whatROOLYhappened.com

Adios, amigos

2005-03-31T17:14:00.000+10:00

Well, folks, it's been a little over a year since wRh hit the etherwaves and while we've enjoyed it a lot, we've decided it's time to sign off.

See ya in comment land.

Free range Easter egg mystery

2005-03-29T19:04:00.000+10:00

Sorted. Looked on the side of the carton. Go Sherlock.

Novo Foods Ltd, Victoria. The website says it's a national marketer for state-based producers. That is, a spinmeister front for several state producers. Its old webpage (still active) is more revealing than the one above: "The founding members of Novo Foods Ltd are NSW Egg Producers Co-op, SA Egg, WA Egg and Pure Foods Tasmania."

The listed partners - Eggbert Eggs (NSW), Golden Egg Farms (WA), Pure Foods (TAS), Southern Egg (SA) - all had active sites back in 2000, but now only one, WA Egg/Golden Egg Farms, has a functioning site. The rest prefer to go through this PR front. Pure Foods, as we mentioned, was raided by Animal Lib Victoria.

The website of WA producer, Golden Egg, has a Valley Brook page. The production structure is three tiered. They produce 'Laying Cage System' (ie battery) eggs for the cheap end of the market, '
Intensive Housing' (so-called Barn laid) eggs for those with a little conscience and who can cop the slightly higher price and then there's the 'Free Range' egg for the sucker customer who pays a premium. All those customers are, from the manufacturers' perspective, just different 'markets'. Cage-factory-farm eggs make up 95% of the production total so buying their 'Free Range' product won't dent their low-cost high-misery market strategy.

Also, the certification 'RSPCA approved' appears to mean bugger all, as that photograph above shows.

Truth in advertising

2005-03-27T13:14:00.000+10:00

When is a free range egg not free range? For example and in particular, the Valley Brook "free range" egg sold in Woolies, Coles and other supermarkets. Is it in fact free range? And another question, who owns it?

The Tasmanian business directory BizTas lists Valley Brook eggs as a product of Pure Foods Eggs Pty Ltd. The link to the Pure Foods site is non-existent (though the MD's email and phone number is still listed).

Perhaps the site was taken down after Animal Liberation Victoria raided the factory farm a couple of years back and rescued some pretty horribly crook looking chooks.

But then this annual report from the Western Australian Egg
Marketing Board - trading as Golden Egg Farms - lists the Valley Brook brand as its own.

The report covers the financial year 2002-03. ALV raided the Pure Foods in July 2003. Quick sale at end of FY or same brandname? The search continues.

Hypocrites' picnic

2005-03-26T14:49:00.000+11:00

So where were these nutjobs when others were out on the streets protesting the illegal invasion of Iraq and the decimation of Fallujah - others who actually do care about the value of a human life, not just the sanctity of an American one as decreed by their nutjob leaders.

Dead Man's law II

2005-03-24T16:52:00.000+11:00

Hot on the heels of heavying the states to adopt his fascist defamation law provisions which would give corporations even greater power to crush concerned and active citizens, Ruddock is now pressuring Debus into giving the courts the power to word newspaper corrections. What next, we ask?

The Oz reports: "Judges will be able to dictate the wording and possibly the placement of corrections - a development that is out of step with all comparable democracies."

As if the media in this country aren't under the thumb enough. How did Tariq Ali describe them?

Servile.

The Barry Jones lookalike, Mark Day, explains glowingly that Ruddock has forced the states into uniformity among themselves - rather than succumb to Dead Man Law. A couple of advances in the NSW system will be the adoption of the truth alone defence and the retirement of the imputation system.

Gunns corporate shareholders

2005-03-22T12:04:00.000+11:00

In compiling a list of them, so far we have (tks to crikey.com.au):

CBA
AMP
Westpac
MLC
Perpetual Trustees
AMP
Deutsche Bank
Gerry Harvey
Gunns CEO, John Gay

The story continues. Any others?

Dead Man's law

2005-03-22T11:36:00.000+11:00

SMH, March 21, 2005

Defamation warning

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, will tell the states [read Bob Carr - wRh] today that if they ignore his views on allowing companies to sue for defamation he will press ahead with his own national code.

A spokeswoman said yesterday the minister "still had not heard a good reason why corporations should not have the same rights as individuals to protect and defend their reputation." [wRh: because a corporation is after all a person]

How about this one: it will allow corporations, particularly property developers, to slap writs on citizens and community groups any time they raise an issue about the bulldozer blitzkrieg currently sweeping the nation's eastern states - effectively silencing them. For example, you organise a meeting of your neighbours and begin a community drive (lamingtons etc) which you hope will have some influence on council and ultimately the development company who is planning to build a yuppie getto in your street. Maybe you make a few leaflets for telegraph poles. Maybe you write something to the local paper. You show up at the next meeting and a nervy little grub rolls up and slaps a stop writ on you and your neighbours. The ultimate possible cost of your pursuing it in the courts? They win defamation payout, you lose your house (if you're fortunate enough to own one).

Will the states roll over?

Today's pop quiz

2005-03-19T11:10:00.000+11:00

And the category is ... Fascist bully-boy politics in the Australasian region.

Now, for 10 points. What does this picture remind you of?

[Theme music plays]

Um, Gareth Evans flying over the Timor Sea in a jet with a glass of bubbly.

That's correct! Well done.

Electric boogaloo

2005-03-17T13:43:00.000+11:00

Still in hiatus mode but this is too fascist-pig-stupid to let go. (Yesterday's news, a'ight.)

Bloggers and spammers could be forced to put their names to political commentary in a bid to close a loophole in the nation's electoral laws.
yaddahyaddahyaddah

Ridiculous. Surely most blogging would be classified as commentary or opinion, even though it ocassionally drifts into reportage. Trying to monitor and police party endorsements on blogs is absurd and unworkable and probably unconstitutional - that is, as interpreted in common law. There is such a thing as freedom of political communication. Even if this sort of bill managed to get up under an electoral laws framework it could only be enforced on sites that are run strictly as campaign operations. Is Abetz seriously considering legislating a criteria for political communication? Does he think it won't result in the good people of this land clogging the courts with challenges and appeals? This is an insult to all Strayans and an act designed to further gut democracy in this once great nation. It also is based on the assumption that conventional publishers don't use anonymous sources or publish anonymously penned comment from time to time.

No doubt it will be marketed by Ratty and co as spam prevention or some other dissembling rot. Where's a bill of rights when you need one?

Let me count the ways

2005-03-09T09:24:00.000+11:00

Amid our brief hiatus we look at the Judeo-Christian Doomsday Top 5 for today. [Jerry Springer-like audience chants in background.]

1. The world's most powerful state is run by chosen ones who believe they are going to heaven after the apocalypse. So of course it won't admit that its forces opened fire on car carrying a freed hostage, whose government paid a multimillion dollar ransom for her release. After all, journalists are fair game - especially commie heathen ones.

2. Dark-ages homophobe, misogynist bigot and local head of the Catholic church prevents notable theological scholar from lecturing in Sydney because she dares to challenge the patriarchal nutbags who run the show.

3. Screws in a Windsor correctional facility throw inmates prayer mats into a toilet and piss on them; one is suspended.

4. The Australian Labor Party votes in a Christian loser to lead its loser party. Oops, that's old news.

5. Ah, pffft.

Relaxed, comfortable

2005-03-01T10:59:00.000+11:00

You people say Australia is so laid-back but there are police and security everywhere.
Danish journalist Kirsten Balslev

Eucalyptus Drive

2005-03-01T04:39:00.000+11:00

White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own
White riot - I wanna riot
White riot - a riot of my own

Black people gotta lot a problems
But they don't mind throwing a brick
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick

An' everybody's doing
Just what they're told to
An' nobody wants
To go to jail!

All the power's in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it

Everybody's doing
Just what they're told to
Nobody wants
To go to jail!

Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?

The Clash, 1977

When a job's not a job

2005-02-28T14:10:00.000+11:00

A comment from weez today reminded me of the ABC corporate policy on archival material.

Do you recall the recent tale which Media Watch brought us about the footage use policies of ABC tape sales? Eva is all about making that sort of white-anting of an invaluable Australian public resource so very much easier. Stack da board, save a bunch of hassle with those pissant peasants.

Exactly. I sure do remember it. I wrote to the ABC at the time to tell them how corrupt I thought that policy was:

I would like to register my complaint regarding the ABC's corporate sales policy as reported on this evening's Media Watch program, available at http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1162237.htm.

The notion that the sales division of the ABC has sought to deny requests by clients for the purchase of material directly from the Corporation for purposes which are clearly those of a documentary nature is deplorable.

That the Corporation, at the arbitrary discretion of public servants within the sales division, should refer on to serving and former ministers of Parliament "clearance" requests for the purchase of news and current affairs materials is clearly a practise that should cease immediately as it is in breach of the national broadcaster's own charter.

That the tax-payer-funded Corporation should prevent commercial access to its archival services by its clients on perceived political grounds shows a policy position that is not only wrong-headed and bloody-minded but shows also a regrettable loss of independence on the part of the national broadcaster.

W. Flaneur
25/05/04

To which I received this reply:

From: ABC CORPORATE_AFFAIRS6
To: "wflaneur@yahoo.com"
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:01:46 +1000
Subject: RE: Archives sales policy
Dear Mr Flaneur,

Thank you for your email regarding a recent episode of Media Watch and the ABC’s policy on licensing of footage for filmmakers.

I would like to assure you that there has been no “political censorship” by the ABC in making decisions about licensing of footage for filmmakers. In the very rare situations where such decisions are required, they are made on an individual basis, taking into account existing ABC Editorial Policies and Library Sales Licensing Terms and Conditions.

As stated in the ABC Library Sales Licensing Terms and Conditions “if the Licensed Materials contain vision and/or sound of an identifiable individual and the Licensee intends to use the Licensed Material in a political advertisement (namely an advertisement authorised by a political party), and/or an advocacy or cause related advertisement or program, the Licensee will obtain the individual's prior permission for that use”.

In the case referred to on Media Watch, ABC Enterprises determined, on the basis of the information supplied by the filmmaker, that she intended to use the footage in an advocacy or cause related campaign. In these circumstances, the ABC remained willing to license the content to the filmmaker as long as the filmmaker was able to obtain permission from the identifiable individuals for use of the footage.

While acknowledging your concerns, I would like to emphasise that in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will not be necessary for filmmakers to obtain the approval of identifiable individuals when seeking ABC licensed content. Nonetheless, please be assured that your concerns have been noted and conveyed to the relevant decision makers.

Yours sincerely,
GEOFFREY CRAWFORD
Director of Corporate Affairs

Thank you, My ABC. Here's my 8 cents. I'll just roll back over now, if that's okay.

Janet, as weez says, is now one of those "relevant decision makers". She continually refuses to accept that she is an employee of the Murdoch stable. (See her latest fantasy piece from today's Herald letters page below.) She argues that, being a freelancer, she does not have a conventional staffer contract with the Oz and therefore is not under its editorial jurisdiction. She denies any conflict of interest: "I do not owe News Ltd and News Ltd does not owe me the duties inherent in an employment relationship."

Bollocks! Weasel words!

Everyone knows how these arrangements work. Her legal background would tell her that the injudicious use of the literal rule can often lead to absurd and illogical outcomes. And this is clearly one of them. Janet, Miranda, Andrew, et al all know which side their bread is buttered. They don't need to be told directly by anyone what are their job requirements. They know exactly what is expected of them.

The question is simple: When Janet looks at her bank statement each month, does it or does it not show an entry in the deposit column that reads News Ltd.

From today's SMH letters.

I do not intend to enter the debate about my appointment to the ABC board. Debate and a diversity of views are good things. However, the debate should be conducted on an accurate basis. Jill Greenwell (Letters, February 26-27) writes that I have a conflict of interest because I am currently employed by the Murdoch press.

This is incorrect. I am not, and have never been, an employee of the Murdoch press, or any other media outlet (including Fairfax) for which I have written. I am, and have always been, an independent contractor. I do not owe News Ltd and News Ltd does not owe me the duties inherent in an employment relationship. Accordingly, there is no legal or practical conflict that would hinder me in acting as a director of the ABC.

Janet Albrechtsen Bronte

Incorrect? No, Janet, it is entirely correct. Unless perhaps you are offering your columns gratis.

Relevancy, irregardless!

2005-02-26T19:57:00.000+11:00

From today's SMH letters page.

Just wondering why the Herald thinks anyone other than Ascham families would be remotely interested in the reinstatement of Mrs Danziger ("Grande dame of Ascham back as headmistress resigns"). I pay $1.20 each day to read the news. not a P&C newsletter.
Anne Kirman Kellyville

Precisely. I also like to think I pay the $1.20 for the highest value information available, produced first and foremost in the public interest, with an uncompromising and uncorrupted scrutiny of government and business, vital to a transparent and accountable representative democracy - the cornerstone of a free and open society.

Is that so unrealistic? As far as "bought media" goes, the Bling Bling Herald is way ahead of the servile Murdoch and Packer press. But unfortunately it constantly feels it has to pander to the sensibilities of Sydney's eastern and northern suburbs and their pathetic 17th century-like snobbery. I blame the editors. It's that simple. I have tried to read the Oz. In fact I tried it again yesterday but it read like a bunch of press releases from neo-con HQ, rewritten by horribly, horribly compromised journalists. In fact, it even had a piece penned by the Rodent himself! For rool.

Time to go ...

2005-02-26T14:01:00.000+11:00

A whopping sigh of relief from Catholics everywhere. This story reports that because a rock is not moistening, the Pope shall survive. Okay. But really, has this man not heard of the word quit? Is there no Papal equivalent of the Kirribilli agreement? Are there no Cossies waiting in the wings? Give it up, man. Go fishing!

Christ's man on Earth is having problems with his throat. He may have to give his sermons via his notebook's text-to-speech function. That means we now have the world's biggest religious hot shot and the world's best known brain in Stephen Hawking both using a machine to speak. Cosmic convergence? Perhaps.

But it still does not explain Janet Evabraunsen's appointment to the ABC board.

Pretty vacant

2005-02-18T09:35:00.000+11:00

Let me see if I've got this straight. After the Australian embassy in Baghdad is targeted in a bomb attack, the federal government moves the staff to a US military base with the hilarious name of Camp Victory. But because of all the mileage they got from the moronic electorate last year in the troop withdrawal "debate", they leave 120 personnel on guard at the embassy. To guard, presumably, an empty - er, unoccupied - building.

Let's see, would that have been before or after our troops shot a bloke (dead, as it turns out) trying to park his car outside the building?

Petro power

2005-02-18T09:08:00.000+11:00

Finally, we have a functioning opposition on asylum seeker policy. A Liberal Party member stepping forth from the back benches and cutting through like Labor can't. The Greens should also take note here.

But to put on the tin-foil hat for a second. Is this being sneekily orchestrated from the front benches? Are the tories playing good cop bad cop on the asylum seeker issue? Probably not. We reckon it would be more the case that this member understands the incompetency of the management of the portfolio from up-close, direct observation.

Kewl 4 KKKats

2005-02-17T11:47:00.000+11:00

Dateline KKKweensland: Not content with sparking off a national kitten-torturing trend among juveniles, activities at Townsville's Lavarack Barracks are again under investigation. This time the troops seem to be hell bent on overtaking the West Australian police service in the redneck stakes. Following its hooded antics of a couple of months ago (described by local federal member Peter Lindsay as 'a fun thing') a new KKKonnection has been discovered at the base. The Bully has the story here.

The good nation's true colors surely do manifest in all manner of ways. Earlier in the week a poll showed that 30 per cent of Strayans reckon the government does not owe an apology to a mentally ill woman imprisoned in an immigration detention centre for 10 months. That's one in every 3 or 4 people you pass on the street, folks.

And today, in the tradition of the Chamberlain massacre, it's trial by meeja for Mamdouh Habib whose psychiatrist found that the public interest in his patient's condition outweighed any of those silly principles of confidentiality. The boffin shrink, who probably meant well but had a bit of a judgment malfunction, was promptly given the boot by Habib's lawyer. It's interesting to read this article from April 2002.

Time for a tinnie.

Truth topples CNNNN chief

2005-02-13T16:53:00.000+11:00

I missed this one but last month at the World Economic Forum in the ritzy ski town of Davos, CNN's news head Eason Jordan said the US was purposely targeting journalists in Iraq - ie, killing them.

The WEF is basically a PR stunt put on by the rich in cooperation with the media. They all turn up to be seen with other rich people and pretend to be doing things to help the developing nations - a euphemism for the exploited peoples that make them rich - and pledge chicken feed and chump change to The Poor.

Anyway, Aljazeera is reporting that Jordan has been forced to resign over the comments.

Speaking to Aljazeera from New York, Dr Fawaaz Jajis, a professor of political science at University of Lawrence said there is little room for voices of dissent in America.

"The United States is in a state of war militarily, and ideologically," Jajis said.

"Unfortunately, it seems that the 'truth' is one of war's victims, as is freedom of the media, journalism and opinion in the United States," he added.

Polluters 1, locals 0

2005-02-12T16:18:00.000+11:00

As if South Sydney is not already polluted enough - what with the airport spewing AvGas all over the place, CityRail, StateRail and the Rail Infrastructure Corp all spewing out noise and too often diesel, and cars and trucks spewing exhaust 24/7 - the state government has given Orica the OK to begin pumping a gigantic toxic plume, seeping into Botany Bay as we speak, via a string of wells along the Foreshore Road, extract the ethylene dichloride (EDC) contaminants therein and - get this - burn it off! Release it into the atmosphere!

The go-ahead was given after the US toothless tigers Environmental Protection Agency and some local "expert" reviewed Orica's plan. As wRh mentioned a few weeks back, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root are principal contractors on the project. The plant is expected to be up by October and, according to this Sydney Yawning Herald piece, will be treating 15 million litres of contaminated water a day. The 8c-a-day news service (which really isn't a straight clone of the BBC) quotes a Greenpeace spokesperson saying what we all already know, that the process is dodgy and will result in locals being blanketed with another layer of toxic crap, this time in the form of dioxin emissions.

End of Straya meeja madness sale

2005-02-11T09:13:00.000+11:00

After being left abandoned by the gutless, suckhole government to be tortured for over two years in an illegal Cuban dog box and returned to the country without having had one "terrorism" charge laid by the Seps, only to be slandered by Dead Man, Ratty and their pal in Macquarie Street, we learn that, because the NSW Police told a reporter where Mamdouh Habib and his family were living, their home has been ransacked for a second time this week.

But who would do such a thing? Surely not reporters? Would an editor green-light such an act? If they had the ethical standards of this bloke they might:

"Geoff Howe, editor of The Inner Western Suburbs Courier, admitted yesterday he [twice] lied to ICAC investigators. [The former mayor of Burwood] chose not to run a story about a secretly taped video of Strathfield mayor Alfred Tsang accepting a bribe despite seeing the recording.

"Mr Howe said he lied to the commission while under oath because he wanted to protect [Strathfield ALP councillor John] Abi-Saab as a source and protect his own reputation."

Tsang's lawyer: "Mr Howe, it's hard to imagine a more dramatic story isn't it? ... A mayor is apparently accepting a bribe and you've got the evidence on tape."

Howe: I had "other stories to write.... I simply can't drop everything".

Howe's news judgment is, of course, right at home among the rest of the (mostly Pommie - or at least pathologically Anglophile) editors in this once proud nation. Every major news outlet today is splashing big - with the usual pathetic servility - on the "news" that Ponce Charles and Lady Blah-Blah Balls are to be wed. These two have a lot of style and class, in case you didn't know.

Feral abacus

2005-02-10T16:33:00.000+11:00

The Brotherhood of St Laurence reveals that the official ABS unemployment figures released today - which showed a steady 5.1 jobless rate - are a bunch of crapola.

Its director Tony Nicholson says the current definition that one hour's work a week equals employment skewed the official rate. [One hour's work a week! What's that, a milkshake and a sanga?]

He says the 5.1 jobless rate DOUBLES when it includes underemployed workers and discouraged job seekers.

The crazy thing is it will be these cooked job figures that will convince the Reserve Bank to hike up interest rates - something the government assured voters/suckers at the last election would definitely happen under a Labor government. So what's its priority now, jobs or rates?

Tory blitzkrieg

2005-02-07T17:33:00.000+11:00

The tories are frothing at the mouth on policy and it's still a whole 5 months 'til they get FULL CONTROL of the place, thanks to the ALP and those CLASS TRAITORS over at the CFMEU (pictured here hailing Howard Nuremberg-style in Tassie a few months ago). They can't wait to kick some butt - first stop: the poor, the mentally ill and the disabled. Sound familiar? Maybe they'll build a few more Baxters to deal with it. Vanstone must have said the word 'German' several hundred times today. What a disgrace.

Labor, meanwhile, has abandoned most of its pre-election policy, conceding that slugging single mothers was a mistake, and Medicare Gold was for fools yo'. Dropkicks.

This place is going to the dogs. It's time for a break. A wRh comrade is threatening to file for a while. We'll see.

War works wonders

2005-02-03T14:26:00.000+11:00

Not since a handful of Chalabi's goons stopped traffic in a Baghdad square and pulled down a Saddam statue with the help of some marines have the Shrubbery and its cheerleaders gone so mental. How mental? Think Manifest Destiny mental.

Amid all the feral frothing and deranged rabbiting on from the RWDBs (need we link?) over the 'lekshun and their crazydrunk logic of apologia which says that a good voter turnout somehow equates to moral vindication for the illegal invasion of Iraq, a piece by James Carroll in the Boston Globe. (Via our sorta-namesake in the northern blogosphere.)

-- SNIP --

The only meaning "freedom" can have in Iraq right now is freedom from the US occupation, which is the ground of disorder. But such an outcome of the elections is not likely. The chaos of a destroyed society leaves every new instrument of governance dependent on the American force, even as the American force shows itself incapable of defending against, much less defeating, the suicide legions. The irony is exquisite. The worse the violence gets, the longer the Americans will claim the right to stay. In that way, the ever more emboldened -- and brutal -- "insurgents" do Bush's work for him by making it extremely difficult for an authentic Iraqi source of order to emerge. Likewise the elections, which, as universally predicted, have now ratified the country's deadly factionalism.

Full blown civil war, if it comes to that, will serve Bush's purpose, too. All the better if Syria and Iran leap into the fray. In such extremity, America's occupation of Iraq will be declared legitimate.

-- SNIP --

Full article here.

Update: Oh yeah, it's going swimmingly. After all the histrionics and tear-jerky theatre in the Congressional House of Lurv today, looks like there may be a tad more PR needed in Iraq. It probably comes as a surprise only to a handful of RaRa-publicans that Iraq's leading Sunni clerics have declared the election invalid and any government arising from it illegitimate. Six-shooter Allawi and his defence minister Hazim Shaalan ought to start dusting off their CVs. The Shia heavyweight Husain Shahristani has called the Allawi government the most corrupt in the country's history and has called for a review of its spending. Not a happy camper.

Tootie frootie gitmo geist

2005-02-03T13:20:00.000+11:00

Matthew Moore, in Le Bling Bling Herald, (cough) reports (cough) on the Prime Miniature's visit to a hospital in Aceh:

There he met Harlina, 34, whose leg was amputated above the knee.

"I shook his hand, and I kissed his hand," she said. "And he said, 'God bless you' and I said, 'amen, amen, amen' and he cried."

O. My. God. Will the Herald just stop publishing this shamesless vomit and get on with the job of reporting? This has become more than an embarrassment.

Also in its pages, Rat fan Peter Hartcher says Kim I-love-the-smell-of-fruit-salad-in-the-morning Beazley is trying to move Labor away from what he [Hartcher] reckons is the party's obsession with Lathamite class-warfare. Like Labor even knows what that means any more.

Says Fruity Kim: "In Australia, while there is always an element of class politics, the reality is that we're a very egalitarian society in spirit".

Huh? We reckon that would have to be the same "spirit" that Bush was referring to when he said the US in Guantanamo Bay were operating in the "spirit of the Geneva Convention."

Meanwhile, the ABC reports: "a US federal judge has ordered the CIA to release records regarding the treatment of prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay and other facilities in the 'war on terror' to ... the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)."

The CIA had tried to prevent access to the records under the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU, which has been trying to get the spooks to cough up since late 2003.

Shafiq Rasul, one of the Brit detainees released from Guantanamo Bay last year, has told the Observer of a verb prisoners would use to describe "being slammed against a floor by a soldier wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up by five armed men" - it is 'to be ERFed'.

The report says a sixth ERF (Extreme Reaction Force) team member would record the abuses on digital video: "Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed so they could be 'reviewed' by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in an archive there, he said."

Now, what are the chances of getting hold of those records under FOI legislation?

Goin' to Jackson

2005-02-02T14:44:00.000+11:00

It's official. And as expected the gig goes to Liz Jackson - not Maxine McKew or Ellen Fanning, as previously thought.

AAP reports: Ms Jackson has won five Walkley Awards and three Logies for outstanding journalism on the ABC's Four Corners over the past 10 years.

She also has won two Human Rights Awards, three UN Media Peace Prizes, three awards for legal reporting, and the Eureka Award.

Before joining the ABC in 1986, Ms Jackson studied and practised law in England.

Good choice, we reckon.

Crikey sell-off

2005-02-02T11:43:00.000+11:00

Stephen Mayne has sold Crikey.com.au to Eric Beecher's PMP for the princely sum of one million Strayan pesos. Mayne says he's too buggered to keep it up. The deal means Mayne has a business writing gig exclusive to PMP. The mailout this morning didn't - as far as I could gather - say whether Christian Kerr and the other staffers were part of the deal. Who knows what the sale will mean. And will we really miss stuff like this from yesterday's mailout?

Why Iron Mark called Albrechtsen a "sk*nky ho"

Has Crikey solved the mystery as to why Iron Mark called Janet Albrechtson a "Skanky Ho", arguably the most disgraceful thing he ever said within the hallowed chamber.

We've received the information from an interested party after the sealed section piece on Sunday that attacked various Labor women for not expressing outrage over Latham's Albrechtsen slur, which literally means "smelley h*re".

As unbelievable as this sounds, we now believe that Latham made the remark in Parliament as a result of a bet with a female staffer for Labor's then spokeswoman for the Status of Women?

And did Latham even know what the term meant when he used it? Apparently not.

What a silly boy.

I suppose we must confess and say yes. wRh commented albeit tongue-in-cheekly on the Skanky Ho business back in November (Yo, foo. Dis da butta, a'ight?).

This is the sort of stuff that in the end caused a lot of damage to Unroolius's image which he was unable to shake.

Vale Markus Unroolius, the Frontrow Forehead. A dingbat outta Hell. A Hater. Famed for his ladder metaphors (or were they analogies?).

Work hard, get stuck in, climb the ladder of opportunity. Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars.

Whatever.

Addenduma: Just in case it should disappear from the Crikey site, here is one of the better "leaks" published on the site in 2003. It is a wonderfully enlightening transcript of the horribly pompous and smarmy Downster and other DFAT stormtroopers "negotiating" a "deal" with delegates from East Timor on oil/gas boundaries: Crikey's fly on the DFAT wall.

Oh, bugger it. Here's a piece of stupid spooky synergy. Crikey also had this entry the other day re Christine Spiteri. We include it because 1) Heaps of google users without a life seem to end up at this site because of this smart-arse post from last month on the cyborg media worker, and 2) it's another excuse to show Crikey's bottom-feeding prowess.

Spiteri gets the LA gig

Over at Nine, the Network has a new US correspondent, Christine Spiteri, a long time newsroom reporter and former Daily Telegraph journo, has been given the gig to replace boyish Karl Stefanovic, who has returned to front the Today Show.

Spiteri, the former partner of Brett McCarthy, now editor of Murdoch's Sunday Times in Perth, will be the only woman Nine has placed overseas in its bureaux. Her impressive tsunami reporting helped her case. [Did we somehow miss this?]

Spiteri had been in [b^]limbo land in 2003 and 2004 after being put back in the general reporting pool at Nine after a short stint as the Network's Sydney political reporter covering state rounds.

If HTML included musical notation I would like to have worked out and added those diabolical sounding octave-jumping notes that she uses to sign off on all her reports. But is it more annoying than Sandra Sully's robospeak? Toughie.

How the west was won

2005-01-29T22:07:00.000+11:00

Who says the genetic bandwidth narrows the further west you go? (Then again, which state's cops capture themselves on camera clocking 126kph in a 60 zone donning KKK get up?) Yesterday in WA Animals Australia sucessfully got the Supreme Court to issue an order for the Director-General of the Department of Local Government and Regional Development, Cheryl Gwilliam, to appear before the full bench to drag her over the coals for not acting on a live animal export complaint.

The ignored complaint was filed after the death of 1000 sheep on board the MV Al Kuwait in November 2003, which AA says was in breach of Section 19 of the Animal Welfare Act which says it's an offence to transport an animal "in a way that causes, or is likely to cause, it unnecessary harm".

Animals Straya says the court's decision sets a precedent for government to take seriously its own animal welfare legislation. Its Executive Director, Glenys Oogjes, said of the decision:

Since this complaint was first lodged ... millions of sheep have been allowed to depart from Western Australia on live export vessels potentially in breach of WA laws.

Penalty: Minimum — $2 000.
Maximum — $50 000 and imprisonment for 5 years.

Wool to power

2005-01-27T16:31:00.000+11:00

The Mexican Times reports that People Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has enlisted the help of tennis titan Martina Navratilova in its campaign to stop the practice of mulesing in Australia.

Navratilova has written a letter to the Prime Miniature, in which she writes:

This is a deliberate act of violence. It is pain inflicted without just cause.... Harvesting livestock is one thing - cruel and unusual infliction of pain in that process is another. It is ethically and morally wrong.

Last week, a leading wool-industry company AWI expanded a claim in the federal court against PETA from allegations of intimidation and conspiracy to unconscionable conduct under the Trade Practices Act.

The claim by AWI also includes Animal Liberation NSW and four staff members who AWI says have been supporting PETA's campaign locally. AWI's chairman and former Howard defence minister Ian McLachlan says PETA has made a mistake in taking on the forces of wool in this country.

The practice involves cutting away skin folds from sheeps' backsides to prevent blowfly strike and maggot infestation. It looks like this ...

The wool industry must recognise the obvious barbarism of the practice as it says it will stop museling by 2010.

The case is to go before the Federal Court in Sydney on February 11.

Vidal on Babylon

2005-01-27T13:19:00.000+11:00

The United States, says Gore Vidal, has "the worst educational system of any first world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because we know nothing. Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists’ work at Babylon. Babylon is a center of our culture. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what it is, except it's a wicked city that the lord destroyed. Well, it was the center of our civilization, the center of mathematics, of writing, of everything. And apparently our troops were allowed to go in and smash everything to bits.

Why did they do it? Was it because they are mean bad boys and girls? No. They're totally uneducated. And their officers are sometimes mean and bad, and allow them to have a romp, as they also had in the prisons, none of which we heard about in the last election. We were too busy with homosexual marriage and abortion, two really riveting subjects. War and peace, of course, are not worth talking about. And civilization, God forbid that we ever commit ourselves to that.

...

We are a declining power economically in the world, and the future now clearly belongs to China, Japan, and India. They have the population, they have the educational systems. They have the will. And they will win. And we will -- we only survive now by borrowing money from them in the form of treasury bonds which very soon we won't have enough revenue to redeem, much less service. So, I put it down to economic collapse may save the United States from its rulers.

A terrific read.

Plane sadism

2005-01-27T13:00:00.000+11:00

My favourite South Park episode (#100) is the one where the town is split over the invasion of Iraq, along pro- and anti-war lines. Cartman, while in a coma, learns from Benjamin Franklin, during a debate among the Founding Fathers, the secret of America: "… an entire nation founded on saying one thing, and doing another."

A day after this country gave top honours to a doctor, an environmentalist and two immigrants, one a refugee, comes a report that stormtroopers from the Department of Immigration dragged a man onto a Thai Airways plane at Sydney airport to be deported to Thailand. A witness reports that the deportee was "in handcuffs and leg cuffs which were chained to a leather restraint thing around his waist ... he was gaffer-taped around his mouth, all the way around the back of his head several times so that he could not make any noise whatsoever and he looked terrified." The witness also said one of the brownshirts had said the man had been "screaming for eight hours".

Vanstone's fill-in Peter McGauran claims the shackles and gaffer were used to prevent the man harming himself or others. "It's the behaviour of the person being removed that determines the measures that have to be used."

In his capacity as minister for Multicultural Affairs, McGauran has discretionary powers to grant protection visas where an applicant's other avenues are exhausted. But in an effort to out-do the Dead Man in black-heartedness, McGaurin was last week shown to have stepped in on only 24 of the 690 cases sent to him for special consideration. (Dead Man apparently granted 203 visas in his final days as immigration minister.) Vanstone gave McGaurin these powers of intervention either because she herself doesn't have the stomach for it, or she knows McGaurin would perform the task of doing nothing sucessfully and with sufficient relish.

Weez says Ruddock and HoWARd "will be strung by [their] thumbs in the press" for their treatment of Mamdouh Habib. I wish I had that amount of confidence in the meeja in this country. In my reckoning it's look after yourself first, then your mates, suck up to your boss/editor, keep the reading punters amused with the Our Nic/Our Lleyton circus antics - oh and then maybe get around to some fourth-estate business. (Weez, last time you dropped by I said I thought Maxine McKew or Ellen Fanning were in for the Media Watch job. I see today Liz Jackson is to host it, due back March.) The Habib case will with hindsight be viewed as not just the pathetic outcome of the tories' Stasi-like sham terrorists-next-door campaign, but as an atrocity in the way this government treats the mentally ill, complicit in which is the meeja's misrepresentations of Habib.

It's a B3 victory

2005-01-26T10:06:00.000+11:00

And back to the future, folks. Gillard on Melbourne radio today:

About a third of my caucus colleagues have indicated that they would support me if I chose to nominate for the Labor leadership ... but it's not a winning majority and you do have to think through the merits of going through a ballot process when the outcome is basically known.

Gillard is set to announce "her" decision today, the very day Latham was to return to work. Has the Labor left faction been cruelly using Jules as a pawn in some kind of perverse face-saving exercise? We wonder.

Toxic history

2005-01-25T11:56:00.000+11:00

That's chemical manufacturer Orica supposedly busy excavating hundreds of metres of what was the median strip of the Foreshore Road where a containment barrier comprising a series of pumps will - so the company claims - extract very high concentrations of ethylene dichloride (EDC) from wells to prevent a toxic plume from further leeching into and further poisoning Sydney's historically and culturally significant Botany Bay.

And to the right of frame is the bay ...

... where people and pets are leisurely soaking up the sun, the AvGas and a three-eyed-fish cocktail of toxic contaminants.

And who should have got the principal contract to manage the project? Why, Dick Cheney's Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, of course. Read Greenpeace's campaign page on the site, and how public safety is being ignored by government.

Speaking of which, here's what U-boat Bob's response was to a proposed wind farm across the bay at Kurnell which no-one except TransGrid thought a good idea:

I know my Australian history, I know what Kurnell means, there's not going to be a wind farm on that site.

He has no qualms, however, about Rocla's ambitions to continue sand mining on the site.

Where's the cookies?

2005-01-24T13:35:00.001+11:00

And what, no bun in the oven either? That seems to be the level of debate today around Labor leadership aspirant and wRh favourite Jules Gillard (if we voted for them, that is). Obviously she's not maternal or homely enough for various arse-end-couturists in the media who have now pulled her up on her kitchen. Bit barren, they reckon; a bit like her womb, they say. Oh, and let's no forget she shagged Bomber-backer Craig Emerson. Blah. Blah.

We reckon Jules happens to have a ripper kitchen. Seriously. Those cupboards rock. The color is magic. The chairs rock and so does the empty bowl on the table - and the bar heater on the wall rocks too. In fact the only thing to not rock is the lino, but hey. Now, let's see the media do their job and ask Bomber and the Kruddmeister to open up their kitchens so Strayans can judge for themselves.

Dirt unit redeployed

2005-01-24T09:53:00.000+11:00

The other day we noted there are moves afoot among the tories to introduce a poor-bashing policy where foodstamps and welfare credits would be added to the already unneccesarily cruel burden laid upon our fellow citizens of this great land who, for whatever reasons, have found themselves on the "scrapheap".

It comes as no surprise that the names behind this barbarism are those of one Tony Abbott - a bare-faced liar like his boss - and Stephen Ciobo, the Queensland MP who is quoted today as saying that he and a number of other right-wing ideologues in his kill-the-poor black-ops task force were "steeled in [their] resolve to have a wide-ranging tax and welfare reform introduced in this new parliament".

[Lest we forget: Thank you, Labor and CFMEU comrades.]

The "reforms" are bundled with a tax plan that, the tories say, would seek to simplify the system - a plan pretty much written off at a [shudder] Young Liberal convention in Tasmania on the weekend by Nick Minchin who basically called it unworkable. The plan appears to be a monkeying of the Bush administration's plan to "simplify" the US tax system by flattening it under the mumbo-jumbo pretense that the social security system is unsustainable and headed for bankruptcy, resulting in near-identical headlines in the Seppo media: Republicans debate overhaul of Social Security, tax code.

Underlying this fallacious melding of tax with welfare policy is the tory ethos of using the allocation of federal funding to enforce its roid-raging Calvinist social agenda. The welfare "smart card" would restrict the type of spending of a scrapheaper - that is, one-armed bandits won't accept the card but presumably Maccas and KFC, K-Mart, Big W, Caltex, BP and Shell, and any number of other global-domination-friendly multinationals would. But are the tories going to try to legislate what is and what is not acceptable in consumer behaviour and spending? And how would it tally with its policy of, say, bashing blacks? Would the card be usable at servos for non-indigenous Australians only, since they aren't all petrol-sniffers? And would it be usable for married mothers but not single mothers, since they're all 900-packs-of-Horizon-a-day bludgers who are too stupid to know what to do with any kind of currency?

This funding-for-policy-change approach is at both its domestic (eg, industrial relations and the universities) and foreign (eg, aid and PNG government "reform") fronts. And if Abbott has anything to do with it, next stop is Medicare and the public health system.

Like Morrissey said

2005-01-21T10:07:00.000+11:00

After three weeks living on "rat packs" about 160 Australian and New Zealand soldiers were yesterday served their first hot meal of fresh food since they began tsunami relief operations.

"Fantastic," said Lieutenant Michael Eyb, 30, of Wattle Grove, before he tucked into penne pasta with meat sauce, mashed potatoes, diced carrots and beans. "What I want is meat, lots of meat."

I must be in one of my green extremist moods today because I was repulsed when I read that passage in the Bling Bling Herald this morning. The whole dominion over the animal kingdom theology crap is alive and well. The media are happy to run stories about dogs and (btw, brutally trained) elephants rescuing people in the tsunami but are completely ignorant to the politics of speciesism.

There is a causal link between the beef and wool industries and the volatile behaviour of the planet. Cattle and sheep farming, and the land clearing that these necessarily entail, have led to massive salinity problems in this country. If people continue to believe they have to eat meat (one billion hindus among others don't seem to feel that need), perhaps they should look at roo meat or some alternative which would finally do away with the square-peg European farm management practices brought to this country and continued mindlessly. And on a side note, isn't Packer the one of if not the largest pastural leaseholder in the land?

Oh, and Save Babe, y'all.

Shape of things to come

2005-01-19T16:38:00.000+11:00

Here it is, gentle folk. After July 1 this year it'll be no holds barred in the tory sport of poor-bashing - it'll become L.A.W. Thanks, need I remind anyone, to the ALP and its perverted preferencing deals.

AAP reports: "A group of coalition MPs are reportedly preparing to push for the dole to be replaced by food stamps and utility credits at a Young Liberal and National Convention in Hobart on Sunday."

Update: full article/context here.

Branch office news

2005-01-19T16:18:00.000+11:00

What is it with Your ABC and its Middle East reportage? It would have to have one of the most spineless takes on that region of all Straya's news outlets. For example, take a look at this five-paragraph online piece constructed from no less than three major world news services (BBC, Reuters & AFP) - contracts with whom are paid for with your pennies, people.

Rice says Middle East peace a key goal

The incoming US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, says trying to solve the Middle East conflict will be a core goal during her term as America's top diplomat.

[Substance rating: Low]

Dr Rice told US senators at a confirmation hearing that the Middle East faces a critical moment of opportunity.

[Substance rating: Lower]

But she says the newly elected Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, needs to do more to end militant attacks against Israel in order to keep hopes of peace alive.

[Slant & bias rating: High]

She says she believes the US's interaction with the world should be a conversation, not a monologue.

[Servility rating: High]

US President George W Bush nominated Ms Rice to replace Colin Powell after winning a second term of office.

[Substance rating: Low]

ends

I mean, could they have put together a more meaningless and innocuous piece of information? Even Murdoch's dreaded Hun does a better job of informing our good nation.

Devil's playground

2005-01-17T08:52:00.000+11:00

It seems the Coalition of the Killing just can't find enough stuff in Iraq to destroy. First, following their refusal to protect any building in Iraq except for the Ministry of Oil - which hasn't received so much as a scratch since the invasion - the Baghdad Museum is looted and plundered. Now, a British Museum report (900k .doc) has detailed the damage done to the culturally and archaeologically invaluable site of ancient Babylon, which was used as a military camp since the invasion. The report is calling for a "full-scale international investigation" into the destruction of the site.

US troops set up the camp in April 2003, and maintenance and development was handed over to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. The Poles, who later moved into the site, are denying responsibility for any damage. It has now been handed back to the Iraqis.

A Guardian report lists some of the damage, republished here.

· damage to the dragons decorating the Ishtar Gate, one of the world's most famous monuments, from attempts to prise out the relief-moulded bricks

· broken bricks inscribed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar lying in spoil heaps

· the original brick surface of the great processional route through the gate crushed by military vehicles

· fuel seeping from tanks into archaeological layers

· acres of the site levelled, covered with imported gravel - which Dr Curtis said would be impossible to remove without causing further damage - and sprayed with chemicals which are also seeping into the unexcavated buried deposits

· thousands of tonnes of archaeological material used to fill sandbags and mesh crates, and equally damaging, when that practice stopped, thousands more tonnes of material imported from outside the site, contaminating the site for archaeologists forever.

Smash the system, smash the plate

2005-01-16T19:58:00.000+11:00

In a cafe window in the country town of Gundagai there is a dinner setting display which has as its centrepiece a plate commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ALP.

Above the plate a plaque reads:

1891-1991
Australian Labor Party Plate Certificate of Authenticity

This certifies that the accompanying plate is one of a limited signature edition exclusively commissioned by the Australian Labor Party from original artwork to commemorate the Australian Labor Party's Centenary in 1991.

It is signed R.J.L. Hawke and has the certificate No. 0686.

The dinner setting itself is the one from which, in 1942, Curtin, Chif, O'Sullivan and Artie "40-day" Fadden chowed down after discussing into the small hours in the warmth of the cafe's kitchen the state of the war in the Pacific.

On first look the plate is kinda kitsche with Hawkie's mug atop a ring of blokes, exhibiting even more gravitas than God Whitlam himself. But after a few moments you get strangely drawn into it as a quaint but potent signifier; it's all there in the lineage, the protectionism, the racism, the struggle, the idealism, the roads, bridges and rail lines, the diggers, the Reds, the Catholics, the splitters, the left, the right, the purges, the big ideas, the centrism, the egocentrism, and beyond to the credentialism, the careerism, the poll-slaves, the focus-groupies, and on further to a pure and concentrated hubris that drips like molassas from the cuffs and collars of the Zegna suits.

Yesterday, when I saw the front page of the Terror carrying a gooey close-up shot of Gillard I realised I was moving off track. While I think it would be a good time for Unroolius to pass the baton to Gillard, giving her a good, long run up to the next election, I saw how easy it is to be swept into the blood lust, the hunt and the kill of the media pack.

It was time to step back. After all, I haven't voted for that party since Tampa.

Unroolius unbound

2005-01-14T09:08:00.000+11:00

Alan Ramsey, March 2003: "Meanwhile, as others manoeuvre, quietly but very deliberately, while Crean goes on destabilising himself as the most inept and unconvincing Labor leader there has likely ever been ... the ABCs and the B3s get more desperate to ensure a leadership change now that the NSW election is out of the way. The ABCs are Anybody But Crean. The B3s are Bring Back Beazley."

That was when Crean was being shadowed by the hearse; he was Dead Man Walking. But right now some in the ALP must be realising that Crean was just the Betamax to Unroolius's VHS image, which after a few months started to pale in colour and lately has exhibited a very poor quality audio signal indeed.

This morning, Unroolius faithful Joel Fitzgibbon (who else would ever give him a gig on the frontbench) was back in the lion's den, defending his champ. Is he sick, bludging, pathologically stupid, what? More to the point: does anyone out there actually care what's up with the man? A resounding No would seem to be the answer. The only person who wants Unroolius back on deck is Ratty who, in his inimitable way, wished him a speedy recovery but only after prefacing his gesture with "If he really is sick then ..."

Why he's Dead Man Walking II is that the public has been given a long enough period of time to get a good look at the bloke and they have come to the conclusion that he is never going to be leadership material. The Frontrow Forehead belongs on the front bench, kicking tory heads. That leash is long enough. Even if the tsunami silence had not happened, he would still be sitting in the leadership departure lounge.

Meanwhile, the B3 crowd has started clucking and scratching. Feathered ones, take note: Bomber on the front bench, in cardie and pith helmet, a rolled up map under his arm, talking military hardware while moving battleships around a cardboard tableu of the Pacific laid out before him. End of story, a'ight?

The only other contender apart from Jules is the Kruddmeister. Well, hey, here's the rub on Mr Mandarin Man: he is not homo sapien! That's correct. Our sources tell us that he is in fact an ALP prototype for a top-secret next-generation cyborg bureaucracy designed to combat the budgetary black hole of the commonwealth public service when Labor next takes power. Carn people, have you not noticed how the Kruddmeister does not age? How, like a CityRail announcement, all words are spoken with the exact intonation each time? The only bug in this model is the unpredictable use of the word "clearly" - which apparently has been successfully ironed out in the labs.

Little ripper!

2005-01-13T13:42:00.000+11:00

Meanwhile, just when you thought Western civilisation had become devoid of substance and meaning lastminute.com has this to restore your faith: The Motion Activated Farting Gnome.

Quote: These farting gnomes are 30cm high, full of gas and will make any office or house plant anything but botanical. Strategically placed, these guys will have every passer by stopping and thinking twice about what they’ve just heard.

The gnomes come in four flavours:
Gnome with Yellow Jacket [eds - our favourite]
Gnome with Green Jacket
Reclining Blue Farting Gnome - Sold Out [!]
Sitting with Purple Jacket

The price? A steal at just $25.

Second tsunami

2005-01-13T11:53:00.000+11:00

Robert Corr, among others, has been keeping pretty much on top of events in Aceh and the minefield the Strayan government now faces in keeping track of its $1bn. Today's news that Indonesia has officially told foreigners to bugger off within three months was expected. The concern now is there will be no mechanisms for accountability and transparency for monitoring the aid flowing into the country.

"The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch. "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way."

"Problems with corruption are so high it is almost inevitable," said Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert with the International Crisis Group. (Reuters)

Aid Watch points to this AFP piece which questions why Australia (whose pledge looks a little droopier when seen as comprised half in interest-free loans) is "the only major country to go on record opposing any moratorium on debt repayments by tsunami-hit countries, let alone debt forgiveness". The Paris club has today agreed to an immediate suspension of debt repayments for tsunami-hit nations. Ratty said last week he would consider its decision of a debt freeze but claimed the best form of assistance to "those who need it" was to act bilaterally.

Indo's debt to Australia $1bn+.

Ratty has made his motives quite plain however:

The interests of the package is in the interests of our government rather than the interests of the Acehnese people. The aim maybe to shore up our relationship with Indonesia and bring our governments closer together.

Human Rights Watch has written a Letter to President Yudhoyono outlining some of its concerns in Aceh.

Aid Watch also has a rather disturbing interview with Acehnese Australian Nurdin Abdul Rahman. An excerpt:

Nurdin Abdul Rahman: Yesterday, I received reports about child trafficking where a group of 6 TNI soldiers collected children in Sigli, Bireuen and Lhokseumawe and put them on a truck then sped to Medan. The people in those areas say that there were a lot of other military personnel along the road who could have stopped the truck but they did not. Thus it was evident that there was cooperation between the kidnappers and the TNI.

Tim O’Connor: Was this a military truck?

Nurdin Abdul Rahman: Yes, that’s right a military truck was used. People chased this truck from Bireuen to Bayu Village about 15km East of Lhokseumawe where they gave up their chase as the truck was traveling too fast.

In other news ... The US has declared its Iraq WMD search over. All they've managed to find is a resentment and hostility that will be passed down through many generations.

Last resort

2005-01-11T09:40:00.000+11:00

Banging away at wRh headquarters this morning: 702 ABC radio. The tail end of an interview with Premier U-Boat Bob, in fact, and with comments like his, let me just say that the federal Labor party has no chance of going anywhere while Markus Unroolius remains in the hot seat. No. Chance. He has no support from the states, he has no support federally, and he has no support within the meeja.

There was U-Boat - former employer and no friend of the Frontrow Forehead - openly agreeing that, no matter how crook, he should have made some semblance of an appearance over the past two weeks. Then, like clockwork, he couldn't help but praise the Ratty government for the wonderful job its doing. And also wonderful is the Strayan effort, all being carried out in that wonderful, wonderful Strayan way; that spirit of mateship, ingenuity and know-how - in that good 'ol wonderfully laconic Aussie way. Honestly, deciding who is the best and nicest and most partiotic leader, Ratty or U-Boat, is sometimes such a toughie.

One thing about U-Boat Bob though, he's never one to back the losing side. His background as a journo has taught him that no matter what the truth of a situation, it's the appearance that counts. Hence his famously Riefenstahl-like media productions. Now he's jumped in to save himself from growing criticism by joining in the media's flaying of Unroolius.

In today's Bling Bling Herald - which has unreservedly allocated acres of news print to the Get Latham campaign since the election - the Campbelltown Warrior's absence from the Strayan relief effort makes front page news. He's been spotted sitting poolside at a central coast resort by a Sydneysider and her five friends: "There was nothing unwell there about him", one Shirley Corbett attests. There is a picture of the pool, sans Unroolius of course, but the paper didn't need to spend money on sending a photographer up to Terrigal to get it, they used a holiday brochure. Now that's clever journalism! Oh, and it only took three of their top journalists to put the gossip piece together. Yup, investigative journalism at its finest.

We've said it before, Unroolius will not last the next six months. He may even use this alleged bout of illness as an opportunity to resign as leader.

The Kruddmeister has been asked by the Indonesians to go to Banda Aceh to meet his counterpart. If there was ever a time to make his move surely it is now. (Though we've already nominated our preferred leader: Go Gillard 2007.)

Aceh lockdown

2005-01-10T13:05:00.000+11:00

Already the wires - and therefore the internet - is awash with stories about the threat to aid workers and others from "separatist rebels" in the Aceh province. Yesterday, most of the local and international news sites were happily publishing wire stories which reported that the Acehnese were responsible for gunfire near the UN relief headquarters - a cop's house was allegedly sprayed by an "unknown number of rebels" and a truckload of TNI was called in for a look.

The AP version went like this:

Suspected rebels fired shots early Sunday at the home of a top police official near the United Nations' relief headquarters in the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, officials said.

...

Members of the Free Aceh Movement ... fired at officers guarding the home of the deputy provincial police chief, about 100 yards from the U.N. building, police Sgt. Bambang Hariyanpo said.

A Reuters version quoted one Inspector Lazuardi who, when asked who was responsible for the "10 minute" shootout, said: "Who else? GAM".

As it turned out, the shots were fired by a (possibly traumatised, but probably instructed) Indonesian soldier or police officer. The result was headlines like this: 'Aid workers' safety feared after clashes' - followed by Indonesia cautioning that aid workers may not be safe as the rebels were now infiltrating the relief camps. (Even less than an hour ago updated versions of these factually incorrect stories were doing the rounds on the web.)

That window of uncertainty was all the Indonesian government needed to clamp down on the movements within the province of foreign media and aid workers.

What we get is plenty of press - deservedly - on the efforts of Australian medics but nothing on the Australian-trained Kopassus who are responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths in Aceh, West Papua and East Timor. Yesterday the United Nations Association in Australia called on the government to find some backbone and get more vocal about Indonesia's abuses in Aceh. What we got instead was a vainglorious address to the nation from The Prime Miniature. Ratty has opted for a bilateral arrangement for the $1 billion aid package; he and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono alone will decide how it is to be divvied up. Howard was hated by Megawati Sukarnoputri so this is his chance to repair relations with not only the Indonesians but with governments throughout the region, particularly after copping such a pasting at the ASEAN summit.

Today he told CNN that Australia is "not in the business of picking sides. [Aceh] is an internal domestic matter for Indonesia." This is pretty much the line governments here have taken for decades. Gareth Evans and the policy of making the Indonesian army a more effective killing machine springs to mind, as does Keating's ties with the dictator Soharto. Ratty's attitude is much like the person who chooses to ignore the yells and thwacks coming from the next-door neighbour's place at night, who looks away the following morning as the black-eyed kid passes them on the street.

Meet the Jensens

2005-01-08T16:00:00.000+11:00

The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen - whose brother, the Anglican Dean of Sydney, Phil the Dill, attributed the Asia tsunami to the will of God - has launched an appeal. Is it that the man has for too long been communing with the Divine that he is unable to communicate with his fellow Strayans?

The website splash page reads: Please help now ... Our Christian brothers and sisters need your support.

Whah? Last time I looked Indonesia was the most populous Muslim nation on Earth. Perhaps someone could alert the cloven, er, clothed ones to that fact?

And this, from the Archbishop:

Although Australian casualties seem to be relatively small in number, it may be that someone in your parish has been affected. Even if they are not connected to the church, I hope that you will feel able to let such people know that the church fellowship is praying for them and willing to help in any way needed. Returning travellers are being given a brochure which suggests contacting their local clergy. [Emphasis mine]

Such grace, charity and tolerance.

I am, ewe are

2005-01-08T14:22:00.000+11:00

In pubs around Straya, otherwise rational people are glassing one another in the face, debating the motives behind Howard's (your) $1 billion donation to Indonesia, whether it's generous - compared with other nations, particularly the rich oil states - or whether we just have a plain and simple moral obligation to help our closest neighbours. And after all, we can more than afford it.

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but weren't we just a few months ago scorning the idea of peace in the region and pre-emptively invading the place? And what, for argument's sake, of the government's solution of putting Indo fishing folk in detention centres for having entered The Zone? Has the major onset of self-adulation and backslapping given Strayans an even more severe case of historical amnesia or what?

From Crikey comes this from expat, Troy McLure, in Jakarta:

My colleague's wife is from Aceh and she lost both her parents and some siblings and the family lost everything. They transferred some money to a friend's bank account and they were able to fly out of there to Jakarta lastnight (on the national airline which is gouging with 200% fare increases).

The stories of corruption are horrifying yet the Australian media is not reporting on this? I only saw Ray Martin's jingoistic intros which make us all feel good to be Australian while we ignore abuse. John Howard is a winner from this. TheIndonesian government is a winner. The economy in general is a winner. Only thepoor people in Aceh who lost everything are losers.

That's an unfair distribution of loss and suffering - even people's landis being taken away from them now because they can't prove that they can own it - but someone else with a few hundred bucks can bribe a government official to create new land title documents, because the government land office was swept away too. That's the sort of thing that is rampant right now.

Sangas & shakes

2005-01-06T13:38:00.000+11:00

George Monbiot writes in today's Bling Bling Herald:

snip

The US Government has so far pledged $US350million ($450million) to the victims of the tsunami, and the British Government $US96 million. The US has spent $US148billion on the Iraq war and Britain $US11.5billion. The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the US is the equivalent of 1 days' spending in Iraq. The money Britain has given equates to 5 days of the British involvement in the war.

It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war with the total foreign aid budget. Britain has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The US gives just over $US16billion in foreign aid which is less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.

/snip

Some other numbers:

Retail figure for December: total spending by Australian consumers of $21.1 billion dollars.

December 2004: Treasury's expected Budget surplus for 2004/05: $6.2 billion .

Government defence spending: $20 billion (over 10 years) on top of $11 billion per annum.

Brick's unworkable "Son of Star Wars" program: US: $70 billion in five years, Japan $10 billion, Australia?

Ratty's $6 billion "Mad Hatter" spending spree in pre-election promises.

2004 Budget: Tax cuts: $14.7 billion, Family assistance: $19.2 billion, Super: $2.1 billion ...

According to the Vanstone calculator, that would put it somewhere in the vicinity of a piece of crust dipped in milk.

Oh, and we mustn't forget Brick's own heartfelt contribution of - $13,000.

The aliens have landed

2005-01-06T13:22:00.000+11:00

Jeb Bush in Thailand.

Christine Spiteri in Sri Lanka.

Discuss.

Raw numbers

2005-01-02T16:01:00.000+11:00

Financial pledges by nation
Country Amount in millions
African Union $US0.10 ($A0.13)
Algeria $US2.00 ($A2.57)
Australia $US46.48 ($A59.69)
Austria $US2.72 ($A3.49)
Britain $US96.00 ($A123.28)
Canada $US33.00 ($A42.38)
China $US60.42 ($A77.59)
Denmark $US54.88 ($A70.48)
EU $US40.81 ($A52.41)
Finland $US6.12 ($A7.86)
France $US56.18 ($A72.15)
Germany $US27.21 ($A34.94)
Hungary $US0.27 ($A0.35)
Ireland $US2.72 ($A3.49)
Italy $US95.00 ($A122.00)
Japan $US500.00 ($A642.10)
Kuwait $US2.10 ($A2.70)
Libya $US2.00 ($A2.57)
Netherlands $US34.00 ($A43.66)
New Zealand $US3.60 ($A4.62)
Norway $US16.53 ($A21.23)
Poland $US0.33 ($A0.42)
Portugal $US10.88 ($A13.97)
Qatar $US25.00 ($A32.10)
Saudi Arabia $US10.00 ($A12.84)
Singapore $US3.10 ($A3.98)
Slovakia $US0.23 ($A0.30)
Slovenia $US0.11 ($A0.14)
South Korea $US5.00 ($A6.42)
Spain $US68.02 ($A87.35)
Sweden $US80.00 ($A102.74)
Switzerland $US23.81 ($A30.58)
Taiwan $US5.25 ($A6.74)
Turkey $US1.25 ($A1.61)
UAE $US2.00 ($A2.57)
USA $US350.00 ($A449.47)
Venezuela $US2.00 ($A2.57)
World Bank $US250.00 ($A321.05)

Nations' wealth index per GDP
Rank Country GDP - per capita Date of data
1 Luxembourg $55,100 2003 est.
2 United States $37,800 2003 est.
3 Norway $37,700 2003 est.
4 Bermuda $36,000 2003 est.
5 Cayman Islands $35,000 2002 est.
6 San Marino $34,600 2001 est.
7 Switzerland $32,800 2003 est.
8 Denmark $31,200 2003 est.
9 Iceland $30,900 2003 est.
10 Austria $30,000 2003 est.
11 Ireland $29,800 2003 est.
12 Canada $29,700 2003 est.
13 Belgium $29,000 2003 est.
14 Australia $28,900 2003 est.
15 Hong Kong $28,700 2003 est.
16 Netherlands $28,600 2003 est.
17 Aruba $28,000 2002 est.
18 Japan $28,000 2003 est.
19 United Kingdom $27,700 2003 est.
20 Germany $27,600 2003 est.
21 France $27,500 2003 est.
22 Finland $27,300 2003 est.
23 Monaco $27,000 1999 est.
24 Italy $26,800 2003 est.
25 Sweden $26,800 2003 est.
26 Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) $25,000 2002 est.
27 Liechtenstein $25,000 1999 est.
28 Jersey $24,800 1999 est.
29 Singapore $23,700 2003 est.
30 Taiwan $23,400 2003 est.
31 United Arab Emirates $23,200 2003 est.
32 Faroe Islands $22,000 2001 est.
33 Spain $22,000 2003 est.
34 New Zealand $21,600 2003 est.
35 Qatar $21,500 2003 est.
36 Guam $21,000 2000 est.
37 Man, Isle of $21,000 2001 est.
38 Guernsey $20,000 1999 est.
39 Greenland $20,000 2001 est.
40 Greece $19,900 2003 est.

Stingy

2004-12-29T17:22:00.000+11:00

The Boston Globe reports: The U.S. Agency for International Development prepared Tuesday to add $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian earthquake relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a United Nations official's suggestion that the United States has been "stingy."

No, rooly?

Asia tsunami

2004-12-28T07:35:00.000+11:00

Asia quake and tsunamis appeal: Australian Red Cross, Oxfam Australia. About the quake: USGS.

DFAT financial assistance towards the ~~23,700~~ 60,000 (and counting) people who have died in - and the one million displaced by - the Asia tsunami: $A10 35 million.

Dead heart.

Headlight of the elites

2004-12-19T14:53:00.000+11:00

Ratty invited his fellow plunderers to Kirribilli for a shindig. The Packers were there, naturally. Also on the conga line were: Nick "Marlboro Man" Greiner and (hic) the missus. John "You are, sir, a disgrace" Broggers and the missus. Rumoured thesbian Sarah O'Hare and rumoured hubby. Carr boss Frank Lowy. Malcolm "How's my hair?" Turnstile and Lucy the mailout queen. Former Gucci posterboy and famed cell-phonist Andrew Peacock with the missus. Max "The Axe" Moore-Wilton, sinker of boats, destroyer of airports. And the usual bunch from the rent-a-token-sporting-legend agency.

Anyway, there was Ratty, a beacon of light for the elites, welcoming them to one of his taxpayer-funded residences (that's public housing, people) - and Janette, out back, handing out drinks. One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me.

According to this article, Ratty also got a congratulatory call from class traitor and union buster, Bob Hawke. Naturally.

Telstra & the People's Senate

2004-12-18T15:55:00.000+11:00

The Government continues to gear up Telstra for the firesale which will happen some time after July 1 when the Senate will be effectively shelved until the next federal election (thanks to you know who and their PATHETIC preferencing deals). Telstra, which employs around 47,000 Strayans (and some people in Delhi, or Bangalore), announced further job cuts as it starts carving into the company's layer of middle management fat, an exercise designed to please the market.

Wacky ideas man Dr Ziggy, who told Lateline the other night that he wuz robbed, will be replaced before July. (Surely he won't hang around that long.)

The NFF would probably be the only stumbling block for the Ratty Government. They have been talking about the Estens inquiry and not "supporting" the full sale of Telstra until all the recommendations of the inquiry are fulfilled. They're even talking about internet services being something of a right, as it is with telephony, rather than a luxury, which we agree with. But we say the NFF is just grandstanding and talking a bunch of lip service.

The inquiry was headed up by Moree cotton farmer, Dick Estens. The minister for communications, Helen Coonan, who was slammed a while back for tax avoidance when she was the Assistant Treasurer and minister responsible for - yup - taxation, met Estens last month to talk "future proofing" for bush services.

The chairman of Telstra is former NFF head, Don McGauchie, who has probably given the current NFF head, Peter Corish, some late-night advice. McGauchie was one of the inner circle, along with Patrick's Chris Corrigan and that pillar of ethics in public life Peter Reith, that tried to - some say did - smash the Maritime Services Union back in 1997 when it used NFF members, trained up in Dubai, as scab labour on the waterfront.

While we here at wRh hate Telstra, just as we hated Telecom, we maintain that communications services are vital to a healthy community and to that extent the Government should provide all Strayans with a decent connection to the web - especially bloggers! - cuz, well, we're the second superpower, aren't we?

Or at least the only SENATE the country will have after July 1. (Did I mention that already?)

Tanks but No tanks

2004-12-12T16:45:00.000+11:00

Today an ad from former employer of unlucky Greens candidate for Bennelong, Andrew Wilkie, dropped in to the wRh mailbox.

An inclusive culture that values all contributors gives Raytheon a competitive advantage. It's one reason our people, and our company, perform beyond expectations.

What do you expect in a career? One of our openings may be just right for you. Check us out at: www.rayjobs.com

Oh, okay. I 've been thinking of a career in manufacturing high-tech arms and munitions for the express purpose of dropping them on kids and old people in far-off lands.

The neighbours

2004-12-12T16:40:00.000+11:00

This morning I noticed it was only the people who never respond to Hi's, How are ya's or G'day's when you pass them on the street who have Christmas lights up.

Tweedle dumb and dumber

2004-12-11T20:12:00.000+11:00

Sheesh. What has this country come to when you start agreeing with the slime bucket war criminal Prime Minister that the Premier and fellow-fascist, U-Boat Bob, has failed the people. And it seems the state's citizenry enjoy to watch him make a mess of the place. His vote is up, according to a recent poll - even after announcing plans to first bribe, then further destroy the west (though his pals at the Boing Boing Herald have lauded the plan [think water, sewerage, cars, trucks, habitat loss, you idiots!]) and the sneaky $5 billion plan to ethno-socioeconomically cleanse the Redfern-Waterloo area by legislating away heritage and environmental provisions. What's next? Pack shaven-headed, serial-numbered degenerates and undesirables into rail carriages and ship 'em out?

Tomorrow residents will descend on the Bus & Truck Museum in Tempe at 11am. State Transit are in the process of selling the historical Tempe Tram Depot to developers - scumbuckets who plan to build more highrise apartments on the site. How bloody original. This is what developers have said about the area:

- We don't expect to make much money here.
- Tempe is a shithole and full of ethnics
- This will not be an upmarket area, just a place for urban consolidation.

Locals see it as merely an extension of U-Boat Bob and henchman Frank "Kill Clover" Sartor's drive to hand over as much of the suburbs south and west of the city as they can to their political donor developer mates.

Talks green, walks greed.

Dear Crikey,

2004-12-08T16:40:00.000+11:00

-- SNIP --

A union subscriber writes:

I recently watched the documentry Outfoxed, about Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, and it's right wing bias. Whilst watching, it occurred to me that I had seen this bias before in Australian media.

In reference to your own website, how many times has your website said negative things about the trade union movement (every other day), and how many times has Crikey said something positive about the trade union movement (I can't recall Crikey ever doing so).

I therefore have some questions for you and your readers:

1. Do you think Crikey's bias against unions, unionists and collective bargaining is fair?
2. How can you say that you are any better than Murdoch's Fox network?
3. What do you propose to do about it?

CRIKEY: The editor is a paid up member of the MEAA but does believe the union movement should not enjoy its 50 per cent gerrymander over votes inside the ALP and that construction unions, especially in Victoria, are out of control and rorting away outrageously at the moment.

-- SNIP --

An angry Green writes:

I wish you stop attacking the Greens, under Bob's leadership we managed to grow our vote by 72% in the Senate (from 531,821 in 2001 to 916,000 or 7.7% of the total) and by 48% in the House of Representatives (from 569,075 to 841,739 or 7.2%). Yet we won just two of the 190 (150 House and 40 Senate) seats available.

When the Greens are compared with all the other parties, it was a minimal result for a maximal campaign. Green voters were discounted. Twice as many Senate votes (458,000) were needed to win a Greens seat as were anti-Green votes to win a Coalition (256,329), Labor (261,520) or Family First (210,628) seat. And with 841,739 votes we picked up zero seats in the House of Representatives.

Considering the outrageous claims that ran ad nauseum about our policies by Murdoch and Family First we did very well, and have built a base to move forward. All we want to do is make the country a better place to live now and into the future.

Please take us seriously and look at our policies, otherwise you are doing a great disservice to the over 3/4 million Australians who voted for us, most of whom are well educated and informed people, who understand that we have an economy and people need jobs but this shouldn't come with reckless disregard for everything else, including people (you may recognise them as consumers) and the environment.

- - -

Sure, Crikey is usually happy to publish sprays directed at it, but the question is, what do they ever do about it? Publishing this stuff gives the appearance of transparency, but is it rool? The comrade has a point, as does the angry Green.

Ultimo Babylon

2004-12-06T09:56:00.000+11:00

Note to self: Must remember to stop turning on ABC radio at 9.20 in the morning.

That's the federal politics comedy spot with Sal and Baz. This morning, however, it was Sal and Mal, Ratty's best mate at News Ltd., with the surprise topic of the federal ALP. Then, after the 9.30 headlines, it strayed over horribly, horribly onto the subject of practical reconciliation, a word pairing of such dissemblance, a brickbat to the ears, with almost no rival, perhaps with the exception of economic rationalism. Dead Man speak.

To sum ...

Mal: Shucks, if the PM's got the Dodson brothers on board he must be doing something right, eh, Sal?

Sal: Sheesh, but have you seen what happens when those people get hold of some land, Mal? They sure do make a mess of it, don't they?

Mal: My goodness, they do indeed, Sal. A right mess.

Sal: Honestly, Mal, why do the courts continue to hand over good cattle country to those people? It's such a waste, wouldn't you agree?

Mal: Pearls before swine, Sal. A waste indeed.

To some extent we can blame the Alston dossier, but even before Russell Balding's self-inflicted $200,000 bias-monitoring project started ABC News and Current Affairs had become an embarrassment. The pendulum has in fact stopped swinging and is now lodged discretely but firmly up Ratty's arse. It's a disgrace and not what we pay our 8 cents a day for.

Friends close, enemies closer

2004-12-05T23:18:00.000+11:00

Jeez, Bob McMuffin thinks the Unroolius frontbench lacks experience. What it needs is feckless traitors and backbiters like Bob on the job. Today he reveals there's a gaggle of comrades circling the lumpen leader's wounded figure: viz, the Roosters of the North. He discards our favourite, Jules, saying the ALP carcass still fears a chick planet. The sand in the hourglass, says Bob, runs out in February. Then, our fearless Labor heroes in parliament will succumb to the will of the masses in the form of Rupert's NewsPoll and the fate of Unroolius will be decided.

"We're all really disappointed with the result, we're all tired, and we all need to go away," McMuffin says.

No, Bob, we're really disappointed and tired. And angry that you IDIOTS and your TRAITOR mates at the CFMEU gave the upper house to the tories in your bloodyminded preference deals.

The Frontrow Forehead needs to make some friends pronto. But he can't, for all the reasons we outlined the other day. And here was the Campbelltown Warrior's unenviable pickle. Does he give all his loser enemies (the Rooster triad, Bomber et al) a portfolio? Or does he hand 'em out to the more compliant upstarts? He's goes with the latter and what does he get? a grenade here and a snipe there from the when-will-I-will-I-be-famous Jaffa tossers on the back bench.

Thinking, earlier, on the crapper, I thought: that Unroolius, beating up on the poor, scaring the youngsters with all that earn-or-learn gabber, books books books, kids, forcing crap down people's throats. We've had enough, Unroolius. Get it through that two-inch skull of yours. Some of us are beaten and will never get back up. Some of us need help cuz we don't get shouted an education or whatever that log-cabin crap story was. People are hurting, man; they've had the shit beaten out of them - the people your party once represented but now threaten to punish for being on the scrapheap. And there you lot are in Canberra, like deer in the headlights, bewildered by the defeat. Scheming amongst yourselves, daggers under the coat. And Unroolius, imploding. Clueless.

Silk skirt

2004-12-02T14:24:00.000+11:00

Ian Harrison is president of the NSW Bar Association. Acting for Tara Anglican School for Girls in the NSW District Court this week, he made the bizaare link between the claim by one of its former pupils that she was raped while on a school trip to Italy and the fact that she wore a short skirt several years later while out with friends. It was met with this exceptional response in today's SMH.

Harrison heads the five-person committee that decides on who gets silk, which this year was a couple of dozen from over 120 applicants. There are over 300 silks in NSW. 12 are women. He gives some insight - er, make that no insight - into the mysteries of the barristerisation process in a blurb titled Silk selection is a smooth process in the latest Bar News. Also in the issue is this pic of Harrison with former Media Watch host David Marr at the 2004 Tutors and Readers Dinner. It would have been interesting to see how Marr would have tackled the story. In last year's issue he - Harrison - made this comment on equality at the bar:

[A]dvocacy is at its purest form an intellectual exercise where hormones and chromosomes have no relevance.

Harrison also defended Supreme Court judge Jeff Shaw over the missing blood sample affair. He said Shaw would be welcome back to the bench when he got his shit together and that the bench had lost a "fine mind".

Here's his bio from the NSW Bar Association site:

Ian Harrison SC was elected President of the New South Wales Bar Association in November 2003. He was educated at the University of Sydney University, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1975. He lectured at the University of New South Wales Law School between 1975 and 1980.

Ian was called to the Bar in 1977, where his principal areas of practice have been common law and equity. He took silk in 1995. Ian Harrison has played an active part in the affairs of the Bar Association. He was elected to Bar Council in 1994 and 1995. Between 1998 and 2001 he was chairman of the Professional Conduct Committee #4. In 1999 he was treasurer of the Bar Association. In 2000/2001 he was junior vice president, before rising to senior vice president in 2002/2003.

He has also served on a range of other legal professional bodies and inquiries. In 1995 he was made a member of the Costs Assessors Rules Committee. Between 1998 and 2000 he was a member of the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board. In 1996-1997 Ian conducted the Australian Federal Police Corruption Inquiry for the federal Attorney General.

Mean time

2004-12-02T10:43:00.000+11:00

Tassie's own wildman of the north Dick "Grisly" Adams says the clock is ticking for Unroolius:

[I]f Labor is still well behind in the polls next year, the Caucus might reassess its support for Mr Latham.

Which follows this litany of faults as perceived by anonymous Labor back ~~biters~~ benchers the other day.

Glass jaw - cannot take criticism
Refuses to take or heed advice, operates as a lone wolf
Reluctant or unable to take responsibility for mistakes
Inflexible - cannot change style or tactics to meet challenges
Abrasive, a mass of repressed anger
Obsessed with class warfare
Autocratic, won't consult
Erratic and unpredictable, impulsive
Disdain for process
Blind to flaws in others
Ill-disciplined

Meanwhile, here's Aristotle's table of virtues, which we think ought to be photocopied and handed along the backbench.

Oh, and to a few prominent Labor senators. And, yeah, a great deal of the Strayan public. And us for our GO GILLARD 2007 campaign. Where are those stickers?

And did I mention former Labor national secretary and Maxine McKew hubbie Bob Hogg.

Pix and stones

2004-12-01T17:13:00.000+11:00

An Air America radio jock Randy Rhodes, whose bio informs us that her radio talk shows are legendary in South Florida (er, okay...), has this quiz entitled Name that genocide: How well do you know your crimes against humanity on her website. Visitors are asked to guess which leader, George Bush or Saddam Hussein, was responsible for the atrocity shown in 16 photos (from Fallujah in Pictures).

There is a big public interest argument for the FiP site. That I agree with. But I'm just not finding this stuff funny these days. Am I missing the point? Am I crabbing out in my old age?

Has to be the weather since it now seems to be responsible for anything from whales beaching (what happened to the sonar theory?) to the Eureka uprising - at least according to a Bling bling Herald letters correspondent:

Far from being a "legend", the Eureka Stockade was as accidental to our history as the Tampa. The historian Humphrey McQueen has shown that in November 1854 Victoria's weather was dominated by a low pressure system. Because of this, the alluvial rocks of the old river beds being mined released increased quantities of methane - "miner's damp" - which could not be removed by the wind sails over the shafts because there was no wind.

As a result the galleries could not be worked and the miners spent their days in the grog shops. If weather conditions had been different the miners would all have been underground and the incident known as Eureka would never have evolved.

Bob Cork, Kiama, November 29.

Pass the ice pick, comrade

2004-11-29T11:56:00.000+11:00

In 2002 then Police Minister Michael Costa was on the warpath trying to shut down the Council for Civil Liberties and the Redfern Legal Centre joint website snifferdogalert.com. The now defunct site alerted subscribers by text message to the presence of sniffer dog hotspots, mostly railway stations.

A few months ago the NSW Ombudsman found (pdf) that the dogs were a waste of time. As if we didn't know that anyway. The office found that most people aren't carrying drugs on them (jeez, no?), when they are it's usually recreational amounts of pot and the operation does nothing to stop the big hard-drug dealers who carry on their trade in suburbs that usually don't usually have railway stations anyway. (Think Double Bay, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, and the rest of those beachy coke-head suburbs.)

Today I read over the shoulder of a fellow Cormo Express passenger that a boff named Fergal has launched a similar operation validticket.com which alerts punters to ticket checking hotspots. Warms the cockles, don't it? Fergal, mate. The clock is ticking. Expect the knock any time now.

In 2000 the one-time career commie at the Labor Council warned against governments and their use of military intervention in industrial unrest or civil protest. Around that time a variety of disputes and stoppages were occurring involving hospital workers, TAFE and school workers, public servants, and rail and bus workers. With threats of public sector wide industrial action brewing Costa would assure the Carr Government that such action would be "suspended" and union anger would be quelled.

Quelled.

In May this year, Costa - then as now up to his neck in shit over the joke that is the transport system - was asked by Greens MP Lee Rhiannon:

When will the Minister quell the uncertainty surrounding the future of the Newcastle rail line and make a decision on it? ... Is the delay because the Minister has discovered that the [Lower Hunter Transport] working group misinterpreted and misused data about passenger numbers on the rail line ...?

Costa: I am still trying to work out how to quell something. I assume there are many methods one could refer to in history.

Michael Gallacher: Remember when you used to crush the lefties down at the Labor Council?

...

Costa: ... I was asked when I would quell certain actions. I have to make reference to the meaning of "quell" to understand what the honourable member is asking me to do....

...

Rhiannon: Will the Minister elucidate his answer in the context of when he will announce his intentions about the future of the Newcastle rail line and whether he is confident in the work of the Lower Hunter Transport Working Group?

Costa: I am very happy to elucidate my answer. My first experience with the notion of quelling was, I think, at Kronstadt during the Russian Revolution when Trotsky took a brigade of the Red Army and crushed the anarchists. In my previous manifestation as a young Trotskyite I supported the decision ... I have had time to reflect on the mistake of supporting that decision, but every time Ms Lee Rhiannon speaks I tend to think that Trotsky may have been right about suppressing anarchists because they do not add to the parliamentary process or the complexities of managing government. I certainly would advocate it for the Greens.

- - -

As I say, pass the ice pick would you, comrade?

Schhhht. Schhhht. Schhhht.

2004-11-27T15:40:00.000+11:00

That, friends, is the unmistakable sound of knives being sharpened. After that shameless "profile" of Unroolius a couple of weeks out from the election you'd think someone would have chucked a bucket of water over Ratty cheerleaders Peter Hartcher and Louise Dodson at the Sydney Bling Bling Herald. But, no. Yesterday we get this wealth-equals-grace Calvinism from Hartcher on how terrific money is, which basically pings the outside-inside line that Hendo was casting back in September - which in turn pings said profile.

Then today, it's Dodson's turn.

"Are people shitty and ugly after the defeat? Yes", says the unnamed source.

Are Herald political writers accepting too many junkets to the land of the free? Yes, we think.

It's not that we don't agree that Unroolius is a goner. (Go Gillard in 2007, we say.) It's just the hypocrisy of it all, especially after they insulted readers' intelligence by claiming to be non-partisan on the eve of the election.

Cole and the Colonel

2004-11-25T23:20:00.000+11:00

We notice these curious happenings over at Juan Cole's pad (via Barista). He's been sent a SLAPP by MEMRI, the owners of one very slooow website (no doubt snooping the harddrive as it's loading).

Cole has posted the letter and asks fair-minded people to send a polite Get Rool, Nongs communication to the Tardis factory. Some Colonel bloke wrote it up, probably without having had an inch of legal advice beforehand. You can tell from this:

The article included several statements about MEMRI which go beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and which in fact qualify as slander and libel.

Er, no dude. It's written matter, so slander doesn't come into it. The Colonel claims Cole has portrayed the group as rich and sinister, "funded to the tune of $60 million a year."

Colonel: Completely false!

Cole: How much then?

Colonel: Not tellin'. But we don't like you calling us an "anti-Arab propaganda machine" when we sink a lot of that moolah into our Reform Project, which is devoted solely to finding a progressive voice in the Arab world.

Cole: Progressive? You mean pro-

Colonel: Right. You me carpark now!

Fear of a chick planet

2004-11-24T19:41:00.000+11:00

So, where were we. That's right, we were talking about how Markus Unroolius will probably be a goner in the second half of next year. We missed him the other night when he dropped in on the Maller on the set of the filming of the sequel to Rats in the Ranks. Fisting the Greens, was that the title? Anyway, we mentioned last month that the Campbelltown Warrior was in for a dose of recrimination from the Labor Carcass and, yup, that cage has been rattling rather loudly according to today's Strayan (which we'd link to if there weren't a shot of Janet Evabraunsen of Wolfram & Hart on the homepage).

But the real horror of the day was Carmen Lawrence trying to defend a plan to introduce performance-based contracts for candidates. From the Snoring Herald article:

Labor has conducted a review of what went wrong in the election and the executive has made more than 50 recommendations, covering rabbit rabbit rabbit ...

And they wonder why they're losing their constituency. Next stripper night Unroolius attends the comrades ought to get him tanked, hold him down and tattoo that L-Plate sign on his forehead - to scale.

So, the real story is this. We've ordered the stickers already. They read, simply and elegantly: GO GILLARD 2007. It's on, we reckon. With Jules in 2007, Hillary in 2008. There's already Clarkie over the pond. What about a replacement for Tiny Blur? Clare Short! Of course! Is she still around?

Did I hear someone say Condi? Carn, who was it?

Top Gunn

2004-11-18T13:47:00.000+11:00

Further to our recent focus on the yachting fan Anthony Marrickville Maller Albanese and his comment that "too much political activity is removed from grassroots participation", we (re)publish a speech made from the floor of the Tassie ALP conference a couple of weeks back.

What has happened to my Labor Party?
Majda Flanagan
Closed session, Tasmanian ALP conference, 30 October 2004.

I am the daughter of refugees. I was raised by my father, a labourer, in wog flats in the back of working class Hobart suburbs.

I say this, because I am tired of hearing the views that I and so many other Labor people hold dear being dismissed by the premier’s spin doctors as those of the ‘latte swilling elites’.

How dare they.

I have been a loyal member of the Labor party for 15 years. In that time I have worked long and hard and with love in my heart, to see Labor party representatives elected to power not only in the federal parliament but to both the lower and upper houses of the Tasmanian parliament.

People like Doug Parkinson. Judy Jackson. Jim Bacon. Graeme Sturgess. Lara Giddings. To name but a few.

I mention this because it has become too easy for the people at the top of the party to dismiss any criticism from within its ranks as treachery to the party, when it is the opposite: the greatest loyalty one can show is to speak the truth.

The truth is that many Labor rank and file with whom I work and deal with on a daily basis feel betrayed and angry with our state government.

The truth is that it is treachery to Labor ideals to preference a party like Family First - a party of extreme reaction. It is a source of utter shame for every decent Labor person who rings me asking how this ever happened.

The truth is that many ordinary Tasmanians, who it is my job to help and deal with on a daily basis on behalf of a Labor party federal member, feel our state government is out of touch with its own people, that it is arrogant and listens only to the big end of town, to the likes of the Walker Corporation, Federal Hotels, and particularly Gunns.

Groups with widespread community support are scorned. People from the Blue Tier and Ralphs Bay get nowhere in the ministerial diaries-but John Gay, Walker and Graham Richardson have open access any time of the day or night.

The betrayal of Mark Latham by Paul Lennon in the final week of the federal campaign disgusted me. According to the forest industry’s own report by Professor Bruce Felmingham, there is a maximum of 1345 jobs at stake if old growth logging ended.

Mark Latham offered us $800 million for those workers, approximately $594,000 per job. He offered us a way out of an impasse that is crippling us as a society. He offered us a future. It was a great deal for Tasmania.

And what did Paul Lennon do? He condemned it with his silence, as surely as Scott MacLean did with his rat’s rhetoric.

They ratted on their party, on us, and two days later delivered John Howard the biggest propaganda triumph of the federal campaign. Premier Lennon could have prevented this. He didn’t.

Where is Premier Lennon’s loyalty? To Tasmanians? To the Labor Party? Or to Gunns profits?

If Lennon is going to say that his actions in the last week of the Federal Campaign were in the interest of the party, then it is a party whose interests are now identical to those of the Gunns board.

If as a nation we cannot safeguard the future of 1345 workers and protect forests unique in the world we are not a nation worthy of the name. We can and ought have a better forest industry, but to have it we have to conceive of that industry as something larger than Gunns profits.

The Labor party should be bringing people together, not dividing them with hate. It should be honouring Tasmanians and not destroying them.

And if Tasmania is to have a future, if the Tasmanian Labor party is to be an effective party of reform and progress, we need to deal honestly with the forest issue and stop being a party that takes its marching orders from Robin Gray and John Gay.

It’s time for this terrible period of shame in our history as a party to end, and for us once more to be the party of hope, of the future, and of the people.

The Labor Party is full of good people. It’s time we took control of our party back. It's time we got out of the clearfells and started heading back toward our light on the hill.

Its time.

Thank you.

Baywatch revisited

2004-11-17T11:16:00.000+11:00

Earlier this year we made note of the disgrace that is Sydney's Botany Bay. Now, according to this article, it looks like Orica has all but given up on being serious about cleaning up its mess. The company wants to soak it up and burn it off, thereby releasing toxic fumes into the atmosphere rather than continue to let it leech into the bay which, as this graphic shows, is clearly what is happening. Clever country.

"He's dead now"

2004-11-17T01:35:00.000+11:00

Just call us a bunch of rhino-arse cynics here at the wRh cybercafe but here's military PR 101 at its predictable best.

Your forces are bombing the crap out of a number of cities in an illegal war in a far-off land, killing mostly people too poor, too old or too infirm to leave. The casualty toll is mounting. Even though thousands of civilians may be dead or dying, attacked in hospitals and deliberately starved of aid, your domestic media is counting the toll of marines dead, which numbers around two dozen or more. That isn't looking good at home. What to do?

Why, pull out the old lone-gunman theory, of course. Abu Ghraib wasn't systemic abuse of human rights going all the way back to Rummy's office in Washington. Gosh no. It was pretty much one redneck private prevert gittin' some kicks.

Ditto Fallujah. This isn't about random, out of control god's-own hillbillies lettin' loose on the evil ones. No, this is about a trigger-happy bad-apple marine who needs a bit of discipline. Or at best, a kangaroo court marshal. Besides, what's all the fuss about? it was just one of those terrier insurgent fellas anyways.

"We exited from the hospital on the second day of the attack, but we could not return as the main Falluja-Saqlawiya junction was controlled by the US troops. We saw around 150 women, children and the elderly attacked by aircraft fire." Aljazeera

Poor man's psephology

2004-11-16T14:30:00.000+11:00

Staying with the subject of the Marrickville Maller, here's how the votes compared in 1996 & 2004. To these untrained eyes, it would appear - roughly - of the extra 10,000 ballots, the 9,000 NAN and 1,500 Dem votes, more than a quarter went to the Maller, just over 3,000 (SUV-drivers) went to the Libs, and a whopping 13,000 went to the Greens.

Rool solutions

2004-11-15T14:40:00.000+11:00

So, we're banging away here at the wRh offices and what should drop in the snailbox but an official invite to the Marrickville ~~Muleser~~ Maller's "Community forum" starring boofhead Labor Loser Markus Unroolius himself. We noted this a few days ago but now it's official. The flyer informs us that it's an "open" forum on the topic of "Future Directions for Australia".

The Maller says this forum comes on the back of all those "successful" one's he's hosted over recent years around the theme, "real solutions".

"Too much political activity is removed from grassroots participation", the member says, "and I would encourage you to come along."

Removed from the grassroots? Are you talking about the N40 rule, mate or what?

Whatever. The evening will be "reasonably informal" which means ferals and ratbags are not welcome. The Maller also says he's proud to represent a "diverse and tolerant" electorate, yet how quickly did this bloke roll over at the ALP conference as Labor for Refugees honcho? Moreover, and in true Labor style, after the conference the Maller entertained "lefties" on a $40 million mega-yacht called The Other Woman whose owner is reportedly a wealthy Sydney property developer.

Up the workers.

The flying goanna

2004-11-15T14:16:00.000+11:00

Today's Crikey asks, Is Kerry Packer's aid business GRM Australia's very own Halliburton, creaming largesse off the top and out of the mouths of the hungry poor? It presents this UN insider's view:

"Do Australian people know Kerry Packer is involved in $200 million worth of Australian aid contracts via his company GRM? How does giving this money to Australia's richest man equate to 'poverty alleviation' to which the AusAID allegedly aspires?

"Our aid money has at best had very little impact. At worst it may be doing harm. AusAID has never published any research supporting the hypothesis that delivering aid for profit is actually working."

10 biggest recipients of AusAid contracts over the past few years:

Contractor No of Contracts Value
Acil 29 $323.8m
Sagric 22 $290.8m
GRM 19 $197.5m
Hassall & Associates 19 $155m
Melb Uni Private 10 $131.6m
URS Australia 9 $96m
Int Devel Support Svces 5 $90m
Overseas Project Corp 11 $75.6m
Australian Wheat Board 7 $69.6m
SMEC 8 $61.6m
Total top 10 148 $1.5bn
Total AusAID contracts 968 $2.88bn

Er, yes we do know this because it's been reported a fair bit in recent times; for example, try this article from aidwatch.org.au. In another entry it appears Qantas has pulled yet another swifty on its Strayan workers in outsourcing call-centre business to NZ. No link is made between these two entries so we'll do it here.

Packer is taking over Qantas. The inflight magazine is now published by Packer's ACP, the inflight TV is mostly all Network Nine content, featuring Lauren Hutton et al. Not sure about longhaulers though, haven't been on one for a while. The new meal paraphernalia smacks of the Goanna too: passengers are presented with food - horrible food - wrapped in a paper garbage bag which, we are informed, doubles as a meal tray. Once the grub is put away, passengers are then required to put their plastic utensils, leftovers etc into this meal tray cum garbage bag for collection.

Did not! Did too!

2004-11-14T16:32:00.000+11:00

Further to yesterday's post, it seems the Marrickville Muleser is denying having tip-toed into Tassie in order not to wake the sleeping Grizzly Adams.

The Muleser said this on Insiders this morning:

I don't think I was sneaking around and I, certainly last time I looked, you didn't need a visa to go to Tasmania. I was doing my job, I will continue to do my job.

For someone who until a few weeks ago thought the wilderness was where you ended up if you fell asleep on the 426, the member says he was "humbled" by his visit to the Styx Valley and pondered the longevity of public life as compared with that of the trees:

We're in Parliament for a short time. These are trees that have been there ... for 400 and more years.

Read on, comrades.

Dog's life

2004-11-13T14:39:00.000+11:00

The dingo that allegedly eyed off a couple of kids on Fraser Island last week has been hunted down and killed. Rooly intelligent tourists coming from lands where fox and hare pepper the landscape like a scene from an Art Garfunkel song just expect the island's wild animals to stay down their little holes and come out only for photo opportunities. Other signs of intelligent life on the island are 4-wheel-drive nongs playing Clark Gable with the wild brumbies.

More interestingly, the island is home to a huge population of deadly sand-adapted funnel web spiders but the tourist centres tend to keep that little fact to themselves.

And while on the subject of wild dogs. Peter Cave, fresh and revitalised after a stint in Iraq, reported on PM last night that Tassie Senator Dick "Grizzly" Adams called Anthony "Marrickville Muleser" Albanese a "mangy dog" for slipping in and out of the state without telling him. Not stopping there, Grizzly wants the Muleser thrown out of the ALP for the low act. Sheesh. No love lost between those two.

The Muleser, by the way, will be host to a visit to his Grayndler electorate on the 22nd of this month by none other than Unroolious himself to discuss unvoirunmunt'l ishews. The fun starts at 6.30pm at that den of iniquity the Leichhardt Town Hall.

Ratty to plague house long time

2004-11-13T13:36:00.000+11:00

Democrats Senator and apartheid outcast Andrew Murray had some bleak words to say about the future of the senate over at Crikey yesterday. Like we need more of this depressing stuff.

- - -

Whether Labor win any of the next three elections or not, the Coalition will effectively control the policy outcomes they let through the Senate for the next decade (this is of particular importance to the unions and IR) If Labor gain power they may be forced to an early double-dissolution to break the Coalition stranglehold on the Senate The National Party now effectively hold the balance of power in the Senate - the Liberals will have to acknowledge their views more than ever 'Dissident' members of the Coalition will have to be more assertive as they no longer have the Senate non Government parties as a safety net Other minor parties may remain politically relevant, but will be mostly legislatively irrelevant except possibly/perhaps for one vote after 2011 The only restraint on the Coalition Government (and it is a big restraint) is the need to retain popular support for re-election. [Emphasis mine.]

Read on if you can stomach it.

Anti-terrier laws

2004-11-12T11:54:00.000+11:00

Justice Michael Kirby, who famously came under slanderous attack from Ratty via his woo-hoo! axe-wielding mate Wild Bill Heffernan, got stuck into something we were grumbling about the other day, viz, the Dead Man's shocker terror laws.

J Kirby, a ripper bloke in our opinion, says since 2001 there have been 17 pieces of legislation adopted by the federal and state governments which act to restrict civil rights.

"There is a tendency in this area [drafting anti-terrierism law] to give legislation stirring names in the hope of rendering exceptions to civil liberties more palatable and opposition to such laws more difficult."

He gives the example of U-Boat Bob's equally stunning go at it in the Orwellian-sounding NSW Freedom of Information (Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence) Act 2003 "whose object," he says, "is to restrict and not to enhance access to official information on security grounds."

More here in the Snoozy Boring Herald cuz the ANU couldn't be bothered to make it available to the public.

J Kirby was the man behind the ALRC's Draft Uniform Bill on defamation and publication privacy which basically argued back in the late 70s(!) that Strayan defo laws are all over the shop, some statutory, others common law, and the states and territories need to pull their heads in. The argument against a uniform commonwealth legislation is that defo ought to be a job for the states, like unfair dismissal etc, and Canberra should bugger off. This is especially true when pulseless paranoics like Dead Man are put in charge of the A-G's office. But this is a toughie cuz publishing is no longer confined to a few partisan rags in a Pommie penal colony.

At any rate, Dead Man might need to have a crack at section 128 of the constitution to get the powers he needs, which of course shouldn't be much of a problem at all now that there will be NO REAL SENATE to speak of after July next year.

More Pandamania

2004-11-11T16:03:00.000+11:00

We were giving it a little bit of thought earlier today, looking at the potential ethical consequences of Rob Corr's posting of private email correspondence on his site. The concern was that if this practice became universal (in the Kantian sense) it could have all sorts of ramifications for email use. This is quite apart from the legal questions of the post. But then we came to the conclusion that correspondence between journos and sources would probably only get this sort of airing if a) there was a strong desire to redress a wrong (ie the Boltster spray) or b) the journo was being extraordinarily sloppy. We thought either of those two would fit the bill. We then had brekkie.

The thought was sparked by Darp's post last night which read tersely but elegantly as follows: Mission Accomplished. It linked off to Two Cents which has now become "password protected". This got us thinking about the dangers of driving young right-wingers underground and made us a bit uncomfortable. For those who have seen Bertolucci's masterpiece '1900', they will remember the two psychopathic fascist characters Attila (Donald Sutherland) and Regina (Laura Betti). This could be Panda and Alex if they are forced to disappear underground!

We note also this post from the other day over at MAR:

Today I've copped visits from The Fairfax Emprire, a pack of Sydney solicitors, and within Parliament House.

We have to ask whether the Boltster has been on the horn to fellow Murdoch stable ho Janet Albrechtsen because that "pack of Sydney solicitors" is a reference to none other than Freehills, where the foxy one's top-gun corporations lawyer hubby John O'Sullivan had been a partner since 1983 until late last year when he was appointed General Counsel at CBA.

Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

Pandamania

2004-11-10T14:57:00.000+11:00

Update: Goodness but hasn't Pandagate got the Boltster all in a big huffle. Following the Crikey entry today (Ramseyed below), over on the site there is now a very narky response from Bolt making new allegations against Corr, that he has published "highly defamatory and false material about several people in what seems to me to be largely a politically inspired campaign for Labor". And this, aimed at Mayne: "the moral morass that now passes for your conscience."

But wait, there's more. Beneath the Bolt tanty is a message from none other than the ficticious attorney at law Simon Hollins of Hollins & Associates, who says, among other things: "I must say I found it extremely surprising, not to say amusing, that while Bolt's own research turned up no trace of Diana Elgar, he was nevertheless still eager to engage with me, a fictional person's fictional solicitor." Quite. Read on.

What a hoot.
. . .

Crikey's newsletter today picks up the Pandagate saga but disappointingly, though not unexpectedly, with a dry angle. Robert Corr has published a series of emails which I would suggest simply makes Murdoch hack and Downster press agent Andrew Bolt look the tory bed-warmer that he is.

Weez makes the point that, when it comes to potentially defamatory material, it wouldn't matter whether Corr wrote the emails or not. This is correct. The fact that you only publish/republish/reproduce - rather than write/author/produce - defamatory material is not a defence. However, the courts have tended to apply this to the dead-tree end of publishing (ie, newspapers) rather than what they see as the digital end (eg, radio) - the shaky assumption being that hard copy/print is (as I understand it) a more permanent record. Where that leaves cyber publishing - esp. blogging - is anyone's guess. I've yet to hear of a blogger successfully tried for defo in a Mexican court and I reckon Bolt would rather let this one fade away than try to chuck a Gutnick.

All this is kinda interesting given that Dead Man is trying his best to push for a codification of defo laws. His March attempt has been revamped due to popular demand. At first brush, Dead Man's office appears to have made a better fist of it than it did of terrorism laws, which are nothing more than a parroted Patriot Act. (Though as we are about to lose a functioning Senate after June because of those IDIOTS! in the ALP, the Dems and the CLASS TRAITORS! over at the CFMEU, who knows what we'll end up with.) Truth alone would be a defence (you are corrupt and I can prove it); corporations would no longer be able to sue individuals (think your favourite development corp and your protesting anti-ugly-building neighbour); and payouts would be capped.

These aspects seem okay in principle but who can trust that guy to ever act in the public interest? Richard Ackland's main gripe with it seems to be that journos and others would lose a "small pleasure" by no longer being able to speak ill of the dead. So what? we might ask, but as he says, it amounts to a "bonanza" for lawyers representing the estate holders of the dead. Thinking of doing a biography on, say, Johnny Warren? Forget about it. Hagiographers need only apply.

Anyway, here's Crikey's blousey take on it:

9. Blogger brawl in Pandagate putsch

Andrew Bolt and the granddaughter of one of Australia's most unrepentant old Coms battling it out online? Sounds speccie. Welcome to Pandagate.

Federal politics is in a lacunae, but a spectacular brawl has erupted in the Australian blogosphere, mainly among the new political blogs that flourished like Mao's hundred flowers in the lead up to the election.

It's been dubbed Pandagate - and started with a somewhat sophomoric article in the Age by Misha Schubert that mentioned Young Lib Miranda Airey-Branson's blog. (Airey-Branson is sometimes known as Miranda Panda, hence the tag.)

Soon other bloggers pounced - and things got very messy very quickly. Threats against employment were made, more dirt was excavated than in the heyday of the Whitehouse Plumbers and an interesting range of accusations against Labor MP for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby - along with photos of his partner - appeared online.

Eventually, they conscripted Andrew Bolt to their cause, who wrote this column about it.

Bolt was later asked about where the idea for his column came from, and he denied knowing the Liberals concerned. However, he was called on that one because he was interviewed by Miranda Airey-Branson for the Melbourne University newspaper, Farrago. After that, he stopped answering emails about the column.

But some of his emails turned up. It seems that the Liberals had been sourcing their information from two fictional characters - one of whom Bolt had an email conversation with before writing his column.

A Labor blogger has put the trail up here. Leftie Fitzroy bore Marieke Hardy, granddaughter of Stalin fan and Power Without Glory author Frank Hardy, scriptwriter and proprietor of the rather bemusing "Joan Kirner is the new Betty Page" Polichicks fashion label www.polichicks.org has got in on the fun, too.

Readers can follow the whole saga by starting at the bottom of this page and working your way up. Still, it's very odd that Bolt saw fit to involve himself in such a spat. Isn't it below him?

To uproot or be rooted

2004-11-09T13:08:00.000+11:00

It's 1999 and you've got some dot com stock. You're hearing the big investment houses talking up tech stocks every day but you're starting to smell a rat. Do you sell?

It's 1933 and you're finding yourself hanging out at weekend barbeques with guys wearing more brown than Steve Liebmann and that's not wood burning, it's books. Does Switzerland cross your mind?

It's 1976 and in your comfortable house in Johannesburg read that hundreds of people, many just kids, are killed in Soweto protesting against the policies of the Afrikaner government. Do the words St Ives start to sound good?

It's 2004 and you're living in Sydney or San Francisco and your government is being run by a war criminal and your country's military is bombing mostly elderly and infirm people in a city thousands of miles away as part of an illegal war.

Do you stay and get active, or cut and run?

. . .

This site urges Canadians to help save progressive Americans ("a threatened species") by marrying them. Will we soon find our Kiwi cousins being similarly generous?

Arise, Agent Smith

2004-11-08T15:17:00.000+11:00

How O how did this sour-grape piece of fluff make it to the front page of today's Sydney Boring Herald? It's not like there's no other news about at the moment. Agent Smith - oh, Sir Agent Smith has come out after carting around an abscess for TWENTY NINE YEARS to call on Morpheous to say sorry to the ALP and the people of Straya for being a failed prime minister. His gripe? Gough having a snipe at him for being a functionary of the state apparatus (as they'd say in the 70s) and a couple of other complaints which do not come anywhere close to constituting a "litany".

Smithy. Mate. Whoever put you up to this stunt was probably nowhere near the seat of Werriwa in the early 70s, or any other working-class neck of the Strayan woods, to know what the man did for the place. He made mistakes, big mistakes, and all was forgiven long ago. If you want to start taking potshots at pollies for a lack of honesty, integrity and truthfulness, I would suggest you need go no further than the Tory hotseat and frontbench of the house of reps.

This is no more than another case of Rattie and his brat pack - half of them educated free of charge thanks to Morpheous - and their attempt to rewrite history. (Pity about Neo, though. Looks like he's not the One, after all.)

Yo, foo. Dis da butta, a'ight?

2004-11-08T14:21:00.000+11:00

Left exiled has discovered the source of Markus Unroolius's parliamentary lingo. Not so much the (albeit bunged-on) Campbelltown parlance which we once so enjoyed (conga line of suckholes being the fave) and, as with a tattoo on the forehead, he now is unable to shake - to the extent that sometime over the course of the year it may prove to be part of his unravelling as Labor leader - but rather the gangsta yoof speak that he would sometimes use as missives to his friends in the press (Skanky Ho Albrechtsen famed of Rupert's stable of foxy ho's comes to mind).

Thanks for the gank, y'all.

Psephology made fun

2004-11-07T23:36:00.000+11:00

This caught our eye from over at Crikey. We've pulled it out of context (some Mexican copping a sledging) to get to the interesting bits on the Capt's so-called mandate:

[Bush] won the smallest margin in the electoral college of any re-elected president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and the second-smallest in history.

In popular vote Bush's mandate is even less impressive. His share of the 2-party vote (which, in a first-past-the-post system, is all that matters - those who vote for 3rd parties have no more effect than voters who stay at home) is the lowest ever for a re-elected president, since popular votes were first tallied in the 1820s.

Year President Share of 2-party-vote Majority in electoral college
1832 Jackson 56.5% 170
1864 Lincoln 55.1% 191
1872 Grant 55.8% 223
1900 McKinley 53.2% 137
1904 T. Roosevelt 60.0% 196
1916 Wilson 51.7% 23
1924 Coolidge 65.2% 133
1936 F. Roosevelt 62.5% 515
1940 F. Roosevelt 55.0% 367
1944 F. Roosevelt 53.8% 333
1948 Truman 52.3% 75
1956 Eisenhower 57.8% 384
1964 Johnson 61.3% 434
1972 Nixon 66.2% 503
1984 Reagan 59.2% 512
1996 Clinton 54.7% 220
2004 Bush 51.6% 34

And yet the question remains.

Crusade watch

2004-11-07T13:49:00.000+11:00

The Fallujah Mujahideen council has invited journalists to embed with them as Capt Brick's crusader army moves to bomb the crap out of the place.

"We will protect and transport them to the location of the events. There will be a special building for the journalists."

Great idea but there's just a small matter of trust that is probably an issue for journos who don't want to wake up headless on the side of a road somewhere. John Martinkus can pull it off. Fine. But most journos do not have the cred of independence that he does. How many would take up the offer?

And that building? The "special" part: would that be the big target painted on the roof and the sign out front which reads DROP BOMB HERE? Let's not forget that the US military likes full control of its media. Remember the Baghdad Hotel and the Aljazeera offices?

It might also help to instil a little bit of trust if the captors of Margaret Hassan would listen to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and release her. Yes, CARE has had its problems over the years (e.g.) and as Arundati Roy said the other night:

Many resistance movements in poor countries which are fighting huge injustice and questioning the underlying principles of what constitutes "liberation" and "development", view Human Rights NGOs as modern day missionaries who've come to take the ugly edge off Imperialism. To defuse political anger and to maintain the status quo.

- - -

But, still, as true as that may be media and aid workers ought to be given special status - otherwise you are just as corrupt as the aggressor.

Peace defined

2004-11-07T09:57:00.000+11:00

Last night we finally were able to take the time to read Arundhati Roy's lecture Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology which she delivered on receiving this year's Sydney Peace Prize at Sydney Uni the other night. Very inspiring stuff. Some excerpts:

Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack. The assault on vulnerable, fragile sections of society is at once so complete, so cruel and so clever - all encompassing and yet specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious - that its sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. It has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations. Even among the well-intentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of 'human rights'.

If you think about it, this is an alarming shift of paradigm. The difference is that notions of equality, of parity have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that.) Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times, not even that.)

...

So the 'civilized' 'modern' world - built painstakingly on a legacy of genocide, slavery and colonialism - now controls most of the world's oil. And most of the world's weapons, most of the world's money, and most of the world's media. The embedded, corporate media in which the doctrine of Free Speech has been substituted by the doctrine of Free If You Agree Speech.

...

The head of Britain's BBC had to step down and one man committed suicide because a BBC reporter accused the Blair administration of 'sexing up' intelligence reports about Iraq's WMD programme. But the head of Britain retains his job even though his government did much more than 'sex up' intelligence reports. It is responsible for the illegal invasion of a country and the mass murder of its people.

Visitors to Australia like myself, are expected to answer the following question when they fill in the visa form: Have you ever committed or been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity or human rights? Would George Bush and Tony Blair get visas to Australia? Under the tenets of International Law they must surely qualify as war criminals.

...

The US government has privatized and sold entire sectors of Iraq's economy. Economic policies and tax laws have been re-written. Foreign companies can now buy 100% of Iraqi firms and expatriate the profits. This is an outright violation of international laws that govern an occupying force, and is among the main reasons for the stealthy, hurried charade in which power was 'handed over' to an 'interim Iraqi government'. Once handing over of Iraq to the Multi-nationals is complete, a mild dose of genuine democracy won't do any harm. In fact it might be good PR for the Corporate version of Liberation Theology, otherwise known as New Democracy.

...

Between 2001 and 2002, nine out of thirty members of the US Defense Policy Group were connected to companies that were awarded Defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars. Time was when weapons were manufactured in order to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured in order to sell weapons.

...

In New Iraq, privatization has broken new ground. The US Army is increasingly recruiting private mercenaries to help in the occupation. The advantage with mercenaries is that when they're killed they're not included in the US soldiers' body count. It helps to manage public opinion, which is particularly important in an election year. Prisons have been privatized. Torture has been privatized. We have seen what that leads to. Other attractions in New Iraq include newspapers being shut down. Television stations bombed. Reporters killed. US soldiers have opened fire on crowds of unarmed protestors killing scores of people. The only kind of resistance that has managed to survive is as crazed and brutal as the occupation itself. Is there space for a secular, democratic, feminist, non-violent resistance in Iraq? There isn't really.

Full text

Plea to NT AG

2004-11-06T14:01:00.000+11:00

Saturday AM had a piece on this today. It's a call for the re-opening of the case of Douglas Scott, an Aboriginal man who was found hanging in a cell while in police custody in the Northern Territory. We haven't seen any other media pick it up today but will keep looking.

- - -

Attorney General for the Northern Territory
Dr Peter Toyne - care of Solicitor for the Northern Territory Mr Greg MacDonald

Dear Dr Toyne

You are the first law officer of the Justice Department in the Northern Territory where my husband was murdered, and yet you have been given evidence of murder and you do nothing about it. You have evidence of murder from eyewitnesses who saw four prison officers enter the cell of my husband carrying batons and heard them beating Douglas and heard Douglas' screams for help, and Douglas crying out "someone help me please someone help me". They said that they could hear the muffled screams like a pillow being held over the Douglas' mouth. Next minute Douglas is hanged and these prisoners state in their affidavits that they were forced to clean Douglas' blood on the floors, the walls, inside the toilet and around the toilet.

We have scientific forensic expert opinions throughout the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Brazil, India, and again from the United States and police investigators from the United States who have all filed affidavits into the Court that the injuries to Douglas were not from the hanging, and that there is an injury to Douglas lower right posterior neck which is not recorded by your Dr Kevin Andrew Patrick Lee who covered my husband's murder to protect the killers.

Also Douglas was unlawfully imprisoned for having a beer at a hotel pub after work. You's hold him on remand for sixty days for allegedly swearing while having a beer after work, and yet you white Australians swear all the time, even on the television and not any white people get charged, remanded 60 days, and murdered for it. You have got no witness to say that Douglas swore. Douglas was in the pub in Darwin and the police that charged him were in the police station who was the complainants. How do you work that one out.

My son Nathan and I inform you that we will bring the whole international scientific and police community into Douglas' case for justice until the prison officers who murdered my husband are brought to justice. They have murdered Douglas and hundreds and hundreds of other Aboriginal people and hanged them in cells and pretend they commit suicide. You allow this to happen in Australia. Well we are sick of it and we are going to scream to the whole world until the world steps in to stop the murders of Aboriginal people and bring Douglas' killers to justice under Northern Territory Criminal Code on the charge of murder, and to be jailed for life as required by Northern Territory law.

Your Solicitor Mr Greg MacDonald has scoffed at all the international police forensic scientists and criminal investigators, but the entire international scientific and police fraternity will demand that Douglas' case be opened, that Douglas' body be exhumed, and that Douglas' killers be brought to justice and jailed for life imprisonment. God will make this happen because God is a God of justice. Australia has to be brought to account for Douglas' murder, and all the murders of Aboriginal, as you white Australians murder and hang our people and pretend they all commit suicide into the hundreds and then yet you call yourselves a democracy, but you are murdering your own indigenous people in Australia.

Our indigenous people are dying and crying and burying our dead as our sons and husbands and daughters all are found hanging in police and prison cells across Australia. You put a stamp on each death, - suicide - onto the hundreds of deaths in custody. Yet your white officers are gloating and laughing for getting away with murder. We are going to scream till these officers are brought to account for Douglas' murder.

Yours Sincerely
Letty Scott

- - -

Source: Darwin Independent media

Contact: Attorney-General Dr Peter Toyne

Related link: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Fireworks begin

2004-11-06T11:37:00.000+11:00

Just a day after a Danish fireworks factory blew up and created a light and sound spectacular for miles around, the coalition of the wilful has begun its own fireworks show in Fallujah. Residents are being told to get out of the city while militant rebel insurgent Islamic radical fundamentalist extremists were being asked to kindly stay put so as they can get a gid wuppin'.

Meanwhile, Capt Brick has outlined his second term agenda, which includes defeating the axis of evil and enemies of god and the land of the free, though not in so many words. Today's allafrica.com editorial is not mincing its words: Bush Re-Election is a Tragedy. Obviously not "bought" media, as the ratbags like to say.

Spykid: mission accomplished

2004-11-04T14:36:00.000+11:00

Brick's sneaky hatchet man in Canberra Tom Schieffer has announced he will head back to the land of the free early in the new year. His job in Canberra is done - namely, destabilising the Australian Labor Party, taking the odd pointer from the Tory campaign strategy and sending telexes back to the black room at TRW, er, the White House. In other words, leading a Seppo intervention assault on domestic politics like no other since The Dismissal.

Take a look at this suck-hole rot on the question of a job with Herr Brick:

"I think it's real hard to be president of the United States and if there's some way that I can help the president, I'd be glad to do that, but that's his decision".

"I also count as helping the president, just being a friend, not having a title, not having a job.

"I think presidents need friends as much as they need people who represent them around the world."

Good riddens and piss off!

UPDATE: AAP is reporting that the Spykid already has a new job - as gardener to the gods. His mission: to "clear away the underbrush so that we can get the thing [FTA] certified", he told reporters.

underbrush noun 1. shrubs, small trees, etc., growing under large trees. 2. Peskie Labor amendments to dodgy legislation to ensure big pharma doesn't rip off the poor, the disadvantaged and honest, hardworking taxpayers who deserve better.

"Mr Schieffer said with both the Australian and US elections out of the way it would be easier to resolve the FTA."

Yeah, especially now there's no house of review in either country.

Fowa mowa yaiahs

2004-11-04T09:48:00.000+11:00

Capt Brick's back. We can't help but notice the similarities with Ratty's re-election campaign. The theory that Labor didn't want to win here could extend to the US - who in their right mind would want a mop-up job of that magnitude? The upside for the Dems is probably Hillary in 2008. The upside for both losing opposition parties is the potential massive swing back of the pendulum once the people of both countries get a load of the unfettered Tory-Wal Mart ideology about to be unleashed on them as never before.

How did it happen? Just look at how wrong the Strayan meeja got Hanson, then think about the pompous jibes and discrete snipes at the Capt. (for example) and think of the land of the free as one huge Queensland.

Bring it on, we say. The full blast. Let's see the true colour of privilege, bigotry and zealotry.

Update: Unhappy Democrats wanting flee north across the border to escape Nazi Uhmerica will get no special shortcuts, Canada's immigration minister has announced. Dontchya love it.

Also, we found these two entries from SCATT bloody funny, tragically of course.

Lastly, pommie bookie firm Ladbrokes is offering 5/1 odds on Hillary Clinton to win the 2008 vote.

The real losers

2004-11-02T20:46:00.000+11:00

Aljazeera has posted the full transcript of OBL's statement. Certainly is an intersting read. It paints the picture of a Bush dynasty moving the country further into financial ruin because of its foreign policy ("Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance."), that the administration and OBL are actually working towards the same goal - not jointly, but that the outcome is the same.

The relevant excerpts:

---

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.

And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.

...

[E]very dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.

...

And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's permission.

... And it all shows that the real loser is ... you.

It is the American people and their economy.

---

I reckon. Capt Brick would seem to be expediting that bankruptcy with his war chests. This from the Houston Chronicle:

[S]pending in the war against terror and other factors have resulted in an expected $377 billion shortfall for 2003 — the highest deficit since World War II, accounting for inflation. The total U.S. national debt is near the $7.4 trillion statutory limit.

Tough questions

2004-11-01T13:47:00.000+11:00

China View asks its readers to pick which of these three men are the most dangerous to life on Earth.

[Theme from Jeopardy plays in background.]

Seriously though, ABC radio's Life Matters this morning had a forum of some sort, which we caught the tail of*, where a bunch of what sounded like school kids were asking questions of none other than that sneaky Canberra Spykid Tom Schieffer. The one that made us chuckle went to the question of whether killing, looting and maiming in the name of democracy is any different to doing the same in the name of terrorism, to which Spykid replied, If you can't see the difference between what we're doing in Iraq and, say, Beslan, you need to think again (or something along those lines). Admittedly, we were finding it difficult.

* We rarely listen to that show because of the righteousness.

Rupert's front row forward

2004-11-01T13:35:00.000+11:00

Bad boy Bill "Shut up!" O'Reilly of the Fox Network has settled a sexual harrassment suit filed against him by a former producer of his show for an undisclosed sum.

Bill features heavily in the film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism as Rupert's big-shot fascist bully boy at Fox News. The doco is a pretty good look at how big money has only to call something, say, "news" for great swathes of the American public to believe it. Of course, as the film points out, there is in fact no journalism on the network to speak of. It's simply one of Rupert's (and therefore Bush's) propatainment organs.

Rupert, incidentally, was here the other day to basically say So long suckers to his Awstralian shareholders. That leaves Packer's gambling empire as the big media player in the local market. As we know, after June it's going to be no holds barred in the media market. On top of the intimidation of the ABC, which has rendered its news service a quivering and gutless little wet-the-bed roll-over outfit, Ratty and co just can't wait for the snapping up of Fairfax by the big players, which Keating described so eloquently (and we just can't resist republishing this excerpt):

---

Fred [Hilmer, CEO], in advocating changes to the cross media rule thinks he is joining Kerry and Rupert in the media proprietors' club. The difference is that each of them is long experienced and accomplished in the game of snatch and grab. Devouring a company or two before the main course has arrived. Fred would be still unfolding his napkin as the assets were swept off the table.

---

If only Unroolius was similarly endowed with such turn of phrase.

Anyhow, over at Crikey the apotheosis of Snoozy Morning Herald reporter Anne Davies is taking place for daring to take on the board at the AGM last week. And so it should be.

Effin F factor

2004-11-01T10:57:00.000+11:00

Okay, so I just caught the end of that moralising middle-class mouthpiece Silly Loane speaking with Ratty's very good mate and former Canberra press gallery pres Malcolm Fart. He was of course stating the obvious about the CLASS TRAITORS! over at the CFMEU: that it's the Forestry workers who are responsible for Ratty's upper house coup. So, to set the record straight, when we refer to that union of turncoats, we'll be sure to identify the effness involved: CFMEU.

UPDATE: ~~Logger~~, er, Unroolius has just bagged out the F division of the CLASS TRAITOR! union, telling the comrades the protests were unnecessary.

Carn, Unroolius, stop wussing around. Lay that thong in hard, man.

Perverse preferencing

2004-10-30T13:45:00.000+10:00

We have a particularly bad case of post election blues here at wRh. The best we can do is another Ramsey Ctl-c/Ctr-v from Crikey on the subject of those sicko deals done by those IDIOTS in the ALP and the Dems who along with those CLASS TRAITORS! over at the CFMEU, handed the upper house to Ratty and co. Nice going dropkicks.

---

Greens analysis now shows that the Greens have been denied at least 3 additional senate seats because of the perverse preferencing arrangements of the ALP and Democrats. Nonetheless, if the WA result is confirmed today, there will be a doubling of Greens Senators.

South Australia

The Greens would have won a senate seat if the Democrats had preferenced the Greens ahead of Family First.

Victoria

The Greens would have won a seat if the ALP had preferenced the Greens candidate ahead of Family First.

NSW

While counting is still not complete here, current analysis shows that the Greens may have won a seat if the ALP and Democrats had not preferenced the serial senate candidate and preference manipulator Glenn Druery ahead of the Greens. Final analysis awaits the completion of the Senate count next week.

Crikey FOI snippet

2004-10-29T15:04:00.000+10:00

Here's an interesting entry from today's Crikey mailout (copied and pasted verbatim, Ramsey style).

13. Costello, Downer and Guantanamo Bay

Remember the issue of the Australian newspaper's FOI cases against the Government - bids to gain copies of documents relating to, amongst other things, how bracket creep slugs ordinary taxpayers and legal advice over David Hicks' custody in Guantanamo Bay?

The legal community certainly hasn't, and have been following the matters very closely.

These matter - plus a few other similar loose ends - are up before a Federal Court judge sitting as the head of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and talk is that the Government might get some unwelcome Christmas presents.

The tax and Hicks documents were blocked by the issuing of what are known as "Conclusive Certificates". These are very, very rarely used - and have to been signed off on page by page by the relevant minister.

In these two cases, the Certificates have been signed off on by the
Government's two most senior ministers after the PM - the two ministers John Howard indicated would go straight back into their jobs after his election win - Treasurer Peter Costello and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Just to add to the fun, the third most senior minister, Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, has suggested that he sees no need to reform the conclusive certificate procedure because political embarrassment would force any minister to release documents if they lost the fight in the AAT.

The Australian isn't talking. Its FOI Editor, Michael McKinnon, is staying mum until the judgements are formally handed down. That's expected to happen before the end of the year.

However, excited legal eagles say that after the AAT appeals are ruled on the Government - the very top levels of the Government - might have faces as red as Santa's suit at Christmas. Successful judgments would also overturn decades of pro-secrecy case law found in the previous precedent setter, Howard v Treasury (ironic, irony), dramatically improving FOI across Australia.

You're standing in it

2004-10-29T09:34:00.000+10:00

October 28 2004 at 11am, after the AEC had crunched the federal Senate numbers for Queensland, the Coalition government was assured of a majority in the upper house effective June 2005.

This will open the door to the full privatisation of Telstra as well as what remains of publicly owned utilities and services in this country: postal services, rail services - you name it. Fire sale time. It will spell the end of any critical media, bringing instead a new era of Packerised and Foxed propaganda arms in the service of militarist executive governments. It will spell the complete end of federal protections for workers due in no small part to the magnificent own-goal of those CLASS TRAITORS! over at the CFMEU and some piss weak preferencing by Labor and the Dems.

When Ratty and co. say they'll be measured, or whatever the term was, about exercising legislative powers we know they mean the exact opposite: by the end of the next three-year period Australians will no longer be able to recognise their own country. All of the behind-closed-doors GATT-WTO agendae will have been put into effect.

No doubt there is at this moment a small Tory task force sitting in Canberra somewhere laying out plans for the neo-Thatcherisation of this country - tectonic "reforms" at the core of this clumsy little democracy which will make the first 20 days of the Whitlam government look like warm beer.

Seps move in

2004-10-13T08:05:00.000+10:00

And only three days after the defeat. No waiting. Whoosh! Straight in for the kill.

Back in August wRh made this prediction:

"... watch the sneaky spykid Sheiffer (sic) pull a rabbit out of the hat for the Libs. The US will somehow intervene on their behalf, perhaps with rejecting Labor's amendments to the FTA legislation."

We now know Bonsai didn't need Seppo intervention. Or probably more the case, didn't want it, considering the backlash when almost the entire administration stepped up to beat the drum and sing the Bonsai song. Nonetheless, the sneaky spykid has pounced. This, of course, spells the end of the PBS in this country. He'll tickle Bonsai's belly and the Labor amendments will be out the window.

We here at wRh said back in July that Labor needed to get on the attack about its financial credentials:

"Labor now leaves itself wide open for attack at its weakest point: financial management. Just watch Costello and the little bloke go in hard. Finance will be the big issue for the campaign and Labor is in for a tough time."

It's gonna be back to the bloodbath and backbiting for the comrades. How many leadership spills are we going to see in the next 12 months? Logger probably won't last. He'll never be able to undo his yob past.

This piece over at the CSM is saying the result holds a lesson for Capt. Brick and Tiny Blur in their campaign strategies: "economic stewardship can outweigh war discontent."

But then again, unlike in the US, here there has not been the steady procession of body bags coming back from the middle east.

Leaders of the pack

2004-10-08T20:34:00.000+10:00

Fact: newspaper editorials are boring and only a handful of port sippers care about them. Until today. While there were no surprises from the Packer and Murdoch camps endorsing the Little One, there seems to be a quiet uproar going on at Duh Age where former Greiner staffer Mark Scott muscled in and got an endorsement up for Ratty and Co. which he argued was of "commercial interests of the company".

But wait, there's more. Over at the Sinnoi Morning Herald they got behind - no one.

Their rationale that it's a break from archaic partisanship of the media is just treating its readers like idiots, not because of the fence-sitting but because everyone knows which camp the SMH is in - so why insult us with claims of independence?

Footnote: Tory communications minister Helen Coonan said Thursday that cross media laws were on the agenda as soon as they get back in.

Gots ta have friends

2004-10-08T20:25:00.000+10:00

Meanwhile, over at Haaretz, they seem to have a certain fondness for the Rodent, who they affectionately refer to as our tested friend.

QUOTE

From Israel's point of view, a victory for Latham will be a total loss, even though Labour also has a long history of friendship with Israel. But Howard is the quintessential friend who agreed to isolate Australia at the UN by joining the ostracized pro-Israeli "bloc" with the U.S. and Micronesia.

...

The Jewish community of Australia is grateful for this and experts say they will give him massive support.

END QUOTE

Don't forget to -

2004-10-08T20:17:00.000+10:00

Send a message to the CLASS TRAITORS! over at the CFMEU:

Contact the CFMEU National Office at:
Level 2, 15 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney, NSW 2000
Ph: 02 9267 3393
Fax: 02 9267 2460
Email: rfowler@cfmeu.com.au