Bolt Attack : "Hating Howard To Death"

By Darryl Mason

The post down below, 'Howard Hating : New National Sport', was up for an hour, or less, at Road To Surfdom, to which I occasionally contribute. The blog's owner Tim Dunlop pulled the piece because he didn't like its tone or its association of violence with prime minister John Howard, even though the post was clearly satirical. Fair enough.

And there the story would have have ended. Except Herald Sun blogger Andrew Bolt jumped onto the, by then, deleted story so he could raise his regular, pointless and utterly inane question :

What is it with the Left and violence?

My only regret with writing the 'Howard Hating' post is that today, on the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, I've given Bolt a way of distracting his readers from the fact that it was the Australian conservative Right, of which he is a proud member, who cheered most loudly and most savagely for the illegal War On Iraq to become a reality. Bolt damns words, but praises a war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

A war that has destroyed the standing of the United States in the international community, robbed its people of more than half a trillion dollars, taken the lives of more than 3500 coalition troops, cost the Australian people more than $4 billion, killed more than 60,000 Iraqi civilians and driven millions more from their homes. Iraqis continue to still flee the country of their birth at a rate of more than 30,000 a week. More than one-third of all Iraqi children are now categorised by the United Nations as malnourished.

Talk about promoting violence. Bolt's hypocrisy is pathetic, and illuminating.

Bolt, like most of the so-called conservative commentariat in Australian, were fully aware of the terrible civilian death toll the initial Iraq War would deliver, just as they were fully aware of the horrific insurgency that would inevitably follow the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

And this is say nothing of the shocking treatment dished out by the likes of Bolt, fellow blogger Tim Blair, the Sydney Morning Herald columnists Miranda Devine and Gerard Henderson and the Daily Telegraph's Piers Ackerman onto the hundreds of thousands of Australians who marched in February, 2003, against the, then coming, illegal war.

Included amongst these protesters so viciously defiled by Bolt, Blair, Henderson, Ackerman and Devine, were thousands of Australian veterans of World War 2, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Insurgency, and the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf wars.

Through their desperate hatred of peaceful protestors, these writers insulted and verbally assaulted Australian veterans, both men and women, who well knew the full horror of what going to war on Iraq would actually mean. for all the young Australian soldiers and Iraqi civilians involved.

Bolt, along with his media brethren, happily mocked such protesters and questioned their sanity, and loyalty, and parroted John Howard's spurious claim that the veterans who chose to march against the coming violence of a full-blown war, waged against a mostly defenceless people, were giving comfort to Saddam Hussein.

But to raise a question about the scope of anger and hatred directed towards John Howard today by many, many Australians who clearly feel duped and betrayed by this nation's leadership?

Well, Andrew Bolt reckons you must be a Lefty and therefore you must embrace violence.

And so it goes. On and on.

Here's the original post that was pulled from Road To Surfdom, in full :

How many Australians silently whispered the words "C'mon snipers..." when they first saw footage of prime minister John Howard fleeing, at speed, out the back of a smoking Hercules on a wide-open airstrip in Iraqi insurgent territory on Sunday night?

Hundreds of Australians? Thousands? Millions?

'Howard Hating' is now officially Australia's new national sport of choice. But do the vast majority of Australians merely dislike John Howard? Or do they hate him? Do they despise him? Do they wish for his political or physical death? Or both?

I know I've cited the unofficial caravan park campfire poll before, but I think the vibe from such gatherings of lower and middle class Australians aged 20 to 80 from all states of the nation can be extremely revealing.

On a trip through ten caravan parks and campgrounds in West Australia in late February and early March, the raw fury and teeth-grinding hatred that virtually everyone I met held for John Howard was disturbing in the extreme.

They could smell the blood of Howard's coming electoral savaging, and they didn't want to wait another month for it to become a flesh-splashing reality. They wanted it, needed it, right there and then. If the prime minister were a newborn baby, they would have tossed him to the dingos.

As Newspoll results today show, not only has Kevin Rudd and his policy-focused front bench ministers opened up a completely unbeatable lead of 61-39% over the "conga-line of suckholes" that leer out from the prime minister's quivering shadow, John Howard himself is now the primary target of choice for the loathing of a nation.

Naturally, the opposition leader's numbers will rise in the polls if the prime minister's popularity and approval ratings fall. But Howard's numbers aren't falling, they're plunging into the basement like a lift crammed full of concrete blocks that's snapped free of its cables. He's almost in George W. Bush territory. And Rudd has led Labor to their best numbers in two decades.

The decline of John Howard's political kingship has already become an amusingly harrowing spectacle. But the laughs won't last. The cacophony of lies, deceit and fear mongering that have punctuated his reign have deafened the masses and deadened their souls. Now they want their revenge. They want to scrape the filth off their shoes and put the past decade of derision and division, of Tampa, of Truth Overboard, of legitimate refugee toddlers razor-wired into desert prison camps, of Australia-funded missiles slamming into Iraqi civilians, of propping up Saddam's hideous regime by plausibly-denying the bribes of the AWB, all of it, all that muck and filth, Australians in the overwhelming majority now want to push it all deep into the back corner of their memories.

Perhaps appropriately enough, the kiss of death for John Howard was delivered in the main editorial in The Australian today. Two kisses, actually. One for each cheek.

"The record shows that far from being too close to the Howard Government, as our detractors would argue, this newspaper has in fact been a fierce critic."

"....for a government that argues its strongest virtue is economic management, the real economic achievements of the past 11 years are slim pickings."

The Australia's editor is trying to force the lid shut on Howard's political coffin before the fetid stink of death seeps into his pleasant suit.

There is no going back now. The opinion makers and fakers of The Australian can go for the throat, and the arms and the legs and the bloated liver, of Howard for all they are worth.

Australia has been transformed under the War On Human Decency waged by John Howard for 11 solid years, and many of us have become more like Americans than perhaps even John Howard and Tony Abbott and Piers Ackerman and Andrew Bolt might like to realise.

The Fair Go For All has faded. Give The Little Bloke A Chance is not so popular anymore. But most of all, we don't seem to like Losers as much as we once did, even the ones who try really hard. That's the chief reason why the Iraq War is so vastly unpopular in the United States today. America is losing, and Americans don't like to lose. And now, neither do we.

Howard is a Loser. And everyone knows it. When you're a Loser in Australian politics, you don't get a second chance anymore, as Mark Latham so comprehensively learned.

The stumbling, bumbling, simpering, whimpering decline and fall of John Howard is really going to be almost too cruel to watch. Alan Ramsey called the coming spectacle of Howard's downfall "delicious" in the Sydney Morning Herald last week. Maybe. But there's nothing pretty about a six month long autopsy.

John Howard is like a once glorious multiple Melbourne Cup winning racehorse that's gone lame and now needs a well-lubricated fist to clear its bowels in the misty morning. Peter Costello and Malcolm Turnbull must do the decent thing, the humane thing. The only thing that can and should be done. They must feed Howard a handful of sugar cubes and coax him down into the back paddock and do what the insurgent snipers failed to do in Iraq on the weekend: put him out of his misery.

Politically speaking, of course.

Tim Blair's Attack Pack Weighs In....But Has Little To Say

Road To Surfdom Regular Readers On Decision To Pull 'Howard Hating : New National Sport' Post From Blog

Government Estimates 148,000 Australians Could Be Hospitalised During Bird Flu Pandemic

Study : Severe Shortage Of Protective Masks Will Increase Spread Of Pandemic Bird Flu

(this post originally appeared on 'The Bird Flu Blog')

A new study has concluded that Australia faces a more severe threat of a wider bird flu pandemic due to a severe lack of the most basic protection wear for the hospital and medical staff who will have to care for its victims.

From the ABC :

Stockpiles of special masks for hospital staff to wear while treating bird flu patients are likely to be inadequate and quickly run out in a pandemic, an Australian study suggests.

Insufficient stocks of protective wear will lead to more people becoming infected, depleting stockpiles of antiviral drugs sooner, it concludes.

"Until now all the fuss has been about drugs but the crucial thing is if there's an epidemic, masks will protect the drug stockpile," says society president and senior investigator Professor Lindsay Grayson.

"The study shows if we run out of masks, a lot more people are going to need drugs," adds Grayson, who is the director of infectious diseases at Austin Health.

Guidelines recommend high-filtration masks for healthcare workers in close contact with infected patients.

The Federal Government's national stockpile has at least two million of the masks, plus at least 40 million standard surgical masks for the projected 1-7.5 million people who will attend GPs, clinics and outpatients.

The Government projects a maximum 148,000 infected people may be hospitalised.

The Australian government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars stockpiling anti-viral medications that are expected to expire shortly. Unlike anti-virals, the report points out, protective wear like high-filtration masks do not have a use-by date.

Go To 'The Bird Flu Blog' For The Latest News

Hating Howard : The New National Sport Everybody Wants To Play

By Darryl Mason

How many Australians silently whispered the words "C'mon snipers..." when they first saw footage of prime minister John Howard fleeing, at speed, out the back of a smoking Hercules on a wide-open airstrip in Iraqi insurgent territory.

Hundreds of Australians? Thousands? Millions?

'Howard Hating' is now officially Australia's new national sport of choice. But do the vast majority of Australians merely dislike John Howard? Or do they hate him? Do they despise him? Do they wish for his political or physical death? Or both?

I know I've cited the unofficial caravan park campfire poll before, but I think the vibe from such gatherings of lower and middle class Australians aged 20 to 80 from all states of the nation can be extremely revealing.

On a trip through ten caravan parks and campgrounds in West Australia in late February and early March, the raw fury and teeth-grinding hatred that virtually everyone I met held for John Howard was disturbing in the extreme.

They could smell the blood of Howard's coming electoral savaging, and they didn't want to wait another month for it to become a flesh-splashing reality. They wanted it, needed it, right there and then. If the prime minister were a newborn baby, they would have tossed him to the dingos.

As Newspoll results today show, not only has Kevin Rudd and his policy-focused front bench ministers opened up a completely unbeatable lead of 61-39% over the "conga-line of suckholes" that leer out from the prime minister's quivering shadow, John Howard himself is now the primary target of choice for the loathing of a nation.

Naturally, the opposition leader's numbers will rise in the polls if the prime minister's popularity and approval ratings fall. But Howard's numbers aren't falling, they're plunging into the basement like a lift crammed full of concrete blocks that's snapped free of its cables. He's almost in George W. Bush territory. And Rudd has led Labor to their best numbers in two decades.

The decline of John Howard's political kingship has already become an amusingly harrowing spectacle. But the laughs won't last. The cacophony of lies, deceit and fear mongering that have punctuated his reign have deafened the masses and deadened their souls. Now they want their revenge. They want to scrape the filth off their shoes and put the past decade of derision and division, of Tampa, of Truth Overboard, of legitimate refugee toddlers razor-wired into desert prison camps, of Australia-funded missiles slamming into Iraqi civilians, of propping up Saddam's hideous regime by plausibly-denying the bribes of the AWB, all of it, all that muck and filth, Australians in the overwhelming majority now want to push it all deep into the back corner of their memories.

Perhaps appropriately enough, the kiss of death for John Howard was delivered in the main editorial in The Australian today. Two kisses, actually. One for each cheek.

"The record shows that far from being too close to the Howard Government, as our detractors would argue, this newspaper has in fact been a fierce critic."

"....for a government that argues its strongest virtue is economic management, the real economic achievements of the past 11 years are slim pickings."

The Australia's editor is trying to force the lid shut on Howard's political coffin before the fetid stink of death seeps into his pleasant suit.

There is no going back now. The opinion makers and fakers of The Australian can go for the throat, and the arms and the legs and the bloated liver, of Howard for all they are worth.

Australia has been transformed under the War On Human Decency waged by John Howard for 11 solid years, and many of us have become more like Americans than perhaps even John Howard and Tony Abbott and Piers Ackerman and Andrew Bolt might like to realise.

The Fair Go For All has faded. Give The Little Bloke A Chance is not so popular anymore. But most of all, we don't seem to like Losers as much as we once did, even the ones who try really hard. That's the chief reason why the Iraq War is so vastly unpopular in the United States today. America is losing, and Americans don't like to lose. And now, neither do we.

Howard is a Loser. And everyone knows it. When you're a Loser in Australian politics, you don't get a second chance anymore, as Mark Latham so comprehensively learned.

The stumbling, bumbling, simpering, whimpering decline and fall of John Howard is really going to be almost too cruel to watch. Alan Ramsey called the coming spectacle of Howard's downfall "delicious" in the Sydney Morning Herald last week. Maybe. But there's nothing pretty about a six month long autopsy.

John Howard is like a once glorious multiple Melbourne Cup winning racehorse that's gone lame and now needs a well-lubricated fist to clear its bowels in the misty morning. Peter Costello and Malcolm Turnbull must do the decent thing, the humane thing. The only thing that can and should be done. They must feed Howard a handful of sugar cubes and coax him down into the back paddock and do what the insurgent snipers failed to do in Iraq on the weekend: put him out of his misery.

Politically speaking, of course.



John Howard Sees Only "Faint Glimmers Of Hope" In Iraq

On the night Australian troops enter their fifth year of war fighting in Iraq, Australian prime minister John Howard was downbeat on the prospects of any eventual result approaching great success in the Iraq War.

Two days ago, the prime minister visited Iraq, meeting with prime minister Maliki, and Australian troops, before he committed Australian forces to at least a few more years of support for the embattled Maliki government. Howard is also expected to announce further increases of troops to Iraq in the coming weeks.

When asked, on the 7.30 Report, about whether he thought the Iraq War would deliver the kind of freedom and liberty promised to the people of Iraq in 2003, Howard said he still saw a "faint glimmers of hope".

"Australia will continue its presence in Iraq to assist in bringing about a situation where the Iraqi people are reasonably able to provide for their own future and for their own security," Howard said while in Iraq, last weekend.

This is yet another example of Howard's steady, sustained deflating of expectations of what state Iraq will be in, as a society, as a nation, when Australia eventually withdraws its troops as the United States does so.

John Howard will give a major speech on Wednesday evening to mark the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, where he is expected to downplay earlier claims and boasts of success in Iraq, and to prepare Australians for a long commitment and the likelihood of Australian casualties, as insurgents chased from Baghdad by the US troop "surge" relocate to Australian controlled areas in the south of the country.

During the 7.30 Report interview, John Howard was completely busted by interviewer Kerry O'Brien trying to portray Iraq as a country besieged by Al Qaeda terrorists before the 2003 illegal invasion began :

KERRY O'BRIEN: You've just come from Afghanistan, too, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been able not only to survive but, it seems, rebuild strength, in the case of the Taliban. In the case of Al Qaeda, its ongoing strength is clear for all to see, it would seem. You must have pondered what might have been if America and its coalition partners had focused on that primary battle front in Afghanistan after September 11 rather than the disastrous four year distractions in Iraq?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I've pondered two things about Afghanistan. I pondered, firstly, why is it important to defeat the terrorists in Afghanistan, but it doesn't matter in Iraq?

KERRY O'BRIEN: Well, what was the evidence that Al Qaeda was a terrorist force in Iraq when you invaded?

JOHN HOWARD: But I am talking of the present, Kerry.

No, you were talking about pre-war Iraq, post-Afghanistan pullout when you said you had pondered why "it was important to defeat the terrorists".

Nice try, though.

Major Australian City Running Out Of Drinking Water

Vegetable Crops Destroyed By Drought, Production To Drop By Two-Thirds

The primary dam supplying the majority of Melbourne's drinking water is only weeks away from draining down to a level regarded as critical.

Within a year, and without heavy rains, the Thomson dam is expected to be dry.

The Victorian government is weathering a storm of criticism for relying on rain falls that are clearly not guaranteed to occur.

But extremely low levels of fresh water are not only the problem with the dam. According to this story in the Melbourne Age, "equipment needed to pump the dead water from the dam is not ready, meaning Melbourne could face a water crisis in quality and quantity...."

At the same time as harsh water restrictions are expected to become a reality across the state, more than half the dam's water washes down river to meet irrigation demands.

The claims are made by former Melbourne Water hydrologist Geoff Crapper and engineer Ron Sutherland. Their latest predictions follow their forecasts about the Thomson dam last year, which contradicted Melbourne Water's projections but were later proven true.

"The Government is taking a punt on the weather to solve the crisis … while an outrageous amount of water is being wasted every day," Mr Crapper said.

Also from The Age :

Water supplies in Melbourne's main dam are set to fall below 20 per cent for the first time.

Rural water levels have fallen to 25 per cent, with paddocks turning to dust in parts of the state, a separate Government report shows.

Melbourne storage levels are estimated to fall by an average of 0.5 per cent a week.

The water restrictions due to come into effect within weeks are referred to as 'Stage 4' and will see Melbourne residents banned (under threat of heavy fines) from watering gardens and lawns and they will also not be allowed to use fresh water to wash their cars, except "car windows, mirrors and lights".

Rural farmers are facing a drought unlike anything in living memory. Production of vegetable crops is predicted to fall by two-thirds in the coming months.

The city of Melbourne could realistically be facing severe water and fresh food shortages by the end of 2007.

PM's Plane, Billowing Smoke, Forced Down In Iraq

14 Minutes Of Terror As Cabin Of Aircraft Filled With Choking Fumes

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, had the closest call of his career last night when his C-130 RAAF plane began billowing smoke thousands of feet above Iraq.

The Hercules aircraft was forced to descend quickly, and gas masks were worn by all on board, as heavy smoke poured from the aircraft and filled the cabin :

Some on board thought the smoke smelled of burning oil, while other likened it to burning insulation material.

The military transport aircraft, carrying the PM, his personal staff and security, journalists, senior military leaders and dozens of others, landed heavily at Tallil Airport, 300 kilometres from Baghdad, after 14 minutes of flight in conditions close to an Airforce 'mayday' status.

The Prime Minister and all on board were evacuated within moments of the Hercules coming to a stop, while SAS troops surrounded the plane to fend off potential attacks.

During the long minutes on the ground at the airport, as his escape flight on a Blackhawk helicopter was organised, there were very real fears that insurgents might launch attacks on the prime minister, as his aircraft would have been seen coming down in a state of emergency.

Security were reported to have been fearful insurgents were using mobile phones to co-ordinate an attack on John Howard, while he was exposed in the middle of an aistrip, before being escorted onto the Blackhawk.

The prime minister made this unnanounced visit to Iraq, after visiting Afghanistan only hours before.

In meetings with the leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, Howard confirmed that Australia would continue its troop presence in their region for the immediate future.

John Howard is expected to announce a "surge" of fresh SAS troops into Afghanistan in the coming week.

In a press conference with Iraqi prime minister Maliki, Howard again dropped expectations for what he regarded as the level of "success" in Iraq that would warrant a pullout of Australian troops.

"...Australia will continue its presence in Iraq to assist in bringing about a situation where the Iraqi people are reasonably able to provide for their own future and for their own security..."

Howard also vowed that Australia would stay in Iraq until "the terrorists are defeated."

More To Come.....

Birds Continue To Die In Seaside Town

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

Lead Shipments Banned As Investigators Move In


A beach close to the port facility at Esperance.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killer Crocodile Movies Set To Terrify

All photos by Darryl Mason, Northern Territory, August 2006


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Out Of Action - For Now

Exploring A Secret Australia With The 'Grey Nomads'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 5

Cheney Makes His Case For War On Iran

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

By Darryl Mason

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

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

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

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

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

Or this :

There is something bracing about Cheney's unrepentant attitude generally

Or this :

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

Good God man, have you no shame?

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

Well, you'd be wrong :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People like Greg Sheridan, and others :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine if he had.

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

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


Iran Vows To Defend Nuclear Program

Cheney Warns Of Iran Strike

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

US Keeping "All Options" Open Regarding Iran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about leaving your options open.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 4

Signs Of The Times, And Stupidity

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 3

On The Inside Of A "Violent" Protest

Breaking Down The Numbers

Story And Photos By Darryl Mason



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

"Probably close to 500," he said.

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

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

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

The cop laughed.

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

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

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

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

Amazing stuff.

"Violent Protest"?

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

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

MORE TO COME....

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

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

Cheney Protesters Clash With Police

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

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


Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 1

Dick Cheney Down Under - Part 2

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

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

By Darryl Mason

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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