Howard Staff Busted Censoring, Editing Wikipedia Entries Critical Of Prime Minister

Weird Edits : "Freemasonry Is The Work Of Satan"

Wikiscanner has been getting a good workout in Australia by journalists, and researchers, curious to know just who might have been editing Wikipedia entries on Prime Minister Howard and controversial issues relating to his 11 years in power.

Why his own staff, of course.

An entry that referred to the "Mandatory detention in Australia" of illegal immigrants got a working over, with an all important "allegedly" added to a sentence that said detainees had been subjected to inhuman conditions.

Allegedly? Tell that to the eight year old girl who was detained for years, along with her parents, and was left so distraught by her experiences behind the wire that she smashed her head repeatedly into a concrete wall.

Staff in the Defence Department have also been hard at work, editing Wikipedia.

This story claims DD staff have made an astounding 5000 edits, including edits to entries on the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Pentagon Papers.

Some of the edits made by government staffers were just plain weird :

edits by department employees include adding sentences on various sites, including the additions "Freemasonry is the work of Satan", "Mormonism is the work of Satan" and "Jesus is god".

Someone needs to go and re-edit that last sentence. Everyone knows Jesus was the son of God.

Allegedly.

Defence Department officials are pissed off, and have now banned staff from wasting time editing Wikipedia. The site is in the process of being blocked by all DD computers.

No word on whether a similar crackdown will be enforced on the computers of the prime minister's staff.

Is the need to edit Wikipedia entries critical of John Howard one of the reasons why he has the largest, and most expensive, prime ministerial staff in the history of Australia?

UPDATE : Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has accused the prime minister of "editing history", before admitting that his own staff also 'fact-checks' entries on Wikipedia :

"My own personal staff, I'm sure, look through Wikipedia to make factual changes, no excuses about that, but using public service departments to make sure the truth is delivered according to Howard?"

That's a pretty pissweak argument from Rudd.

Prime ministerial Wikipedia editors have a near obsession with working on the entry for the Gang-Gang Cockatoo, but have also found the time to remove a damaging fact from the entry on Howard hugging propagandist Andrew Bolt.

Cosy.

Sydney Jails Cleared Of Prisoners To Make Way For APEC Protesters

Bondi Beach To Get The Ultra-Security Treatment So The Ladies Can Lunch

Police are making room for at least 500 APEC protesters in jails across Sydney. Weekend detainees will be given 'two week holidays' from serving time, so their beds can be available.

Police are clearly anticipating mass arrests. The reason why weekend detainees are being give such long breaks from their sentences is because police will be allowed to detain 'persons of interest' from September 2 and then hold them, without bail, for the entire duration of the APEC summit, expected to finish on September 12.

Police are known to have already drawn-up lists of potential 'troublemakers' and are expected to make contact with these people in the next fortnight to warn them to stay away from the five kilometre long, three metre high 'steel wall' which will divide the Sydney CBD into two, and create a series of security zones around the hotels and conference centres where 21 world leaders will stay and gather for meetings.

At least eight buses have been converted into mobile prisons, with wire mesh over the windows, to transport those the police wish to detain during the APEC summit to the prisons.

Police are making the media aware that they expect "violent clashes".

Hopefully the NSW and Federal Police won't be following the example of Canadian police, who used agent provocateurs, in hoods, armed with rocks, to try and incite clashes with peaceful protesters last week. The agent provocateurs were outed by protesters for trying to start trouble and were forced to flee behind police lines.

More on the emptying of Sydney jails here :

Three of six wings of Parramatta Jail, in Sydney's west, will be cleared and a recently refurbished section of Long Bay prison, in the city's east, will be reopened to accommodate the expected surge in prisoners.

Prisoners serving periodic detention will be excused from reporting for mid-week or weekend jail.

About 200 periodic detainees are serving sentences for offences including drugs, violence and driving breaches, News Ltd said.

A Department of Corrective Services spokeswoman confirmed the move.

Columnist Michael Costello says Sydneysiders shut the hell up and stop whingeing about APEC-related disruptions. And don't even think of blaming Bush for costing taxpayers an extra $6 million for arriving two days early, on top of the $331 million already being spent on APEC, or all the traffic chaos and locked down city streets. If you want to blame someone, blame terrorists, or 'violent protesters'. That would be 'violent protesters' who haven't actually protested yet. Another example of the infamous psychic powers of News Limited employees :

Let’s look at the complaint that the meeting will cause traffic and business chaos and inconvenience.

Okay, lets. Will APEC cause traffic and business chaos, Michael?

Sure it will, though mostly in central Sydney and really only for four or five days.

Only four or five days? Why that's barely a week. The security measures, closed streets and presidential motorcades blocking traffic for hours will actually be spread over nine days, not four or five. And roads will be closed and clearwayed all the way out to Richmond, and over to Bondi, when the leaders are being transported around.

Why should such a meeting cause this level of chaos and inconvenience? Because of the high levels of security necessary to ensure the safety of these important guests of our country.

And why the high levels of security?

Because it helps feed the 'I'm so important, I want the works' egos of some of the world leaders?

There are two reasons. Any prudent security planner must work on the basis that such a gathering could be an attractive target for a terrorist attack. Such an attack could be on the US President alone, on one of the other heads of state or government or against the group as a whole.

That same prudent security planner would also work on the assumption that planned protests and expressions of dissent, despite the undoubted peaceful intentions of most of those planning to participate, will likely turn violent _ potentially very violent _ at some stage.

Apparently, Michael Costello claims, we know such protest "will likely turn...potentially very violent" because violence has broken out at "similar gatherings around the world". Except for all those APEC and WTO summits where there was no violence at all. But hey, why ruin a good rant with facts?

Are we to accept that world leaders can’t come to Australia because terrorists or violent protesters necessitate stringent safety precautions, thereby inconveniencing Sydneysiders? Surely not.

Nobody said they shouldn't come to Australia. By why not hold the APEC summit in Canberra? Or one of the more beautiful island resorts? Why inconvenience millions of people trying to get to work and do their jobs?

...if there is chaos, violence and inconvenience, don’t blame Bush. Don’t blame the leaders of China or Vietnam, who are two others who have already been singled out to be the object of protest. Don’t blame APEC as a whole. Gosh, don’t even blame John Howard.

So who do we blame?

Blame the terrorists, whose threat is real...

Anyone else?

...and blame those who will want to turn totally defensible and legitimate peaceful protest into violence.

But of course. The violent protesters who haven't actually protested yet, or turned violent. Expect more of this kind of blame-spreading in the next two weeks, even though police already know there are but a few dozen, if that, anarchists and troublemakers in the whole of the country who they are expecting to try and cause mayhem. As we noted above, the police will be contacting them and telling them to stay clear, or cop a free holiday in prison.


But it's not only central Sydney that will be disrupted, as is becoming abundantly clear.

Even a kite-flying festival at Bondi Beach won't escape the reach of APEC-related ultra-security, when John Howard's wife, Jeanette, and the spouses of 20 other world leaders, swoop on the Bondi Icebergs for Sunday lunch :

Bondi's Icebergs will endure a meltdown so guests of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit can do lunch.

The story notes that many of the top Sydney restaurants are situated inside the APEC security zone. But none of them have a view of Bondi Beach. So Jeanette Howard sees no problem disrupting an entire Sunday at Bondi Beach and at the Icebergs so she can show off the view from the restaurant.

The Prime Minister's wife, Janette Howard, and the partners of the 20 visiting leaders will descend on Bondi on Sunday, September 9.

They will bring with them a security operation that will disrupt the celebrated Bondi Icebergs Club swimming races, the annual Festival of Winds kite event and anyone intending to visit the area that day.

The source said club members were "not terribly impressed" with the officials' choice of venue.

That would be an understatement. If the club members are the same ones I came to know as a regular visitor to the Icebergs in the late 1990s you can translate "not terribly impressed" to "extremely f..king pissed off".

The Bondi Icebergs clubhouse will be closed to members until 4pm, before which it will be an operational security centre, the source said. "They're going to use the club for security and police. We're feeding and looking after them while Mrs Howard's entertaining the spouses.

Between 400 and 600 swimmers usually attend Sunday races at the Bondi Baths public pool, on the ground level of the Bondi Baths complex.

The Herald understands that many members are expected to stay away because of the clearways that will be in place and the security checks they will have to go through to swim in the races.

Enjoy your lunch, ladies.

Hopefully the hovering BlackHawk helicopters won't disrupt the kite-flying too much.


3000 Police Slated For APEC Duty - 1/5 Of State's Entire Police Force

Police Warn School Student Protesters : We Cannot Guarantee Your Safety

Eight Year Olds Subjected To APEC Security Checks - Have Your Photo ID Ready If You Want To Cross The Street

APEC Protest Hysteria Gets Big Fat Tabloid Push

Police Warn School Student Protesters : We Cannot Guarantee Your Safety

President Bush's Early APEC Arrival Will Cost Taxpayers $6 Million

The $331 Million Party You're Not Invited To, But You're Paying For


The Daily Telegraph's Kara Lawrence and Joe Hildebrand use their remarkable psychic powers to predict what will happen in Sydney during the coming APEC summit, when thousands of Australians exercise their democratic rights to free speech and right of assembly :

A WEEK-long campaign of mayhem involving every major protest group in Sydney will cause mass CBD disruption during next month's APEC summit.

Unlike the APEC summit itself which, of course, will cause absolutely no mass disruption to the centre of Sydney at all. Except for the ten foot high, five kilometre long 'steel wall' cutting the city in half, BlackHawk helicopters sweeping over the city, massive presidential motorcades blocking traffic for hours at a time, and the deployment of more than 5000 police, armed soldiers and foreign secret service onto city streets who have the right to body search and detain, without charge, anyone they feel like.

The organisers of the APEC summit, according to the Daily Telegraph are bracing "for protests from a range of radical groups..."

Radical groups? Oh my gawd. Hizbullah? Hamas? Tamil Tigers?

Ah, no. Some of the radical groups the Daily Telegraph is referring to, in regards to their self-proclaimed 'campaign of mayhem', include :

Amnesty International, the Greens, Vietnamese and Chinese groups, and Critical Mass...

Amnesty International is a radical group? Chinese groups protesting Communism and campaigning for human rights are radical groups?

Well, Critical Mass sure sound like a bunch of dangerous radicals. Who are Critical Mass? They're bike riders, celebrating their love of biking, and promoting the riding of bicycles as an alternative to filling city streets with more cars.

Yeah, that's pretty radical.

Clearly the Daily Telegraph has already decided that 'MAYHEM' will be the action word in all its stories and headlines covering the protests surrounding the APEC summit. Even if there isn't any mayhem.

Here's a couple of headlines you'll never see in the Daily Telegraph :

'Thousands Of Australians Celebrate Their Love Of Democracy'

'Peaceful Protests Turn Sydney Streets Into One Big Party'

Meanwhile, police are warning that they cannot "guarantee the safety of children caught up in the protests".

As long as the 21 world leaders at the APEC summit don't get tasered, hit by water cannons, targeted by disorientation weapons or stepped on by police horses, how could any parent complain?

The Daily Telegraph also helpfully provides starting times and meeting place locations for a variety of rallies and marches, something the mainstream media rarely does, usually because police would prefer they didn't reveal such details.

By publishing full details of the events, the Daily Telegraph now stands accused of actively encouraging and promoting the rallies and marches by the very groups they've deemed to be 'radical' :

September 7 and 8 - the peak of APEC leaders' week - have emerged as the most popular for protest groups.

Hyde Park, Martin Place, Sydney Town Hall, Belmore Park and Milsons Point will all be occupied on these days.

On Saturday, September 8, at least 15,000 protesters are expected to clog the CBD. The biggest protest, at 10am on that day, is expected to be the 10,000-strong Stop Bush Stop Howard rally and march from Sydney Town Hall to Hyde Park North.

...the Vietnamese community is also staging a protest on that day, which is expected to attract thousands of protesters to Belmore Park, opposite Central railway station.

The Stop Bush Coalition is also organising a stunt protest at Sydney Town Hall to coincide with the arrival of US President George W. Bush on September 4.

Students from at least five Sydney high schools will also walk out of school in a student strike at 1pm on September 5 for a protest at Belmore Park.

The group is to then march along Elizabeth St and back to the park.

Assistant Commissioner Dave Owens, who is heading the police APEC response, said school students who attended protests put themselves at risk.

"These kids might get caught up in a violent protest but, as police, we cannot guarantee their safety if they do," he said. He said police were well-briefed on plans for a student walkout and said "the same rules apply to them as anyone else".

Hear that, children? You have been officially warned that if you turn up and exercise your democratic rights - you know the kind of democratic rights that Australian went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan to help spread around to the oppressed - you may be deemed to be posing the same level of threat as violent anarchists and ski-masked agent provocateurs.

Interesting that nobody organising the numerous rallies is planning for, or even anticipating, "violent protest".

The police and the Daily Telegraph aren't trying to scare off people from exercising their democratic rights in the streets of of an Australian city by any chance, are they?

The irony is that the people who have actually unleashed untold violence, death and destruction will be the ones ringed by the kind of ultra-security never seen deployed before in Australia's history.


A report aired on Channel Seven News on Monday night revealed that the APEC summit will cost Australian taxpayers more than $331 million. One lunch alone will cost $12,000. And President Bush's early arrival in Sydney, throwing years of security planning into chaos, will cost an extra $6 million.

But forget about all that. Lookit! School students are taking part in democracy and demanding that vile war makers be held responsible for their actions. Quick! Somebody stop those kids before they start making sense!


The New South Wales Premier, Morris Iemma, has warned "ferals" to stop trying to recruit school students to take part in the protests around APEC.

That's right, students. If you're politically motivated and you want to make a real difference, then think about joining the Young Labor Party. It's a hive of action, and change. Kind of. Then again, not really.

Iemma has to get in early. That way, "ferals" can be blamed for brainwashing students into marching and protesting, when thousands of them turn out in opposition to the anti-environment policies and anti-human rights doctrines that about half the world leaders present at APEC actively support and practice.

Students, particularly high school students, aren't allowed to be motivated by what they see happening in the world around them, and genuine concern for their futures, to take to the streets of Sydney.

They have to be recruited, by "ferals", as though they're taking part in the rallies against their will.

Cops In Disguise - Agent Provocateurs Busted Trying To Cause Mayhem At Protest

Revealed - White House Manual Details How To Isolate, Marginalise Dissenters And Protesters

Police Reveal Secret APEC Weapon - Motorcycles

Water Cannon Can Break Limbs and Blind - Welcome To APEC Sydney, 2007

APEC : Eight Year Olds Subjected To Security Checks

Mobile 'Prisons' Readied For APEC Summit Protesters

Sydneysiders Told To "Leave Town" During World Leaders Summit

"A Gentle Humping Motion"

'Award Winning Blogger' Fired For Fantasising About Kevin And The Strippers

How much is too far for a controversial blogger employed by a major Australian news corporation?

Jack Marx, of the 'The Daily Truth', found out yesterday when he posted a fantasy piece about what Australia's 'Next Prime Minister', Kevin Rudd, might have experienced during his drunken visit to a New York City lap-dancing club back in 2003.

In case you missed the news, back in 2003, a pissed up Kevin Rudd was shepherded into Scores, a New York strip club, and. errr. sports bar, by Col Allan, a particularly gruesome master of sleaze from the Rupert Murdoch tabloid stable. Rudd was in town for a UN conference. He went to dinner with New York Post editor Allan, who then suggested they go somewhere else for a few more drinks. Allan took Rudd to the strip club. Live gridiron on the big screens, and strippers manning the poles onstage.

Rudd now claims he was too hammered to remember anything about what happened in the 'nightclub', but he remembered enough to call his wife the next morning and apologise before word got back to her.

Jack Marx's semi-porno description of Rudd watching a pole dancer in action was only up on his Fairfax blog for a few hours, at most. The post was pulled, his entire blog de-linked from the front page websites of the Sydney Morning Herald the Melbourne Age and Marx was sent a brief e-mail telling him he was sacked.

Marx claims he was eating lunch with his family at the time, and enjoying his birthday :

“Blogs should run close to the wire,” Marx said. “The post was totally harmless.”

You can read the post that got banned, and Marx sacked, in full here.

The blog post was a mildly mocking, and hardly shocking, description of Rudd attempting to grope a stripper in the middle of her routine and being rejected. We'll take a guess the editors weren't happy with most of it. But they shouldn't have been the least bit surprised at what Marx dished up.

He spent most of the 1990s with the sleaziest of tabloid media before soft-porning newsagents shelves with tits-and-cars-and-aftershave mags like Ralph.

Seriously. What did did his editors think Jack Marx was going to write about when all of Sunday was filled with the story of what Kevin Rudd did or didn't do, or could and could not remember about what he did or didn't do, in that New York strippers paradise back in 2003?

It was a Jack Marx goldmine : New York City, a leading politician, a strip club, booze, lapdancers, alcohol-induced blackouts, Christianity, memory loss...of course he was going to cut loose.

We'll take a wild guess that it was this paragraph that got Marx canned, and pronto :

...an erection would have creaked to life in the trousers of the future Australian Opposition leader.

And this bit :

Back at his hotel room, the shadow foreign affairs minister would have laid in the dark, thinking. He would have smelled her, felt her lingering touch still upon him, like that of some phantasmic seductress. Perhaps, if he were lying face down, he'd have begun a gentle humping, his pillow underneath as kapok mistress.

And undoubtably this :

Or perhaps, with closed eyes to the heavens, deliverance would have been at hand. Whether sleep came down before ecstasy we will never know.

Did Jack Marx know in the back of his mind that this post would get him fired? Probably. Did he care? Probably not.

Considering the huge amount of coverage various News Limited websites and newspapers have already given this story, it's a fair bet he has already been offered a new blog position in the News.com.au stable.

For the moment at least, you can access Jack Marx' 'Daily Truth' archive here. If you've got a couple of hours spare, and you're not a regular reader, you might want to go browsing and save the stories that catch your interest now. They might be hard to find in a few days. It's a mixed bag, but there's some brilliant work to be found in that archive, particularly on matters Australia, and tales of Australian history.

It will prove to be interesting to see the reaction to Marx's sacking from Fairfax by the key bloggers and columnists at News.com.au - Fairfax's key online rival in media news and the MSM blogstream. No doubt they will express outrage, and plenty of it, that all those 'Lefties' couldn't handle such things being said about Saint Kevin.

But there will be plenty said about whether or not Kevin Rudd, or his media keepers, raged to Fairfax about the Marx post, and pushed them to pull it and can him and his blog.

It's Fairfax's loss. Marx was easily their most popular blogger, and a good slice of his audience will follow him wherever he goes. Plus they lose all that online ad revenue his blog generated, and will be made to look like a bunch of wimps, who still can't understand that blogs are not columns, and bloggers are not responsible columnists. Not the real bloggers anyway.

News.com.au is happy to run Marx's post on Rudd And The Strippers, in full on their site today, as part of the story of how this 'Award Winning Blogger' was sacked. They're happy to run what Fairfax canned because it allows News.com.au to take some solid shots at Fairfax, their chief online rival.

But if Marx was blogging for News.com.au, would he have been allowed to run the post, as it's published today, and not have it canned, even if Rudd's people tried to pour on the pressure?

Of course not.

News.com.au has censored its own bloggers in the past, and for far less than what Marx wrote.

It's another example of why the truly outrageous bloggers should never expect to find a secure home with the mainstream media. At least, not a truly free home where they can write what they like, which was the entire reason why political and social satire blogs became so popular in the first place.

In the words of Jack Marx' online boss, "...this was just the latest in a long line of indiscretions."

Yeah, but that's one of the key reasons why Jack Marx was so popular and brought so much traffic to Fairfax's site.

Like I said, it's Fairfax's loss, and presumably News.com.au's gain...if they don't try and keep Marx on a tight leash, that is.

Podcast Interview With Jack Marx On Being Sacked For "Indiscretions"

Andrew Bolt : Back In The Gutter Where He Belongs

Herald Sun propagandist in chief, Andrew Bolt, will continue to claim the US "surge" strategy in Iraq is working until every Iraqi is dead, or a refugee. If the "surge" was allowed to last that long.

As one of the key media supporters of the War On Iraq and one of the most hysterical and savage attack dogs against anti-Iraq War protesters across the country, including thousands of Australian World War 2, Korea and Vietnam war veterans, Bolt will never admit as so many other pro-war supporters have that attacking a sovereign country who posed no immediate threat to the United States or Europe was a catastrophe for Iraqis, and one of the worst foreign policy decisions made by Australia, and the United States, in decades.

Instead Bolt continues to perpetuate long-discredited myths and BushCo. created propaganda about what is going on in Iraq.

With no real, credible proof to back up his claims that the "surge" in Iraq has been a success, when the death toll of both Iraqis and American has actually increased in recent months, Bolt has been reduced to linking to his own blog posts to try and back up his absurd claim that "It is becoming widely accepted that the US and Iraqi "surge" strategy is working."

He then claims that the US "surge" strategy is "saving lives".

Says who? Seven serving members of the American military claim here that the "surge" has already failed, that the Iraqi Army and police are now working together to attack American soldiers. The American soldiers who served 15 months in the war zone also go on to utterly shatter all manner of other myths about the Iraq War that the likes of Bolt are always so keen to perpetuate and echo-chamber.

The "surge" is working and it is saving Iraqi lives, claims Bolt. Why would Bolt ignore the evidence and make such facile claims in his increasingly demented Herald Sun blog?

Because prime minister John Howard has just re-committed Australia's combat troops to continue serving in Iraq to at least mid-2008, and this flies in the face of Opposition leader Kevin Rudd's plan to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq when he becomes prime minister.

Bolt cites Rudd in an interview yesterday stating :

We believe the strategy being pursued by and supported by Mr Howard is heading in the wrong direction and that’s why we have argued consistently against that surge strategy...

Which leads Bolt to make the following despicable claim about Kevin Rudd :

He’d rather win a populist vote than save an Iraqi life.

Andrew Bolt is human garbage, and a promoter of further pain and suffering for the Iraqis. He is too much of a coward to admit that he was wrong about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and continues to be wrong about the effectiveness of Bush and Howard's strategies for stabilising Iraq.

But then, being a coward is nothing new for Bolt. Many months on and he still has nothing to say about Rupert Murdoch's Climate Change Crusade, or his own newspaper's near ceaseless promotion of climate change programs and campaigns.

So as to not offend his boss, or his own editors, Bolt has quietly, steadily, reduced all of his attacks on those pushing to control global warming to claiming that some of them are being merely "alarmist".

A remarkable backdown from the days when Bolt used to call them all "cultists" and "hysterical" and "preachers" and believers in "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

But that was before his boss, Rupert Murdoch, announced that climate change was real and "posed clear, catastrophic threats" and had to be confronted.

Naturally, Bolt fell into line.


Betrayed By Murdoch On Global Warming - The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt

Bolt Anticipates Terror Attacks In Australia So Howard Can Showcase His "Vast Experience"

'Forget About States Rights'

Howard Wants It All, Now

John Howard's Liberal Party cannot win a state election. So what to do? Slowly, but surely, eliminate the power and control of state governments :

Prime Minister John Howard will continue his attack on state Labor governments today with a major speech outlining more plans for federal takeovers of state responsibilities.

Calling for a new "aspirational nationalism", Mr Howard will deliver his fourth Australia Rising speech in Sydney.

Mr Howard said all Australians should want the best possible outcomes for people regardless of where they lived and which level of government delivered those outcomes.

"Sometimes it will involve carefully put together cooperative federalism. On other occasions it will require the Commonwealth bypassing the states altogether and dealing directly with local communities."

Mr Howard said much of the debate about commonwealth-state relations was wrongly focused on finding a balance between the respective roles.

"That is the wrong approach. We should be focused on outcomes, not systems," he said.

"We should be neither centralists, nor believers in states' rights.

"We should be aspirational nationalists."

Why not just spend Australia's money where it is needed most, before crises develop?

Now all Howard needs is some kind of event that, or national emergency, that will allow him to delay or outright cancel the federal elections until he can finish ramming through his raft of new "interventions".

Howard's clenching fist around Australia's throat, in the name of 'aspirational nationalism', has been a chilling and vastly cynical exercise. Spend a decade holding back national funding for hospitals and health care facilities, strip away or divert federal money for education, abandon hundreds of thousands of elderly people to rotting nursing homes, cheerily allow national infrastructure to crumble, and then when times are desperate, and the need for 'intervention" is close to peaking, step in and save the day.

Would Howard be doing any of this if he wasn't tanking in the polls and facing devastation at the coming elections?

Howard's supporters will cheer him on, of course, failing to realise that what he sets in motion with his 'aspirational nationalism' can also be adopted by the Labor Party, if they win the federal election. They can use Howard's deligitimisation of states rights to block Liberals from winning state elections for a decade or more to come.

Shark Vs Crocodile - Croc Wins



The remote Daly River in the Northern Territory is one of the last truly stunning untouched wildernesses left in the world, like most of of the NT. Spend enough time up there, and you you'll see things nobody would ever believe, unless you catch it on camera.

Which is exactly what fisherman Indrek Urvet managed to do, when he saw a huge 13 foot long saltwater crocodile explode out of the river, with a live bull shark in its jaws.

According to this story, Urvet managed to snap off a few unbelievable photos like the one above, before "Suddenly the croc saw me. He turned around and came shooting towards me.”

Mr Urvet, who said that fishermen on the river frequently lost their catch to the bull sharks before they could reel it in, retreated and watched from a safer distance as the crocodile devoured the metre-long shark.

Bull sharks, which grow to 3.5m, are known to be highly aggressive and, unlike other marine sharks, can dwell for extended periods in both fresh and saltwater.

The Northern Territory : you won't believe it, until you see it.

Jamming The Jammed



A new Australian film gets rave reviews from just every film critic who sees it, including two rare four star reviews on The Movie Show, from two of the toughest critics in the land. Reviews claims it deals honestly, and dramatically, with its controversial subject matter, with an excellent script and some of the best performances seen in recent Australian films. It's described as a brilliant, taut thriller, and stars three of Australia's best up-and-coming young actors.

But every Australian film distributor turns down the producers, it is rejected by the Melbourne film festival, even though Melbourne is virtually a character in the movie, and key government funding bodies refuse to kick in even minimal amounts of money to help the producers finish the film and get it ready for distribution.

The film is called The Jammed and last week it was heading straight to DVD.

So why has this film been crushed at almost every turn and kept out of Australian cinemas?

Perhaps it might have something to do with the subject matter it dares to take on :

The sex slave trade and the criminal gangs who kidnap teenage girls to be sold into prostitution.

You'd think film distributors would be falling over themselves to get their hands on a well-made film about such a controversial subject. Controversy generates media coverage, which helps to generate "vibe" and ticket sales.

Hundreds of teenage girls and young women are allegedly smuggled in and out of Australia every year to fill brothels and escort agencies. The worldwide trade, so rarely reported on in any deep, impactful way, sees the lives of thousands of children and young people destroyed every year :

According to the United Nations, Australian is the tenth main destination for victims of trafficking; this kind of fact makes The Jammed all the more disturbing...

Director Dee McLachlan said she was inspired to make The Jammed when read a few years ago about police raids on brothels uncovering women who were being kept as slaves, sex slaves, and traded internationally. Didn't we outlaw slavery almost a century ago?

McLachlan went to the trouble of thoroughly researching her film, The Jammed, from court transcripts, and interviews, and pulls together a cast and crew dedicated to getting the movie made on a low budget, and not one distributor, big or small, or most of the plethora of film development funding bodies, dishing out taxpayers money, are interested in helping?

Nobody's trying to cover up anything here, are they? Because that's exactly what it sounds like.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that one of the key sex slave traders in the movie is not some cliched backstreet grubby thug, but a middle class professional, married with children, with a wife who runs an inner city Melbourne gallery.

Too close to home for some people perhaps?

The good news is that The Jammed is now getting interest from distributors when it was set to go straight to DVD :

The film's executive producer, Andrea Buck, described the superlative reviews as "way better than we could have expected - it felt life-changing. We've dealt for so long with lukewarm, negative responses. To have someone say 'I love your movie' with such passion and conviction is overwhelming."

None of this seemed possible a few days ago, when the film's producers were preparing for last night's low-key premiere at an independent cinema in Melbourne. They secured a modest two-week season - designed to promote the release of a DVD on September 5 - by agreeing to pay the cinema's marketing costs and sharing any profits.

The story of a Chinese mother searching for her missing daughter, it features a cast of up-and-coming young actors including Sydney's Emma Lung, Saskia Burmeister and Sun Park.

Of course, if The Jammed goes on to win awards at international film festivals, and picks up a few at the AFIs, many of those very same distributors and funding body types will be in the media ranting about how fantastic the film is and how they always knew it would do so well.

Regardless, it's good to see such a daring, challenging film looking more likely to get a cinema release sometime soon.

The Jammed Website (Trailer Online)

The Jammed Review From The Movie Show

Interview With Director Dee McLachlan

McLachlan : Why Isn't News About Australia's Prostitution Slave Trade On Page One?

APEC : Sydney To Be Cut In Half By Three Metre High 'Steel Wall' Security Fence

Eight Year Old Children Subjected To Security Checks

Have Your Photo ID Ready If You Want To Cross The Street


The large red lines show the route of the 'steel wall' security fence that will enclose the hotels and conference centres used by world leaders during the APEC summit. No cars will be allowed inside. The blue marks show the gates in the fence where pedestrians can cross, but you may need to produce photo ID to get through, and be subject to body searches.

Apparently it's an honour for Sydney to be chosen to host the APEC conference in three weeks time, bringing together more than 20 world leaders, including US President Bush. But most Sydneysiders are wondering why they couldn't have chosen one of the dozens of luxurious islands of the far north to hold their conference, now the full scope of the staggering security measures that will lock-down half of the city's centre for 10 days are being made public.

A five kilometre long, three metre high security fence will cut Sydney's CBD in half.

You will only be able to enter the lockdown zone on foot, and then only through a small number of gates, manned by some of the 4500 police and thousands more private security guards, secret service and intelligence agents already descending on the city.

You will need to queue at the gates, where your face will be scanned in a live field test of facial recognition technology and assessed by agents for suspicious body language. Police and intelligence agents have been scouring through years of anti-war protests and building up a database of faces that were captured on police and security video.

Nearly everyone who passes through the gates will be searched, have their ID checked and have their handbags and briefcases unpacked.

Once you've produced ID, your name and address will be compared to a long list of suspected 'troublemakers' that the police and intelligence agents have been compiling for months. Everyone who enters the security zone is expected to be photographed, and databased along with their ID information.

Even if you work on the other side of the fence, you can be refused entry without explanation. Should you then choose to make a scene, you may be judged to be a troublemaker and detained, without charge, for the entire length of the APEC summit. If you are charged, you can be denied bail.

There will be buses, converted into mobile prisons by the police, to hold those who the police and intelligence agents deem to be suspicious, or those they want to interrogate further, or submit to full body searches.

Inside the security zone, you will come face to face with police and soldiers carrying machine guns, and if you look to the top floors and rooftops of buildings you might catch a glimpse of the dozens of snipers expected to be in place once President Bush settles into his room at the InterContinental Hotel.

If you watch the skies you will probably see BlackHawk helicopters, surveillance balloons and even jet fighters conducting patrols of the airspace above the city.

Gone from some of the busiest streets of Sydney will be all parked cars, and most other vehicles.

Inside the security zone, even if you are simply enjoying lunch at a cafe with co-workers, you may be singled out for further searches or interrogation. And don't even think about trying to smuggle inside the zone a "Bush Is The World's Number One Terrorist" banner.

Free speech and democratic rights will be suspended inside the security zone.

With an expected 21 world leaders inside the security zone at the height of the summit, it is expected that only people with important business, or security clearance, will be allowed into an inner high security zone, around the hotels housing the leaders, that will swallow up entire blocks of Sydney's central business district.

In preparation for the APEC summit, the staff of dozens of restaurants and hotels were subjected to intense background and security checks.

Even eight year old children, who will be singing at the Opera House, as part of the Sydney Children's Choir, were subjected to security checks and assessments. The good news is none of the children were deemed to be terrorists, or security threats.

During the ten days that the three metre high fence will be in place, or in the process of being constructed, you will need ID to cross city streets that take you inside the fence, however briefly, as part of your journey.

If you want to escape the high security for a quiet lunch in the Botanical Gardens, you will find the three metre high fence cutting right through the heart of the park.

Although the security fence is claimed to be necessary to stop 'terrorists', it will have the added benefit of keeping all protesters hundreds of metres to a kilometre away from the gathering of world leaders, which include Communists, despots, dictators, champions of democracy and war makers. You can decide for yourself who is who.

The NSW police commissioner has made a point of stating that no protesters will get within shouting distance of any of the world leaders.

The NSW government claims the security measures will cost Australian taxpayers more than $170 million, but some estimates place the final costs at more than $300 million.

While some businesses will be mildly compensated for losses incurred during the 10 days of high security, many restaurants and small businesses are expected to lose millions from loss of patronage.

Outside of the city centre, major arterial roads leading to the airport and out to the RAAF base in Richmond, in western Sydney, have been designated 'clearways', which means locals will not be permitted to park outside shops or restaurants in their towns.

Massive delays are expected to further lock up Sydney's already notoriously gridlocked morning and afternoon traffic, as world leaders are shuttled across the city and suburbs in police and secret service motorcades dozens of vehicles long.

President Bush will travel through Sydney in a motorcade compromising of black 4WDs, from which, in the event of an attack, or major security incident, machine gunners will appear through the roofs of the vehicles, firing weapons that can unload more 20 rounds per second.

When the first details of the massive delays and inconveniences caused by the APEC summit were made known, a few months back, Sydneysiders were advised to "get out of town" and take holidays while the world leaders are meeting. A public holiday has been declared in Sydney for Friday, September 7, when the key APEC events are expected to be held.

So if you get stuck in stalled traffic for an hour, or three, or if you're forced off the road driving home from work by a fleet of police cars and limousines, or have a machine gun pointed in your face because you're wearing a 'No More War' badge on the lapel of your suit jacket inside the security zone, just try to remember how much of an honour it is that APEC chose Sydney as the host city for its summit.

Melbourne must be so jealous.

Maybe.

"The Biggest Security Event In Australia's History"

Pedestrians, Present Your Papers Please

Icons Of Sydney Will Be Locked Away Behind Security Fence

Horror In The Outback

Australian Gothic : Movies That Actually Make Money


Huge crocodiles, like this one we photographed last year on the East Alligator River, will star in the new movie, Rogue, from Wolf Creek director Greg McClean.

Some Australians were sickened by the backpacker serial killer flick Wolf Creek, others thought it was kind of funny, and pretty silly. American friends were shocked by the violence and the intense sense of isolation the movie conjured up, but they also said it made them want to visit the outback and see the place for themselves.

They're not alone.

When Wolf Creek was first released a few years back, there was genuine horror amongst tourism industry executives, fearful that the movie would put off tourists and backpackers from visiting Australia, and visiting the arid, remote stretches of the Australian outback in particular.

But the stream of tourists and backpackers hiring dodgy old vans, or renting air-conditioned homes on wheels for a few weeks of hitting the desert highways has actually increased in the past two years.

As terrifying (or funny) as Wolf Creek could get, it also showcased a hauntingly beautiful series of landscapes, barren, empty but dazzling. Why wouldn't tourists want to come and see such places for themselves?

The Australian tourism industry learned its lesson well.

When Wolf Creek director's Greg McClean's follow-up, Rogue, which pits a bundle of tourists caught on a sand island at night against huge and hungry crocodiles churning through the rising waters, hits cinemas across the world in the next few months, there are plans to launch publicity campaigns about the NT, where the movie is set, and Kathryn Gorge in particular, and those dead-eyed, cold-blooded dinosaurs will be the star attraction.

Thanks to the success of Wolf Creek, and the zombie flick Undead, Australian movie-makers are now turning out a string of horror movies and they are being snapped up by international distributors.

Australian horror movies are the rarest of Oz flicks - many of them actually make money and are seen by millions around the world.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Joel Anderson, the writer and director of the supernatural mystery Lake Mungo, puts it starkly: "One of the main reasons that Lake Mungo exists is because of Wolf Creek. That film had a big profile, and it made money, and film always follows money."

"We call what we do 'Australian Gothic'," says Everett DeRoche, a key figure in Australian horror who wrote the scripts for classics such as Patrick (1978), The Long Weekend (1978) and Razorback (1984). The term was coined to describe Razorback, and anyone who has seen this smoky, heavily backlit tale of a giant pig terrorising the outback will understand why. "Australia doesn't have that iconic 'haunted house' that we are familiar with from American movies. But it does have the outback, and people's fear of that, that agoraphobia."

A DeRoche script, Storm Warning, has recently been filmed by the director Jamie Blanks, who is also set to direct a remake of The Long Weekend. The original Long Weekend is a fascinating film, with a central idea of humans disrespecting the environment and suffering the consequences feeling years ahead of its time. Interestingly, DeRoche says the notion of the outback as a spooky place is more prevalent abroad than in Australia, perhaps explaining why his films have proved more popular in the US and Europe than here.

IndiVision, an Australian Film Commission scheme now in its third year, has given a boost to local film production, including the horror genre. The director of the commission's IndiVision Project Lab, Megan Simpson Huberman, explains the thinking: "Amongst a diverse national film slate, we wanted to make more films at a lower budget. This will allow more filmmakers to practise their craft."

One film helped by IndiVision is Black Water, from the first-time writer-directors Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich. Set in crocodile-infested mangrove swamps in northern Australia, it was actually filmed in Gungah Bay on the Georges River.

"There's nothing worse than making a film and no one goes to see it - which has been the case with many recent Australian films," says Black Water's producer, Michael Robertson. The film has been sold to more than 30 countries, and has already recovered its production budget of $1.2 million. It's an effective shocker, featuring three city-dwellers battling for survival against a man-eating croc, and brilliantly taps into that fear of remote Australia.

Lake Mungo, from the writer-director Joel Anderson, has also benefited from the IndiVision scheme. It tells of the drowning death of a 16-year-old girl, how the family copes with the tragedy, and the investigation into subsequent sightings of the girl. A line from the film - "Whenever someone dies, there's always a ghost story never far behind" - sums it up well.

Anderson did not set out to make a genre film, but has enjoyed the opportunities of working within genre. "Australia has often made self-consciously Australian films, which can be inhibiting. Horror movies, though, are really B-movies. If we can inherit the vitality associated with B-movies, then questions of Australian-ness are absorbed into the story. The question takes care of itself."

More Australian horror movies? Yes, please. Anything but another $6 million movie about the grim struggle of junkies in decaying urbania.

We want to feel The Fear. Not fear The Boredom.


The Orstrahyun : Killer Crocodile Flicks Set To Terrify

Watch The Trailer For Rogue Here

Rogue And Black Water - Australian Monster Movies Make A Welcome Return

Drunk Downer Rambles, Slurs On Lateline

Calls Journalists Liars For Accurately Reporting Treasurer's Plot To "Destroy Howard'

So how hammered was foreign minister Alexander Downer during his interview on Lateline last night? About half a glass of Glenfiddich away from slurring whole sentences.

Perhaps he needed to be pissed to go on the ABC and deny that the Treasurer Peter Costello plotted to "destroy" John Howard, when he clearly did, and then dare to accuse one of Australia's most respected political journalists of being a flat-out liar.

Hilariously, Downer actually tried to claim that the Australian public were more likely to believe him and Costello over respected Australian journalists. How much more comprehensively out of touch with their own people could a couple of politicians actually be?

On Lateline, Downer repeated himself so often that host Tony Jones had to intervene to get him back on track. By the end of the interview, Downer was clearly slurring, his thoughts muddled and clouded. He looked ready for another double.

Michael Brissenden of ABC's 7.30 Report is one of the three journalists that both Downer and Costello have now accused of being stone-cold liars. An excerpt from his report on the scandal follows below.

Naturally, the whole scandal comes down to Costello's ceaseless boasting in 2005 that if John Howard didn't step aside and allow for an orderly leadership transition, to Costello, by early 2006, he would bring down Howard, all of which he tries to continue to deny.

Costello told numerous journalists of his plans, back in 2005, and said as much to the writers of a new Howard biography. He even gave a more subtle version in front of television cameras when he tried to encourage the PM to step aside last year.

How stupid do Costello and Downer really think people are? That they would trust either of them, particularly Downer, over the sober reporting of three journalists, who took short hand notes of their conversation with Costello, because it was on the record.

They'll find out soon enough, when the Liberal Party goes down in flames, and torrents of horrid shrieking, at the federal election.

Here's some of Brissinden's report on the fresh and already blood-soaked "I'll Destroy Howard" scandal. It all began with a dinner in early 2005 :

Present at that dinner were journalists Paul Daley, Michael Brissenden, veteran political reporter Tony Wright - then also a Bulletin writer now working with the Melbourne Age, and the Treasurer's press secretary.

The dinner was held on March 5, 2005, where the leadership question had been swirling its way through yet another eddy.

The Treasurer was in an expansive mood.

The three journalists still have the notes of that discussion.

Michael Brissenden says Mr Costello told the group he had set next April 2006 as the absolute deadline - "that is mid-term" for Mr Howard to stand aside.

If not, Mr Costello would challenge Mr Howard.

Mr Costello said a challenge "will happen then" if "Howard is still there".

"I'll do it," Mr Costello said, also saying he was "prepared to go to the backbench".

Mr Costello said he would "carp" at Howard's leadership from the backbench and "destroy it" until he won the leadership.

He says he would do it "because he (Howard) would lose the election".

Mr Costello said he could beat [then Opposition Leader Kim] Beazley but that Howard cannot win "without me".

He said April is the deadline, "then it's on".

The journalists all left the dinner that night with the understanding that the story - as background - could be reported.

The Bulletin planned to splash with the story the next week. The ABC agreed to run the story the night before the magazine was published.

But by 1pm the day after the dinner, the Treasurer had a change of mind.

An agitated press secretary rang pleading for the conversation to be now placed off the record and that the Bulletin pull its report.

Reluctantly, the journalists agreed.

The journalists, however, kept their detailed notes of the meeting, and Costello's bold claims, and have now made them public.

Costello had been caught out in a lie when he was questioned on the quotes by journalists yesterday. So why did he try and deny it?

But he did. Not only did he deny he ever said those words about destroying Howard, Costello tried to disparage the journalists involved :

"You find actually over the years that you get attributed with a lot of things you didn't do and you don't get afforded a lot of things you did do and I must say when I read some of these things, I wonder where the journalists get them from.

"They generally speak to somebody who has spoken to somebody who was down the back of a pub who heard the barman say, and that gradually finds its way into magazines or articles."

The journalists were sitting at a table, with Costello, while he spoke on the record.

Last night Alexander "Tulip" Downer had his drunken try at discrediting the journalists :

...you think the public would believe journalists over Peter Costello, well that's an interesting proposition, by the way.

that's the claim of the journalists and did that happen? No. And they claim that these conversation took place two years ago. I mean, you know, get real. At the end of the day journalists claim something was said two years ago, the Treasurer, who's a man of decency and integrity, has denied it.

Howard, Costello and Downer love to waffle on about their vast experience, and yet they still don't understand that when you're caught out in a lie, the worst thing you can do is try and deny it. Particularly when journalists recorded the lie.

So much for all that experience. And credibility.

Labor will have a field day with this scandal, as they well should.

Another bloodbath on the road to the Howard government's decimation has begun.

1916 : Diggers Were Told To Open Fire On Their Irish 'Cousins'

A little known story of what happened to Australians in Ireland on leave from the Western Front, during World War 1, has emerged. And it's a remarkable, troubling tale :

THE year was 1916. Australian soldiers involved in the brutal fighting on the Western Front had been granted leave and went to Ireland for a break.

But instead of catching up with relatives and resting up, the Australian troops found themselves reluctantly pressed into more action by the British — to help crush the Easter Rebellion in Dublin.

Some of the Anzacs involved in this little-known episode were Gallipoli veterans prized by the British for their sharp-shooting skills.

One group was ordered onto the roof of Dublin's Trinity College to snipe at Irish dispatch riders delivering messages to the the headquarters of the rebels, whose leaders included Michael Collins.

Barrister and historian Jeff Kildea has researched the episode and described the colonial soldiers' dilemma in a new book, Anzacs and Ireland..

"For soldiers who enlisted to fight Germans, it was not a happy time," Mr Kildea said.

These veterans of Gallipoli went to Ireland on leave but found themselves once again in battle, he said. "(They were) given a rifle and, in effect, told to shoot their Irish 'cousins'."

...when the fighting erupted in Dublin, many of the soldiers on leave were rounded up by British officers in hotels and clubs and at the local railway station and had rifles thrust back into their hands.

Mr Kildea found the diary of Private Davis, who described how the soldiers made the best of a bad job — "but we would prefer to be anywhere but this unenviable city".

Davis and a friend were ordered to join 70 men taking arms and ammunition to Dublin Castle and described how a volley of rifle shots rained down on the party from buildings the rebels occupied. "Around us bullets pinged and broken glass clattered onto the footpath.

"The horses bolted and vanished into the darkness and the troops did likewise."

The British military aristocracy of the World War I era saw little difference between Australian diggers and Irish revolutionaries. They were all just human pawns for them to pit against their enemies, or in this case, each other.

No doubt amongst the Diggers in Ireland there were those who refused to kill their Irish 'cousins' and those who were threatened with a bullet to the head from British sergeants for refusing to obey orders.

Those who ran away didn't necessarily do so simply because they were scared.

Is This How The Flu Pandemic Begins?

Virulent Flu Epidemic Fills Australian Hospitals


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Reuters :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Respiratory illnesses have risen by 70 per cent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE TO COME...


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

Go Here For The Latest News From The Bird Flu Blog

Australia Prepares To Withdraw Troops From Iraq

Howard Tries To Blackmail Maliki Government

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the Maliki government actually cared.

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

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

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

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

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

From Sheridan's story :

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

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

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

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


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

The proviso in Howard's own words :

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

"It's all Iran's fault."


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


John Howard Finally Admits Iraq Was A War For Oil

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

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

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