Greenpeace Closes World's Largest Coal Port: "Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, closed down the world's largest coal export port in Newcastle today and called on Australia to quit coal and tackle climate change by moving to a clean energy economy. The Rainbow Warrior dropped anchor in the channel leading to the Kooragang and Carrington terminals in Newcastle harbour. In addition, teams of activists occupied a 2.5 million tonne coal stockpile and one of four huge coal loaders.

"Greenpeace Australia climate and energy campaigner Ben Pearson said: 'We are here today to expose Australia's dangerous addiction to coal export dollars and its significant contribution towards global climate change. Newcastle sends 80 million tonnes of coal to the world each year, and every tonne causes worse droughts, bushfires, storms and floods. Every hour that we are here, we stop coal that could emit thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases from leaving.'

"Australia is a major exporter of pollution and a climate destroyer. It exports coal to thirty-five countries. In 2002-03, 80 % (165 million tonnes) went to Asia. The main customers are Japan and South Korea. Taiwan, India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines buy Australian coal.... Australia has the potential to be a world leader in renewable energy exports, sharing its vast solar and wind resources to its neighbouring countries in the region. It could play a more constructive role in addressing poverty and environmental issues in these already vulnerable economies by supporting their shift to safe, clean energy sources. "Coal burns our common future but renewable energy unites us. By embracing renewable energy, Australia will embrace a future common to Asia as well - a clean, sustainable future," Ronquillo concluded."

Greenpeace Closes World's Largest Coal Port: "Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, closed down the world's largest coal export port in Newcastle today and called on Australia to quit coal and tackle climate change by moving to a clean energy economy. The Rainbow Warrior dropped anchor in the channel leading to the Kooragang and Carrington terminals in Newcastle harbour. In addition, teams of activists occupied a 2.5 million tonne coal stockpile and one of four huge coal loaders.

"Greenpeace Australia climate and energy campaigner Ben Pearson said: 'We are here today to expose Australia's dangerous addiction to coal export dollars and its significant contribution towards global climate change. Newcastle sends 80 million tonnes of coal to the world each year, and every tonne causes worse droughts, bushfires, storms and floods. Every hour that we are here, we stop coal that could emit thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases from leaving.'

"Australia is a major exporter of pollution and a climate destroyer. It exports coal to thirty-five countries. In 2002-03, 80 % (165 million tonnes) went to Asia. The main customers are Japan and South Korea. Taiwan, India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines buy Australian coal.... Australia has the potential to be a world leader in renewable energy exports, sharing its vast solar and wind resources to its neighbouring countries in the region. It could play a more constructive role in addressing poverty and environmental issues in these already vulnerable economies by supporting their shift to safe, clean energy sources. "Coal burns our common future but renewable energy unites us. By embracing renewable energy, Australia will embrace a future common to Asia as well - a clean, sustainable future," Ronquillo concluded."

Flu Wiki: Bird flu: Genuine risk of global pandemic

Flu Wiki: Bird flu: Genuine risk of global pandemic

British poll: Bomb blasts 'linked to Iraq war': "The overwhelming majority of the public believe that the London bombings were, at least in part, due to Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, according to a new opinion poll. The YouGov survey for the Daily Mirror and GMTV found that 23% thought the war was the main cause of the attacks, while another 62% thought it was a contributory factor. Only 12% said they thought that it was not a significant cause.

"The Government has consistently rejected the argument that the bombings were the result of the conflict, insisting that extremist Islamic terror attacks began long before the invasion."

85% of the British people do not believe Blair. The position of Blair and his government is ridiculous wriggling. Bush, Blair and Howard are trapped under a lie of their own making - the big lie that Iraq had WMDs, links to terror and was a threat to Western countries. The truth is 9/11 was cynically exploited by Bush to get up a war he wanted anyway, and that the real reason for invading Iraq was to control the region's energy reserves. The world's supply of oil is steadily depleting, expected to last only another 30-40 years, and the war criminals' plan is to seize what is left by force.

British poll: Bomb blasts 'linked to Iraq war': "The overwhelming majority of the public believe that the London bombings were, at least in part, due to Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, according to a new opinion poll. The YouGov survey for the Daily Mirror and GMTV found that 23% thought the war was the main cause of the attacks, while another 62% thought it was a contributory factor. Only 12% said they thought that it was not a significant cause.

"The Government has consistently rejected the argument that the bombings were the result of the conflict, insisting that extremist Islamic terror attacks began long before the invasion."

85% of the British people do not believe Blair. The position of Blair and his government is ridiculous wriggling. Bush, Blair and Howard are trapped under a lie of their own making - the big lie that Iraq had WMDs, links to terror and was a threat to Western countries. The truth is 9/11 was cynically exploited by Bush to get up a war he wanted anyway, and that the real reason for invading Iraq was to control the region's energy reserves. The world's supply of oil is steadily depleting, expected to last only another 30-40 years, and the war criminals' plan is to seize what is left by force.

Melting Greenland Glacier May Hasten Rise in Sea Level: "If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt into the ocean it would raise sea levels by up to seven meters (23ft), inundating vast areas of low-lying land, including London and much of eastern England.

"Computer models suggest that this would take at least 1,000 years but even a sea-level rise of a meter would have a catastrophic impact on coastal plains where more than two-thirds of the world's population live."

Melting Greenland Glacier May Hasten Rise in Sea Level: "If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt into the ocean it would raise sea levels by up to seven meters (23ft), inundating vast areas of low-lying land, including London and much of eastern England.

"Computer models suggest that this would take at least 1,000 years but even a sea-level rise of a meter would have a catastrophic impact on coastal plains where more than two-thirds of the world's population live."

Arundhati Roy: World Tribunal on Iraq: "Let me say categorically that this tribunal is the defense. It is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war."

Arundhati Roy: World Tribunal on Iraq: "Let me say categorically that this tribunal is the defense. It is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war."

A Defeat Bred in Deceit: "'Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.' - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"When Bush decided, prior to Sept. 11, to attack Iraq, he committed himself to lies and deceit. As his British co-conspirators realized, only victory could save them from the consequences.... The Bush administration has squandered America's diplomatic, economic, and military power and is heading for defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the Middle East. Bush's invasion of Iraq is fast becoming one of the greatest strategic blunders in history."

A Defeat Bred in Deceit: "'Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.' - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"When Bush decided, prior to Sept. 11, to attack Iraq, he committed himself to lies and deceit. As his British co-conspirators realized, only victory could save them from the consequences.... The Bush administration has squandered America's diplomatic, economic, and military power and is heading for defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the Middle East. Bush's invasion of Iraq is fast becoming one of the greatest strategic blunders in history."

Mike Steketee: Fixing this absurd system should be mandatory: "HAVING been denied political asylum, Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, together with his wife and six-year-old daughter, should be picked up immediately and put into a detention centre. With the customary efficiency of the Immigration Department, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the courts, it should then take only a few years to determine whether they are refugees. In the meantime, they would be safe from Chinese goons.

"Only joking. Chen's case highlights the absurdity of a system that discriminates between refugees according to how they arrive in this country. Those who carry a visa and apply within 45 days to stay as refugees can live in the community on bridging visas that entitle them to work, Medicare benefits and, in some cases, welfare. These claims are running at 3000 to 3500 a year. In a typical year, fewer than 15 per cent are successful. Those who are become permanent refugees with the full rights of Australian residents and access to English-language classes and job placement services.

"By contrast, those who come by boat are locked up, mostly behind razor wire in remote camps. They have no entitlements other than being allowed to lodge an application for refugee status. Of the 9160 who did so between July 1999 and June 2002, 8260 were assessed as refugees; 90 per cent compared with the 15 per cent who come by air."

The assault on boatpeople (the nonsensical mandatory detention and 'pacific solution' policies) is racist and political in origin. Howard's strategy has been to recognise the existence of racist sentiment in Australia (as plainly demonstrated by Hanson and her 1m votes) and deliberately manoeuvre to ultimately pick up that vote. This has been the basic approach through the whole of his 9 years of government, and the secret of his lasting success. At the same time a number of people in the political establishment have either failed to admit that the racist sentiment exists or naively expected Howard to distance himself from it, instead of exploiting it in the most calculated and skilled manner possible.

The approach to racism (or nationalism, sexism, fundamentalism, homophobia etc) has to be the same as ever: expose and condemn it, both as irrational and inhumane in itself; and as a tool of ruling elites used to divide the public from their genuine interests.

Mike Steketee: Fixing this absurd system should be mandatory: "HAVING been denied political asylum, Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, together with his wife and six-year-old daughter, should be picked up immediately and put into a detention centre. With the customary efficiency of the Immigration Department, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the courts, it should then take only a few years to determine whether they are refugees. In the meantime, they would be safe from Chinese goons.

"Only joking. Chen's case highlights the absurdity of a system that discriminates between refugees according to how they arrive in this country. Those who carry a visa and apply within 45 days to stay as refugees can live in the community on bridging visas that entitle them to work, Medicare benefits and, in some cases, welfare. These claims are running at 3000 to 3500 a year. In a typical year, fewer than 15 per cent are successful. Those who are become permanent refugees with the full rights of Australian residents and access to English-language classes and job placement services.

"By contrast, those who come by boat are locked up, mostly behind razor wire in remote camps. They have no entitlements other than being allowed to lodge an application for refugee status. Of the 9160 who did so between July 1999 and June 2002, 8260 were assessed as refugees; 90 per cent compared with the 15 per cent who come by air."

The assault on boatpeople (the nonsensical mandatory detention and 'pacific solution' policies) is racist and political in origin. Howard's strategy has been to recognise the existence of racist sentiment in Australia (as plainly demonstrated by Hanson and her 1m votes) and deliberately manoeuvre to ultimately pick up that vote. This has been the basic approach through the whole of his 9 years of government, and the secret of his lasting success. At the same time a number of people in the political establishment have either failed to admit that the racist sentiment exists or naively expected Howard to distance himself from it, instead of exploiting it in the most calculated and skilled manner possible.

The approach to racism (or nationalism, sexism, fundamentalism, homophobia etc) has to be the same as ever: expose and condemn it, both as irrational and inhumane in itself; and as a tool of ruling elites used to divide the public from their genuine interests.

Senator Andrew Bartlett on Downer and 'Communist Tyranny': "The attempt by a senior Chinese Consular official to seek asylum has rightly attracted a lot of interest in Australia (you can read some statements made by the Australian Democrats by clicking here, here and here.) But I found it particularly absurd that Alexander Downer had a column in The Australian this week attacking the Labor Party of the 1950s for being 'too accommodating to communist tyranny' just days after his officials turned away a senior Chinese Consular official seeking asylum from the Chinese communist government. The wilful blindness of the current Australian Government over the last decade in ignoring and appeasing the tyranny of the Chinese government has been just as hypocritical, mealy-mouthed and complicit as the left-wing deniers of communist atrocities of the 50s and 60s.

"For Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister who has presided over nearly ten years of appeasement of human rights abuses by Chinese dictatorships (not to mention other countries with an appalling human rights record like Burma), to try to lecture about alleged isolationism and appeasement by John Curtin – a Prime Minister who worried and worked himself right into his grave out of his concern for Australians during wartime – is simply breath-taking."

Amnesty International state that in China "Torture and ill-treatment continued to be reported in a wide variety of state institutions despite the introduction of several new regulations aimed at curbing the practice. Common methods included kicking, beating, electric shocks, suspension by the arms, shackling in painful positions, and sleep and food deprivation. Political interference in the rule of law, restricted access to the outside world for detainees, and a failure to establish effective mechanisms for complaint and investigation continued to be key factors allowing the practice to flourish.

"The authorities officially announced an intention to reform “Re-education through Labour”, a system of administrative detention used to detain hundreds of thousands of people for up to four years without charge or trial. However, the exact nature and scope of reform remained unclear.

"People accused of political or criminal offences continued to be denied due process. Detainees’ access to lawyers and family members continued to be severely restricted and trials fell far short of international fair trial standards. Those charged with offences related to “state secrets” or “terrorism” had their legal rights restricted and were tried in camera."

Senator Andrew Bartlett on Downer and 'Communist Tyranny': "The attempt by a senior Chinese Consular official to seek asylum has rightly attracted a lot of interest in Australia (you can read some statements made by the Australian Democrats by clicking here, here and here.) But I found it particularly absurd that Alexander Downer had a column in The Australian this week attacking the Labor Party of the 1950s for being 'too accommodating to communist tyranny' just days after his officials turned away a senior Chinese Consular official seeking asylum from the Chinese communist government. The wilful blindness of the current Australian Government over the last decade in ignoring and appeasing the tyranny of the Chinese government has been just as hypocritical, mealy-mouthed and complicit as the left-wing deniers of communist atrocities of the 50s and 60s.

"For Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister who has presided over nearly ten years of appeasement of human rights abuses by Chinese dictatorships (not to mention other countries with an appalling human rights record like Burma), to try to lecture about alleged isolationism and appeasement by John Curtin – a Prime Minister who worried and worked himself right into his grave out of his concern for Australians during wartime – is simply breath-taking."

Amnesty International state that in China "Torture and ill-treatment continued to be reported in a wide variety of state institutions despite the introduction of several new regulations aimed at curbing the practice. Common methods included kicking, beating, electric shocks, suspension by the arms, shackling in painful positions, and sleep and food deprivation. Political interference in the rule of law, restricted access to the outside world for detainees, and a failure to establish effective mechanisms for complaint and investigation continued to be key factors allowing the practice to flourish.

"The authorities officially announced an intention to reform “Re-education through Labour”, a system of administrative detention used to detain hundreds of thousands of people for up to four years without charge or trial. However, the exact nature and scope of reform remained unclear.

"People accused of political or criminal offences continued to be denied due process. Detainees’ access to lawyers and family members continued to be severely restricted and trials fell far short of international fair trial standards. Those charged with offences related to “state secrets” or “terrorism” had their legal rights restricted and were tried in camera."

How Bob Somerby got to channel Socrates: "Plato described [Socrates] in the Seventh Letter as "without question, the most upright man then living." ... In 399, an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death on charges of impiety and subverting the young. Again to quote Plato, in the Seventh Letter: "When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and drew back from the wickedness of the times..."

"There is one key point I should make crystal clear before beginning my account of The Greek’s detailed findings. At the time The Great Greek was channeled back to D.C., he had never even heard of a professional press corps. In his own day, of course, there were sophists and poets; and winded harriers would occasionally pound their way from the coast; but there was no institution expressly devoted to discussing the day’s crucial happenings. It intrigued him to think that a group of trained specialists might be devoted to crafting a great public discourse. Instantly it leaped to his mind, he’d later tell me: Perhaps this “press corps” could serve as a “guardian” class--could serve as a brilliantly-trained, skillful cohort that could rein in the murderous work of the sophists. For the very first time in his greatest of lives, he began to imagine that democracy might work--dared to dream the public discourse could be wrestled away from those who lived to distort and mislead us!

"I shuddered to think what The Great Greek would find when he began to read actual work of the press corps."

And thus began the Daily Howler.

How Bob Somerby got to channel Socrates: "Plato described [Socrates] in the Seventh Letter as "without question, the most upright man then living." ... In 399, an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death on charges of impiety and subverting the young. Again to quote Plato, in the Seventh Letter: "When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and drew back from the wickedness of the times..."

"There is one key point I should make crystal clear before beginning my account of The Greek’s detailed findings. At the time The Great Greek was channeled back to D.C., he had never even heard of a professional press corps. In his own day, of course, there were sophists and poets; and winded harriers would occasionally pound their way from the coast; but there was no institution expressly devoted to discussing the day’s crucial happenings. It intrigued him to think that a group of trained specialists might be devoted to crafting a great public discourse. Instantly it leaped to his mind, he’d later tell me: Perhaps this “press corps” could serve as a “guardian” class--could serve as a brilliantly-trained, skillful cohort that could rein in the murderous work of the sophists. For the very first time in his greatest of lives, he began to imagine that democracy might work--dared to dream the public discourse could be wrestled away from those who lived to distort and mislead us!

"I shuddered to think what The Great Greek would find when he began to read actual work of the press corps."

And thus began the Daily Howler.

Administration's offenses impeachable - Robert Shatterley on the Downing st memo: "So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the 'news' shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.

"It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

"So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.

"What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.

"Richard Nixon was impeached for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an intern. Now we have the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for taking the United States to war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were lying."

Administration's offenses impeachable - Robert Shatterley on the Downing st memo: "So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the 'news' shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.

"It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

"So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.

"What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.

"Richard Nixon was impeached for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an intern. Now we have the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for taking the United States to war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were lying."

Orcinus on the classic nature of fascism/racism: "nothing makes me angrier than seeing working-class people suffer, as they seem to do in places like Idaho, where the right has been in control for decades now. The most disturbing feature of this is the way it is self-inflicted; conservatives wrap themselves in these people's 'values' in a way that convinces them they're operating on behalf of their best interests, when policy after policy demonstrates exactly the opposite.

"To me, the real slap in the face is seeing the good will of working-class people being used, manipulated cynically for alterior purposes: for profit, for political gain, for spreading divisiveness and ill will. Xenophobia (racial, religious, and otherwise) has been fanned for generations to make scapegoats to cover the real root of the problems that plague the working class -- namely, economics and class.

"Working-class whites are in this fight not against other races, but with working-class blacks and Asians and Latinos. Jews, Muslims, and gay people aren't their enemies. Their real enemies are the snakes who come hissing lies into their ears to make them blame their black and Jewish and gay neighbors for what's wrong with the world. I've seen the havoc these snakes can wreak among families and communities, and it can be devastating.

"The right of the past two decades, as a clear tool of the wealthy class, has been about widening those divisions, in a kind of divide-and-conquer strategy that, sadly, has succeeded too well. And now the real extremists of the right are pouncing, eager to take the reins as so-called 'mainstream conservatives' relinquish them.

"We're being warned that immigration is going to be Republicans' big re-election issue in 2006, which means we're going to be seeing a lot more of this. A lot more Nazis coming out of the woodwork, emboldened by the realization of their longtime hopes and dreams. They see the political momentum heading their way -- and so far, they may be right."

Orcinus' racist commenter 'Border Ruffian' in comments quotes Kunstler and the coming chaos of peak oil. This is the second occasion I have seen racists clearly positioning themselves to exploit the energy crisis. These people are almost ahead of the Greens on this issue, not to mention the mainstream media and the major parties. Scum like Howard and the Liberal brownshirts will have to be dealt with first, and firmly, before knuckling down to a committed fight in favour of tolerance and multiculturalism as we move to a sustainable society based on renewable energy.

Orcinus on the classic nature of fascism/racism: "nothing makes me angrier than seeing working-class people suffer, as they seem to do in places like Idaho, where the right has been in control for decades now. The most disturbing feature of this is the way it is self-inflicted; conservatives wrap themselves in these people's 'values' in a way that convinces them they're operating on behalf of their best interests, when policy after policy demonstrates exactly the opposite.

"To me, the real slap in the face is seeing the good will of working-class people being used, manipulated cynically for alterior purposes: for profit, for political gain, for spreading divisiveness and ill will. Xenophobia (racial, religious, and otherwise) has been fanned for generations to make scapegoats to cover the real root of the problems that plague the working class -- namely, economics and class.

"Working-class whites are in this fight not against other races, but with working-class blacks and Asians and Latinos. Jews, Muslims, and gay people aren't their enemies. Their real enemies are the snakes who come hissing lies into their ears to make them blame their black and Jewish and gay neighbors for what's wrong with the world. I've seen the havoc these snakes can wreak among families and communities, and it can be devastating.

"The right of the past two decades, as a clear tool of the wealthy class, has been about widening those divisions, in a kind of divide-and-conquer strategy that, sadly, has succeeded too well. And now the real extremists of the right are pouncing, eager to take the reins as so-called 'mainstream conservatives' relinquish them.

"We're being warned that immigration is going to be Republicans' big re-election issue in 2006, which means we're going to be seeing a lot more of this. A lot more Nazis coming out of the woodwork, emboldened by the realization of their longtime hopes and dreams. They see the political momentum heading their way -- and so far, they may be right."

Orcinus' racist commenter 'Border Ruffian' in comments quotes Kunstler and the coming chaos of peak oil. This is the second occasion I have seen racists clearly positioning themselves to exploit the energy crisis. These people are almost ahead of the Greens on this issue, not to mention the mainstream media and the major parties. Scum like Howard and the Liberal brownshirts will have to be dealt with first, and firmly, before knuckling down to a committed fight in favour of tolerance and multiculturalism as we move to a sustainable society based on renewable energy.

Car bombings, Iraq's time bomb: Michael Schwartz analyses the insurgents' evolving strategy, especially the relentless carbombings and the effect this is having on the occupation and on Sunni-Shiite relations.

A 'civil war' is and always has been in the interests of the occupiers. Divide and rule. They pick the side they want to support and back them to win, which then becomes dependent on the colonial power. One might have thought that the Sunnis would have been the obvious choice as a local ruling elite, but the US has put itself in a situation where it is backing the Shiites.

Car bombings, Iraq's time bomb: Michael Schwartz analyses the insurgents' evolving strategy, especially the relentless carbombings and the effect this is having on the occupation and on Sunni-Shiite relations.

A 'civil war' is and always has been in the interests of the occupiers. Divide and rule. They pick the side they want to support and back them to win, which then becomes dependent on the colonial power. One might have thought that the Sunnis would have been the obvious choice as a local ruling elite, but the US has put itself in a situation where it is backing the Shiites.

Unleash the sadists within: "THOSE two academic lawyers from Deakin University in Melbourne have struck a bold blow for liberty in advocating the use of torture in our war on terrorism.

"You will have read their argument in Tuesday's Herald. 'The belief that torture is always wrong is … misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators,' wrote Professor Mirko Bagaric, head of the Deakin law school, and his beautiful brunette assistant, law lecturer Julie Clarke.

"Questioned on ABC radio, the professor said that sticking needles under people's fingernails to cause excruciating pain would be the way to go. Even to the point of 'annihilation', although that 'only in extreme circumstances'.

"What a refreshing change from the leftie hand-wringing so common in our universities these days.

"And economically sound, too: no more need for rendering, as it is called, the expensive business of dispatching terrorist suspects for a spot of outsourced torture at the hands of the professionals in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. We can do it cheaper here at home.
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"OBVIOUSLY there is not a moment to lose. I urge the Howard Government to act immediately, with an advertising campaign along these lines:

'ASIO, Director of Torture, Grade 6. Salary range $175-200K (plus benefits). The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is seeking to recruit an experienced sadist to join the front line in the fight for freedom as head of its newly formed Directorate of Torture. The successful candidate will be a self-starter, demonstrating outstanding qualities of leadership and interpersonal violence. You will be forward looking and outcomes oriented, confident in managing stakeholder relationships in a dynamic environment, with extensive, hands-on experience in the administration of all forms of physical and psychological pain to subjects under interrogation, including the use of thumbscrews, the rack, near-drowning, partial garrotting, testicle crushing, solitary confinement and sleep deprivation, and the application of electricity to male and female genitalia. A postgraduate law degree would be desirable although not essential.'

"Surely there would be a rush of applications from right-thinking people eager to serve our country. Our free way of life is at stake."

Unleash the sadists within: "THOSE two academic lawyers from Deakin University in Melbourne have struck a bold blow for liberty in advocating the use of torture in our war on terrorism.

"You will have read their argument in Tuesday's Herald. 'The belief that torture is always wrong is … misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators,' wrote Professor Mirko Bagaric, head of the Deakin law school, and his beautiful brunette assistant, law lecturer Julie Clarke.

"Questioned on ABC radio, the professor said that sticking needles under people's fingernails to cause excruciating pain would be the way to go. Even to the point of 'annihilation', although that 'only in extreme circumstances'.

"What a refreshing change from the leftie hand-wringing so common in our universities these days.

"And economically sound, too: no more need for rendering, as it is called, the expensive business of dispatching terrorist suspects for a spot of outsourced torture at the hands of the professionals in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. We can do it cheaper here at home.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

"OBVIOUSLY there is not a moment to lose. I urge the Howard Government to act immediately, with an advertising campaign along these lines:

'ASIO, Director of Torture, Grade 6. Salary range $175-200K (plus benefits). The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is seeking to recruit an experienced sadist to join the front line in the fight for freedom as head of its newly formed Directorate of Torture. The successful candidate will be a self-starter, demonstrating outstanding qualities of leadership and interpersonal violence. You will be forward looking and outcomes oriented, confident in managing stakeholder relationships in a dynamic environment, with extensive, hands-on experience in the administration of all forms of physical and psychological pain to subjects under interrogation, including the use of thumbscrews, the rack, near-drowning, partial garrotting, testicle crushing, solitary confinement and sleep deprivation, and the application of electricity to male and female genitalia. A postgraduate law degree would be desirable although not essential.'

"Surely there would be a rush of applications from right-thinking people eager to serve our country. Our free way of life is at stake."

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement: Gorgeous George gives the US Senate a hell of a serve. That would be a video to see. How many times would these crooks and liars have been told, to their faces, that they are crooks, liars and war criminals?

"'Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

"“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"'Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.""

One commenter paraphrased the whole speech as follows: "It was your shameless hubris, greed and ghastly appetites that killed those people, those troops, those civilians. Your fuckin' arrogance and blindness and mendacity put the knife in the world, and you twisted it the way small time hoods do, and you have the temerity to drag my ass up here all fuckin' hoity-toity, but you're the ones who are the liars and murderers. May God have mercy on your worthless fuckin' souls, for I fear the world will not."

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement: Gorgeous George gives the US Senate a hell of a serve. That would be a video to see. How many times would these crooks and liars have been told, to their faces, that they are crooks, liars and war criminals?

"'Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

"“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"'Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.""

One commenter paraphrased the whole speech as follows: "It was your shameless hubris, greed and ghastly appetites that killed those people, those troops, those civilians. Your fuckin' arrogance and blindness and mendacity put the knife in the world, and you twisted it the way small time hoods do, and you have the temerity to drag my ass up here all fuckin' hoity-toity, but you're the ones who are the liars and murderers. May God have mercy on your worthless fuckin' souls, for I fear the world will not."

The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Michael Hudson criticises the Bush plot to privatize social security.

The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Michael Hudson criticises the Bush plot to privatize social security.

Howard's Gestapo Openly Advocate Torture: "Torture should be legalised and is a 'morally defensible' interrogation method, even if it causes the death of innocent people, according to an article by two Victorian academics.... [the authors state that] the belief that torture is always wrong is, however, misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators. It is this type of absolutist and short-sighted rhetoric that lies at the core of many distorted moral judgements that we as a community continue to make, resulting in an enormous amount of injustice and suffering in our society and far beyond our borders."

"Professor Bagaric [one of the authors] is a part-time member of the [Howard] Government's Refugee Review Tribunal and Migration Review Tribunal."

To bring this up at this stage indicates that Professor Barbaric is not the slightest bit deterred by the mind numbing revelations that the Iraq war was a high level conspiracy sold on a lie (the 'Downing St memo'); or that the vast majority of the unfortunate inmates of Guantanamo bay were admittedly not terrorists; or the general scandal surrounding the Bush administration and its 'torture memos'.

This development illustrates how sustained government lying about important issues assists the rise of fascism and barbarism. The 'war on terror' is no such thing: it is a war against the Arabs for control of the oil (which, incidentally, is what produces the insurgency or 'terrorism' of the Arabs; and the reduction of which terrorism is not, obviously, the priority of the 'Allies'). Torture (the purpose of which is to repress and terrorise, not to acquire information) is immoral and barbaric and must remain totally banned.

As the world and the country slide ever deeper into a great global crisis of energy, ecology, economics and politics, the debate over such matters as torture, concentration camps and the loss of civil liberties is a battle for the soul of the country and the future of freedom and democracy in a new era.

Howard's Gestapo Openly Advocate Torture: "Torture should be legalised and is a 'morally defensible' interrogation method, even if it causes the death of innocent people, according to an article by two Victorian academics.... [the authors state that] the belief that torture is always wrong is, however, misguided and symptomatic of the alarmist and reflexive responses typically emanating from social commentators. It is this type of absolutist and short-sighted rhetoric that lies at the core of many distorted moral judgements that we as a community continue to make, resulting in an enormous amount of injustice and suffering in our society and far beyond our borders."

"Professor Bagaric [one of the authors] is a part-time member of the [Howard] Government's Refugee Review Tribunal and Migration Review Tribunal."

To bring this up at this stage indicates that Professor Barbaric is not the slightest bit deterred by the mind numbing revelations that the Iraq war was a high level conspiracy sold on a lie (the 'Downing St memo'); or that the vast majority of the unfortunate inmates of Guantanamo bay were admittedly not terrorists; or the general scandal surrounding the Bush administration and its 'torture memos'.

This development illustrates how sustained government lying about important issues assists the rise of fascism and barbarism. The 'war on terror' is no such thing: it is a war against the Arabs for control of the oil (which, incidentally, is what produces the insurgency or 'terrorism' of the Arabs; and the reduction of which terrorism is not, obviously, the priority of the 'Allies'). Torture (the purpose of which is to repress and terrorise, not to acquire information) is immoral and barbaric and must remain totally banned.

As the world and the country slide ever deeper into a great global crisis of energy, ecology, economics and politics, the debate over such matters as torture, concentration camps and the loss of civil liberties is a battle for the soul of the country and the future of freedom and democracy in a new era.

British Columbia (Canada) referendum on adopting Hare-Clarke voting system: "The thing that interests me even more is the way that the referendum came about. A couple of farcical election results (the current BC parliament has 77 government MPs to 2 lonely opponents) sowed the seed for change, but there is an obvious problem here. When discussing electoral reform, if every MP with a conflict of interest left the room you’d have an empty chamber. Independent inquiries are all very well, but often end up being made up of a bunch of retired pollies, who may not be much better. So the BC government did something really radical – they trusted the people. Not by handing them a referendum most people couldn’t understand, but by setting up a “Citizen’s Assembly”. 160 people were selected off the electoral roll at random. There is no evidence that any of them had even thought about the issue before, let alone held a formed opinion, but for 11 months they read submissions, quizzed experts and discussed.

"In the end an overwhelming majority agreed that the electoral system should change, that the change should be to what they call BC-STV (basically Hare-Clark but with electorates of varying populations and numbers of MPs) and a referendum giving final choice to the voters. The whole process restores one’s faith in the wisdom of the population. In discussing their conclusions the assembly members get to the heart of what democracy should be about, and they weighed up which system will best provide this. What's more, they communicated their decision in clear and moving prose of the kind that is now an endangered species in Australian political discourse.... It may all come undone. The major flaw in the BC process seems to have been the post recommendation publicity. An opinion poll taken a few months before the referendum showed that most people were still confused about the whole thing, and quite a lot didn’t even know it was on."

The British Columbia proposal, apart from some electorates having only two members, is a reasonably pure form of the Hare-Clark quota preferential method, and includes such advanced features as 'Robson Rotation'. A good case can be made that the Hare-Clark quota-PR (STV) system with its latest refinements is about the best and fairest method of electing representative bodies that is possible. And one must admit it is gratifying to see that a Citizen's Assembly comprised of people selected at random has also come to that conclusion. The first-past-the-post system is primitive, and it is symptomatic of how difficult and slow reform, politics and activism is that such primitiveness could endure for so long when plainly superior alternatives have long been known.

British Columbia (Canada) referendum on adopting Hare-Clarke voting system: "The thing that interests me even more is the way that the referendum came about. A couple of farcical election results (the current BC parliament has 77 government MPs to 2 lonely opponents) sowed the seed for change, but there is an obvious problem here. When discussing electoral reform, if every MP with a conflict of interest left the room you’d have an empty chamber. Independent inquiries are all very well, but often end up being made up of a bunch of retired pollies, who may not be much better. So the BC government did something really radical – they trusted the people. Not by handing them a referendum most people couldn’t understand, but by setting up a “Citizen’s Assembly”. 160 people were selected off the electoral roll at random. There is no evidence that any of them had even thought about the issue before, let alone held a formed opinion, but for 11 months they read submissions, quizzed experts and discussed.

"In the end an overwhelming majority agreed that the electoral system should change, that the change should be to what they call BC-STV (basically Hare-Clark but with electorates of varying populations and numbers of MPs) and a referendum giving final choice to the voters. The whole process restores one’s faith in the wisdom of the population. In discussing their conclusions the assembly members get to the heart of what democracy should be about, and they weighed up which system will best provide this. What's more, they communicated their decision in clear and moving prose of the kind that is now an endangered species in Australian political discourse.... It may all come undone. The major flaw in the BC process seems to have been the post recommendation publicity. An opinion poll taken a few months before the referendum showed that most people were still confused about the whole thing, and quite a lot didn’t even know it was on."

The British Columbia proposal, apart from some electorates having only two members, is a reasonably pure form of the Hare-Clark quota preferential method, and includes such advanced features as 'Robson Rotation'. A good case can be made that the Hare-Clark quota-PR (STV) system with its latest refinements is about the best and fairest method of electing representative bodies that is possible. And one must admit it is gratifying to see that a Citizen's Assembly comprised of people selected at random has also come to that conclusion. The first-past-the-post system is primitive, and it is symptomatic of how difficult and slow reform, politics and activism is that such primitiveness could endure for so long when plainly superior alternatives have long been known.

Torture’s Dirty Secret: "This is torture’s true purpose: to terrorize—not only the people in Guantanamo’s cages and Syria’s isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist—the individual prisoner’s will and the collective will.

"This is not a controversial claim. In 2001 the US NGO Physicians for Human Rights published a manual on treating torture survivors that noted: “perpetrators often attempt to justify their acts of torture and ill treatment by the need to gather information. Such conceptualizations obscure the purpose of torture….The aim of torture is to dehumanize the victim, break his/her will, and at the same time, set horrific examples for those who come in contact with the victim. In this way, torture can break or damage the will and coherence of entire communities.”

"Yet despite this body of knowledge, torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of state terror."

Jenny Brockie and a whole SBS studio full of people discredited themselves recently by 'debating' the proposition that torture may be justified by the gaining of information. Torture is a tool of tyranny and dictatorship. Its purpose is to terrorise and suppress the population. Failure to understand this or to protest vigourously against it is to make oneself an accomplice to barbaric torture. De-nazification is needed, it seems, not only in the US, but also in Australia.

Torture’s Dirty Secret: "This is torture’s true purpose: to terrorize—not only the people in Guantanamo’s cages and Syria’s isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist—the individual prisoner’s will and the collective will.

"This is not a controversial claim. In 2001 the US NGO Physicians for Human Rights published a manual on treating torture survivors that noted: “perpetrators often attempt to justify their acts of torture and ill treatment by the need to gather information. Such conceptualizations obscure the purpose of torture….The aim of torture is to dehumanize the victim, break his/her will, and at the same time, set horrific examples for those who come in contact with the victim. In this way, torture can break or damage the will and coherence of entire communities.”

"Yet despite this body of knowledge, torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of state terror."

Jenny Brockie and a whole SBS studio full of people discredited themselves recently by 'debating' the proposition that torture may be justified by the gaining of information. Torture is a tool of tyranny and dictatorship. Its purpose is to terrorise and suppress the population. Failure to understand this or to protest vigourously against it is to make oneself an accomplice to barbaric torture. De-nazification is needed, it seems, not only in the US, but also in Australia.

The Biggest Story of Our Lives: "At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

"People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

"And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

"Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

"Karl Rove isn't capable of conceiving and executing such a grandiose crime? Wake up. They did it. The silence of traditional media on this subject is enough to establish their newfound bankruptcy."

The Biggest Story of Our Lives: "At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

"People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

"And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

"Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

"Karl Rove isn't capable of conceiving and executing such a grandiose crime? Wake up. They did it. The silence of traditional media on this subject is enough to establish their newfound bankruptcy."

ACT Human Rights Act 2004 (pdf - 34pp): A noble document which expresses many of the classic values, principles and freedoms we love so much, hardwon over the centuries, and that are now endangered by current events. This act can also serves as a basis for public discussion and a template for any future similar act for the State and Federal parliaments, or for a constitutional referendum.

ACT Human Rights Act 2004 (pdf - 34pp): A noble document which expresses many of the classic values, principles and freedoms we love so much, hardwon over the centuries, and that are now endangered by current events. This act can also serves as a basis for public discussion and a template for any future similar act for the State and Federal parliaments, or for a constitutional referendum.