars a week?

If the Australian government was eventually forced to evacuate a city like Adelaide or Brisbane, where would all those people go to? There's not a lot of room in the other Australian cities. They're all experiencing, or facing, water shortages of their own. And once you get out of the city and their suburbs, the vast majority of Australia is already suffering scary to shitscary levels of drought.

If we can't pack off the millions of residents of Adelaide and Brisbane to somewhere else in Australia, we're going to have to look overseas.

How about Canada? They're looking for a few hundred thousand new immigrants in the next few years. But be warned 'exported' Queenslanders, it's mighty cold in Alberta, where all the new jobs in the shale-into-oil industries are waiting to be filled. Pack your woollies.

Of course, all these Australian climate change refugees might find a new home in the rapidly melting lands of the Arctic. The ice-free Arctic coastlines of Canada, the US, Russia and Greenland are going to be the new homelands for tens of millions of climate change refugees in the coming decades.

The bizarre irony of Australians possibly being forced to evacuate their towns and cities due to the severe effects of climate change is that Australians were recently debating whether or not we should welcome the expected human tide of climate change refugees from the islands of the South Pacific, some of which are already being consumed by rising sea levels.

How hardcore climate change effects Australia is likely to only get more weird, from here on in.

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According to this international news story, Australian Of The Year Tim Flannery, the superbly apocalyptic Climate Change Voice Of Doom, is "the country's most recognised scientist".

Well, maybe. He's certainly Australia's most recognised Australian Of The Year.

According to Flannery, who tends to beef up his Voice Of Doom when speaking to journalists on the international beat :

Australia faces the world's most extreme climate change challenge as millions of city dwellers try to cope with water shortages, according to the country's most recognised scientist.

Flannery said the drought meant two of Australia's largest cities, Brisbane and Adelaide -- home to a combined total of almost three million people -- would run out of water by the year's end unless the so-called "Big Dry" ended.

"We could see a catastrophic situation developing here by the end of the year. It's become a huge issue," Flannery told AFP.

"Even a year ago this would have been unthinkable. I think it's the most extreme and the most dangerous situation arising from climate change facing any country in the world right now.

"We have a situation where, if there are no flows in the Murray-Darling (river system), Adelaide, a city of one million people, has only 40 days' worth of water left in storage.

"If we don't get any rain this year Adelaide and Brisbane may be facing diabolical problems."

Catastrophic situation? Diabolical problems? Cut all the soft talk and sugar-spin, Flannery, and tell the bowel-loosening truth : If it doesn't rain in volumes that would have made Noah hire on extra ark builders, Adelaideans are going to be evicted from the city and packed off to the colds of Canada, via cruise ship.

Nobody wants to be the first to say it, but now I've said it. It's done, there you go. So deal with it, Adelaide, or start towing Antarctican icebergs into your ports.

It's always interesting to take a look at the international media stories on how Australia is being hammered by climate change, and the subsequent water shortages, crumbling coast lines, destroyed crops and mega-drought. They don't tend to hold back on the heavy stuff like the local media does.

There was a spectacularly doom-laden feature in the UK Independent a few weeks back, which I sat down to read after I finished liberally hosing off the path, wastefully washing the car, filling the swimming pool, flushing the toilet repeatedly to get rid of a fly that was doing laps in the bowl, and turning on the front and back lawn sprinklers for four or five hours, not because the grass was dying, but just because I love the way the sunlight glistens in all that watery spray.

If it's good enough for key members of the Australian media and the federal government to be deniers of global warming and climate change, then I can be a water-shortage denier.

And so much for all that.

But seeing a point-by-point mini-history of how the mega-drought and water shortages have impacted Australia in the past couple of years can make for some pretty freaky reading, even more so if you live in a city or town where water shortages have already hit hard :

The drought, which has lasted a decade in parts of the country, has slowed Australia's overall economic growth by an estimated 0.75 percent as crops have fallen 62 percent.

The impact on rural communities has been devastating. Many farmers have been forced off the land and counselling services have reported unusually high levels of suicide in rural areas.

Children have water conservation messages drummed into them from an early age at school and householders face hefty fines, or can even have their water disconnected, if they are found to be wasting the precious resource.

The government is also concerned that Australia's tourism industry, which earns billions of dollars a year, will be hit by "jet guilt" -- a reluctance by holidaymakers to take the heavily polluting, long-haul plane flights that are the only practical way to reach Down Under.

Authorities are also considering culling some of the million-plus feral camel population after dromedaries "mad with thirst" rampaged through a remote desert community.

Researchers warn the drought could drive Australia's iconic koalas to extinction within a decade.

The scale of the problem hit home for many Australians in April when Prime Minister John Howard said there would be no water for farms in the Murray-Darling river basin unless the drought broke soon.

Covering more than one million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) in the southeast of Australia, the Murray-Darling basin is the country's largest river system, almost three times bigger than Japan and four times larger than Britain.

It is Australia's rural powerhouse, producing more than 40 percent of the nation's agricultural produce, worth 10 billion dollars (8.3 billion US) a year.

The Murray-Darling supports half the nation's sheep flock, a quarter of the cattle herd and three-quarters of irrigated land.

It's clearly time to evacuate the residents of Brisbane and Adelaide to the wilds of Canada and divert their fresh water river flows to Sydney and Melbourne, where they are needed most.

The Brisbanians and Adelaiders won't be happy, but harsh sacrifices must be made in such times of national emergency. Sydneysiders and Melbournians will appreciate the sacrifices made by their fellow Australians. We might even send these new Canastralians a post card, or two, but only if they ship back an ice berg or two, if there's any left by then.


Prime Minister Says "Pray For Rain", Renowned Priest Says Begging God To Stop The Drought Is "Pointless"

Melbourne Also Running Out Of Water - Vegetable Crops Production To Drop By Two-Thirds

Australia's Mega-Drought To Cripple Local Food Supply

The "Armageddon Solution" To Water Shortages - Start Evacuation Of Queensland Towns

"Patriotic" Movies That "Glorify War" Won't Face Ban Under New Anti-Terror Censorship Laws


This from the Sun Herald :

Patriotic movies or games that glorify war will be specifically excluded from tough new anti-terrorism censorship laws.

So Australia faces a new regime of media censorship that will aim to define what acts of violence and bloodshed constitute acts of terrorism, and which are patriotic and glorify war?

What's the difference between glorifying acts of war that decimate civilian populations and glorifying acts of terrorism that decimate civilian populations?

It may all come down to what is deemed to be "patriotic" by a censorship board.

So what about the peoples' movement of Fretelin in East Timor? They rose up against the Indonesian government - a government backed by Australia and armed by the United States (amongst the many nations that sold them weapons of mass destruction) - in the mid-1970s, and fought back against the depopulation of their nation. They used what would now be called terrorism to fight for their freedom.

Would an Australian made movie about this 'terrorist group', that showed how they waged their insurgency against the Indonesian government, not be deemed to be "unpatriotic" under these new guidelines? After all, Australia was a close ally of Indonesia during the very worse years of East Timor's depopulation, which may have claimed more than 200,000 lives.

Or what about the insurgency waged by the Kooris in New South Wales against the English occupation of their native lands in the late 1700s and early 1800s?

There is no doubt that the Aboriginal warriors terrorised the civilian population of Sydney and Parramatta back then, as the English terrorised and decimated the Aboriginal tribes.

In a movie about the Aboriginal uprising against the English invaders, which side would be deemed "patriotic"?


Go To 'Your New Reality' For The Full Story

Former Prime Minister On John Howard & George W. Bush's "Evil Purpose"

Former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, gave a speech at the Australian National University yesterday where he spoke of his disgust at how the Australian and US governments conspired to ignore, and over-ride, the Rule Of Law when it came to the illegal detention of David Hicks for five years in Guantanamo Bay.

Hicks pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism in a plea deal and was sentenced to nine months jail. He is set to be returned to Australia in the coming weeks to serve out the remainder of the sentence in an Australian jail and is expected to be set free on December 31.

Fraser cut loose in his speech, and pointed out that what happened to Hicks is not an isolated incident, in Australia or the US, but the most prominent in a long string of violations of human rights and the right to fair trials and due process :

So David Hicks will be home by the end of the year, partially gagged. The gag order which was undermined by information provided to the British Government and subsequently published in his application to become a British citizen and subject to the same treatment as other British citizens formerly held in Guantanamo Bay.

And so this story comes to an end but at what a price. The main story is not David Hicks. The main story is a willingness of two allegedly democratic governments prepared to throw every legal principle out the window and establish a process that we would expect of tyrannical regimes. That our own democracies should be prepared to so abandon the Rule of Law for an expedient and as I believe, evil purpose should greatly disturb all of us. But how many are concerned? Too many are not concerned because they believe that such a derogation of justice can only apply to people who are different, in some indefinable way.

Only the other day I was speaking with somebody who quite plainly believed that Hicks deserved anything that was metered out to him because he was what he was, the Rule of Law did not need to apply. For somebody who has done terrible things, why does he deserve justice? That denies the whole basis of our system, the necessity of a civilised society which cannot exist unless there is an open, predictable justice system that applies equally to every person.

David Hicks at the best was clearly a very foolish young man. He was terribly misguided and may well have done some terrible things. I do not know. But if our Government says he has had his day in court, he made a plea bargain, therefore he deserved what he got, it only emphasises its lack of commitment to the Rule of Law for all people.

If the Government believes it to be expedient, we now know that it is prepared to push the Rule of Law aside. That is a larger issue than the tragedy of David Hicks.

A number of Liberals have spoken out about these and similar issues in relation to asylum seekers or refugees, or people improperly treated in Department of Immigration detention centres. Too many have remained silent.

In an op-ed piece published in The Jurist, Fraser elaborated on what he determined to be part of an "evil purpose" in how David Hicks was 'prepared' to face the military commission, and that methodology of preparation allowed the military commission to avoid facing the full glare of a supposedly open hearing and trial :

I believe it likely that the United States authorities did not want the weakness of their evidence publicly exposed, even in a fraudulent military tribunal. Even though cross-examination would have been extremely limited, it could still have exposed the secrecy by which evidence had been collected. The defence would have exposed the fact that they were not properly advised of the evidence, of the means by which it was obtained, that it was in fact a very secret process, designed to achieve one verdict. If the process had gone to open court, each hour would have demonstrated that justice was not being served, that this was not a court of law.

The best alternative for governments, with some semblance of their credibility preserved, was to have Hicks under such pressure that he would accept a plea bargain.

This does explain the solitary confinement of over twelve months. It does explain the other pressures placed upon him, pressures which would have included the threat of continuing jail in Guantanamo Bay for twenty years or more. What person amongst us would not have accepted a plea bargain that achieved some element of freedom at the end of nine months?

Good question. But don't expect an answer from those who cry out for democracy and free societies in the Middle East, but are quite happy to see those very same institutions and rights undermined, poisoned and tarnished, in their home countries.


The Cost Of Prosecuting And Jailing David Hicks? $3 Million

Australian Government Has Had Secret Plan For Hicks' Return To Australia Since September, 2006

Attorney General Vows To Change Laws Retrospectively So Hicks Can Never Profit From Telling His Story

From The "Worst Of The Worst" To A Bumbling Wanna-Be And Al Qaeda "Liability" - US Military Prosecutors Now Claim Hicks Was Not Dangerous At All

Publishers Want Hicks Story In His Own Words - At Any Cost


Tomorrow : Why David Hicks Could Earn Up To $4 Million From Media Deals To Tell His Story

John Howard's Shocking Anti-Americanism

Prime Minister Blasts Americans Over Iraq War

Here's the latest attack on the American public from prime minister John Howard :

"The American domestic resolve is weakening..."

He said that because more than 70% of Americans back the US Congress in trying to force the Bush administration into bringing the Iraq War to an end... :

"...it is wrong, and I don't think it is doing anything other than giving great comfort and encouragement to Al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq....They are looking at all this, they read newspapers, they see it on television and they say, 'The American domestic resolve is weakening, therefore we should maintain our resolve.'

"If there is a perception of an America defeat in Iraq, that will leave the whole of the Middle East in great turmoil and will be an enormous victory for terrorism."

Howard is high on NeoCon propaganda if he really believes that garbage. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, and the Iraqi insurgency is concerned, the US is already defeated in Iraq. That is not giving aid and comfort to the enemy, that is facing reality before another 3300 American and half a million Iraqi lives are lost.

How utterly disgusting.

How dare Howard try and present an anti-American front simply because the vast majority of Americans, like Australians, oppose the Iraq War. This is not about the reality of war, or the reality of the world, this is about Howard's ego, and his devotion to President Bush.

This news story featuring Howard's shocking anti-Americanism was featured prominently on the Drudge Report for chrissakes. This means that any of the tens of thousands of American journos who daily access the site will see this story and may choose to use it as a dramatic example of fractures in the Australian-American alliance.

It's clearly time to re-name it : The Howard-Bush alliance.

A very separate and distinct alliance to that between the generations of Australians and Americans who have called each other friends and allies, regardless of who is in government.

Howard clearly has no intention of preserving the alliance when the Democrats take control of the White House in 2009. He knows he is going down and will not win the federal election later this year, and he doesn't care.

The prime minister is damaging the alliance and disgracing the name of Australia in front of a war-shattered, grieving nation.

It's time for John Howard to shut the hell up, and keep his nose out of America's internal affairs.

Towns May Be Evacuated Over Water Shortages

The "Armageddon Solution" To The Australian Mega-Drought

1800 Australians may be forcibly removed from their homes in two Queensland towns as councils and state governments consider increasingly drastic measures to cope with the worst drought in Australia's recorded history.

Disturbingly, Killarney, one of the towns that may be "evacuated", is situated near the source of the Murray-Darling river system : the essential water system that stretches through three Australian states and is now drying up, and has completely stopped flowing in dozens of locations.

Drinking water is being trucked into Killarney at a cost of $8000 a week, but the expense means this measure to keep the town alive may not last for long :

Senior state bureaucrats have discussed the possibility of moving residents from Leyburn, population 200, and Killarney, home to 1500 people.

Water Services Association executive director Ross Young said the Government had the power to move people.

"I'm not sure it has ever been used in Australia...The reality is with no water, you can't live anywhere for long."

Warwick Shire Mayor Ron Bellingham called evacuation an "Armageddon solution", but admitted it was a possibility for Leyburn.

If the drought doesn't break soon, which would require vast stretches of Australia to receive unprecedented and sustained rainfalls, the evacuation of towns that rely on bores and rivers for their fresh water will become a reality for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Australians in the years ahead.