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| Linda Burney MP launches NAIDOC week action at Addison Gallery Marrickville 2pm Sunday 8th July 07 |
a-ok
High circulation Sydney Daily Telegraph this last 2 days, which has also been running a determined attack over lack of airport security with two of their journalists facing criminal charges, as here page 3 7th July 2007: Howard 'all talk' on air safety | The Daily Telegraph
Notice in the right hand front page the departure from house style guidelines of inclusion of a question mark. We can't remember the last time we saw the SDT include a question mark in one of their stripped back headlines.
As an example if they had a headline 'Is it a hot day' they would leave off the '?'. We find this annoying enough changing an innocent or neutral query to an rhetorical implied conclusion, in this example 'we at the newspaper think its damn hot today, so should you .....if you have any brains'. There is no reasonable doubt either way allowed in such a house style.
This sounds a trivial matter of style, but what about this hypothetical headline about war not weather: 'Should we go to war in Iraq' with no '?'. We submit removal of the question mark implies the position of the newspaper and the politically acceptable answer of the 70% press controlled News Ltd across the land: "Yes of course we should go to war to stop[choose] WMD/Saddam tyranny/Al Qaeda links". No reasonable doubt about it is the politics in the omitted '?'.
We say the lost '?' at the SDT is another subtle mind fuck of the public.
But what about the Telegraph inclusion of the '?' above? It's probably seeking to capture the context of Howard's radio interview and reinforcing his painful state of confusion on air noticed by all the commentators. The ALP wisely are adding nothing, letting the slip up do its viral marketing impact all on its own. No need to over egg this pudding. In this way the question mark compounds criticism of Howard for losing the polls. Ouch.
On another aspect of Big Media, the sister paper The Australian, often seen as rusted on to Howard's Coalition in its polling coverage, has an unflattering picture today of the said name forgotten candidate presenting her a bit like a village idiot. As if to say she is intrinscially forgettable. Talk about cruel visual spin. It's on page 4 top right if you want to check the image out.
As regards positive visual spin how's this collage comparing Julia Gillard as Deputy ALP leader in the middle looking very Deputy Prime Ministerial, compared to Hilary Clinton left or actress Geena Davis in US drama Commander in Chief as first female Pres:
Call us sexist but like crikey.com's Christian Kerr we have noticed for quite a while now her hair care salesman partner is a one great presentation asset for the highly intelligent Ms Gillard. She just seems happier in life too. She might have been her working class dad's favourite, who maybe missed out some of the girlie conditioning, but Gillard seems to be doing a hell of alot of successful catchup in the visual grooming stakes now as expected of high power.
In her case one presumes it's a tool of trade not a value in its own right. Dignified threads woman, you've earned it surely. Tools of trade.
sharpWe read this yesterday which we believe because it sources reputable science:
We received this late last night [italic added] which we do not believe because it is not based on reputable science:
Craig Isherwood, National Secretary
PO Box 376, COBURG, VIC, 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au
Find out why man-made Global Warming is a fraud!
Watch :
Originally screened by British Channel 4 on March 8th, this must-see documentary, with irrefutable science, shows that CO2 does not drive climate change. Natural climate change cycles are actually driven by the radiation output of the Sun, astronomical cycles, and cosmic rays. This film is driving Al Gore and the global warming hoaxters crazy!
After the documentary, ABC's three hour feature will include an interview with the producer, Martin Durkin, and dialogue between a panel of experts and studio audience.
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specialNAIDOC celebrations are held around Australia in the first full week in July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
NAIDOC originally stood for ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’. This committee was once responsible for organising national activities during NAIDOC Week (see History of NAIDOC), and its acronym has become the name of the week itself.
The week is celebrated not just in the Indigenous community, but also in increasing numbers of government agencies, schools, local councils and workplaces.
At the local Marrickville Addison Rd Community Centre a big event was held last Sunday 8th July 2007 with more events all week there with more detail here: Linda Burney MP launches NAIDOC week action at Addison Gallery 2pm Sunday 8th July 07
Here are images of the launch at ARC:
Postscript #1 11th July 2007
While most Big Media are involved in supporting the underlying positive message behind NAIDOC, politically minded people probably unwisely seek to leverage the event. This was evident in the event above in some speechmaking but we didn't bother to report it because it was a negative energy compared to the greater truth of such a friendly positive cross cultural vibe as proven by the artwork too showing a love of land, love of life, love of humanity.
That is not to say some artworks were not cutting in their politics too. So it's not reality to sanitise/ go all Pollyanna either. These messages of the Indigenous are pretty strong in the Big Media on January 26th Australia Day aka Invasion Day aka Survivial Day. But it is a choice, and here at SAM we make an ethical editorial decision to amplify the "celebration" as per our introduction which is a straight lift from the official NAIDOC website.
Which brings us to today front page poison headline in today's low rent Sydney Daily Telegraph appealing to the white trash One Nation types
referring to this "sorry song" about the stolen generation subject of a federal govt report called Bringing Them Home in a NSW School songbook.
Here is their deliberately provocative, argumentative piece that inevitably leads to angst tension and dissension:
CHILDREN as young as eight are being taught to sing sorry to Aborigines in a widely distributed song book, sparking concerns that NSW students are being "politically indoctrinated".
But for all those schools with lots of Aboriginal and non Aboriginal kids it's probably a great song as per this very profound witness of Bob Randall and his very well known song "Brown Skin Baby .... they take him away" which actually happened to the artist at age 7:
Funny isn't it how our kids are supposed to learn about the death and heroism of Gallipoli, but not about the sad history of Australia too. We read the other day of how anti semitism should not be sanitised in another context. Well exactly.
Another ugly editorial performance by the Daily Telegraph. It's not a song of shame. It's a song of historical reality. By the by, the first picture above by Barbara Weir is based on her experience as a child of hiding in the long grass for hours whenever the white welfare officers came to "steal" her from her parents. The price tag is $26,500.
What is quite wicked is the sneaky way the Telegraph headline is slyly equivocal, from one angle addressing a past 'shameful' situation of stolen children, but then leading into a text attacking schools for allegedly politicising children as the 'real' shame. Gallipoli anyone - conscription, abuse of colonials by British idiot generals, warfare to solve international disagreements .....?
Here is the Bob Randall tune - and it takes a heart of ice and stone to deny the emotional power of the song for its tenderness
Postscript #2 12th July 2007
> Good article Tom , Give it to 'em Brother ....
>
> THAN..X..
> dominic
................
A school in NSW has banned students from singing a song with lyrics that calls for an apology to be given to Aboriginal people. A NSW politician is worried that young children are being indoctrinated while at school, but the song's composer doesn't know what all the fuss is about.
chatty
www.getup.org.au/campaign/PleaseMrHoward, which ran on channel 10 Sunday morning and maybe elsewhere.
Author’s general introductory note (skip this if you know this regular weekly column):
This is not a well packaged story. It’s a contemporaneous traverse of the Sunday television free to air political talkies indicating the agenda of Establishment interests: Better to know ones rivals and allies in Big Politics and Big Media.
Indeed it’s the tv version monitoring task similar to what Nelson Mandela refers to here in his book Long Walk to Freedom (1994, Abacus) written in Robben Island prison (where he was meant to die like other African resister chiefs of history in the 19C), at page 208
“..newspapers are only a shadow of reality; their information is important to a freedom fighter not because it reveals the truth, but because it discloses the biases and perceptions of both those who produce the paper and those who read it.”
Just substitute ‘Sunday tv political talkie shows’ for "newspapers" in the quote above.
For actual transcripts go to web sites quoted below except with Riley Diary on 7. And note transcripts don’t really give you the image content value.
Media backgrounder:
Saturday Sydney Telegraph was a LauraNorder howler. Details include:
- page 5 grovelling apology to legal referees of Dr Patrick Power convicted, now on appeal of serious user of child porn. And all is revealed on page 1 SMH (who repeat their rival's blunder in their eagerness to embarrass the Telegraph by) referring to “perverts mates” in $480K defamation settlement, with more suits likely to come. The point being giving references in a legal trial doesn’t really equate to friendship of to a "pervert" if they didn’t know at the relevant time. They might just believe in telling the truth about their narrow knowledge of him: The Dr Jekyl to the hidden Mr Hyde. My guess the Herald are thus just as guilty of defamation with their own headline. Ironic eh?
- So you’d think the Saturday Telegraph might go softer on loose allegations – no, page 1 banner headline referring to “Aussie raids/FIVE foreign ‘terror’ doctors in WA and NSW” Yep – it’s the unreconstructed law and order tub thump, when the radio news same morning says ALL FIVE have been released after mere questioning. Derr.
- But in case there is any doubt about the vigour of LauraNorder we have at page 8 and 9 same SDT “Mad doctor cell linked to Sydney”,
- NSW ALP desperate to get in on the act with “We’re going to smoke ‘em out” p13, “Another fine mess” page 14 “CSI Sydney: $22m for hi-tech crime lab” on page 19.
- But don’t worry if you are white and nice, it will be allright, even if you commit $340K tax fraud and your name is Glenn Wheatley: “Stars rally to defend shame tax dodger” – it's all in the picture, blonde glamour wife, inset Farnham, Newton, 2 other nobodies from the cartoon infotainment world.
Meanwhile in the geo political LawNorder blooding curdling farce known as the Iraq War “Downer admits safety of oil key to Iraq war” page 14 Sydney Morning Herald 7/7/07 proving it is a lucky day for the Coalition since this should have been page 1 in place of other shallow stories, reinforcing our recent traverse of the Minister Nelson ‘incompetence/truth telling’ on oil motives (to quote Opposition Wayne Swan on Meet The Press today).
7/7/07 is 2 year anniversary of 52 killed London Tube bombing which is where Louise Barry comes into it below via Get Up.
We also noticed in The Australian, to be circulated (surely) in the seat of Wentworth to green leaning Liberal voters - "Turnbull 'helped' in Gunns case" - that is promoting old growth woodchipping disgrace. P7 5/7/07.
More weirdness p10 4/7/07 "Go green to lure recruits, military told" which surely is the converse of this in the press yesterday also in the Herald 7/7/07 p14 quoting "alleged bombmaker ....Kafeel Ahmed" using "global warming" as a cover for his international terrorism plans. Not fair on us greenies.
Prescient article in Sydney City Hub indy press May 2007 p6 "Urgent action needed for Aboriginal Australia" (offline) by Chris Graham, editor of National Indigenous Times, and Walkley Award etc winner.
Also relevant to Meet the Press coverage section below is this:
Everest melt pictures earlier this year June 1 07 Sydney Daily Telegraph page 11,
and our report of Australian Climbing Festival themes here on SAM several months ago – at PM visit to Bega [didn’t report anti logging protest for 3 hours on main road through town:
Prime Minister John Howard visits, protester jams taffic
Last Update: Thursday, July 5, 2007. 11:20am AEST
By ABC South East
The Prime Minister John Howard travelled to the South East of NSW to address a reception in Bega.
An anti-woodchip protest was staged, coinciding with the visit and causing congestion in the main street of Bega. Protester, Scott Daines chained himself by the neck to a logging truck at a set of traffic lights when the logging truck was stationary.
For over 3 hours, the southbound lane of the Princes Highway was blocked while police considered how to manage the situation.
While one block up the hill at the RSL Club, the Prime Minster was speaking to an invitation only get-together as people concerned about the government's new industrial relations laws formed a silent protest outside the RSL.
Members of the Clean Energy for Eternity Group had also stationed themselves outside the club to make their point on environmental awareness.
While in the South East of NSW, the Prime Minister John Howard announced the Commonwealth will contribute ten million dollars toward building a pipeline from the Bega River to Yellowpinch Dam near Merimbula.
The project aims to drought proof a number of towns in the Bega Valley Shire and is estimated to cost a total of $20 million dollars.
Mr Howard told ABC South East Radio that he would welcome a debate about housing affordability in the upcoming electorate, citing 17 per cent interest rates under Labor's Paul Keating.
According to Mr Howard, "If the Labor Party want to make interest rates an election well we will remind them from the beginning of the campaign until the end that housing interest rates hit 17 per cent under Mr Keating. They've been dramatically lower under this government."
The Labor candidate for the seat of Eden Monaro, Colonel Mike Kelly also took the opportunity to comment.
He said people are really struggling at the moment to pay their mortgages. "When you listen to Mr Howard talk about interest rates it's the pot calling the kettle black, back in his time we had astronomical interest rates back over the 20 per cent interest mark", he said.
Mr Kelly continued, "The real issue at the moment is what's been revealed with the Treasury papers that have been acquired which show just how much of an impact the cost of financing loans has become these days. It's just massively eroded people's disposable income and that's having a huge impact on Eden Monaro."
10 Meet the Press 8-8.30 am
Sunday press round up – missed the start – Live Earth concert, massive truck bomb in Iraq
Wayne Swan is talent to preface Treasurer on Insiders, who will be with Oakes? Sledges govt re productivity etc discussion of security etc under Rudd.
Protester of the week – “eye candy” good male body, in brief swimmers saying there is no snow, climate change – like Everest picture in backgrounder above.
Adbreak – Get Up – Louise Barry – terrorism victim call to get out of the mess in Iraq. Very powerful stripped back home, polished boards, serious injury, clear language. Humble. Preface Monica Attard 9pm tonight of Brett Solomon as ALP front group or not?
Panel is Fran Kelly RN ABC, Glen Milne – several curly testers well briefed with treasury arguments [source is Costello himself?]. Kelly backs up. Swan holds own, fast talking, energetic, focused, no word trip ups. Leans back holding forth.
Milne looking more studious in glasses, lost weight, new suit suits him, stripes to offset the tubb. Does sharply himself.
Healers as killers in Bill Leak cartoon. Grim, sad stuff. Trouble is a healer can’t fix a tsunami of death as per the Middle East. It’s psycho meltdown for many of these doctors. [A contact in the Greens Avi Lemberg told me once it’s the little kids that knock you hard – and that was in Sydney, let alone over there via war.]
2nd Ad break – running extract of Get Up advert again. Prof Clive Williams – is she right? Gives credence, greater threat, Govt will say existed before. Very factual mild.
Milne – Paul OSullivan ASIO head says well educated as likely terrorist attacker. Tends to agree. Milne presses him on foreign airline pilots? How many here?
Kelly another scary scenario – phone call from Australia as trigger of a car bomb possible?
Transcript in due course www.ten.com.au/meetthepress
7 Weekend Sunrise, 8.35-40 am Riley Diary -
Howard in his electorate fruit shop with some ripper juxtapositions with coconuts etc. Satire about scissors, Hawke swearing in jest, serious sledge of polls under cover of astrology satire, Rudd less repetitive. Q & A about housing market upcoming this week or so.
Good laugh, great footage.
http://www.seven.com.au/sunrise/weekend
Sunday 9
Full on bikie organized crime story with Ross Coulthard. Goes hard, big Sunday 9 play. Whoa. Chilling. Corrupt either direct or systemic Qld police in the picture. Informant in another country building his new home. No wonder Beatie wants to get out.
Oakes interview with Ruddock – increasingly the crumpled pasty faced man. Just spoke for 60 seconds but not sure he said anything (?).
Teases out detention powers. How mad is this about phone calls from Australia as a trigger device. Ruddock waffles – sounds bogus, as Barry Cassidy says.
Doctors funding line of q from Oakes – this has more resonance – good wage. Ruddock says no comment in 60 seconds.
All released except original Haneef in Qld – in the clear? [A new David Hicks, hanging their hat on his one way ticket, but what does that mean? Dual passport? Cheaper fares?]
Here comes the alarm over well educated folks being a threat.
Oakes is very subdued and deferential, as if he has been fed some secret information to go soft. Solidarity amongst geriatrics, cynicism of the vain old men?
New law draft about any media advocacy terrorism. Wants States to be involved.
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/default.asp
Insiders 2
Provenance of oil as cause of Iraq War – Age on Thursday, Nelson added to it. ALP pushed it along. Missed start of Peter Costello Treasurer – ideological commitment to democracy in Iraq, what has it done for them asks BC in Palestine or Iraq, more ideology.
Discusses housing prices, admits high, says not quite as high. Indigenous emergency – asks for goodwill, and grace. Will take more than 2 or 3 months.
Panel – Annabel Crabb Fairfax, Brian Toohey Fairfax Akerman News Ltd Telegraph shrieker, Akerman.
Paul Kelly soliloquy on broad defence strategy.
Panel blather. Annabel Crabb sounding a little deferential and subdued maybe for her story dumping on Akerman’s paper and fearful of same.
Windup comments – Toohey says no Tampa arriving, consensus polls are adverse trend. [Cowards scared to predict Howard done, but fair enough given cornered rodent bites hard even in death throes.]
Akerman gives the game away that Get Up advert is strong stuff – hopelessly claims Louise Barry is exploited, which may well be sexist, certainly plain wrong given she is doing it calmly and with real determination.
Home page is http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/
Also great segment repeats via webcast here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/
Postscript #1 Monday 9th July 2007
Downer and Howard are busy warning us of risks of travel in Indonesia here via webcast:
News Video | | Duration 45s
The Department of Foreign Affairs is warning of imminent terrorist attacks in Indonesia, possibly in Bali.
But that's not what happened before the Bali bombing killing 200+ including 88 Australians according to this VERY DISTURBING intelligence leak on open source:
on this man's watch - Minister Alexander Downer:
lyrical Tyeli Hannah poster design winner
LOOKING FORWARD . LOOKING BLAK. CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF NAIDOC. Sunday 8 July: Exhibition of paintings, carvings, and artefacts by more than 60 artists. Exhibition opens at 2pm; Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony. Introduction by Yvette Andrews, President of Addison Road Centre. Address by Linda Burney MP Minister for Fair Trading/ Youth and Volunteers. Addison Road Gallery: tel: 9518 3709; e: terrycutcliffe@aol.com; hours: 11-5 wed to sun. 2 real crocodiles (real but not live) will greet local MP for Canterbury, Minister in the NSW Government and Aboriginal woman Linda Burney who will launch National Aborigines’ and Islanders’ NAIDOC events at Addison Rd Community Centre.
Tuesday 10 July: KIDS CELEBRATE OUR INDIGENOUS CULTURE: Thursday 12 July: INDIGENOUS FILMS AND FORUM @ 7.30PM. SIDETRACK THEATRE.
 |
blueWith the news cycle in a very big spin re the latest terrorist attack in Britain, including a link here
Tuesday July 3, 2007 12
00pm AEST
UK terror plot arrest in Brisbane
MARK DAVIS 10:31am | Philip Ruddock confirms a 27-year-old junior doctor has been arrested at Brisbane airport in relation to the UK bomb plots. Slideshow: Bomb plot's Aussie link
we think this article below is prescient. Revealing too that medically trained enemies of the West continue to seek their revenge, or whatever motivates them, over foreign affairs and geo politics of the Middle East, and ongoing ferocious loss of life:
[bold added]
18/6/07
Neocons can't have it both ways on Arabs | The World | The Australian
including this
"....
As Ralph Peters, a former military intelligence officer, explained in the New York Post last Thursday: "We're stuck in Iraq, and it sucks. But were we to leave in haste, far more blood than oil would flow in the Persian Gulf. The disaster in Gaza's just a rehearsal for the Arab-suicide drama awaiting its opening night in Iraq."
But here, it seems to me, neoconservatism begins to devour itself. For the sake of argument, assume the premise about the violent dysfunctionality of Arab political culture.
Now ask yourself: if that's correct, how on earth did neoconservatives ever argue that we could produce a functioning democracy by force of arms in Iraq?
This is surely the self-contradiction at the heart of neoconservatism. [bold added] Even at the maximum surge strength, the US is helpless in the face of an Iraqi civil war that has only just begun, can be fuelled indefinitely by corrupt oil money, and is driven by centuries-old sectarian hatred between Shia and Sunni Muslims and decades of totalitarian trauma. And yet the neocons insist we should plough on, adding more troops, planning on permanent bases for indefinite occupation.
Well, you can't have it both ways. Either Arab culture without autocracy really is what we see in Gaza and Iraq or it isn't. If it is, then trying to build Western-style democracy during a brutal civil war in Iraq is a mug's game.
We have, I think, two options. We can withdraw from Iraq and play the grand regional Shia-Sunni war in the Middle East by proxy. Or we can enmesh ourselves much more deeply and irrevocably in a metastasising conflict. Such a conflict may well breed even more anti-Western terror and run the risk of inserting Americans into an ancient sectarian blood feud.
There are grave dangers in both options and no one should underestimate the risks of withdrawal from a power vacuum we created. But surely the lesson of Gaza and Iraq is that occupation will not transform Arab culture for the better either. It may, in fact, make things worse.
What I guess I'm saying is that if you take neoconservatism seriously as an analysis of Arab culture and the regional conflict in the Middle East, and you are primarily interested in the defence of the West, the case for cutting our losses in Iraq is a very strong one. [bold added]
But somehow the neocons are afraid to follow their argument to its logical and inexorable conclusion. We need to leave. Soon. Or reap a gathering whirlwind.
The Sunday Times"
........................................................................
Postscript #1
Sure enough the apparent phone link from Britain terrorists to a doctor here in Qld, which may or may not be significant, has the Big Media in a lather. Even to the extent of parody by crikey.com ezine today 4th July about lack of any real news value. What has got us puzzled is the really shallow lack of psychological insight in most of the gormless media coverage.
By this we mean the Big Media are taking the line of shock, horror that medical people are getting murderously violent. Yet the SAM editor was alive to this potential years ago based on this simple observation - with hundreds of thousands of gruesome deaths (eg Iraq whether from Gulf War #1, sanctions, Gulf War #2, The Occupation, or in Palestine from prison like conditions) who are the ones in society most exposed to the carnage, misery and indeed mass preventable fatalities? Who are most intellectually capable to generate a political analysis of the geo politics behind the blood and gore, at least in some fashion. The medicos obviously. How anyone can think this horror especially the broken bodies of children, won't take its psychological toll and indeed turn at least some from their hypocratic oath is the really bizarre thing, not that it happens.
Indeed it takes a determined ignorance akin to the role of the mainstream media in this disturbing movie, and in the current context ..... Israel's vicious cluster bomblets in the last days of the recent war in Lebanon; or the mass lethality of USA air strikes; or The Lancet report estimating hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq to think the doctors would be whistling while they work.
Hence last Monday night on 4 Corners Chris Masters asked a military man in Afghanistan 'will 10 locals killed in error result in 100 enemies?'. It's a straight forward multiplier well understood by the UN for instance. Not for nothing do people refer to 'the spiral' of violence.
By what blindness do our well paid, over indulged journalists/editors ignore such basic consequences of western geo politik foreign policy as a matter of basic human psychology? Is it some kind of willful blindness that the "other" is not also human in every way to ourselves in the West?
One might at least expect these dumb Big Media to have seen this fairly recent movie where the doctor character is positioned as an assassin by the CIA in the Robert Redford, Brad Pitt vehicle Spy Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia exploiting the doctor's desire for revenge. Script writers are obviously smarter than journalists.
Postscript #2 6.15 am 7th July 2007
A. Well, as the news breaks (from about 3pm July 6th) of more detention and interrogations of medical people here in Australia from ALP Premier press conferences in WA etc our analysis in postscript #1 has itself proven "prescient" (to quote oneself above).
(Why on earth our postscript #1 typeface today first appeared as 16 point when its supposed to be 12 point is just another small mystery of the internet and maybe the junior trainee spooks trawling such things. This has never happened before quite this way.)
B. Another 'gratifying' aspect for SAM news site if such a term is possible in this sad, grim geo politik is that like our post of Sullivan above, both major parties here gave broad defence speeches here eg at the Lowy Institute on Thursday eg ALP's Kevin Rudd Future Challenges in Foreign Policy - MP3, and Defence Minister Nelson prefacing interview here on AM here with summary here
Defence battlelines drawn ahead of election | News | The Australian
;
and both ended up highlighting the miserable failure in Iraq:
(1) The ALP intentionally by focusing on regional priorities for the future, barely mentioning Iraq except to say it was as bad a result as Vietnam.
(2) The Coalition not intentionally but as a result of the AM interview, where Defence Minister Nelson, having swatted all night and maybe all week for a broad policy, was forced into ducking and weaving a Lillee like bouncer first up about 'Why are we still in Iraq?". You could hear his imperious annoyance at having to account yet again and use up precious oxygen he wanted for his giant defence Mecanno set of assets, ships, planes, tanks etc most of which are not deployed in said Iraq. So unsettled we would say that he defaulted to usual condescending truth that energy/oil security was the motivation for being there. A truth that must not speak its name. Within a few hours he was being repudiated by Treasurer, PM and Chris Uhlmann of ABC was referred to his squandered leadership potential. Ouchy ouch.
By next day Nelson was even repudiating himself!
And the Opposition were making hay.
But it was true, in world attention getting Syrianna (the movie) style that oil underpins the Occupation in Iraq, and for that we give Nelson some credit. Maybe as a medical doctor he was in angst over this whole violent doctors things - and his role in taking so much life as defence minister.
Further we wrote about this on the Matt Price blog story in The Australian yesterday (he pushing the line Nelson's words were an accident, and we were in Iraq for the US Alliance - which Matt is just a semantic way of saying oil again). His blog was fresh and unblotted when we got to it about 8 am yesterday - our comment was censored off when checked last night (?) hence the time to write it here again. Or maybe it's hidden in the 400+ comments there now.
(3) As a result of all this attack on the main flaw in the Govt's broad defence policy re the disaster in Iraq, fiesty penetrating well resourced cyber group Get Up has run a glancing blow on the govt's security credibility: A terrorism victim calling for withdrawal from Iraq, which echoed onto the tv news bulletins last night. Ouch. Here it is:
"Dear GetUp members,
Two years ago I was on a bus that was blown up by terrorists. Three months in traction and six operations later, I'm asking for your help to prevent this from happening to any more Australians.
These recent attacks in the UK have not only brought back some really painful memories, they've prompted me to make a television ad - and we need your help to show it. Please watch my urgent plea here:
www.getup.org.au/campaign/PleaseMrHoward
I thought going to war in Iraq was supposed to make us safer, not put us in more danger. And now we're hearing it was for their oil. Some of you may have seen me ask John Howard from my hospital bed whether he thought what happened to me was a result of the war in Iraq.
I did not think then that two years later we would be still be in this position, where I feel compelled to ask Mr Howard the same question. Yet here we are - our military presence is not making the Iraqis any safer; it is not making Australians any safer. Why, exactly, are we there then?
www.getup.org.au/campaign/PleaseMrHoward
I want to help the Iraqi people, but not at the end of a gun. Our involvement in the violence in Iraq will only lead to more violence. Why can't we instead spend the money on reconstruction programs?
I'm no expert, but I do know something about the real cost of terrorism. Please, help me tell this to the Prime Minister.
Thank you,
Louise Barry
Survivor, 2005 London Bombings
GetUp member"
(4) We are pretty used to being censored by The Pompous/Big Media - even as we effectively scoop them on psychological insight into Arabic medical personnel reacting to a miserable history -
We were also censored off the Trioli talkback on Wednesday after being near first in the queue pre 9am and waiting 30 minutes. We wanted to address the land clearing vandals reported in the SMH -(see immediately preceding story) so we resorted to type back radio submissions
- she is "haughty" which is true, and
- that she is being "duchessed" having admitted a dinner in Government House by the National Trust which has always been a pseudo ALP Left qango;
- that the article below by SAM on the clearing issue is 'doing the ABC's work for them ....again'
Now we see Stateline last night here in NSW with Quentin Dempster pretty much running our story last night . But even he can't do a very good job though he knows the issues - dwelling on the views of the disastrous Jeff Angel dirctor of Total Environment Centre who was the peak 'green' representative on the state native vegetation committee from 1997 to 2003 and ongoing (?), when about a million hectares (of 80M ha state) was cleared and yet he still saw fit to pander to the ALP in 2002 in the SMH proximate to the next election that Carr was the 'greenest premier in the history of Australia'. Yeah right. Betrayal of duty and trust for those that know.
Angel over the same timeline also cut a deal with Lake Cowal cyanide gold mine to receive money for his group and cronies for greenwashing projects up to $6M direct from revenue of the gold mine to the outrage of the Green Party and independent groups like Rainforest Information Centre.
In around 1997 we attended a meeting of 6 or 7 green groups where Angel proposed to tradeoff land to be cleared by farmers in the Southern Mallee of NSW, land that had outstanding native title claim by Aboriginal traditional owners, not to mention intrinsic environmental values. (The native title case all the way to the High Court was eventually lost, but we didn't know that at the time.) Talk about racist. [Time permitting we will pull the file out soon.]
Over the same time line Angel's group with maybe 750 members gazumped all the much bigger groups like The Wilderness Society with maybe 5,000 NSW members to entrench 20 year logger 'resource security' in a "peace deal" with govt and industry paving the way for woodchippers in southern NSW that continues to kills 2-3000 trees every day including pristine areas of East Gippsland like Goolengook. Majestic Goolengook fed through the Eden chipper in NSW that Angel kept open in alliance with Bob Carr in breach of an election promise of 1995.
And Angel is hopeless at modern media presentation - ugly to see on tv, and choked speaking voice so much so that Trioli recently told him on air to drink water (!) not realising (she from Victoria) it was his normal voice, Angel is the perfect ALP patsy to keep in his position with Iago's technical ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth. And that's why the NSW environment movement is broken and our natural environment is doomed under this ALP government - Jeff Angel's faustian deal by with corrupt ALP, probably the worst environmental leader in Australia's history.
So why did Dempster's show dwell on him next to Reece Turner of TWS on the panel last night on tv? Dempster is an acolyte of Angel's group TEC, and probably recognises this real politik power game, and has done several public events for him pushing him forward at the expense of the true independent environment movement like Chipstop in the south and the Green Party or The Wilderness Society. The corruption of the ALP infuses most aspects of NSW life even into the Establishment green groups desperate for grants and profile at the expense of the sacred environment they are honour bound to protect, and certainly the Big Media.
Angel's real legacy - a choked, dishonest, hobbled green movement served on a platter to this 12 year old ALP Government, fiesty mid level campaigners cut off at the knees after a year or two, corrupt grants, mediocre pandering spiced with the odd criticism to cover his backside.
In short Milo Dunphy was right about Angel being a wholly unsuitable person to lead the green movement and the fact Dempster promotes him is shameless and immoral.
rushedWe responded to the rogue farmer clearing vandals here:
Bulldozed: a vital wetland - National - smh.com.au
FARMERS in NSW, Queensland and Victoria said they had chopped down as many as 4000 trees yesterday in a campaign to pressure state governments to weaken land clearing laws.
This builds on the disastrous environmental destruction of Macquarie Marshes international wetland (to be formally reported on by Federal Environment Minister Turnbull in the next 2 weeks or so), and reported again here last weekend by admirable journalist Marian Wilkinson:
Beautiful to barren, in fewer than 10 years
And this also front page yesterday re NSW Govt pandering to Crown leaseholders with sale of public property rights at a tiny pittance of their real market value - Your wilderness for sale, cheaply
And there in is the correct legal solution to these vast areas of the public estate held in trust by the agri industry west of the dividing range. A lease is a lease is a lease. Break the lease and get evicted.
We call on the NSW Minister Koperberg to evict these farmers for breach of their leases by vandalism.
Not for nothing does Professor Cullen who gives comfort to the NSW Govt on desalination water supply insurance
No stopping desalination even if dam spills over - Environment ...
, also says that farmers on unsustainable farm operations should be restructured out of the business
AM - Calls for Govt to cut funding for unsustainable farming.
And by definition increased land clearing proves the land on their farm already developed i.e. cleared, is not sufficient to make a quid without drawing down disastrously on the natural capital. Such farmers will never stop clearing because they are not very good.
We heard a joke comparison on the radio this morning between urban freehold land holders and farmers on their crown leasehold wanting to clear away as much as they like. Au contraire.
It's time the rest of the political community and economy with their worthy drought assistance sympathies, and patient subsidies of farm sector stopped pandering to redneck vandals.
Agforce in Qld have already repudiated Truman in Gympie, and it's high time the responsible farmer lobby in NSW also did the same. Some do it right as here:
Farmer makes $1m for doing nothing at all | NEWS.com.au
with this heartening image captioned "Tree change ... Queensland farmer Peter Allen and his wife were ready to chop down their trees until Rio Tinto stepped in / Annette Dew"
We say not only prosecute for illegal land clearing in NSW in the age of climate change, but also resume the crown lease for breach of the terms of stewardship and occupation rights at a tiny non market rental.
Time to stop pandering to agrarian socialist vandals. Indeed bring it on and do your job Minister Koperberg, and Premier Morris Iemma.
Failure to take decisive action will prove beyond doubt the brown shadow of such as Treasurer Costa over the NSW Govt and failure of welfare and good governance as here editorial 2nd July 2007 Sydney Morning Herald:
Michael Costa: colour him brown
DOES it matter that the NSW Treasurer, Michael Costa, calls the writer and environmentalist Tim Flannery an idiot for his views on climate change? By itself, not at all. Professor Flannery is perfectly capable of defending himself against Mr Costa's gibes, just as the Treasurer is perfectly at liberty to make them. What matters, though, about Mr Costa's comments is the post he holds.
Mr Costa is a member of the ever-dwindling group of climate change sceptics. In British political terms, the Treasurer is old Labor, an heir to a tradition that includes the Whitlam government's Rex Connor and those Tasmanian administrations which gleefully dammed Lake Pedder and would have done the same to the Franklin River if Canberra had not intervened. Development and the jobs it brings are everything to this way of thinking; the environment is a peripheral matter, of concern to trendies and lightweights, to be given lip service at election time, but otherwise ignored.
His views led Mr Costa to oppose the desalination plant - not on environmental grounds, but because it is a needless waste of money: since climate change does not exist, the drought will break and fill Sydney's dams, and the plant will lie idle. He was overruled by the Premier, Morris Iemma. Mr Iemma is a man of strong opinions: he believes firmly whatever the voters believe, and climate change quite rightly worries them deeply.
Mr Iemma's Government is weighing the options for a new baseload power station for NSW. Mr Costa obviously will play a large part in that choice. It should concern all voters, then, that Mr Costa's views of climate change are likely to skew that discussion decisively in favour of a coal-fired plant, the cheapest and most environmentally damaging choice. Similarly, moves are afoot to raise the registration charges for heavy trucks, to reflect the greater damage which they cause to roads. This is good policy because it helps even up the competition between rail (where tariffs reflect maintenance costs) and road (where they do not), and promote less environmentally damaging transport choices. But it will bring powerful opposition from the trucking lobby. For Mr Costa, the environmental sceptic, that may be enough to kill the idea. Mr Costa's blind spot overshadows the entire state.
Celebrate Aboriginal Australia:
happy
April 2007 - 12,087
March 6,684
February 5,372
January 2800
specialQuoting the Canberra Times today below, (and see also 4 Corners February 2006 interview in an episode called The Greenhouse Mafia ):
2nd June 2007
Liberal attacks PM on climate
Natasha Rudra 
A Liberal Party member and former ministerial speechwriter issues a book today which depicts the Prime Minister with a stranglehold on environmental policy, deliberately surrounding himself with climate change sceptics.
Bungendore-based author Guy Pearse wrote High and Dry after seven years of academic research at the Australian National University, and a career with a former senior government minister as well as lobbying.
He has come to the conclusion that John Howard has a deliberately skewed vision of an Australian economy heavily dependent on mining and other high-pollutant industries.
"He has never genuinely believed climate change to be that serious," Pearse said.
"At every level, if you look closely, you'll find that he has promoted sceptics around him."
Pearse, who is originally from Queensland, worked as a speechwriter for former environment minister Robert Hill from 1997 to 1999.
He said that his experience and research into climate change forced him to rethink his political ambitions within the Liberal Party.
"In about 2005 I really reached a fork in the road where I either toed the line and went back to Queensland and set up for a political career, or I took this issue on," he said.
"I arrived at the conclusion that the issue was more important.
"The deception was too great, and the deception is even worse now than it was then.
"I don't see in any way that I'm betraying the Liberal Party.
"I think this is a case of the leader betraying the party's legacy on extremely important issues.
"Even though I'm a Liberal Party member and have been for almost 20 years I just felt we had reached the position where I had an obligation to do what I'm doing."
He hoped his book would spark extreme change in the Liberal Party's policy, saying that it could take a spell in opposition to achieve this.
"I hope it drives change faster than would otherwise occur," he said.
"It's to fix the policy," the author said.
