we won so now we have some hope for our future

on the Future of Labor and Gillard

2012-01-25T16:18:00.001+11:00

The Labor Party is ailing. The left wants it to return to its roots, and put community first. It knows this won't happen under Gillard, but can't think who, from the left, could replace her. The right wants to ignore the Greens, and maintain power at any cost. Both sides doubt the Gillard could win the next election.The fact is that under Gillard, the Labor party has moved more to the right, disaffecting much of the electorate, and ensuring an increased vote for the Greens. In the last elections, they gained 1.6 million votes. I predict that in the next elections, they will top 2 million votes. The question is who will get their preferences? On an open ticket, about 10% will give preferences to the Liberals. If Gillard remains PM, this is likely to increase, especially if Abbott keeps his mouth shut and the press keeps vilifying Gillard and the Greens.
Under present conditions, Liberals would win with a comfortable margin. The electorate is in a hard place. They dislike Gillard, they hate Abbott, and the majority still distrust the Greens. This is not democracy, this is a sham.
It's also crying shame. The Westminster system our country adopted is well past its use-by date. You had one party of the wealthy, educated aristocracy, pitted against the down trodden working class unionists. Each wanting to gain power and further its cause.That what we are left with. We need to evolve from that. We need adversorial party based government like we need a hole in the head. What we need is one government of people from all walks of life coming together for the public good, to enact far reaching plans to enrich this land and its peoples. There is only one way this will work, through consensus. Primary school children, along with their ethics class, should be taught about how to reach consensus, and the difference between consensus and compromise. In the future they will be the government fodder which will steer this nation. We might have to muddle on with what we have until then.
China has one government of party officials who debate issues and reach an agreement, fitting in with its communist ideal, and its market economy. I wouldn't swap communism for democracy, but do we really have democracy in its pure sense? How much better is one government, than a rabble that our parliament has become. We have yet to find out. Consensus has to be learnt, and used in every day life. Our children can learn that lesson well. In their ethics class they will learn another lesson about compassion. That will be easy for them to grasp, and they will create a great society.

Divisions

2012-01-07T17:58:00.004+11:00

When I was small, I invented a division. There were people who smoked, and people who didn't smoke. More division followed, as I grew older. Fat people and thin people; old people and young people; kids who could read, and kids who couldn't; people who wore glasses, and those who didn't; adults who had friendly twinkly eyes, and those who didn't; kids who had Dads, and those that didn't; kids who were circumcised, and those I guessed weren't; kids who could sing like an angel, and those that were tone deaf; kids who got the cane often, and those that didn't; kids that wore underpants, and singlets, and those that didn't; kids who aimed at going to Uni, and those that didn't; kids who swore heavily; and those who swore lightly; kids who went away on holidays, and those that didn't; kids whose parents hired coaches from the power coaching college to help them keep up; and those who lost the plot, or had learning difficulties, or were dyslexic, or got beaten up at home, or abused; or were just naturally bright. Kids who went surfing before and after school; and those who never surfed; kids who were afraid of adults; and well adjusted kids who had natural leadership qualities; kids you were sexually attracted to, and kids you disliked with a passion. Kids who did their homework late at night, and kids who did it in the morning; on the bus, or the dog ate it (again); kids who lived in nice well ordered homes who always had great home prepared food in the fridge; or kids that had a hamburger on the way home from school, and that was it - dinner; kids who got bashed up after school because they were Jewish, or wogs. and those that just walked on by; teachers who called you by your first name, and all the other kids by first name; and teachers who treated you like scum; kids that swapped comics, and those that didn't; kids that wanked every day, or the rest who never talked about it; teachers who taught calculus ike it was the sexiest, most intriguing subject; and those who couldn't give a stuff what you made of it.

"Are you threatening me? Let me tell you, if you lay one finger on me, I will have you arrested and charged so fast like you wouldn't believe!"

What a great line, ( I never got to use) but if you went to school when I did, kids were punched, shoved into walls and even bitten by teachers who were plain psychopaths.

Any way the above divisions were there, some would apply today, but these days I take people as they are, as I would like them to take me, and my friends do. I found that you tend to attract the people who reflect the qualities you express. But you never should make rules about these things. If I ran into a fat, Jewish wog who didn't wear underpants or singlets; who was tone deaf etc, etc, he might turn out to be a great mate, (as long as he didn't smoke.)

alexx Karydis from my Facebook page

2012-01-07T16:43:00.006+11:00

Sometimes I come across stuff on Facebook I want to share, not because I totally agree with it, but because I'm not sure, and because I believe a divergence of views is valuable

Jo Harrison

‎'There has not been a violation of human rights by America that wasn’t first practiced on Native Americans. America’s first biological warfare was against Indian people with small pox and measles infected blankets, the first concentration camps were against Indian people where they took their land and rounded them up. And Lincoln known for being against slavery, had 38 Indian men hung in unison in Mankato Minnesota for rebelling in the starving concentration camp they were confined to and there were camps all across this nation for American Indian people. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Indian land polluting it and destroying the water tables. To this day the result of their digging for uranium still pollutes parts of the Navajo reservation. They practiced sterilization of our women up until the late 1950s and even into the 60’s. Up in Alaska they experimented with various forms of hepatitis on the native people there. The list goes on and on. Our people to this day suffer generational trauma as a result of the concentration camps and invasions and starvation and boarding schools that tried to destroy our culture. The death rate in the boarding schools was 50%.

To this day the unemployment rate for American Indians is 35%. What America calls “depression” has become a way of life for us. Bureaucrats scream and jump up and down about the Israelis right to claim their homeland, yet at the same time America still takes our land against our will, our homeland. The black hills of South Dakota was leased for 99 years the lease has been up for some 20 something years, but they will not return it. They have offered to pay some 3 billion dollars for the Black Hills. Why don’t they take that money and relocate the non-Indians from there? There have been people complaining of a mosque in the proximity of the former World Trade Towers yet our sacred hills have Abraham Lincoln’s face carved in the side of our sacred area, and George Washington who practiced a scorched earth campaign against our people in the East is there along with others.

I’m sorry if I’m getting carried away, I want America to be a great nation, but I want it to be fair to all people. We don’t ask for anything that wasn’t agreed to by this government,. There’s three hundred and seventy something treaties that cover most of our concerns. I apologize if in reading this in some way it hurts your celebration of the holidays. Its very difficult to not be negative when you are unjustly imprisoned for this long and every day you look through an iron door when the true enemies and terrorists are free to terrorize the poor and the oppressed of America. When the resources of America and the labor of its people is used to enhance the lavish lifestyle of some 2 to 3 % of the population that owns 96% of America’s wealth or I should say owns and controls 96% of America’s wealth then people like you and the people occupying Wall Street and walking across America are needed more than you would ever know'.

12/17/11 Statement from Leonard Peltier: From Behind the Iron Door

Statement from Leonard Peltier: From Behind the Iron Door ...

by: Brenda Golden

New Ideas for 2012

2011-12-31T15:28:00.004+11:00

These ideas are not written in order of importance. My first idea about "One Korea" can be found in Facebook. (31-12-11)

(2)I know the science of solar panels is increasing exponentially, as the price is dropping. Australia is leading in solar research, so it's only reasonable that we patent that research and begin large scale production of them. I know China is churning them out, but when the word gets round that ours are more efficient, more technologically advanced than older designs, export markets will open up for us.Here are some other uses for them. Regulation should be made to make a solar power collecting roof mandatory on all new cars, (maybe painted on).This will make our manufacturing industry prepared for the arrival of electric cars, which are already here. The roof may not power the car, but the power that is saves can be fed back into the grid every night, helping lessen the load for our renewable energy power stations. Back in 1960 I had a small solar strip, which powered my transistor radio, much to the amazement of my teachers and friends. Our solar industry should make stand alone panels of all shapes and sizes, ones that you can hang out a window, put out on a clothes line, take on a camping trip or put in the yard if roof space is not suitable. Anywhere there is sun should be utilised. We are blessed with so much sun, yet most of it is being wasted.

(3) No education pursuit is more important than music. Every child should be given a musical instrument, and receive professional tuition for it. At the end of High School, they should be given the instrument to keep. Children who elect to learn piano, should be given a piano for the fee of $30.00 a quarter, until it's paid off, or they die. The fee should be waived for parents who can't afford it. Children should have the choice on "sports afternoons" whether to have music tuition instead, play chess, or go home. Chess should be mandatory for all children from 10 yo. This is one game they can beat their parents at. Music and chess cross universal boundaries, and our musicians are world class.

(4) Sex education is for life. We have to get it right, and that must include details about LGBTIQ. They should be non-denomenatioal. Some texts for this important subject are those by Shere Hite (see Wikipedia).

I have more ideas, but I'm curious to try out the new interface.

Disclosure

2011-01-01T14:04:00.004+11:00

So where have I been over the last year? Baiscally, on Facebook, and no doubt many of you are on it too. With membership approaching half a billion people, it's an exciting social event. I use my real name on Facebook, and the sky hasn't fallen in, no men in suits have stalked me, and my privacy on Facebook is not a problem. I have 23 friends on Facebook, and that's the way I like it. My profile page has links to hundreds of sites that interest me, and others (including Blogger).
In this age of Wikileaks, disclosure is the paradigm, and I no longer feel it appropriate for me to publish in Blogger in anonymity.
My name is Alex Karydis, I'm a 63 yr old male, living in Sydney. I have a disability (muscular distrophy), a very eager electric wheelchair, and a wife that one only dreams of.
Now there are no secrets on my part.
Some of my blogs will be included in my memoirs, so be prepared for more intimate insights, but those of you who like my left leanings won't be disappointed either.

Andronicus Chocolates

2009-09-27T17:11:00.027+10:00

The Andronicus Chocolate Shop (at right), Lower George St, c late 1960's

Charles Andronicus (Uncle Charlie to me) and Nick, ran Sydney's premier chocolate shop in Sydney for many years. Uncle Charlie managed the finances and stock and ran the staff of four or five skilled chocolate dippers (middle aged women and, in school holidays, me). It was his business. This was circa 1964 - 65.

At the back of the shop was a large, spotless kitchen with an imposing vat in one corner. In the centre was a large iron table which had removable and resizable edges. This was Nick's domain. He ran it expertly and never faltered. In his large vat he made the chocolate fillings, nougat, toffee, honey crumble, and the newest creation "rocky road" consisting of chocolate, marshmallow and cherries. Some time later, Darrell Lea produced a (downmarket) version which they called, "Rock-Lea Road". I remember Uncle Charlie jokingly referring to rocky road as "rock and roll".

The chocolate fillings are what distinguished Andronicus Chocolates from all the rest. Nick had developed a special formula to make hand dipped chocolates with a runny filling. Something no other chocolate maker has achieved to this day. He never wrote the formula down, he kept it in his head. The legendary Andronicus chocolates gained cult status because of their very high quality, and the runny filling which no other chocolate maker could emulate. There was only one outlet, the shop at lower George St. Soon overseas travellers in the know, arriving by boat, would beat a track to this shop and stock up on the one luxury they could get nowhere else. The shop was always stocked up, and never let customers down. Freshness was always guaranteed.

I often got to watch Nick at work in the kitchen. Everything was made in the vat with utmost precision. It was all about quantities, temperature, time, and was different for every product. With the fillings, he would choose one small jar of essence, and put a minute amount into the vat. As if by magic the whole kitchen would take on the sweet odour of orange or peppermint, or any of the other fillings, including honeycomb and nougat.

After the allotted time, he would empty the steaming vat onto the table, and while the contents were still warm, he would cut them into small cubes and then they were wheeled into the dipping room. This was a hive of activity. Four middle-aged women, friendly banter, (they all fell in love with me) sitting on low stools, around a heated bowl of chocolate. They would take one of the cubes, dip it into the chocolate, place it onto the conveyance belt, and then put a coded squiggle on it according to its content. Thanks to Nick's wizardry, this would now have a smooth runny centre, and baffle Australia's chocolate industry.

My main work at the factory was weighing and packaging into cellophane bags. I packaged chocolate mints, orange peel dipped in chocolate, chocolate almonds, chocolate ginger, and rocky road. I appointed myself quality control officer. I found that the chocolate mints needed a lot of control, but the chocolate almonds came a close second. My room was next to the dipping room and opposite the long shop counter, which Uncle Charlie watched. If it got busy he would press a buzzer, and one of the women would appear, in a clean starched white coat. I could leave my door open and watch the action in the shop. When I finished packaging (I was really a fast worker), my Uncle would invite me into the shop, to sit with him at the end of the counter. Pretty soon he would let me serve customers, using the big manual till. It started getting busy after 4pm and by that time Nick was with us, but I got first go at the customers. Serving them and making suggestions was so cool. The extra sales pleased Uncle Charles, and when I offered to sweep the shop out, that was like icing on the cake.

I did manage to displease him once, however. It was when I spent my first pay packet at the nearby Harmony Record store on a Ray Charles LP.

When Uncle Charlie saw what I had spent my wages on he quoted his often said proverb (with a twinkle in his eye) , "a fool and his money are soon parted".

Now Uncle Charlie has passed on and the shop and the whole block on which it stood have been turned into ticky tacky (aka the Regent Hotel) and Nick's secrets remain forever secret but how many love affairs were initiated by a box of Andronicus Chocolates from that nondescript shop at the wrong end of George St?

livestation -how it will change you

2009-06-10T15:18:00.013+10:00

If you are dissatisfied by our poor low quality television news and current affairs programmes available in Australia, if you want the best high quality classical music station to play while you work, if you wanted to watch Obama's Cairo speech live...and if you have broadband, then livestation is for you.

You might know by previous posts that I don't recommend products, especially ones that cost. I do recommend this one, and it doesn't cost.

What is livestation

They now have a promo for HQ Al Jezeera. I find it ok as it is. You can bypass this by clicking on Downloads and get the free version I promised you. The URL for this is

http://www.livestation.com/downloads?tracker=main_menu

These are just some of the channels you can get, there re hundreds more including BBC.

All on your computer, providing live feeds.

What is the most watched TV network in the world? It's Algezeera broadcasting in English and Arabic. In Arabic, a large portion is watched on LiveStation.

I watched Obama's Cairo speech, on Aljazeera TV, live, along with millions of others. But you couldn't see it on Oz TV, just a few grabs. Don't you think that is insulting, disappointing?

Don't waste money on cable, get your fix from livestation. Just a small download is required, then it's yours to explore and enjoy.

On future posts, I'll tell you about some of the gems I have found, not officially theirs, but on the list of available broadcasts they provide - that you can add to.

The classical station I talked about is: bayern 4 klassik

you will find it on their list. And the reproduction is sensational.

Ginger men -Yipeeeee

2009-06-08T16:21:00.002+10:00

Forget anything you know about ginger men -these ones are soft, and use advance sprouting method.

ingredients:

organic ground sprouted wheat (see previous post)

organic flour

ginger man cut out

ginger powder

soaked dates, with soak water

baking paper

try small scale to get quantities right

Mix ground sprouted wheat with about 1/3 quantity of flour

add dates and water and ginger powder

add flour to get consistency right

add more ginger powder (or organic juice if you prefer)

roll out with pin

cut with ginger man

place on baking paper

bake in hot oven

Yipeee they have risen!

serve in rubber neck jar, with a pair of tongs

Think up name

write ingredients

make second batch modifying quantities

remember to get ground sprouts cooking as soon as possible

you are only people in Australia making these

maybe a world first

they sell like hot cakes

slow- foods secrets of essene manna

2009-06-03T15:57:00.009+10:00

Essene Manna was what I called my sprouted wheat loaves.

Sydney was well pleased with my organic sour dough bread, but I knew I had another challenge. One day in the late seventies a friend of mine, the manager of Harmony Whole foods, came to my cafe and showed me a sample of sprouted bread he had brought back from the US. It was made by a Canadian company, Life-Stream and was the latest craze in the health food industry. It tasted great with a sweetish flavour. I thanked him, and put it on my 'to-do' list.

After almost ten years, I decided to tackle this new challenge, and make sprouted bread, knowing nothing about how to even make wheat sprouts. I had the ovens, the bread tins, and no shortage of organic wheat.

I had no idea of how to make sough dough bread when I started out, but eventually came out with Sydney's best Sour dough bread though at that time only Demeter was making sour dough, the main difference being their bread had no hint of sourness, so they missed the point.

Sprouted bread was another matter, but I knew I would crack it. And I did, after a lot of trial and error.

When Alexx Slow-Foods hit the market with the Essene Manna it was an instant hit, Every one wanted it, and demanded it.

The following is a detailed 'how to' manuscript. Whether you want to make it for friends; your friendly local health food store, or a stall at your local markets. or the whole of Sydney, it will sell very well. It is a recession proof food. But it's a matter of economics. You have to charge enough to make it worth while. But more about that later.

This is the first published details of how to make Alexx Slow-Foods style essene manna.

You must use durum hard wheat. (I have also made it with rye - the smell of it cooking is to die for). You could also use other grains - rice, quinoa, spelt, but I can't help you with these.

The wheat needs to soak for about ten hours. In colder weather, around twelve hours. Then rinse and drain, but don't let it dry out.

Sprouting is critical. Line a basket or box with black plastic, then add wheat so it is about 1.5" inches deep. Wheat should be wet, but not dripping. Cover wheat with another piece of black plastic. This should go up to the edge of the wheat, but not stop air from getting to the wheat. Now you wait. The soaking will have expanded the wheat. It has all it needs to grow into an upstanding stalk of wheat - but we have other plans for it. The darkness is also critical for it to start sprouting. Large black garbage bags are best for this. For larger quantities, I found the best thing is a tip top plastic bread tray. You can buy these in a grey colour. Now the second day -what is happening? depending on outside room temp, not very much if its cold, but you can see them advancing. The third day gets exciting. You can feel the heat they are giving off. Now you should stir them up, and if you have tiny roots forming at the base, break up the clumps, then cover again. They will be ready the next day. The starch is being converted to simple sugars and this is what we want to work with.

It is critical to grind them when they are ready, otherwise they overheat. the roots grow too long, and they don't make nice manna.

How to grind them?

Small scale, I bought an old meat mincer from Vinnies. When suitably disinfected, it worked fine. After that I bought a new Breville meat mincer which also worked well, until it got louder and louder, and then died.

By then we needed some big guns, and by chance the next door shop had the perfect old machine for a bargain price. The crucial thing about a mincer was to have the right size blade, ie the holes in the blade If it's too small it just makes mush. If its too big, the wheat doesn't get ground enough. I went to a wholesale Butcher equipment shop, and got the ideal blade, and friendly service with a smile.

The ground wheat sprouts go into a big stainless steel bowl. Now they need some water, before they are hand mashed into a not too sloppy mix, and put into oiled tins. As for my sour dough bread, I only used virgin olive oil for this. The dough is weighed to a pre determined weight (about half height of tin) and then placed in hot oven. If you have brick based ovens, use a wire rack under tins.

From the moment the grains are broken, the mix starts to oxidise, so speed is of the essence for a nice sweet loaf to ensure.

Bake in hot oven for about an hour. Now be amazed -be very amazed! This loaf has risen! It rises just enough to allow the loaf to cook well throughout, without drying up.

When the top is nice golden colour, it is probably cooked. (trial and error here).

When you remove from oven leave in tin until cool enough to handle. If you remove from tin too soon, it will fall into a million pieces. Yes, this creation of yours needs kid gloves, but the sensational results are worth it.

When it has cooled down (if there is any left) place under refrigeration. It must be kept cold, as it is virtually a live food, and if left out it will die quite quickly. It will keep in a fridge for ages, so I always put a 5 week use by date on it.

All my stuff in health food shops was on a sale or return basis, but I never had any sprouted bread returns.

Now about the water you add. This is where you can add organic sultanas, dates, or organic pumpkin. The dates and sultanas are best soaked overnight in enough water to soak them, but with little left over, which can be added to the mix.

The result is an orgasmic loaf.

For commercial purposes, you need to think hard about the price. I never charged enough, so although it was retailing for $6.15 a loaf, I was producing too much (with one ton of wheat per fortnight) for too little money.My sour dough loaf was the first to break the four dollar price ceiling, and then later, first to break the five dollar mark.

If you are thinking of selling at a stall in a market situation, think about charging $8.00 a loaf. By the second or third week you will be selling out. (once it gets round to the halls of power). Keep it small scale and gradually up the price to$10.00 (if your game). Cut a loaf up into small pieces to give a taster test. If they baulk at $10.00, cut loaves in halves. At least you will still have your friends, and will always be invited to parties.

next post is all about ginger men

olive tree learning

2009-04-26T14:10:00.009+10:00

Of course we have an olive tree. It is a very young Kalamata variety, one I've never grown before. We planted in the side passage, which is actually like our front yard, as our balcony faces onto it. It has enough sun to keep it happy, though traditionally olive trees love full sun. It also surprised us by producing one olive. Surprising because olive trees reputably don't produce fruit for the first seven years, and this tree is only about one year old.
This single olive was like a promise to us, that if we took due care of it, it would reward us for many, many years to come.
But first it has to learn how to be a well ordered tree, to live up to its promise.

Olive trees do lose some leaves,, but not many. They develop blossoms, then tiny flowers, which develop into olives, which slowly grow in size, and ripen. Black olives are ripened longest, green olives are picked sooner, or separated in harvest, when all olives are picked. In Sydney this happens March to April. This is often a festive occasion, for family and friends to help in picking, and share the olives. It is also when olive trees are traditionally pruned, according to owners choice. Trees that are not pruned grow very large, and are very attractive as such.

Olive trees benefit from some leafy compost, but are not fussed. They are grown organically, requiring no pesticides, but they are a favourite food for big black birds, who swallow them whole. Generally a grown tree does not require watering (in Sydney).

Freshly picked olives are very bitter, and must be pickled, to remove excess bitterness.

Every one will tell you different recipes to do this, but this is my method (and the best).

Rinse the fresh olives, and soak in cold water in a glass or earthenware container. Cover with concave lid, to ensure olives remain underwater. Change this water every day, for six days. Olives are ready. Well if you are a true aficionado, (an olive nazi?), this is the day you eat them sketo. They are still a bit bitter but have the full olive flavour. It's an acquired taste, fostered by a lifetime of eating bitter dandelions and olives in this state.

But I will let you off the hook. Olives like this , much as I like them, are only ok on the sixth day. You must preserve them.

Tip out the water and make a strong sea salt solution. Return the olives, and top the jar with a layer of virgin olive oil. Some like a touch of vinegar, some grated garlic, bay leaf, ginger - the sky is the limit. The salt will cut the bitterness. Try them the next day - a little bitterness is nice, but it will go in a few days. This is a gentile food, bearing no relation to the deli olives, which have far too much salt, in order to keep for a year.

How long will yours keep? You should get through them in a month. Make them a part of every meal. kali orixi.

URANIUM MINING the facts

2009-03-24T13:04:00.004+11:00

We voted for a Labor govt (mainly to depose the Howard regime).

The following article is important, as we are already getting false information about developing nuclear power. The Rudd govt has categorically ruled out any such development; we need to ensure it holds to this ideal.

Mining from The Greens Website - ta

It doesn't make sense, not on economic grounds, not on social grounds, and definitely not on environmental grounds. The deeper you look into it - the worse it gets.

Poor economics

Some commentators have spuriously argued that uranium is a 'low-emission' fuel. This, combined with generally high commodity prices, meant that uranium prices soared in 2007 to over US$130/pound. But along with most other resources, those prices have tumbled. Uranium oxide in 2009 is selling for around $40/pound, the same price as three years ago, shown by this graph

http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_graph_u3o8_2yr.gif

(More information is at The Ux Consulting Company)

Hidden costs: energy and water

The mining and processing of uranium ore takes large amounts of both energy and water, particularly in the mining and refining stages. The Olymic Dam mine presently uses 12 GL/yr of water from the Great Artesian Basin; plans for expasion may take that to 48 GL/yr, beyond the capacity of the GAB, and requiring other sources including a coastal desalination plant with pipeline to the mine. Olymic Dam also consumes 10% of South Australia's base-load power; plans for expansion are yet to identify where an additional 300 MWe will come from. CO2 emissions currently top 1 million tonne per year; this may increase to over 4Mt/yr if expansion goes ahead (Australian Uranium Association).

Dangers in the Mining Process

Mining uranium has a particular safety issue unlike any of the other metals currently mined in Mt Isa. All forms of uranium are unstable radioactive isotopes. This means that they spontaneously undergoe fission reactions, breaking into two or more particles, and in the process may become totally different elements. One of those unstable elements is radon, a heavy gas that becomes trapped within the ore body over millennia. Uranium mining releases this deadly, cancer-causing radioactive gas. It is not dust, it can't be filtered out. Just like other gases such as oxygen or nitrogen, it passes straight through breathing masks. But because it is radioactive, once it has been breathed deep into a miner's lungs it can undergoe nuclear decay and turn back into radioactive uranium or other radioactive metals. Once this occurs, the chance of radiation-induced cancer becomes very great. In the US, radon gas just from indirect sources has been identified as the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsW9ouAsKfk , http://www.prlog.org/10175781-radon-gas-identified-as-the-second-leading-cause-of-lung-cancer.html , http://www.epa.gov/radon/)

Plans by both Labor and the LNP to mine uranium mean that the 150 workers in the mine planned for Mt Isa will be directly exposed to the deadly gas. If people in their homes are exposed to dangerous levels of radon, what about miners bathed in radon in underground mines? Their families and the Mt Isa community will also be affected. The record in other countries is far worse than we have seen in Australia (see Uranium: Wealth or Woe?). People in uranium mining areas can ingest up to 18 times more uranium than people in the general population. Increased levels of uranium are linked to bone cancer, kidney cancer and lung cancer, among others (http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/).

Dangers to the Community

Beyond the very real issue of radon gas, the deliberate or accidental release of radioactive and toxic materials into the local environment is a very real concern, especially from tailings dams (Uranium mine water leak concerning, govt says, Polluted water leaking into Kakadu from uranium mine, Beverley Uranium Mine , Contaminated water shuts Rio uranium mine). Radioactive dust can also be blown across towns near mine operations.

Enrichment

The majority of current nuclear reactors require a specific uranium radioisotope to function, U235. Uranium ore contains an array of radioisotopes, only 0.72% of which is U235. Uranium must therefore be 'enriched' to increase the relative amount of usable U235, typically to 3-5%. This means that to obtain 1kg of enriched uranium fuel requires 4.2kg of uranium to be 'thrown away'. Typically it becomes 'depleted uranium', a weapon of mass disease that should be outlawed (see Blowin' in the wind). Uranium is not known to be currently enriched in Australia, but there appear to be plans by either the ALP or LNP to start-up this dangerous industry (Uranium enrichment plans on discussion table with Fed Govt , Enriching uranium could impoverish regional security , Russian environmentalists unite against uranium shipments from Australia).

Some links

Film - a hard rain
www.frontlinefilms.com.au/videos/hardrain.htm
Film - Blowin' in the wind
http://www.bsharp.net.au/
ACF calls for a ban on uranium mining
http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=2158
Medical Association for Prevention of War
http://www.mapw.org.au/
International Physicians For The Prevention of Nuclear War
http://www.ippnw.org/
Dr Helen Caldicott
http://www.helencaldicott.com/index.htm
Friends of the Earth
http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/overview

Rudd's priorities wrong

2009-02-05T18:26:00.004+11:00

Rudd needs Senator Fielding's vote to get his economic package through the senate. There are some rumblings in the opposition that might make his vote irrelavent. Costello is trying to unseat Turnbull, but doesn't know what he wants, and as usual won't answer any questions. Obama acted swiftly. Rudd dithered, and still is. The next week will be interestng times; who are he losers? Read on

Published on newmatilda.com (http://newmatilda.com)
27 Jan 2009
Australia's Abortion Gag
In one of his first official acts, Barack Obama has lifted a ban on foreign aid to organisations that provide abortion counselling and services. We're now the only country in the world with such a ban, writes Ruby Murray
Once upon a time, an Australian federal government decided that the lives of countless women in developing countries were less important than the sale of Telstra. In 1996, in return for Senator Brian Harradine’s support of the Telstra sale, the Howard government placed a ban on the provision of Australian foreign aid to abortion-related services.

For a little while in June last year, it seemed like we might care about the women affected by this ban. Small noises were made about debating the issue in parliament. We’re thinking about it, people from the Department of Foreign Affairs kept mumbling.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and his colleagues in the Labor caucus, however, are slow thinkers.

While the Federal Government has been pondering how much of a hassle it is for Australia to lift its ban, the following things have happened: The season changed four times; My sister had a child, who is now just about to start crawling; An estimated 5 million women became temporarily or permanently disabled after seeking out an unsafe abortion; And an estimated 67,000 women died from complications associated with unsafe abortions, leaving many more children without mothers.

Australia and the United States were once the only countries in the world where an equivalent abortion ban applied to the provision of foreign aid. Under Barack Obama, the US has now lifted the ban, adding to the pressure on Australia to follow suit. It took Obama all of four days in office to reverse the legislation. Kevin Rudd, on the other hand, has been side-stepping the issue for 15 months, presumably in an effort to keep the important Senate vote of Family First’s Steve Fielding on side.

In essence, the ban means that Australian aid funds are not available to activities involving abortion training, services, research, or provision, even where the life of the mother is at stake.

Not only does Australia refuse to train doctors in the provision of safe abortions, we won’t provide funds to any groups or organisations that dare to give women information on abortions, whether or not the organisation itself performs them. Doctors receiving Australian Government aid are therefore unable to counsel women who are seeking an abortion, or to help them differentiate between a safe and an unsafe abortion.

This is despite the fact that abortion is freely available to women in our own country, and despite the fact that Victoria has recently decriminalised the procedure. The only message one can take from this is that the Australian Government believes women in poor and developing countries are not entitled to the same rights as Australian women.

Providing funds for abortion services and counselling is not about "advocating" abortion. It is about recognising that women will seek to abort regardless of how you might personally feel about it, and that access to abortion information and services is a key element in any effective family planning policy that has women’s health as its final goal. The truth is that the number of women who will seek abortions remains roughly the same regardless of whether or not the abortion is provided in a safe, legal, medical environment, or whether the procedure is unsafe and illegal.

Successive studies have shown that women who want abortions will find a way to have them, regardless of their legality and whether or not Australia deigns to help them. What separates women’s experiences of abortion in the developed world from those in the developing world is that 92 per cent of abortions in the developed world are safe, while over half the abortions performed in the developing world — 55 per cent — are unsafe.

I use the word "unsafe" to describe these abortions because that’s how the World Health Organization categorises them. But "unsafe" seems a very pedestrian, mundane little word for the procedures it actually describes. The methods of abortion that leading sexual health research centre the Guttmacher Institute categorises as "unsafe" — and which women regularly obtain for themselves when safe procedures are unavailable — include: Drinking turpentine, bleach or tea made with livestock manure; Inserting herbal preparations into the vagina or cervix; And placing foreign bodies, such as a stick, coat hanger or chicken bone, into the uterus.

Australian funding of family planning programs across the entire aid sector has declined as a percentage of total aid from 0.44 per cent to 0.07 per cent since 1996. In absolute terms, it has dropped from $6.8 million in 1995/6 to a paltry $2.28 million in 2006/07. Concerned NGOs have argued forcefully that the guidelines introduced by Senator Harradine in 1996 are acting as a disincentive to Australian aid providers attempting to deliver sexual and reproductive health rights.

And still Minister Smith considers, and waits, and hopes we’ll forget about the hypocrisy of refusing to provide the same basic services for women in our aid programs that we recognise as central to women’s health within our own borders.

All of this pain, just so that the Federal Government doesn’t have to step on the toes of Senator Steve Fielding and the pro-life lobby.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2009/01/27/australias-abortion-gag
Links:
[1] http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/unsafeabortion_2003/ua_estimates03.pdf
[2] http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/unsafe_abortion/induced_abortion_worldwide.pdf
[3] http://www.watoday.com.au/national/end-abortion-aid-ban-smith-urged-20090125-7pgv.html
[4] http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/10/17/13/Chang-Guttmacher_Institute_abortion_report.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
[5] http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/10/17/13/Chang-Guttmacher_Institute_abortion_report.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
[6] http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html#1
[7] http://afmw.org.au/images/roausaidfamilyplanningguidelines.pdfblockquote>

G20, what's a G20??

2008-11-13T18:59:00.004+11:00

Hello,Kevin Rudd here.
Hello, can I speak to John?
Johns not here any longer, I'm Kevin Rudd, the new PM.
Oh I see.
long silence
I imagine I will see you at the G20 meeting next week.
Oh yes, I heard about that... what exactly is it?
It's a meeting of 19 heads of state and Leaders...
Is the US in the G20?
Yes.
Is Peter Zamek still on your staff?
Yes, why?
He's a CIA operative.
Plays a darn good game of golf.
If you brought him with you, maybe we could fit in a game of golf, like when the foreigners are talking.
We should listen to them through out headphones.
I only listen to "The Sound of Music". I have a digitally re-mastered version of it.
Airforce one is fitted out with quadraphonic sound.
I don't care about the meltdown. I've converted all my money to bullion. Cheney is looking after it for me
Ok John, I have to go now.
Oh, good-bye then. I should tell you though, we have had an election here, and we elected a young guy to take over, or as you would say 'have a go'. I have spoken to him,and he assured me he wasn't a Muslim. I'm not so sure, but that's democracy for you. If I were you, I wouldn't trust him.
We shall see, bye George,
Bye John - bring your clubs.

Less is More - Our New Life

2008-08-23T15:34:00.012+10:00

It's not a sea change, we are still by the same sea, (the Pacific Ocean), just further down the coast, in historic city of Botany Bay.
The one bedroom unit we bought has none of the romance of the Coogee ramshackle Federation half house we used to live in, with it's overgrown garden, surrounded by huge trees, which I planted in the seventies.

But what it has, it has in spades, from the near perfect finish of the unit, to the walking distance to the pristine Bay, with its generous promenade,and cycle track, with clean small beach, littered with interesting shells.
Looking at this pic, you might wonder: "Is this up the coast? Or down the coast, some isolated hideaway"? Nope, it's Ramsgate Beach, just a Cooee from the city centre. Less is more.

The path less trodden ....

All this is one block away from a very complete shopping centre, which has ample parking space, a first class cafe, and the best fish shop anywhere, which will grill you fish in olive oil. Coles is open 7 days (for your organics)

The layout of Ramsgate Beach is very reminiscent of Lismore, but the people hee are more cosmopolitan, more open and friendly.
The whole area is flat, which, these days suits me just fine.

Time to end MANDATORY DETENTION

2008-07-21T15:51:00.003+10:00

The Australian Government has launched an unexpected but long-awaited inquiry into immigration detention - the system that gave us children in detention, the 'Pacific Solution', sewn lips, the Cornelia Rau affair, razor wire and condemnation from the international community.

We believe this Inquiry signals that the Government genuinely wants to put an end to Australia's inhumane detention regime, and for the first time they are asking us for our views. If ever you have despaired at the treatment of asylum seekers, put your name to GetUp's petition submission and help end this ongoing national shame:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/EndMandatoryDetention

GetUp believes, along with many other refugee advocacy organisations, that the immigration detention regime should meet the following principles:

Detention should not be mandatory. A mandatory detention regime is a breach of basic human rights principles.
Detention should never be indefinite. The Minister should not have the power to detain a person for life if they have committed no crime and pose no health or security risks. Strict time limits must be enacted.
Detention must be reviewable. The detention of any human being should be subject to the systems of legal review befitting a modern democracy.
Detention should be used as a matter of last resort.Detention should only be used where there is a proven security or compliance need.
Children should never be detained. Ever.
Detention centres should be humane. Detainees should be treated with dignity and respect. There must be genuine oversight by welfare and human rights bodies.
Detention centres should not be located in remote areas. Hiding asylum seekers away limits their access to legal, medical and social welfare services, and makes it difficult for family to visit.
Detention should never be used to punish those who seek asylum. Those who flee persecution have the right to ask for help.
Detention should be cost-efficient. Not only is the detention regime inhumane, it is more expensive than the community release options available.
Detention centres should have differing security levels appropriate for different types of detainee. The current one-stop-shop approach is inappropriate as it places vulnerable asylum seekers, visa over-stayers and sometimes dangerous or violent criminal deportees in the same centres.

GetUp has partnered with the following organisations in this campaign:

A Just Australia
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
Human Rights Act for Australia Campaign Inc
Human Rights Law Resource Centre
The Justice Project
PolMin
Project SafeCom
Public Interest Law Clearing House

The Pope and condoms: compassion missing

2008-07-15T15:36:00.008+10:00

The protesters handing out condoms to the Catholic World Youth Day festivities are expressing a compassionate, christian attitude to the suffering of millions of people who do not use condoms. This is a compassion and ethical side of christianity that is missing from the Pope, president Bush cardinal Pel and the likes.

Today is the 30th birthday of the first IVF child born. Following her birth, over 30 million babies have been conceived using IVF. This amounts to about one child per classroom. Is this not "pro-life"?

The use of condoms by men in Africa would cause a decline in the number of children born with HIV, thereby reducing the number of backyard abortions/deaths.

The people handing out condoms this week have a serious message. A message about life and death.

Activists to hand out condoms in protest against 'immoral stance'

15/07/2008 12:00:00 AM

World Youth Day pilgrims staying in communal school housing will receive a welcome letter and a condom from anti-Pope activists.

The NoToPope Coalition says in addition to today's postal drop, it will hand out condoms at a peace rally on Saturday to remind young Catholics to ''make up their own minds about what they believe is appropriate behaviour''.

The coalition said while it respected people's right to practise religion, it disagreed with the Pope's stand on contraception.

Soubhi Iskander, from the Sudanese Human Rights Association, part of the coalition, said, ''It is an immoral stance. The Pope's policy on condoms is a death sentence for millions within Africa.''

Anthony Englund, from Sydney Atheists, also part of the coalition, said the young people who would receive the condoms were capable of making up their own minds about whether or not to use them.

''Young Catholic people are quite capable of distinguishing what they want from their church's theology and what they do not want,'' he said.

''By providing them with a token number of condoms we're reminding them they can make up their own minds about what they believe is appropriate behaviour in terms of their personal sexual health.''

Ms Evans, 33, who represents Community Action Against Homophobia and whose father was a Uniting Church minister, said the coalition would notify police of its route in the next couple of days but she feared the NSW Government "wants to be heavy-handed with protesters".

She said the Pope's teachings contributed to 67,000 women dying every year from backyard abortions and a suicide rate among gay youth that is seven times the average.

Why the Pope Is Wrong About Condoms

An interview with South African Bishop Kevin Dowling, an AIDS activist

By Deborah Kotz

Posted April 10, 2008

Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa, has made a name for himself defying the Roman Catholic Church's absolute ban on condom use. He determined the church's views were unacceptable after witnessing the AIDS epidemic up close for 16 years in a mining town west of Pretoria. There, impoverished women living in tin shacks sell their bodies to feed themselves and their children. Most contract the deadly HIV virus from having unprotected sex. Since opening his first AIDS clinic in 1996, Dowling now oversees nine clinics that treat nearly 1,000 adults and children with lifesaving antiretroviral drugs.

South African Bishop Kevin Dowling.

(Jim Lo Scalzo for USN&WR)

Arriving in Washington on the eve of the pope's visit, Dowling met with White House officials yesterday in an effort to get more funds for hospice care for AIDS patients in their final weeks of life. (Congress is in the midst of reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] with plans to increase the five-year funding package from $30 billion to $50 billion.) He also sat down with U.S. News to explain why he believes preventing the spread of HIV must come before religious idealism.

END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT?

2008-06-14T13:50:00.017+10:00

This article (from the ABC News website (14/06/08) contains this sentence:

"Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social".

Rudd's recent grant to Toyota for them to make hybrid cars in OZ really is like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. That money and much, much more should be spent on giving us the best transport system that money can buy. We don't need hybrid cars. with good efficient transport, many of us would not need cars, and those that did would be driving all electric cars, powered by solar powered power stations. This is not policy that can be vaguely brought in "by 2010", its urgency demands that the program begins tomorrow. We have the technical ability; we have the social will to commence it; we only need to bring the politicians screaming and kicking to face reality.

JOINT STATEMENT: On global warming from scientists, politicians and commentators.

This joint statement is a ‘call to arms’ from some of the country’s leading scientists, plus several commentators and politicians. The statement describes the urgent need for an effective response to global warming. It was written following the 2008 Manning Clark House Conference on Climate Change which concluded on Thursday June 12 in Canberra.

It has been approved by over 200 conference delegates, which included: Climate scientists: Prof Barry Brook, Prof Ian Enting, Prof Janette Lindesay, Prof Graeme Pearman, Dr Barrie Pittock, Prof Will Steffen;  Earth and prehistory scientists:  Dr Geoff Davies, Dr David Denham, Dr Andrew Glikson (conference convenor), Dr Simon Haberle, Prof Malcolm McCulloch, Dr Bradley Opdyke;  Political leaders:  Senator Lyn Allison, Dr Carmen Lawrence, Senator Christine Milne, Barry Jones; Environmental lawyer:  Phillip Toyne; Health and population experts:  Prof Stephen Boyden, Dr Bryan Furnass (conference co-convenor), Prof Tony McMichael, Dr Sue Wareham;  Humanists:  Phillip Adams, Dr Paul Collins, Tony Kevin, Dierk von Behrens;  Poet:  Mark O’Connor.

Below is the Joint statement and comments from two of the signatories:

------------

Barry Jones is former Federal Science Minister. The conference was held in his honour

“Citizens have come together with scientists in Canberra to consider global warming. We are shocked by the urgency of the situation.”

------------

Professor Barry Brook is the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide:

"The Manning Clark House Conference: Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth is quite unusual for a climate change conference - perhaps unique. This wasn't just scientists talking among themselves. It was climate scientists engaging directly with political leaders, environmental lawyers, health and population experts, humanists, clerics, poets and concerned members of the general public.

In other words, a representative cross-section of the views and perspectives of the wider community, who shared a common concern - the severity of the problem of global warming and the absolute urgency of the need to take action to avoid dangerous consequences. That is what makes this joint statement (approved at the conclusion of the meeting by the conference speakers and other participants) so powerful. When confronted with the immediacy of this issue and a realistic vision of possible futures under unmitigated carbon emissions, the consensus for a rapid societal response was overwhelming. There is no time to lose."

------------ Last call on Climate Change

A statement from the 2008 Manning Clark House Conference: “Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth”, 11-12 June, Australian National University, Canberra.

Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years, - decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.

Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.

Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.

[Approved by the delegates of the conference, 12 June 2008]

For further contact information regarding this joint statement, contact the AusSMC on (08) 8207 7415 or email us.

Photo: Yann Arthus-Bertrand Altitude (from WIRED)

Olympic Tragedy

2008-04-23T11:38:00.003+10:00

The spirit of the olympic games is dead. Maybe it was doomed from the start, when it was decided to give them to China to host. China is a communist country with no regard to human rights or human dignity. We always knew that, but given that it now has a capitalist market economy, we thought we would give it a chance. Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that it is lending the US $1 million per day, and that the aussie economy depends on its trade.

The olympic torch debacle is a farce. It should have been aborted, and given China a strong message, that it wouldn't be business as usual. The protesters are our friends. They have serious concerns about human rights. They should not have to do battle with authorities to get their message across. Rudd has been blunt with the Chinese, and they have not taken any notice.

In OZ we are bussing school children to view the torch 'relay'. Reminiscent of when Nazi Germany held the games.

What we are waiting for, of course is to see how the Chinese polies behave when thousands of cameramen descend on Beijing. Will there be mass demonstrations of pro democracy activists? Will the TV feeds be interrupted with scenes of human rights abuses in Tibet? Maybe not. China can not afford to loose face in such a humiliating way. Already they are gaoling dissidents. What other measures they are taking we can only guess at, and maybe we will never know.

Rudd is not going to break long standing protocol and attend the opening of the games. No doubt Nelson will try and make capital out of that, and as usual be left with egg on his face.

Many European heads of state are also refusing to go to the opening.

We will be watching it on TV, hoping that somehow, someone will expose what a farce it really is.

Is there barbed wire planned for Western embassies? Not a few dissidents will be wanting to seek asylum. It will be a measure of Rudd's resolve if he grants them that.

Charter of Rights

2008-04-08T18:30:00.010+10:00

Why a Charter of Rights is important to Indigenous Australians

Tom Calma

The most revealing indicator that the NT intervention was not consistent with human rights principles was the provision at the centre of the legislative machinery used to support the intervention, namely suspending the operation of Racial Discrimination Act.

A few weeks ago I was honoured and humbled to be entrusted by the national stolen generations representative groups with the responsibility to participate in and later to speak in response to the Prime Minister’s Apology to the Stolen Generations.

I was touched by the Apology in all imaginable ways: as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner; the National Race Discrimination Commissioner and most importantly as the great grandchild of a Stolen Generations woman.

‘Her mother will not part with her’. This was the chilling account of the officer who reported on my great grandmother in 1899. When I recalled this at the Apology ceremony I had in mind not solely the pain of the past, but also the responsibilities of the present, and the demands upon the future to prevent the violation of basic human rights and dignity, such as the right of a mother to care for her child.

Yet, despite our knowledge of these past events, the spectre of human rights violations remains vivid to many people living in Indigenous communities today. Most recently, we have seen the introduction of the NT intervention that, in the name of protecting children and women from abuse and violence, involves violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The intervention adopts an approach that is entirely inappropriate from a human rights perspective by seeking to justify measures which breach basic human rights on the basis that they are taken to advance other, ‘superior’ human rights.

No one wants to see children abused, families destroyed, and the aspirations for a bright future dulled because hope has been overwhelmed by despair.

Ultimately, the sustained scrutiny and national debate on issues of violence and abuse in our Indigenous communities creates a momentum for change, and for action.

Clearly we need such action.

Such change should, however, be considered, evidence based, capable of being achieved and systemic.

In my latest Social Justice Report to the federal Parliament I argue that measures that violate the human rights of the intended beneficiaries are more likely to work in ways that undermine the overall well being of the communities in which they live in both the short and the longer term.

For example, the Government has clearly stated that the NT intervention seeks to address a breakdown in law and order in Aboriginal communities. And yet it involves introducing measures that undermine the rule of law and do not treat Aboriginal citizens equally.

This places inequality at the heart of the NT intervention measures. Such inequality will inhibit the building of relationships, partnerships and trust between the Government and Indigenous communities. It will also undermine the credibility of the measures, and ultimately, threaten the sustainability and long-term impact of the measures.

Human rights law is clear that any measures must be non-discriminatory in their application and their impact. This obligation is non-negotiable and unable to be deviated from.

Put simply, all measures to address family violence and child abuse should themselves respect human rights. It would be outrageous to suggest that it is not possible to achieve this.

What I want to see is a change to the current model for the intervention so that it is consistent with human rights, and draws on the strengths of communities so they are part of the solution and not just treated as if they are the problem.

My Social Justice Report sets out a ten-point plan for making the intervention compliant with human rights. Ultimately, this is about the workability of the NT intervention and enabling it to shift so that it can become a shared ambition and a partnership with Indigenous communities. The Ten Point Action Plan for modifying the NT intervention includes:

Action 1: Restore all rights to procedural fairness and external merits review under the NT intervention legislation.

Action 2: Reinstate protections against racial discrimination in the operation of the NT intervention legislation.

Action 3: Amend or remove the provisions that declare that the legislation constitutes a ‘special measure’. This includes by adding provisions to the legislation that require decision makers to exercise their discretion consistent with the beneficial ‘special measures’ purpose of the legislation.

Action 4: Reinstate protections against discrimination in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Action 5: Require consent to be obtained in the management of Indigenous property and amend the legislation to confirm the guarantee of just terms compensation.

For these measures, I challenge anyone to explain how providing these basic democratic protections could possibly hinder the goal of protecting children. The only possible answer is ‘short term expedience’ prevailing over guarantees of access to justice. And that is not a good enough, and is not a good enough answer.

Action 6: Reinstate the CDEP program and review the operation of the income management scheme so that it is consistent with human rights.

Action 7: Review the operation and effectiveness of the alcohol management schemes under the intervention legislation.

Actions 6 and 7 seek to address the arbitrariness of the existing regimes for income management and alcohol restrictions provided for under the intervention legislation. The report states that some form of quarantining and some form of alcohol restrictions can be justified consistently with human rights. The sweeping and discriminatory approach adopted through the legislation, however, is not that approach. The report recommends that the government seek to implement voluntary community based schemes in place of the blanket bans currently provided for.

Action points 8 - 10 then look to how the intervention can transition back to a process that is a partnership with Indigenous communities and where the ambitions are shared rather than imposed. They are as follows.

Action 8: Ensure the effective participation of Indigenous peoples in all aspects of the intervention – by developing Community Partnership Agreements.

Action 9: Set a timetable for the transition from an ‘emergency’ intervention to a community development plan. And

Action 10: is to Ensure stringent monitoring and review processes.

The most revealing indicator that the NT intervention was not consistent with human rights principles was the provision at the centre of the legislative machinery used to support the intervention, namely suspending the operation of Racial Discrimination Act. Further, immunity is provided for any act of discrimination that occurs under the provisions of the intervention legislation. This includes decisions made by bureaucrats or other agents – such as storeowners – in communities. This provides an extraordinarily broad exemption from the protection of discrimination.

In the current government’s review of the intervention measures, the first priority should be to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act. In so doing the government also needs to consider how in the longer term Australia Federal anti-discrimination laws can be made more resilient to the exigencies of political manipulation and more effective in achieving their goals of equality and non-discrimination.

There is a need for the Federal Racial Discrimination Act to evolve if it is to remain relevant to contemporary Australian society. Because of this, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission will shortly be releasing the first of a series of research papers aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the Act, and highlighting the need for future reform.

For instance the ability of the Racial Discrimination Act to deal with systemic discrimination, as well as individual complaints, needs to be improved. In addition, the burden of proof in race discrimination cases is so onerous that many incidents of racism occur without legal redress. This needs to be reviewed.

The first research paper about to be released seeks to contribute to an analysis of the continuing usefulness and effectiveness of the RDA by placing it in context with contemporary race discrimination legislation in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. By looking at the way in which other similarly placed nations have responded to the problems of racial discrimination and inequality, we are presented with a series of alternative models against which the current Australian legislation may be compared. Recent developments in these jurisdictions may suggest potential directions for legislative reform.

History tells us that neither democracy nor laws stop politicians and public authorities from pursuing a course of action simply because it overrides the collective or individual rights of minority groups. Anna Katzmann, president of the NSW Bar Association, in the context of the debate about the bill of rights in NSW, rebuffed the common argument that says our political structure has served us well since federation and that the founding fathers themselves didn’t recommend a bill of rights. As Katzmann rightly observes; ‘Yet, these are the same men who did not think that Aborigines should be counted as members of the Australian populations. These are the same men who were determined to ensure that governments could discriminate against ‘coloured aliens’.

The NT intervention among other examples (such as native title amendments in 1993) show us that the issue of basic human rights should not be left solely in the hands of a particular government or be subject to the exigencies of a particular set of circumstances. We need to have a more comprehensive legal net to protect human rights in Australia.

In the environment created by the Prime Minister’s Apology, I believe that a Charter of Rights in Australia — which specifies those fundamental rights that should never be compromised other than in grave exceptional circumstances — will assure all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, that their basic rights are protected.

Some would say that a Charter of Rights in general terms protects the rights of individuals not the collective, so how would it aid Indigenous people in our struggle to have our collective rights recognised. I have in mind a few responses:

Yes a Charter of Rights is not adequate by itself to deal with Indigenous issues but is nevertheless an important element of a holistic approach that includes: capacity building; governance measures, and effective participation in government policy and service delivery.

Indigenous people - as individuals - should have the protection of a Charter of Rights as a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, their collective rights to self-determination and cultural identity.

The protection of equality and non-discrimination through a Charter of Rights may not necessarily exclude the recognition of peoples’ collective right to enjoy their culture. A Charter that protects economic, social and cultural rights, as well as political and civil rights, would contribute positively to the much-needed recognition of Indigenous rights.

The enactment of a Charter of Rights does not mean that we no longer demand the recognition of the distinct status of Indigenous Australians. Indigenous peoples are the First Peoples of this land not simply a dispersed collection of disadvantaged communities or a minority group with special needs. The unique status of Indigenous peoples should be recognised in the Constitution as a prerequisite for a genuine process of reconciliation and the promotion of a human rights culture. In addition, and at the same time, Constitutional change will be necessary to ensure that recognition, once it comes, is not whittled back in the eternal swings and roundabouts of politics.

I have called on the government to consider the Canadian constitutional precedent of recognising and affirming Aboriginal rights in Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. Such a provision in the Australia Constitution might read as follows:

The pre-existing rights of Aboriginal peoples in Australia are hereby recognised and affirmed, consistent with international human rights standards.

I strongly support the introduction of an Australian Charter of Rights because it provides protection to all Australians. I also think a Charter would provide a convivial environment to progress the struggle of Indigenous people towards the more substantive rights pertaining to our status as a people.

The issues I raise this evening may appear to some to be essentially ‘Australian’, but with a broader perspective we can see these domestic issues as part of global trends, patterns and protections.

A few years ago many of us here tonight turned on the evening news to become spectators of a race riot that was taking place in a local municipality of Sydney but could’ve been taking place in London, Paris or anywhere in Europe.

The underlying forces of discontent and conflict being played out in Cronulla in 2005 were not that different to those present in the social discontent manifesting throughout the world then and today.

ABOUT TOM CALMA

Tom Calma is a Commissioner with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and National Race Discrimination Commissioner. He is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula in Northern Territory.

NSW now a FAILED STATE

2008-04-04T13:26:00.006+11:00

Probably we would be worse off under a Liberal govt. but how much worse could they be to what we have now?

Iemma continues to be an embarrassment to the Rudd federal govt.

from SMH

NSW is a worse place since the re-election of the Iemma government 12 months ago, Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell and Greens MP Lee Rhiannon say.

Mr O'Farrell told reporters on Monday - the anniversary of the election - the problems facing the state had got worse since the election of the Iemma government.

"Twelve months since Morris Iemma stood up and said, 'Get on and fix the problems of NSW', 12 months on, the problems across the board are worse," he told reporters.

"And the state's biggest problem is the lack of energy that Morris Iemma brings to the job of premier of NSW.

"This is a bloke who has fundamentally let down those who re-elected him a year ago because, whether it's hospitals, community services or transport, everything has got worse," he said.

Ms Rhiannon echoed Mr O'Farrell's comments, telling AAP it was time the premier realised being that being a "pleasant family man is not enough".

"The public are entitled to be angry with the Iemma government. The majority of voters backed them at the last election but once in power Premier Iemma and his ministers have failed to deliver decent public services," she said.

"Premier Iemma's first year in office has been marked by incompetency and deception. Public services continue to be under-resourced.

"If the Labor government wants to be able to celebrate another year in office they should stop running on Liberal policies. Electricity privatisation was not part of Labor's 2007 election platform. The premier should show some backbone, scrap the sell-off policy and stand up to his treasurer Michael Costa," she said.

Mr Iemma was not available for comment on Monday, but said on Sunday he believed his government had made progress in the past year.

He told ABC Radio the government had made plans for the new North West Metro in Sydney, established specialist trade schools and opened more after-hour GP clinics.

"The public want us to work harder and they want better," he said.

"That's what I'm about and that's what we're working hard to do."

Mr Iemma said he understood why people had lost faith in his government.

"I can understand the cynicism and that response but I say, 'Well, is that reason not to do anything? Is that a reason not to do the metro?' No, it's not," he said.

"It just redoubles the determination to make sure that it happens because it has to happen for the city's future."

It's been a damaging year for the state government, which has been plagued by scandal since its return to office on March 24, 2007.

Less than a month into his second term as premier, Mr Iemma was forced to dump prospective sport and recreation minister Paul Gibson from cabinet, following allegations of domestic violence against his former lover Sandra Nori. Lack of evidence from a police investigation later cleared Mr Gibson.

October 2007 proved just as tough, with the government setting up an inquiry into Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital after Jana Horska had miscarried in the hospital's emergency department toilet the previous month.

In November, the government was forced to set up an inquiry into the Department of Community Services (DoCS) following the deaths of a number of children under its care, including seven-year-old Shellay Ward and two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth.

Shellay was found in her Hawks Nest home, north of Newcastle, weighing just 9kg at the time of her death. Dean was found stuffed in a suitcase floating in a pond in Sydney's south-west.

The health care crisis flared up once again in January 2008 with a state-wide inquiry into NSW hospitals set up after "systemic problems" were blamed for the death of schoolgirl Vanessa Anderson at Royal North Shore Hospital.

Also in January, the controversial T-card project - an integrated ticketing system for Sydney's transport system - had to be cancelled, after costing taxpayers $95 million.

Last month, the Wollongong council 'sex-for-development' scandal rocked the government. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation showed a corrupt official had links to several Labor ministers and MPs.

http://lee.greens.org.au/?PHPSESSID=e35b36b9244505ecdfc752810dc97451

budget matters

2008-03-20T16:16:00.002+11:00

RE: what we expect from your first budget [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Inbox

Pre Budget Submissions 2008/09 Received

to me

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10:27 (5 hours ago)

2008-09 PRE-BUDGET SUBMISSION

Thank you for your submission of 17 January 2008 regarding priorities
for the 2008-09 Budget.

Community views are a critical consideration for the Government when
forming its budget policies, and your submission will be taken into
account during the decision-making process.

Yours sincerely

Penny Sirault
Budget Priorities & Reporting Unit
Budget Policy Division

-----Original Message-----
From: Alex .... [mailto:delphi3@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, 17 January 2008 1:39 PM
To: Pre Budget Submissions 2008/09 Received
Subject: what we expect from your first budget

We want you to restore Medicare.

Today it is almost impossible to arrange a visit by a community home
nurse. They can\'t even acknowledge phone messages.

We want strong action for climate change like spending on transport
infrastructure, and making public transport free. This should not be a
state issue, it\'s a national priority.

We want you to review military spending.

We want you to restore compulsory student unionism, and either
contribute towards union fees, or add them onto HECS debt.

We want more funding for the arts.

We want you to cancel any funding the previous government has made to
nuclear power advisory groups or other projects related to nuclear
power.

We want you to respect the rights of returned soldiers and acknowledge
the damages caused by agent orange and gulf war syndrome.

We would like you to publish the full budget details in a full page ad
in newspapers. Often minor details are ignored by the media.

We would like you to provide funding to establish a Bill Of Rights and
call for submissions from the judiciary and the public.

Although we don\'t believe our \'safeguards\'\' are effective in the
sale of uranium, we would suggest that treasury sets funds aside to
draft a further condition for sale of uranium, stating that the the
buyer must have in plans a detailed programme for the containment of
radioactive waste. This is of paramount importance for countries like
China, Russia and Indonesia. It is irresponsible to sell uranium without
such an agreement. This waste is also a terrorist risk, as you know. We
would also need funds to inspect these operations where waste must be
kept for hundreds of years. Maybe this should be referred to the UN to
set minimum guidelines.

We need funding to overhaul our disgraceful treatment of refugees, most
of whom become our legal immigrants.

Thank you for reading this submission.

This will be an interesting budget. We have much expectation of it.

regards,

..........

our right choice: the VW Polo TDI

2008-03-18T18:48:00.005+11:00

It was the perfect car for our honeymoon; the perfect car for going anywhere, really. Well, OK for now. In the not too distant future, cars like this will be converted to becoming full electric cars. Judging by recent advances in battery storage by CSIRO, (where batteries an be charged in minutes), electric cars will be the way to go.

The obvious next step would be to use hydrogen power -but don't hold your breath for that to happen. The technology is already available, but so far silence from our Rudd juggernaut.

The Volkswagen Polo TDI proves once again that power, features and fuel economy are the key ingredients to a successful small car.

Despite the emergence of a serious new competitor in the revitalised Mazda2, the Volkswagen's diesel Polo picked up a second consecutive Best Small Car gong in 2007.

Although its considerable price premium (at $22,990, some $6000 over the other finalists) lost points in the pricing and depreciation criteria, the smallest VW scored well in the other critical scoring areas (running and repair costs, fuel consumption and environment) to snare a comfortable victory.

Not surprisingly, frugal fuel use is a strong point thanks to relatively light weight and an impressive 1.9-litre, turbo-charged, diesel, four cylinder engine mated to a five-speed manual transmission.

We criticised the lack of an automatic transmission last year and it's still not available. Once, turbo-diesels weren't anything to get excited about in any vehicle, let alone a small car. But the new breed of Euro diesels are beauties, offering minimal emissions, no smoke, good power and oodles of useable torque.

The Polo's powerplant delivers a modest 74kW but, as with most diesels, it's the meaty 240Nm of torque, spread between 1800rpm and 2400rpm, that impressed the most and helped the Polo match the performance score of the excellent Mazda2 engine.

And it's one of the quietest oil-burners around too, both inside and outside the car. Being a modern engine using the latest computerised engine-management technology, there is little evidence of the dreaded turbo lag. In fact, the little VW can wheel-spin away from the lights or out of tight corners if you're not careful with the right foot.

In design and function criteria, the Polo scored well for its practicality and was unmatched for its ergonomics. Four doors are very practical, helping entry and egress for the comparatively spacious interior. The wide opening rear hatch gives easy access to the luggage area.

And while not getting the highest score for handling, the Polo was not disgraced on the scoreboard or on the road. It is zippy, nimble and easy to manoeuvre, whether in the shopping centre or on a bit of twisty road. And it does this without compromising ride quality - the Polo outscored all finalists in this criteria.

Speaking of quality, the Polo has it in spades. It's evident from the moment you jump inside and the doors close with a reassuring 'clunk'. The safety and luxury equipment are impressive for a car in this class, and features like the reach and height adjustment for the steering column help to justify the price premium.

While the Polo's diesel variant triumphed in 2007, its petrol-engined sibling also performed strongly, scoring a top-seven finish and even out pointing the diesel in a couple of areas. It would take a long while to even get close to recouping the extra outlay over its competitors, or even the petrol Polo - but the diesel Polo is a better drive and a class act. And what price do you put on that?

Finalists
Mazda2 Neo 1.5
Toyota Yaris YRS 1.5

Vegans leave the smallest footsteps

2008-03-16T15:37:00.000+11:00

Vegans are people who eat no animal food of any kind, i.e. meat eggs, dairy, even honey. They also wear no animal products, or use products which involves use of animals. So they don't wear leather coats or shoes, wool, and ensure that their cosmetics/toiletries/drugs aren't tested with animals.

There was and is still some controversiality about the missing vitamin B12 in such a diet. The fact is that we need only minimal amounts of B12, and we can easily get that from miso, tempeh, nori, spirilina. etc. Many people dispute this on scientific grounds, but I have met many extremely healthy people who are long term vegans. That's proof.

Other ground for veganism are moral, environmental, and spiritual.

We all eat vegan meals from time to time - think about it.

I ran a vegan restaurant for two years, (Sydney's first) and was a vegan for that time, and always had boundless energy. That was proof too. A lot of macrobiotic meals are vegan. People who came to my cafe didn't know what vegan meant, but still rated my cafe as the best vegetarian restaurant in Sydney.

Cooking vegan meals every night (never using a recipe book) was challenging, but proved a great opportunity to create original meals using food combinations which had never been used before (to my knowledge). In the two years I ran Alexx Slow-Foods, I never used the same main meal twice.

Anyway, I'm going to let you into a few secrets, some borrowed from others but adapted to become my originals. All vegan of course. These days everyone occasionally eats a vegetarian meal, and sometimes it happens to be vegan. Now you can be the first one on the block to show off these original ideas. I'll be doing a series of posts called "Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen", read on.

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 4 open sesame!

2008-03-15T19:50:00.005+11:00

The tiny sesame seed can play a big part of your daily diet. Tahini is made of crushed sesame seeds, nothing added, pure and simple. These days there are a number of brands which are organic, and these are the only ones you should consider buying.

So what do you do with it? Spread it on bread - give fatty butter the flick. Mix it with honey and spread on wholemeal bread. If you haven't eaten tahini before, you should be aware that when you first try it, it will have a stringent effect on your mouth, and taste quite dry. You shouldn't let this put you off, as your taste buds seem to quickly adjust to this, and in a day or two you will only have the pleasant nutty flavour, which millions of people around the world enjoy.

Tahini is an essential ingredient of hommous, so you already have eaten some. Good hommous should include .....well that's a topic for another post.

Then there are more devious ways to use it, which I invented to use in my vegan cafe. The remarkable thing about tahini, is its oily property, the oil being a natural ingredient, produced when the seed is crushed. This sesame oil readily mixes with water. Try a dab on your finger, then rinse it off under a tap. To my knowledge, no other oil has this property.

I set out to make a mint source - a vegan one. The first thing I learnt was that if you mixed tahini with lemon juice, it forms a very thick blob. This is when I discovered the strange ability of tahini to be able to mix with water. So in my trusty Braun vitamiser, I poured some tahini, some water, mixed it up, then added lemon juice. Perfect! Smooth full bodied slightly tart source. I added some mint, and it became not just a plain mint source, but a high quality vegan mint source. My customers thought I had dropped my vegan credentials, but I told them no - it was a secret.

This source has far reaching applications. I like it poured over steamed vegetables, added to fresh salads. used over lentil patties, even used in soup. I'm sure you can think of other uses. It doesn't have to be mint of course, you can use basil, or fresh coriander, garlic, or whatever. It's a stable source, but best used within a few days.

You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy these recipes, but they just expand your repertoire, and give you new possibilities, to be creative.

There's lots more tips and tricks, secrets even, stay tuned.

Secret of a vegan Kitchen. The humble Cashew

2008-03-07T18:15:00.004+11:00

Back in the seventies, I met a Fijian Guy, who was (and is) an interesting vegan cook.

He showed me how to make cashew cream.

Take about 1/4 cup of cashews. They must be fresh and raw and unsalted. Using cashew pieces is fine. Put them into your trusty blender, and cover them with water. The more water, the thinner the cream. Turn on at slow speed, then fast speed, and Voila! you have made cashew cream.

That's fine, but how do you use it? My cafe allowed me to come us with many uses. The obvious one was on fruit salad.

Organic fruit and veggies were just becoming available at that time, so I would cycle to Harmony Foods, in Bondi Junction, and buy whatever fruit and veggies I thought I could use in my cafe.

There was a new variety of sweet potato, called Kumera. I bought a few, and decided to bake them. I used baking paper on a tray, because I figured they would leak. Well they cooked beautifully, and I pulled them out when they were soft, but not mushy. I had already worked out how I would serve them. I had bought ones which were longish, and not too fat. I made some thickish cashew cream, but I made it with a combination of sage and dill. Not too much. but enough to give the cream a wonderful flavour. I would put one potato on the plate, next to the main meal and the salad. I would cut it into slices to open it up, and then pour some cashew cream along it. It was sensational. The kumera was bright orange, and very sweet. No-one had had it before and wondered what it was. They also wondered about the cream. They loved it.

I soon discovered another use for this magic cream. Read on

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 2 Pumpkin Soup

2008-03-05T19:14:00.000+11:00

I guess you have made pumpkin soup before, but never like this. Choose a piece of pumpkin which is bright orange. Cook till still firm, and add carrot juice (fresh) and celery juice (fresh) and a small amount of fresh beetroot juice. While making juice, add a small piece of fresh ginger Add a handful of parsley (thickly cut) Also add virgin olive oil and a small amount of lemon or lime juice. Let simmer for a while longer then mash in usual way. Serve with a thick blob of cashew cream in the centre, made with a selection of herbs. My favourite is basil with a hint of cardamon. Serve with organic wholemeal toast, spread with Bertolli Virgin olive spread, or croutons (made with virgin live oil), or zwieback (home made).

Who says vegan food is boring?

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 3 Greek Food

2008-03-04T17:00:00.000+11:00

Lots of Greek food has seeped into the Aussie psyche. Having a Greek background, is is satisfying to have seen this Greek cultural cuisine history being absorbed to some extent into the inquisitive and acquisitive Australian appetite.

Fetta cheese is well established in our diet. You can buy it packaged or loose in delis and supermarkets. It takes its place on a cheese platter next to the cheddars and camembert, and no-one bats an eye, or asks "what is that"?

Fewer people realise that it is traditionally made from sheep and goat milk. And the nicest variety comes from the region of Dodonis in Greece. To much info? Not really - you can specify that next time you buy it loose From Coles supermarket, or your local deli. They will have it. Ok, fetta cheese is one reason why I'm no vegan. Another reason? Well... what do you tell your Mum when she presents you with a pullover that she has knitted herself out of expensive prime Australian wool?

There is a word in Greek which means made with olive oil - "lathero". What even some Greeks don't realise, is that such food tastes infinitely better if kept in the fridge overnight and eaten the next day. Also it can be eaten either hot or cold.

This is such a dish, called "spunacoriso". Different to the "spunacopita" which you know. This is spinach and rice, made without the pastry.

Warning! This is addictive, hot or cold.

We start off with brown rice, which you might have mastered by now. Well this is a bit different, we still need it cooked by absorption method, but we need it a bit undercooked (so less water).

The proportion of rice to spinach is really up to you, but lets start with a quarter cup of rice, to two bunches of fresh spinach (ok, silver beet). If spinach is a bit wilted, soak in cold water for a few minutes. Cut the really thick stalks out, but leave the smaller ones. Roughly cut the spinach into two inch thick strips.

In a largish saucepan heat virgin olive oil, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup! Add one large bunch of cut shallots, and some fresh dill, cut fine. When the shallots are translucent, add the rice, stir well, then add the spinach, stir well so that all surface is covered by oil, (add more oil if you think it can take it). Now add a little salt.

The purpose of the brown rice, apart from complementing the rice and creating a substantial meal, is that because it is undercooked, it will cook more, and absorb excess liquid. This works well and although the traditional way is to use white rice, this is about eating food of peak nutrition, and food which tastes much nicer.

Cook under low heat until rice has expanded. If it's a bit sloppy, that's fine too. Squeeze a whole lemon over it, and stir it in.

Now go outside, take a deep breath, then walk back into the kitchen, and appreciate the wonderful aroma of your food.

It's ready to serve up, but to get the full flavour, I recommend you let it cool, refrigerate it overnight, and eat the next day. Try it cold - it's heavenly! Your kids will skip Macs, if they can come home to this.

give us this day, our daily vegetables

2008-02-25T14:10:00.000+11:00

I'm not talking about meat and three veg. This is for those of us who chose not to eat meat, or would like not to eat meat. So this is about grains and vegies. If your body is used to eating regular meat, your body is regulated to getting a big hit of protein. Grains also give you protein, quality protein but not in a big hit, and not as much protein. Tofu is a high protein food, better quality protein, but still the body has to adjust to getting a protein from a plant food. It takes a while for your body to adjust to a vegetarian diet. A heavy meat diet contributes to not just health problems, but environmental problems, and even cultural problems.

We all have heard about the amazing longevity of the Okinawan population. Their traditional diet is worth learning from. It's not just about longevity, but also disability-free longevity.

The average citizen consumes at least seven servings of vegetables daily, and an equal number of grains (in the form of noodles, bread, and rice—many of them whole grains). Add to this two to four servings of fruit, plus tofu and other forms of soy, green tea, seaweed, and fish rich in omega-3s (three times weekly). Sweet potatoes, bean sprouts, onions, and green peppers are prominent in the diet. Vegetables, grains, and fruits make up 72% of the diet by weight. Soy and seaweed provide another 14%. Meat, poultry, and eggs account for just 3% of the diet, fish about 11%. The emphasis is on dark green vegetables rich in calcium (Okinawans, like other Japanese, don't eat much dairy). Okinawans do drink alcohol, but women usually stick to one drink a day, while men average twice that. Moderation is the key.

Like any diet regime, don't even think about copying it and expect to achieve what Okinawans achieve - longevity (average 102 yrs), and an active life until then. In Oz, we have the US bases, but not much else which gives us the sensitivity, or cultural history to attain anything like that. I'm just giving an example of how veggies are important in the scheme of things.

Much is said about today's obesity epidemic, but no none has been game to spell out how closely this problem correlates directly with the global intake of big macs and other fast foods, which deliver trans fats, yeasted sugary fibre-less buns, and dead cow flesh which comes not just from one cow, but hundreds of cows, dosed with growth hormones and antibiotics. It's not about providing nourishment, it's economic. We need to be mindful of what we are eating, and its consequences. End of lecture.

The pic I provide is just a snapshot of a common meal at chez nous. Lets start with the rice. It's organic brown rice. Never cooked it before? Here's how to get it right, every time. Well maybe not the first time, but every time after that. I use the absorption method. The tricky part is to get the water-grain proportion right. For this you need to always use the same saucepan for rice, (similar to mine). Place about 1/4 cup of rice, then cold water so that it is about 1 inch above level of rice. Turn on stove to its lowest heat, and leave until rice is cooked and all water is absorbed. That's it. If rice is not quite right,needs more cooking, just add a little water and continue cooking. Next time you will add just a bit more water. If it's too wet, do the converse, but still continue cooking until all water is absorbed.

A nice addition is to add some peas or other veg to the top, when water is almost all absorbed. Cooking time about 1/2 hour. If you want to save time, the bring water and rice to the boil, then turn down to lowest heat. Perfecto! This is amount for two. For more, go figure.

Isn't Slow Food fun?

While rice is cooking, get chopping with veggies. No rules really, anything that's fresh for the season. Your kids can do this while your getting home from work. They can put the rice on too - become the rice experts. Snow peas are dear, but buying a handful is cheap enough. Cut carrots thin, as they take longer to cook. Always include onions and garlic. Okra is nice, if it's tender (yes you too can be one of the dudes who spends time selecting the okra that's soft and pliable). It's all part of Slow Food. Add broccoli and mushrooms. also tofu towards the end. You can use tofu 'sketo' (neat) or marinate it first. The nicest tofu is Black Swan. Use some virgin olive oil (only) in the pan, and cook at medium heat for up to 10 mins. Then add tomato, tamari and/or chilli/ginger. Use celery tops, coriander, parsley, basil, turmeric, see what works for you. Cover pan, turn heat right down let it stew for short while. Serve on top of rice with a squirt of lime or lemon, and some fresh cut Lebanese cucumber on the side. Voila!

Enjoy!

SORRY....at last

2008-02-13T17:43:00.008+11:00

Australia day saw SORRY blazoned across the sky. The word that Howard refused to say in his dismal 11 years as PM.

In the lead up to the election, Rudd promised that he would say sorry to the thousands of indigenous Australians who were torn away from their mothers, fathers and siblings - the so called 'stolen generation'. This practice continued in Australia until the early seventies (ie 1970's)!

True to his word Rudd delivered his speech today, to the cheering standing applause, and much weeping of indigenous Australians who never though this day would come. The healing of Australia is a long process, but this was a vital first step in being able to hold our head up high, and a strong signal that this time we would get it right.

Read this speech courtesy of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission):

February 12, 2008

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology motion has been tabled in Parliament:

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

a conversation with god

2008-01-26T18:57:00.000+11:00

It's not very often you meet someone who has had a conversation with god. Well, I have; twice.

The first time I was thirteen, and was quite chuffed that I was chosen to have a conversation with the big one. This really nice guy came and picked me up, and drove me to a place (not allowed to say where). God was really nice to me, said: "call me Amor". She was about forty something, dressed casually.

Is that Italian? I ventured.

It's just convenient, she replied. She told me she spoke every language on this planet, including the oldest - Koori. And a few that haven't come into being yet.

I was a bit too shy to ask many questions then; this time it was different. Another thing I can't disclose is how I was contacted.

This time I drove myself to an industrial area in Sydney, parked in a smelly loading dock. I was apprehensive.

This can't be right I thought, as I pressed the button. The door opened automatically, and I was just stunned. It was a wilderness inside, and smelt wonderful.

Hello sweetie!

It wasn't Amor. This person was totally androgynous. God shook my hand.

Follow me, Alexx.

I followed her down a short path into the wilderness, and we came to a clearing where there were two armchairs and a coffee able and a very plush Greek rug, of the sixties era.

Call me Gene, she said softly.

Oh I get it, Gene is a bisexual name I guess, like Alex.

This is a wonderful space. I love it.

Thankyou.

The cute guy came in (remember him) and brought us two long tall glasses of a drink. He had changed into a silk top and a sarong, barefoot.

Thanks Sean. This is a herb juice, And it's not from this planet. Gene smiled at my surprise. I took a sip.

It's certainly out of this world.

Gene burst into laughter. I made god laugh! Wow! I thought.

So you want to know why another meeting, and why you.

Yes. Gene had read my mind, not surprising, I thought.

You interested us - a background in Christian Science, and now a follower of Eckhart Tolle.

Us? Surely not the royal plural I thought.

We work in committees, and reach decisions by consensus.

OK, you are god, who are the others?

All part of the universal consciousness. We sometimes take on physical forms, for times like this for example.

We have five levels of operation. This is level five, where we interact directly with individuals, from Earth, and many other planets.

Oh? More advanced than us?

Yes. They don't have wars, or poverty, or greed... I could go on.

I understand. So I guess you need to spend more time with us?

Not really, we don't work in temporal or spacial constraints.

Oh.

The other levels?

Gene kicked off her Birkenstocks, and I noticed her pants were slightly flared. How cool I thought.

You don't need to know, except that on level one we take direct action. For instance like we did with Hillary & Tenzig.

And Darfur, Iraq?

Gene became serious.

We do have level five operates working, and level one in some instances, but the pervading consciousness makes it difficult for us to be effective. Religion is one of the major problems we face.

So the Bible?

A tissue of lies, from the virgin birth to the crucifixion. Miracles don't happen.

So Jesus?

Well he had a mission. Water into wine was allowed, but nothing else. He got restless and went to India (as you do). He got enlightenment through the Buddha, though he was pretty cluey to begin with. He was our son, but in no other way than what you or anyone else is. He ended up in Nepal. We have no idea who was crucified.

We became silent for a while.

So where is Amor?

Oh she wanted to see you, but she got called away on an urgent mission. Out of this world.

Gene smiled.

So much I wanted to know....

So death?

Earth is close to creating life, when they do they might understand the meaning of death. The body dies, but not the spirit. I am a testament to that.

But you are god.

So are you, sweetie. There is only one reality. Only one existence. Whether you know it or not, you will eventually have the same status as me.

We are all god.

Right.

We were silent for a long while.

Hitler?

Working on level three. Often when people die on planet earth, they undergo a spectacular epiphany.

Cool.

Suffering?

There are many causes for suffering. It is not beyond the ability of planet earth to overcome these difficulties.

So god won't help?

Individually we do, ( level one) but we generally don't claim or are given credit for it. Things like spontaneous remission.

So you do perform 'miracles'.

No. When you understand the reality of existence, you will not see these as miracles.

More food for thought. Still I wanted to know more.

Those not on committees, what do they do?

The possibilities are endless.

Some take on research programmes and travel the universe. Usually in spirit form.

No need for money?

Like they say you can't take it with you. We have no need for worldly things.

Did you live on Earth?

I'm still not clear on why you chose me.

Maybe just because we like you. A writer is always good value.

Thank you Gene, you have been most generous with your time. My trusty band of blog readers will find this interesting I'm sure.

Sean came in on cue, and helped me to my feet. Gene gave me a hug.

It's been a pleasure meeting an Earthling like you.

Sean walked me to my car.

Have you been to India?

Oh yeah, long time ago. Met the Buddha. He told me we are all Buddhas. Now I know we are all god. There really isn't anything else.

He gave me a gentle kiss.

I drove home, in heaven.

David Hicks's Statement

2008-01-25T19:34:00.000+11:00

THIS is the full text of David Hicks's statement upon his release from Adelaide's Yatala jail. The statement was read to media by his lawyer, David McLeod.

"Thank you for coming out on a Saturday and during the holiday period.

"I know you all hoped I might appear and answer some questions.

"I had hoped to be able to speak to the media but I am just not strong enough at the moment - it's as simple as that.

"I am sorry for that.

"As part of my conditions of release from Guantanamo Bay, I agreed not to speak to the media on a range of issues before March 30, 2008.

"It's my intention to honour this agreement as I don't want to do anything that might result in my return there.

"So for now, I will limit what I have to say - I will say more at a later time.

"I would ask the media and the public understand and respect this.

"I do however want to take this opportunity to say some overdue thank yous.

"First and foremost, I would like to recognise the huge debt of gratitude that I owe the Australian public for getting me home. I will not forget, or let you down.

"Next, I would like to thank my family and friends who have been so supportive of me. Words cannot adequately express the level of my feelings for them. I love them very much.

"Also my team of lawyers: Major Dan Mori, Josh Dratel, Michael Griffin, Steve Kenny and David McLeod, as well as their legal teams in Adelaide, Sydney, Washington and London. Much of their work was carried out pro-bono and they know I owe my freedom to their efforts.

"I also thank the legal profession within Australia, including the Law Council of Australia and the state Law Societies, and those abroad, who strove to uphold the ideal of a free trial for an Australian citizen.

"Many thanks go to the Fair Go For David campaigners and organisations such as Amnesty International, GetUp, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Dick Smith, church groups including the Catholic Church, and various anti-torture and human rights groups.

"The Red Cross played an important role by trying to improve conditions and improve conditions and the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their efforts.

"There are certain politicians I would also like to particularly mention and thank: Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Danna Vale, Sandra Kanck, Senator Bob Brown, Senator Kerry Nettle, Mark Parnell, Senator Linda Kirk, Nicola Roxon, Bob Debus, Rob Hull, Frances Bedford, Kris Hanna and many others who preferred to work behind the scenes.

"A huge thank you also to the members of the media who wrote about and increased public awareness of my detention and treatment over the years. Without you, the court of public opinion would not have been as informed or influential.

"There are many other groups, both large and small, and individuals involved in the campaign for my return to Australia, and to them I offer them my heartfelt thanks.

"This list is in no particular order and to anyone that I haven't mentioned, I am very sorry. I hope to thank all of you personally at a later date.

"Right now I am looking forward to some quiet time with my wonderful Dad, my family and friends.

"I ask that you respect my privacy as I will need time to readjust to society and to obtain medical care for the consequences of five and a half years at Guantanamo Bay.

"I have been told that my readjustment will be a slow process and should involve a gentle transition away from the media spotlight.

"Thank you for respecting my privacy and allowing me some breathing space to get on with my life."

Love Is....

2008-01-25T19:29:00.000+11:00

Love is searching centennial park for a wedding site

Love is watching a full moon rise over Clovelly Beach

Love is a fitting at Thredz, and a lunch at Mash

Love is picking you up outside Permanence

Love is coffee at the Lesbian cafe in Clovelly

Love is lying in bed listening to the waves crash

Love is a honeymoon to Brisy and back

Love is your Paulaomelette

Love is you loving me loving you loving me

Love is Now

Mamdouh Habib and the old Cronies

2008-01-25T17:53:00.000+11:00

Moving the Cronies Along

By Warren Reed

Was Mamdouh Habib rendered to Egypt out of spite because he refused to cooperate with ASIO?

The Rudd Government must review Australia’s intelligence agencies as a matter of priority, writes former ASIS officer Warren Reed.

Mamdouh Habib is not everybody's cup of tea.If you work in intelligence he's the sort of person who can drive you potty, popping up in the wrong place at the wrong time and arousing suspicions. But he is an Australian citizen and deserves the full protection that entails. And, as ever, no one's guilt should be presumed. If it is, and mistakes are made, then they need to be accounted for. If they're not, and the system rolls on uncleansed, its next victim might be you .

It is in this context that we should be concerned about the disturbing claims that Habib has long made, let alone about the evidence recently given in the defamation case he is currently fighting against News Limited columnist Piers Akerman.His assertion is that ASIO agents tried twice to recruit him to help find a former Australian soldier who had allegedly joined al-Qaeda in the months before the September 11 attacks in 2001. An infantryman who had served in East Timor, the soldier had been discharged on psychological grounds.

Habib claims the first approach was made by an agent (whether or not actually from ASIO is yet to be revealed) when Habib stopped over in the United Arab Emirates on his way to Pakistan and Afghanistan.It must be said that there was nothing wrong with Australian intelligence attempting to recruit Habib for this purpose. Far from it, in fact that's their job. The immediate reaction of most Australians would be to help where they could.For whatever reason Habib refused, possibly because of pressure put on him to cooperate. Later, in Pakistan, Habib claims he was waylaid by ASIO again, with the support of local officials. He again refused to cooperate. It seems that he managed to photograph the Australian officer involved and after his release wanted to take that evidence to the Al Jazeera TV network's representative in Kabul. He travelled to the Afghan capital with a Saudi contact in Pakistan and duly met with Al Jazeera. His Saudi friend then put him up in a guesthouse in Kabul where he made the acquaintance of David Hicks and Jack Thomas.

Before long, he claims he had to leave because he was suspected of being a spy. He left Afghanistan and was arrested on a bus while travelling from Quetta to Lahore in Pakistan.It was from there that he was 'rendered' to Egypt, where there is little doubt that he was tortured over an extended period at an interrogation centre in Cairo. It is now clear that the Australian authorities knew where he was and what was happening to him.Habib claims that his removal to Egypt was at the behest of ASIO. This is a serious charge and one that goes to the essence of citizenship in our democratic State, especially to the central precept that no one is above the law, and certainly not below it. However Habib's actions may or may not have contributed to his predicament, he should never have been rendered to Egypt.

We need to know exactly what happened and why and who should take responsibility. It's not simply a matter of blame. We must stop it happening again.Twenty-two years ago, as Station Commander for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in Cairo - a deep cover intelligence operation within the Australian Embassy - my cover and that of my assistant were wilfully blown by senior Department of Foreign Affairs officials. To this day they have conveniently escaped both investigation and prosecution. For a while my colleague and I feared we might land in the same interrogation centre that Habib ended up in.

Allied intelligence operatives also under cover in Egypt had warned us that if caught, we would be suspected of working for the CIA, if not also for Mossad, and could be tortured without hesitation.Ironically, it is not difficult for us to identify with Habib's plight. Even now, I recall the caution of a senior allied operative in Cairo that the master torturers at the centre were all Iraqis, the most exquisite practitioners of those ancient Middle Eastern arts. It doesn't help you sleep at night.Was Mamdouh Habib rendered to Egypt out of spite because he refused to cooperate? The question itself is horrendous, but it has to be answered.

If we have any care for the health and viability of our democracy we should demand no less.Recent bungles by some of our key agencies have sullied the reputation of Australia's intelligence community. The performance of management has done little to allay the fear of many Australians that tight controls and systems of accountability are not in place. What people see in public are agency chiefs unable to take it on the chin and admit mistakes. As a result, public trust is diminished.But that's only half of the story. The other is the betrayal of the trust that the overwhelming majority of men and women who staff the agencies and who suffer in silence, need to have in their management. It's becoming increasingly difficult for them to function effectively without it.

From New Matilda article by Warren Reed

Honeymoon 2007 style

2007-12-06T17:23:00.000+11:00

We did a lot of forward planning for our honeymoon. We needed a car: a quality car, an economical car, a safe car, a four-door hatchback car. After a bit of research, we came up with the obvious best choice - VW Polo TDI. (turbo diesel injection). We decided, for our honeymoon, to point it North, and give it his head (it was a male car at this time)

Here is a brief snapshot from our honeymoon to the north-eastern part of New South Wales - lifted from a letter Paula sent to an overseas friend (with her permission) and edited and embellished by me,
We headed towards the Rainbow region (our old stomping ground) about half way up the east coast and getting into the warmer sub-tropical part of Oz. They grow sugar cane and bananas and coffee up there!

It's called the Rainbow Region because a lot of hippies moved up there in the early seventies after the seminal Aquarius Folk Festival at Nimbin Village in 1973. A thriving series of alternative communities sprang up and survive to this day. I was there altho' Paula didn't go. I actually bought into one of the communes that was set up there in the lush valley, next to the town of Nimbin. It the first (and now the biggest) commune called Co-ordination Co-operative. The deal was, to become a member, you paid $200, which gave you the right to claim enough land to set up a dwelling, and grow as much food as you wanted to. It was an offer too good to refuse.

Paula spent some time in the nearby village of Mullumbimby - another alternative community base - during her driftings and roamings in the late seventies ( She spent the greater part of the seventies way down south on the island state of Tasmania and in South Australia).

Paula and I were friends for a time in the seventies but a relationship never developed as such (she wasn't Paula then). We never journeyed together up to the Rainbow Region then, so for our honeymoon we decided to make up for that and take the road trip we never had.

If we'd have gone in the seventies we'd have done it in a trusty old Beetle (one of six I owned up to the eighties) or Kombi (I owned 3 of those) or hitched and lived out of a pup-tent. Middle-age has caught up in the subsequent 30 years and we opted for our new little Vee Dub Polo diesel which with its fold down back and economical mileage was perfect for such a trip. We also stayed in motels. We didn't book and tended to take the lower end of the market but it was great to have a decent bed and shower, not to mention TV and a cuppa at the end of a long day's driving! We both would have viewed that as totally decadent and beyond the pale once!

Despite it being the school holidays we never had any problems getting a room. We'd just work out a ballpark figure of where we'd get to by about 5pm and pick a suitable destination around that point as our overnight stay. We'd researched some possible motels on the web before we left but apart from that would just let serendipity find us a home for the night.

Each day we'd stock up on good wholegrain bread, fresh tomatoes, tahini, bananas and dried fruit plus thermos for tea and coffee and cold water and fresh milk in our little esky. We had a couple of flexible cooler "bricks" which we'd freeze each night in our motel fridge. We made good use of all the roadside rest stops they have these days to stretch our legs and have a picnic lunch and cuppa (and use the toilet!). Dinner each night - if we were tired was more of the same - but most times we'd go out to dinner at a local low priced (usually) restaurant or cafe - Thai, Indian, organic, pizza.
These days each town or regional centre also has an excellent Information Centre which was a great place to find out local information plus get maps and brochures, use the toilet, soak up some air-conditioned cool and browse/buy arts and crafts. Oh! how resources have improved since the seventies! None of that back then! You had to pee behind a tree and ask for directions at the "cop shop" (police station) - altho' you can imagine how popular hippies were with them!

We saw such beautiful sights, such beautiful country - of all types - mountains, hills, ancient standing stones and rocks, lush sub-tropical tree-arched winding country roads heady with green ripe smells; rainbow flags and totems everywhere, ancient white-haired hippie veterans and a bright new self-possessed alternative generation, macadamia and pecan and coffee plantations, indigenous centres, alternative markets (home-made or home-grown only!), sleepy small wooden-walled, tin-roofed villages, bustling regional cities (with 10 minute peak hours), huge exotic Hindu temples (many Sikhs own and work the banana plantations); broad sweeping northern rivers plied with fishing fleets and lined with Jacaranda trees in brilliant mauve bloom. Oh! And wide, wide skies above a wide, wide land!

By chance (? nah!) along the way in two different towns I met up with two guys I knew from my organic bakery days twenty years ago!
One guy had followed my lead in Sydney and opened up an organic (sour dough) bakery and cafe in Lismore. His Goanna bread is available in Sydney. Lismore was like home for us - a really nice city.

We got as far as Brisbane, capital of Queensland (next state up) where Paula does business trips sometimes. We stopped off where she used to live in Brisbane for a while at one time in the late seventies and then met a girlfriend from work for lunch up on Mount Coot-tha which has spectacular views of the flat river-plain city of Brisbane. (unfortunately the food was the worst we had on our whole trip). We even managed to squeeze in a river-cat ride up the Brisbane River through the city and waterside suburbs in our one day and two nights sojourn there before heading back to the Rainbow region.
We got there in time for the fabled markets at the Shannon. I always used to hear about them, but never went in my earlier hippy incarnation. Today they draw in some 10,000 people from all over the Rainbow region (held once a month). It was a highlight of our trip.

All up we were away for 12 wonderful tiring but soul-restoring days.
see many more pics in flikr - use link on left!

WE WON

2007-12-06T17:16:00.000+11:00

Well we did it finally, all we needed was a creditable leader, and a dopey Govt. leader. If Turnbull was made leader early enough (he will become leader within a year) then Libs would have still lost, but not with such a crushing margin.

Love and Marriage....tying the knot.

2007-11-20T13:16:00.000+11:00

Did you know that tying the knot refers to a pagan tradition in the marriage ceremony, as this pic displays.

We had a pagan wedding on 22nd September 2007. It was the bestest wedding ever, thanks largely to Paula's organisational skills.
Here are some of the nuts and bolts of the wedding.

Centennial Park in Sydney is one of our favourite haunts.It was a natural that we would choose this gothic,fecund, romantic park, with its wild marshlands,large lakes teaming with wild life, and even a lily pond framed by ancient paper bark trees, which we chose for our setting. The park charged $200.

We already knew of a pagan marriage celebrant (Marybeth Zang), and there was never any doubt that she would be perfect for us. We went to her place, and the wheels began rolling. We had to do all the legal stuff, birth certificates etc, then came the fun part. We chose the readings (we decided on three); the vows, and were briefed on the ceremony. Marybeth was our kind of person. We were starting to get excited.
We decided on having it on the spring equinox, but on that Sunday the park was being used for another event, so we moved it to the Saturday. The reception would be held at our small unit and we had doubts that we could fit everyone so we got my brother to clean up the yard, which was no small job. It turned out that Sydney weather decided to impose itself, not only by threatening rain (we called its bluff) but also by turning on a very cold day (16%).

At her work place in Burwood one day, Paula ventured into a small Greek cafe. The food was sensational, and they also did catering so we got their menu and worked out an order. Another part of the puzzle fell into place.
We decided to print our own invitations, but hit a snag when it came to 'Dress'. Did we expect the men to wear dresses too? No apparently it's just etiquette to specify what type of dress to wear.

"No way - this is a wedding. To tell them what to wear is demeaning them, and an insult. I say we leave it out all together".

In the end we reached a compromise: I would allow 'dress' to be 'neat and casual', as long as it was in inverted commas. No-one wore swimmers and thongs, but I wouldn't have minded if they did.
Paula bought some paper at Dymocks, and I reckon we turned out a pretty classy invite, with even a reply insert.

We had invaluable helpers on the wedding day. My bro picked up the food from Burwood, a forward party helped Marybeth set up the wedding circle, and we had some helpers to get us dressed (and help me with my tie... the things we do for love).
For some inextricable reason Paula's Mum and sister decided not to come to the wedding. It was their loss. We missed them.

What's it like being married?
Marriage is a state of mind; we like it, it suits us.

We know it's not for everyone, but denying same sex couples the right to marry is an abuse of civil liberties.

My next blog is about our wild honeymoon.

SIEV X REMEMBERED

2007-10-26T12:06:00.000+10:00

SIEV X: Sixth Anniversary of a Tragedy
By: Tony Kevin
Friday 19 October 2007

Six years ago today, at the height of John Howard’s successful 2001 re-election campaign, an overloaded unseaworthy asylum-seeker boat which I later named SIEV X (‘suspected illegal entry vessel, unknown’) sank en route from Indonesia to Christmas Island, drowning 353 people mostly women and children. There were just 45 survivors.

Few people remember much about this tragedy today, yet it continues to lurk at the periphery of Australian political consciousness. As well it should.

It is an interesting irony that, as John Howard launches his last election battle, a National SIEV X Memorial now stands in Canberra’s Weston Park — a dignified array of 353 hand-painted timber poles, each commemorating a victim of the SIEV X sinking. Where names are known, through independent research drawing on journalists’ accounts and talking to survivors and families, they are inscribed on the poles. Where names are not publicly known (the Australian Federal Police [AFP] admit they have lists of most of the names, but are not prepared to make these names public for reasons hard to understand), the poles are left unnamed.

Each pole was donated, painted and transported to Canberra by an Australian church or school-based community organisation. Each pole represents compassion, love and acceptance of the stranger — Australian values that were in little evidence in Australia during the 2001 election campaign, which plumbed a low point of xenophobia as the two Party leaders competed to see who could be tougher on ‘border security.’

Fortunately, more compassionate values are coming back into view now, as seen in this wonderful people's memorial.

Mourning the victims of the SIEV-X
When the news of the SIEV X sinking became public, three days after it sank, John Howard said that the boat sank in Indonesian waters, and that it was not Australia’s responsibility. After searching Senate Committee investigations in 2002-2003, spearheaded by Labor Senator John Faulkner, both claims were subsequently found to be untrue or, at best, seriously misleading.

First, there is strong corroborating evidence from a number of sources that the boat sank in international waters, on the high seas about 50-60 nautical miles south of Indonesia’s Sunda Strait. The sinking location can be pinpointed quite precisely from Indonesian fishing boat rescue co-ordinates and other data. Yet even now, the Australian Government continues to protect a lie, claiming that the sinking location is unknown.

The international waters where SIEV X sank were, at the time, being intensively monitored and patrolled by Australia, under the unified Australian Defence Force operation known as ‘Operation Relex.’ Strangely, all of Operation Relex’s technical means — on high alert at the time — apparently failed to detect this slowly moving, overloaded, wooden vessel as it sailed for six hours though the declared Operation Relex surveillance zone. And in the 19 hours that survivors were in the water, as RAAF aircraft flew routine patrols overhead, no signs of a maritime disaster were apparently detected.

SIEV X had been sailing for 33 hours from its embarkation point, a bay at the northern end of Sunda Strait, when it sank. How can it be that Australian agencies had not detected and tracked it? Yet that is what the Senate was told in 2002.

Howard’s second claim, that the sinking was in no way Australia’s responsibility is also debatable. But it is a debate that cannot be settled until Australian secret border security operational files are opened, and key witnesses questioned in a contestable independent judicial context. As things stand, there is a good deal of ‘smoking gun’ circumstantial evidence of some Australian foreknowledge of the SIEV X and its organiser, the notorious Egyptian people smuggler Abu Quassey. But there is no conclusive proof.

It was found by the Senate in 2002 that the AFP were conducting overt and covert people smuggling disruption operations in Indonesia in 2000-2001, that involved building relations with Indonesian police teams and penetrating the people smuggling industry using paid agents or informants. Labor Senators’ questions as to whether these operations might have got out of control were never answered by the AFP.

It was admitted by official witnesses that Abu Quassey and the boat we now know as SIEV X were being monitored, well before the fatal voyage began.

An impartial reading of the Senate testimony — recounted in summary in my 2004 book, A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X — would conclude that there are many unanswered questions about this tragedy.

There are mysterious multisource survivor accounts of grey military-type ships that came in the early evening to the disaster scene, but did not pick up survivors; and of noisy propellor aircraft that flew overhead but did not drop life rafts. From what country did these reported ships and aircraft come, if they are not figments of survivor imaginations? Secret Australian border security operational files may one day give us answers to such questions, or the event may vanish in the fog of historical amnesia.

Meanwhile, let us spare a thought today for the bereaved families of the 353 victims who drowned on 19 October 2001.

Walking through the intensely moving memorial poles at Weston Park, one gets a sense both of the huge scale of this tragedy, and of the grace, decency and vision of so many ordinary Australians who took time out of their lives to paint these poles and bring them to Canberra, to be planted here in Australian soil in loving memory.

Lest we forget.
Submit this article to the Independent News Aggregation Site - Kwoff.com.au

About the Author

Tony Kevin, author of A Certain Maritime Incident: the Sinking of SIEV X (Scribe 2004), is a Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, and is a former Australian career diplomat (1968-98).

(Article from New Matilda)

GETUP help make a difference

2007-09-29T12:39:00.004+10:00

view the movie, and think about donating.
this can and will make a difference for our elections.
Here us the message from Getup:

Dear friends,

We are simply gobsmacked here at the GetUp offices - nothing could have prepared us for the amazing response we've had to our climate spoof ad. Over $100,000 raised in less than one day, at such a rate that the server used to process your donations struggled to even cope with the sheer volume! But it's not too late to be part of this.

Our expert media buyers have bought us slots in some key state capitals, but with your help we could also broadcast direct into the heart of rural and regional Australia - where this election will be fought and won.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer

If you get us to $200,000 by Saturday, we will buy TV slots in dozens of vital regional centres (below), exposing up to a million more Australians to our message. On top of this, we promise to build the capacity of the GetUp team to campaign on climate change, targeting all political parties, through the election and beyond. Watch the ad and donate now:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer

A donation of $20, $50 or $100 can help this vital climate message reach so many more Australians. We've booked new slots in Newcastle, Tamworth, the Gold Coast, Lismore, Taree, Coffs Harbour, Canberra, Wollongong, Albury, Shepparton, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, the Sunshine Coast, Rockhampton, Toowomba, Cairns, Bundaberg, Townsville, Mackay, Darwin, Launceston and Hobart. And if we hit $200,000 we'll buy those spots!

Detention: Hell at Villawood

2007-08-18T15:22:00.000+10:00

Detention: Hell at Villawood

By: Dave Cauldwell
Wednesday 8 August 2007

We are sitting in a room with pale walls, and bars on the windows.

Outside, spotlights illuminate possible escape routes and rain rattles

against a steel roof. The hum of a vending machine is drowned out by

a child kicking a soccer ball against a wooden door in the next room.

Ali Humayun sits with his boyfriend, Julio Lorenzo. Lorenzo strokes

Humayun’s neck occasionally, but quickly moves his hand if anyone

else enters the room. The couple don’t want anyone to see them

touching.

For the past two years, Humayun has battled depression and been

‘psychologically tormented’ by his fellow detainees at Villawood

Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) for being gay. ‘People shout

abuse at me when I’m on the Internet, walking in the courtyard or

eating my evening meal,’ says Humayun. ‘It’s devastating.’

Villawood Detention Centre. Photo by the author

The 26-year-old recently found the courage to tell his family back in Pakistan that he’s homosexual, but his father disowned him and his brother has sworn to kill Humayun ‘in the name of family honour’ should he return home.

Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has just informed Humayun that his application for asylum has been rejected, and he will soon be deported.

Humayun came to Australia in 2000 on a student visa. After completing a diploma in Information Technology in 2001, he earned a place at Canberra University. But he slipped into depression and subsequently failed a semester. Although the university cannot comment on individual cases, they are ‘required by law to advise DIAC of international students’ academic progress.’ And that is exactly what the international student advisor did. Even though Humayun says he explained his situation to the faculty

— and they agreed to give him a second

chance — he was called in for a meeting with

DIAC, his student

visa was cancelled and he was put on a

bridging visa. To support himself, Humayun

took a cleaning job, but by working he flouted

a condition of his visa and was taken into custody at

Villawood, 27 kilometres southwest of Sydney.

When Humayun first arrived at Villawood he was placed in the

medium security Stage Two area. But then ‘A staff member wrote

an anonymous letter claiming I was planning to escape,’ he

explains. ‘I had no intention of escaping.’

Humayun was transferred to the maximum security Stage One.

It was there he met Lorenzo, who has now been released from

Villawood after two years in detention.

Although he looks drained and his eyes are glazed, this affable

man’s words are still charged with emotion.

For the past few weeks, Humayun has been frantically

organising an appeal against DIAC’s decision. ‘Detention centre

staff have put hurdles in the way,’ he says. ‘Firstly, they told me

the fax machine was broken so I couldn’t send my paperwork

through. When I asked them if I could use the fax in Stage Two

they refused. Then they told me all the JPs had gone home for

the day when it was still well within office hours. I had to get

my lawyer involved.’

During that time, Humayun feared ‘the extraction squad’

were coming to remove him from his cell. ‘Guys in padded

body armour can burst into your room at any time,’ he says:

If they come it means you’re being deported. Sometimes

they use tranquilisers — but only on the people they know

will give them trouble. There’s no notice. It happens so

quickly. I was speaking to a friend late one evening and

when I woke up in the morning he was gone.

The Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) believes that

Humayan has fabricated his homosexual tendencies

in order to be considered a refugee, and has suggested

that he relocate in Pakistan, away from his brother.

‘I consider that [Humayun’s] relationship is simply

the product of a situation where only partners of

the same sex are available,’ wrote Giles Short, a

member of the RRT and the decision maker in

Humayun’s case.

‘I’ve offered to have sexual intercourse with

Julio in court,’ says Humayun in response,

his face deadly serious. ‘I don’t know how

else I’m supposed to prove it. Could you

prove that you’re heterosexual, for example?’

Humayun is not the first person to be asked

to prove his sexual orientation to the RRT.

An Iranian man’s case was once rejected because

he was not aware of Oscar Wilde, Greco-Roman

wrestling or Madonna. ‘In Iran, where there is

death for some people who are homosexuals,

these people are not in the forefront of the mind,’

Justice Kirby argued for the defence. ‘Survival is.’

It is no wonder that Humayun is reluctant to return

home. ‘A couple in Pakistan has just been given

three years’ jail and fined $200 for being in a

same-sex relationship,’ writes Rachel Evans,

from Community Action Against Homophobia

(CAAH). She has been handing out petitions and

was also involved in a candlelight vigil in Sydney’s

Taylor Square marking International Day Against

Homophobia on 17 May which called for Humayun’s

release.

Life inside Villawood ‘has no structure and the

guards don’t tell us anything,’ says Humayun

. There are psychologists in Villawood but ‘the last

two stayed for four or five months each before leaving.

It’s frustrating because it means that, just as I’m

getting somewhere with one of them, they leave,

and then somebody new has to get to know my case

all over again. It feels like I’m back to square one.’

Humayun dwells in the company of former

prisoners and drug addicts, and has developed

a heroin habit since being detained in Villawood.

‘You can get anything you want in here,’ he says.

‘Ice, heroin, weed. One guy swapped his sound

system for a fix.’

The ABC recently reported that Humayun is suing

both DIAC and management at Villawood IDC for

breaching their duty of care by placing him in a

room with a known heroin addict.

Similar to prison, there is a hierarchy inside the

Detention Centre that is enforced through

intimidation. There have been beatings resulting

in hospitalisation. ‘If you really piss someone

off then sometimes they just rush into your

room and bash you,’ says Humayun. ‘I spend

most of my time in my [single] bedroom. If

it wasn’t for you coming here today then that’s

where I’d be now.’

There is also the fear of arbitrary searches.

‘Last week there was a shutdown,’ explains

Humayun:

They stormed into the dorm and demanded

we all went outside. Then they locked themselves

in there; they’ve never done that before. They

filmed the search with a camcorder and found

a broken broomstick in my room. When they

asked me what it was for I panicked and said

it was for self-defence. I was naïve because I’ve

never been in a fight here … The guards never

told us why they carried out the search.

Humayun is afraid the broomstick incident

will give Villawood staff cause to cancel this

month’s home visit. Once a month detainees are

allowed to be escorted to an address of their

choice for four hours. Humayun visited Lorenzo’s

family home for the first time at the end of May.

‘They don’t take their eyes off you,’ he says.

Although the scrutiny is constant Humayun

believes ‘these trips go a long way in terms of a

detainee’s mental health.’ Despite the fact he

cannot be intimate with Lorenzo, Humayun is

grateful for everything he can get.

‘You don’t appreciate what you have until you

come to a place like this,’ he says.

‘It’s funny how the DIAC’s slogan is

People Our Business,’ says Humayun. ‘Take that

how you will.’

(reprinted from NEW MATILDA)

About the Author

Dave Cauldwell is a 29-year-old Melbourne-based freelance writer who is interested in reporting on social issues and giving a voice to minority groups.

Concerns over Haneef Affair

2007-07-19T00:22:00.000+10:00

Haneef documents revealed full police interview transcript available at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22093906-601,00.html

from SMH

July 17, 2007 - 5:54PM
Mohamed Haneef.

Lawyers for Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef have publicly released documents served on the terror suspect outlining Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews's decision to revoke his work visa.

Haneef is charged with "recklessly" supporting a terrorist organisation, with the Australian Federal Police alleging he supported foiled plans to detonate truck bombs in Britain.

A Brisbane magistrate yesterday granted Haneef bail, but hours later Mr Andrews revoked his visa and said Haneef would be held in immigration detention until the charge was heard.

The 52-page document includes details of Haneef's relationship with British terrorism suspects and relatives Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed.

However, the document also indicates significant pieces of information have been withheld from Haneef's legal team for security reasons.

The information made publicly available alleges Haneef kept in regular contact with Sabeel Ahmed and communicated with him as recently as June 26, three days before unexploded car bombs were found outside London nightclubs.

It also reveals Haneef told investigators that Kafeel Ahmed, the alleged driver of the flaming jeep that crashed into Glasgow Airport, lent him £300 to sit medical exams in 2004.

The documents also indicated that refusing Haneef's visa might serve to deter others from committing similar offences.

A spokesman for Haneef's lawyer Peter Russo said he decided to release the information to keep the public informed.

Meanwhile Haneef's lawyers said they would launch an appeal tomorrow against Mr Andrews' decision to revoke his work visa.

The Gold Coast-based doctor's visa was cancelled yesterday within hours of him being granted bail by a Brisbane magistrate on charges of supporting a terrorist organisation, meaning he will remain in immigration detention pending the hearing of his case.

Government's Haneef treatment "deplorable" - lawyers

A peak legal body representing 1500 lawyers across Australia says the Federal Government's treatment of terror suspect Mohamed Haneef is "deplorable".

Australian Lawyers Alliance president Ian Brown said in Brisbane today Australia would be outraged if one of their citizens was treated the same way as Haneef overseas.

"The minister's decision is a grave departure from the standards of justice you would expect to see in any civilised society and we are appalled that this is happening in Australia," Mr Brown said.

"The Australian Lawyers Alliance believes the decision by the Howard government to cancel Dr Haneef's visa is little more than reactive and political.

"The ALA calls on the Government and the Opposition to immediately review their position on Dr Haneef and to let his matter be determined by law."

ALA national director and Perth barrister, Tom Percy, QC, said when the Government was able to usurp the decision of a magistrate, the rule of law no longer applied.

"A judicial officer has heard the case in regards to Dr Haneef and has granted him nominal bail," said Mr Percy.

"The magistrate heard both sides of the case and the minister should not circumvent that.

"The separation of powers must apply. If there was any evidence presented to the court that this man was a significant risk at any level he would never have been granted bail.

"If the prosecution disagreed with the decision to grant Dr Haneef bail, they could appeal that decision in the Supreme Court but we have seen no evidence of that taking place.

"Instead, the Federal Government has taken away this man's right to a fair hearing."

A GRAB FOR POWER

2007-06-22T18:35:00.000+10:00

Howard cares about Australians' children? Since when? What he was after, initially was just a grab for power, power for powers sake. His secondary scheme, was to create a cunning election ploy. Taking the chance that Labor would oppose his hairbrained scheme, he would crow about it right up to the next election. But Rudd was ready for him, being himself a cunning young fox. Putting pragmatism before principle, he gave Howard bipartisan approval of his divisive plan. Thwarting Howard's well laid plans. Anyway the Liberals don't have a monopoly on wanting power. If Rudd gets the plum job, a bit of extra power wouldn't go astray.
We already have seen a disappointing aspect of Rudd, his greedy acceptance of an unjustified wage increase of 6.7%. This was a slap in the face for his 'battlers'. One they won't forget, and could well cost him the election.

So what about the Aboriginal children, who are the meat in the sandwich? It seems Howard has bitten off a lot more than he can chew. He has read a report on child abuse, but what he doesn't remember is 1984.
Naturally the reens oppose this plan, and already many see cracks in the ill thought out election ploy.
From today's Herald:

More suicides, more violence predicted under abuse plan

Suicide and violence will rise in Aboriginal communities under the new Government regime, an expert has warned

Suicide and violence will rise in Aboriginal communities under the new Government regime, an expert has warned (AFP: Anoek de Groot)

The author of three reports on child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities says the Government's new plan to tackle the problem will lead to increased violence and suicide.

Professor Judy Atkinson from Southern Cross University says she was stunned to hear of plans to freeze welfare payments and ban pornography and alcohol from Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

She says the Government has not thought through the consequences of its strategy to only target Indigenous communities.

"Some of the things that I know will happen in response to this- we will have an increase of violence, we will have an increase of suicide and suicide attempts," she said.

"There will be greater feelings of despair and we can't do it ourselves in our communities."

Under the plan, the Government will take over about 60 Indigenous communities and implement alcohol bans, free compulsory medical assessments for all NT Indigenous children under 16, a ban on x-rated pornography, and a boost to police numbers.

Racist

John Howard has described the situation as a "national emergency" but his plans have been greeted with anger and widespread scepticism today.

They have been condemned as "racist" by ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope.

"This is racist and I don't believe that you can hope for long term sustainable change by engaging in behaviour that impinges human rights, that's racist," he said.

"Give me an example of any racist action anywhere in the world that has ever successfully led to change."

Jeff McMullen from the children's health charity Fountain for Youth says there has been an emergency in the Aboriginal communities his organisation works in for the past 20 years.

But he has also questioned the Federal Government's intervention.

"If we go about this like shock troopers then I can tell you ... [that] Aboriginal people will be so fearful about this this morning," he said.

"If we frighten and panic people it will not suceed."

Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin is worried the Prime Minister's focus on the issue is a pre-election stunt.

Ms Martin has warned that many of the emergency measures will need to be in place for a generation.

"We have to make sure that they are long term and workable solutions," she said.

"My fear today [is] that this might be just an initiative before an election. I'm asking the Prime Minister to make sure that doesn't happen because this is too serious a problem to treat in such a way."

And the Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commissioner says the measures break anti-discrimination laws.

Tony Fitzgerald says the measures are quite simply discriminatory.

"The restrictions [are being] imposed on Territorians because of their race," he said.

"They're being treated less favourably. The interesting thing under the act and under the Federal act is that the motive for doing discriminatory things is irrelevant.

"So what the acts say are, even if the Feds are sincere about Indigenous welfare, the fact that they are unfair makes it discriminatory.

"Would the Government consider compulsory medical tests for non-indigenous kids who are allegedly victims of child abuse?

"I mean it happens in non-Indigenous Australia too. Are they doing that for non-Indigenous kids?"

QUEER as FUCK

2007-05-12T16:39:00.000+10:00

I was going to talk about how T-shirts with this slogan were all the rage in the seventies. A quick perusal of Google shows they are still around, available on the net. Of course I never wore such a t-shirt, although the idea appealed to me. Just like I never camped on Premier Neville Wran's front yard at his Vaucluse home, though the idea of that also had appeal.
The t-shirt was night time 'dress-up' accessory. Wearing it in the daytime you risked the ire of our upstanding police force. And of course it was upstanding in the seventies, wasn't it?
Well now we are on the other end of our youngster's plea: "Don't try and dig what we all say." Well we said it first, not only that, we put it into legislation. It's true - gay lawyers are the best lawyers around. Don Dunston raised eyebrows when he entered Parliament in red short shorts. He didn't need the t-shirt. Nor does Bob Brown. He likes talking about his sexuality, to anyone willing to listen. And we know he has god on his side.

We haven't yet fffaded away, but it's of some dismay, that after all those years of nurturing and reclaiming our queerness, we have found the 'gay' word has been misappropriated by todays youth, to mean inadequate, or sub-standard. What message does that give about today's gay society, and the 15% of children who are realising that they are gay? Or should I say 'queer'?
I guess we have no right to change language use. We have to accept change. 'Our sons and our daughters are beyond our command.' Yeah, right. How truly sick.

Browsing through Google also brought up sites on Queer as Folk. This was a gay series that finally got it right, though the name change from fuck to folk was inevitable. I don't know if there will be a follow up series, but somehow I don't think it would work. The first series was complete, it tackled a lot of key issues, and stopped just short of showing real sex. Our TV is not ready for that yet, but it will happen eventually. Maybe when watching TV will be thought of as 'cute'.
Whenever it happens, I hope they don't include gay porn. Nothing is more boring than most gay porn. Some people dismissed Shortbus as a porn movie. It was anything but that, because it was real. This a major difference from homoerotic flicks, like those of Fassbinder, which rely on our imagination. Shortbus left nothing for our imagination. It was made for a gay community, who've been there, done that. Straight people maybe didn't get it, it was too far from their reality. Well...it wasn't really made for non-queer people
I thought it was truly sick. (Hey, don't you just dig this cool lingo).

More on Shortbus, here's how David reviewed it on At the Movies (ABC TV)

DAVID: Well, I was quite taken aback by this film.

I mean, I liked HEDWIG and the ANGRY INCH quite a lot, but not as much as this. This was, above all so much fun, this film.

It is, as you say, sexually quite explicit, but, at the same time, the characters in it, I mean, they go through a lot of ups and downs in their personal relationships obviously, and they are looking, searching for things. But the general feeling is of such a lack of inhibition.

MARGARET: And exuberance.

DAVID: And exuberance. Yes.

MARGARET: Yes, there is.

DAVID: Yes, and it's really lovely. I was interested to discover the way that it was - there was workshops in the Mike Lee tradition and so on in the way the casting - people were only cast together if they really sort of liked one another.

MARGARET: Didn't you find it, sort of like, overworked the Sofia character trying to find an orgasm?

DAVID: No, I thought she was an interesting character, actually.

MARGARET: I thought she was good, too, but I just sort of felt at a certain stage, "Enough, already".

DAVID: Maybe but I found it pretty enjoyable. But, certainly, it's confronting at times.

MARGARET: He says that there are seven orgasms, real orgasms, and one fake one, and you've got to spot which is which.

David gave it 4 stars.

numero 60 communal blog

2007-04-14T15:16:00.000+10:00

These are some comments added by friends at my 60th birthday party.

I am in an old house, a house rich and beautiful and tumbledown with memories, heavy with the history of families and souls. One of those souls is celebrating his birthday, an old-young, frail-resilient, surprising 60 he is. Like the great old olive tree in the back garden he is still generously fruiting, like the marble stairs at the front he is timelessly beautiful, greying and overrun. His step is halting, his traitorous body unobedient, but his lover, a tall slender beauty, can still raise his head and light his eyes. Who knows how long any of us has in this mad world? I wonder will I see 60? Will Alexx see his "allotted" three score and ten? How many of us will? How much future is there left anyway? Enough, at least, for more of these sweet, slow autumn afternoons, full of friends, food, wine, wit and wandering talk. Live on, lovers of life. Jaqi.

Here's to you Alex, a marvel and wonderful person together with your beloved and beautiful Paula. Have the very best of birthdays and here's to many, many more. Lots of love and wishes. Phil

Hippy Bathday - an oldie but a goodie, like you toots! I've said it before and I'll say it again, old hippies get better with sage, and darling they don't come more sage than you. May the road rise up to meet your feet. Love Peace and Blessings, Angie.

You are amazing, Alex. Sixty more for you. xxx Abelló xxx

o ... 6... Just a young un eh! Enjoy the 6es and forget the 0s
So much love to u in this moment of NOW .. may U BE !!!
Bev & Jen

We love you Alex, and wish you a 61st year full of adventure, XXX Sue & Annie

to my dear friend Alex, the happiest of birthdays, may you and Paula share many more. You are indeed the most charming, kind, intelligent, polite, sociable, engaged, engaging, fun, happy,
intellectual, erudite, sparkling, soulful, challenging, magnificent, gorgeously loving and lovable slightly unusual and enchanting friends a mere mortal could ever wish for.
***** Harry S.

Dearest Alexx, I wish you the happiest of birthdays, I must say I was very surprised (as you told me, you were too!) when I opened the invitation to your party and "60" was flashing away as a colourful header. It took me a moment to realise 'Alexx must be turning 60'. You carry your youth beautifully. I am so pleased to see you happy and in love with life and your wonderful partner. I wish you many many more years of love and fun. Thank you for your friendship.
With lots of love from Matthew x x

Well, dearest, it's been a long day - but a beautiful day - a truly happy birthday, hasn't it? This is my first chance to stop and sit down and add a few words to your blog. The day has gone so well. All your friends came, and there was plenty to eat and drink. Grain-fed chicken and your excellent salad; Pastizzi and George's home-baked spanikoppita; dips and chips and more cheese than you could poke a (cheese) stick at! Hey! And how chocolatey was that chocolate cake? Everyone got into the spirit of olive-picking, didn't they? I think we're gettin' good at this party thing and I do love so much to see to see you happy and surrounded by friends and having a good time (I had a good time, too!). But of course, most of all I love being with you, this day and every day - the pleasure and the treasure and the honour of it all. Goddess bless, I love you, your wife-to-be, Paula xxxxx

SOUR DOUGH BREAD...for LIFE!

2007-03-17T14:42:00.000+11:00

This blog may change your life (for the better). (click on pics to enlarge)

Hopefully it will become part of your every day life. It's about making sour dough bread. You're sour dough bread. Your statement of independence from the corporate white bread loaf, which has no nutritional value, and which goes stale the next day.

No it's not all too hard. Trust me. In another incarnation I made over half a million loaves of sour dough bread, and I was said to be the best maker of sour dough bread in Australia. I was self taught, it was a matter of trial and error to begin with, but eventually became a labor of love.

The main ingredient of sour dough bread is patience -your patience.
But it's not hard. Follow these simple guidelines and you will make the best orrganic sourdough bread you ever had. Do this for yourself, your loved ones, and the planet.

First of all forget all the myths about bread being fattening. What is fattening is the gunk you put on it like butter or margarine. Wholemeal bread is actually slimming.

This is the Slow-Foods ( a term I coined in the seventies) method of making organic sour dough bread.
First we need to make your sour dough starter. You only need to do this once, and it will last the rest of our life, and whoever you pass it onto.

You need to visit your friendly local health food store, and purchase a kilo of organic wholemeal flour. (If your local health food store is run by a money grabbing creep, and I've met some of these, then go to your local money grabbing supermarket).

In a glassware or earthen ware bowl, measure out about 4 cups of warm water. Add enough flour to this to make a soupy mixture, approx 5 or 6 dessert spoons. Add one teaspoon of honey. These figures are not critical, just a rough guide. Mix well to form a light mixture, not a thick one.
Now your patience comes into play. In warm weather, it will take between 1 to 2 days to work.
In cooler weather it will take longer, up to five days. Just get on with your life, and keep an eye on it. It will happen eventually, trust me.

What happens? It will froth up. You will have fresh sour dough starter.
Once it has frothed up, you're ready to make your first no-fail loaf of organic sour dough bread. You don't have to use it straight away. It will be ok for another day, in fact it become a bit stronger, giving your bread the unique sour dough flavour. Beyond one day it's best to pop it into the fridge

OK so now it gets exciting. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl, leaving almost a cup behind (to make your next mix). Add flour slowly until it becomes stiff enough to lift out and knead. This is your meditation, pouring out your life energy into the bread. Add flour or water to make it a nice consistency. For this small loaf 4 or 5 minutes should be enough to release the gluten and help it rise.

Pop it into a well oiled baking tin, and put it into a pre-warmed oven, or other warm place. It's important that the oven is only warm, not hot.

Once more, the waiting game - just get on with your life. Go to work, or go to bed. It will rise in its own time. About 2-4 hours. It will seem as if nothing is happening, but it will rise, trust me. If the oven cools down, it will help to warm it up slightly. If you leave it, it will just take longer. How to tell when it's ready to bake? When it stops rising, if you're watching, otherwise you can bake it when you get up or come home from work. Or your kids can bake it when they get home. For this small loaf, about 20 mins at moderate heat. If not sure, take it out of tin and tap bottom. Hollow sound means it's done. Unlike horrible yeasted bread, this can be eaten warm. If there happens to be any left (unusual) keep it in the fridge. It will last a month easily, and sour dough bread improves with age.

It won't be perfect, sorry. But the next one will, and every other one after that. You need to persist, experiment (a little bit dryer, a bit stiffer), and be confident. Soon it will be second nature, easy, and very rewarding. The flavour is to die for, especially when you add caraway seeds. Another trick, if you like poppy seeds, is to sprinkle them on the bottom of tin, same with herbs. This way they don't go to waste.

OK, so about the sour dough that you saved. You need to add water and flour to make it about the same consistency as the original mix. Then leave it. In about 2-3 hours it will froth up. Pop it into the fridge. In your own time. You've fed it, and it is content and happy, ready to make your next loaves of bread.

So what would I put on my bread? Tahini, every time. It goes with honey, avocado, cheese or neat. This bread is not just bread, it will become an enjoyable and important part of your diet. Tahini (made from crushed sesame seeds) is a very nutritious food, and goes excellently with sour dough bread.
While you're at your friendly local health food store, pick up a jar of organic tahini, and maybe some organic hommous. Chick peas and bread make a complete protein.

This is the basics of making sour dough bread, a bread that has been the staff of life for thousands of years.

The measurements I gave are for a small loaf (see pic). To make bigger loaves, make a bit more culture, and just add more flour and water - as much as you want. The biggest load I ever made was about 70 loaves. But that was with a dough breaker. It was great bread, but you can't beat home made, hand made bread.
Nothing beats the smell of baking bread. Adding some rye flour to the mix smells even better, but reckon that it won't rise as much as pure wheat.

Once you've got this off pat, (and you will, trust me), try adding organic dried fruit, seeds or nuts. (soak fruit beforehand). Also you can add soaked millet, buckwheat, barley, rice, or almost any grain, to increase its nutritional content. This is your bread. No-one will make it the same. Your social life will improve - everyone wants to invite that cool dude who will bring some home made bread for their dips.

Your local friendly health food store will love you. Maybe where you live there is only a supermarket, well they have all this stuff too.
This is real food you're creating. Notice how satisfying even one slice is. And it makes you soo regular.

Now your life has changed, hasn't it.

Enjoy!

Saddam's Execution (from New Matilda)

2007-01-18T15:55:00.000+11:00

Iraq: The Lynching of Saddam Hussein
By: Robert Fisk
Wednesday 10 January 2007

We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad on the morning of 30 December, Washington’s secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States — and Britain — gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember.

And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support — given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War — is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA’s help in destroying the Iraqi Communist Party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union’s influence in Iraq. Saddam’s mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment — extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 — both he and the US Administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border — and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq’s military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle.

One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad — at America’s request.

‘Mr Fisk … at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon,’ he said. ‘There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun River, the tank revetments — thousands of them — all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!’

I was with Saddam’s forward commandos at the time, under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces aligned their artillery positions far back from the battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines. Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week. The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to tell me how he had managed to choose the one river crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago, we met again in Amman and his junior officers called him ‘General’ — the rank awarded him by Saddam after that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of Washington’s intelligence information.

Iran’s official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January, 1981. AP’s correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. ‘We started counting — we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting,’ he said. ‘We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again … The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination — the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies … the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That’s why they spat blood.’

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America’s complicity in this atrocity remain secret — Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan’s point-men at this period — although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail.

But a largely unreported document, ‘United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War,’ stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, and Escherichia coli (E. coli). That US Senate report concluded that:

Still from the video of Saddam Hussein's hanging
The United States provided the Government of Iraq with ‘dual use’ licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including … chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment.

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer — one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments — to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis ‘was not a matter of deep strategic concern’.

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs — the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows — and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

We still don’t know — and with Saddam’s execution we will probably never know — the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $US300 million. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $US1 billion in credit.

By 1990, just before Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $US3.5 billion a year. Pressed by Saddam’s Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State — but the same James Baker who has just produced a report intended to drag George Bush from the catastrophe of present-day Iraq — pushed for new guarantees worth $US1 billion from the US.

In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250 million to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft’s arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office Minister, said:

I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly … A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult.

Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this secret, he wrote, because ‘it would look very cynical if, so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales.’

Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May, 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam’s excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Independent (UK) on 31 December 2006.

About the author

Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for The Independent (UK) and currently resides in Beirut. Fisk has covered the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Gulf War, wars in Bosnia and Algeria, the NATO war with Yugoslavia, and the Palestinian uprisings.

His most recent book is The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (HarperCollins).

GLOBAL WARMING is here

2006-11-06T13:06:00.000+11:00

ANYONE over 50yo knows how the weather has changed. Different cloud formations, different weather. No more repetative heatwaves followed by a fast southerly buster which gave us a heavy, hard downpour,then passed quickly, leading to another hot day to follow. That doesn't happen anymore, not in Sydney anyway. Our rain is half-hearted and useless. Like on Climate Change day in Sydney. It sprinkled a bit, but everyone ignored it. we knew it didn't rain anymore, not real rain.
It was a great day, as far as demos go, it had a huge turnout (around 18,000) with the usual first timers, ie people under one year old, and others over 20yo. It made the seven o'clock news, but we preffered to watch it on the 6:30 news on SBS, as you do.
Howard said don't panic, we will have nuclear power in 15(sic) years. Beazeley said no we won't, but every school will be solar powered. I couldn't help thinking about another policy they once made that "by the year 2000, no Australian child will live in poverty". It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

Well we don't have 15 years, and we need nuclear power like a hole in the head. And it won't happen because we will move heaven and earth to stop it, including voting in a Labor govt.

In the next election, no isssue world wide will be more important than Global Warming, and our preparedness to counter its effects, which are already happening. No mean task when you consider that China is building one coal fired power station every week.

After next week, when Bush become a lame duck president, we may see some changes, but don't hold your breath. The US is too big and clumsy. A case when democracy has failed. Iraq will end in disaster (it is already a disaster). Unless we get a Labor govt, our troops will stay there until the US quits with its tail between its legs, like it did in Vietnam.
People site the fact that millions voted in Iraq. What they don't say is that most of those voters voted for the occupation forces to leave Iraq.
The US is proping up an inept criminal govt. in Iraq like it did in Vietnam. When the US leaves, it will follow. Iraq won't have democracy for a long time, after a protracted war fought amongst their well trained forces. Maybe...?

Anyway, about climate change. Here are some more pics we took at the Sydney rally.

Well at least we can look our grandchildren in the eye, and say "we tried..."

Daniel Ellsberg on Vietnam, Iraq and Iran

2006-10-13T16:02:00.000+10:00

Lateline

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 12/10/2006

Reporter: Tony Jones

Tony Jones speaks with former US Defence Department official, Daniel Ellsberg, who accuses President Bush of lying to take America to war with Iraq, and believes secret groundwork is being laid for a war with Iran.
Transcript
TONY JONES: Well, comparisons between the US war in Iraq and the quagmire of the Vietnam War are frequently made by critics of President Bush's foreign policy. But now the most famous whistleblower of the Vietnam era, former State and Defence Department official, Daniel Ellsberg, is speaking out, calling on Bush Administration officials to do what he did with the Pentagon papers more than 30 years ago and leak secret documents and war plans to the public. Ellsberg claims President Johnson lied to take America to war in Vietnam. He accuses President Bush of lying to take America to war with Iraq and he believes secret groundwork is being laid for a war with Iran. Now in his 80s, Ellsberg is still regarded as either a patriot or a traitor, depending on your perspective. But as a Vietnam veteran and a senior Pentagon official, he was an insider until he blew the whistle. I spoke to him in Berkeley, California earlier today.

TONY JONES: Daniel Ellsberg, thanks for joining us.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Thank you for having me.

TONY JONES: Now it's been said that nations must understand their history or be condemned to repeat it. Your argument is that in going to war with Iraq, America failed to learn one of the most profound lessons of Vietnam. Tell us what you mean by that?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, in a way it's not surprising that a generation and a half after Vietnam, it's been some 30, 35 years since that war ended, it's not too surprising that a new generation will have forgotten how they were lied into that war and just how disastrous it was. People have to make their own mistakes and people don't often learn from other people's mistakes. It is surprising to me that this administration seems ready to lie us into a war in Iran, using the same playbook they used very much on Iraq, just three years later. That's fairly dismaying. It's the same electorate, same people. Apparently if you can't fool all the people all the time, as Lincoln said, apparently you don't need to. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and I'm sorry to see it.

TONY JONES: You really believe that the war in Iraq was based on lies?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: No question. Actually, no matter how much misunderstanding there was underneath that about the role of the presence of WMDs in Iraq, when the administration figures, all of them - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - said, we have no doubt, our intelligence agrees, we know for a fact, all those things were lies. The evidence which they had, which was misleading at best, was extremely thin by any standards. Contradictory, controversial, and the administration managed to conceal from the public for years the amount of controversy there was about the aims of the project, how much it would cost, how long it would take. All of those things were concealed from the public and lied about, just as happened in Vietnam and I'm afraid that's happening once again with respect to Iran.

TONY JONES: Okay, well, that's your thesis. I want to go back in history to find out exactly how you came to this conclusion and I was surprised to learn that you actually carry a burden of guilt for not having become a whistleblower much earlier?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, the guilt isn't as strong as it might be if I'd really considered putting out the truth early on as I could have and had rejected that for careerist reasons or for other bad reasons. The fact is I didn't think of doing that and so, of course, I don't feel as guilty as I would if I hadn't thought of it. The question remains, why didn't I think of it? Nobody had ever done that before, told the truth before a war to avert the war altogether. So I didn't have a precedent, but that doesn't let me off the hook altogether. I do feel I was one of perhaps 100 people who could have stopped the war if we had simply told the Congress, and to the public, the documents and the information that we had in our safes and in our heads at that time and the fact we didn't think of it, as I say, doesn't excuse us altogether. We should have thought of it and I'm hoping that people, I'm hoping to remind people of that possibility earlier than was the case with me.

TONY JONES: Well, here's what you write. "It had been in my power to avert the deaths of 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese." Now that's a very big statement.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It might seem pretentious, that I was taking on myself more power than I actually had. Actually, when a policy depends upon fooling the public with lies and concealment and deception, that policy is vulnerable to a lot of individuals, each one of whom could puncture those illusions. The people, in other words, who could give the lie to what the President and his subordinates are saying have much more power than she or he generally thinks of themselves as having and I'm trying to make people aware of that. They have a choice. They have a responsibility. If they choose to be silent as the public is lied to, they're responsible for that and for all the deaths that follow. They're fully complicit in the wrongful war and Iraq was a wrongful war and indeed Vietnam was a wrongful war and we share - we don't have only on ourselves - but we share the responsibility of those deaths to a very great extent. I think that people right now who are telling reporters like Time magazine and others that a) they know of plans for attacking Iran, b) they are appalled by the risks and the costs involved, which might include nuclear war, then I think they should consider going beyond what they've done so far. They should consider going beyond leaking anonymously or without attribution to reporters and put out documents that will show unequivocally and change the controversy from their own personality or their motives to a controversy about whether we should go to war or not. That's what should be debated and discussed.

TONY JONES: Okay, well let's stay with history for a moment, though. Can you explain why back in 1964 you were so sure that the President and the Secretary of Defence were lying about the reasons for going to war with Vietnam?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I knew that because I was reading the cables that were going to the President and to the Secretary of Defence and I was aware that what he was saying - let me give some examples. The President said the night of an alleged attack on our destroyers, and I spent that night in the Pentagon following the action, he said that the attack on our destroyers was unequivocal, that it was an unprovoked attack, that our destroyers were on a routine normal patrol in international waters and that we sought no wider war, that we were responding simply on a one-time basis. I knew that every one of those statements was a conscious lie and I knew that along with hundreds, I've guessed here 1,000 other people in the Pentagon.

TONY JONES: Now seven years later, in 1971, you broke that taboo and you leaked 7,000 pages of secret documents to the 'New York Times'. What was it that changed your mind and convinced you it was time to become a whistleblower?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Really a number of things. For one thing, I knew then what I would say, the same kind of information we have now, that we're planning an attack on Iran or that many people had before the attack on Iraq. In my case I had it then as an insider, someone who had worked as a consultant for President Nixon. Now we're getting leaks from people in the position I was who are now leaking to Sy Hersh and others. So I knew that the situation was very dangerous and I was convinced that it would be disastrous - in between those years, I'd been to Vietnam for two years. I'd become aware that there was no prospect of any success in Vietnam, just as I would say by this time hundreds of thousands of young Americans have been in Iraq and have reached the conclusion that we're not likely to achieve any success there. Third, I'd read the Pentagon papers. I'd read the Pentagon papers and I understood by that, by reading, that our project there had not been legitimate from the very beginning. We had been helping the French and, in fact, paying for the entire French effort in an imperial effort to regain their colony from the beginning. That meant to me that all the killing we were doing in Vietnam, even of the armed soldiers or the guerrillas we were fighting as well as the unarmed non-combatants, that all of that killing was unjustified. It was murder and that meant to me that that murder should stop right away. Not gracefully and that we shouldn't spend a few years getting out of it, but really we should be out of that war. Finally, the key thing was I met young Americans who were giving their all to do what they could to protest the war. They were going to prison instead of taking part in the draft and that put in my mind the question, "What could I do if I were willing to do what they're doing? Going to prison, giving up my career, doing all that I could non-violently and truthfully?" I think that was the right question to ask myself and it's a question I'm trying to put into the minds of people in the government right now. Normally you simply don't ask that of yourself. You ask, what can I do to avert this terrible policy - this is often a question in people's mind - consistent with my keeping my job and my clearance and my chances for promotion and access in general? That's what people ask themselves and I'm suggesting that when so many lives are at stake they should really ask themselves what they could do if they're willing to risk their jobs and even their freedom.

TONY JONES: Let's go forward in time now to those very officials you're appealing today. You're essentially saying they have a higher duty than to a chain of command or even to the President himself. What is that higher duty?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: In our country officials, both military and civilian, take an oath to uphold and support the constitution. They don't, as in Nazi Germany for example, take an oath to the leader, the commander-in-chief or even the elected president. They take it to uphold the constitution. When the President is deceiving the Congress on the issues of war and peace he's clearly violating that oath, his oath. And that doesn't mean, I've come to believe, that relieves you of your own oath if you're an official. If he's breaking the law, as he was, for example, with these warrantless wire taps that have been going on for the last five years that are a clear violation of the law and the constitution - that doesn't mean that the people below him who know of that are relieved of their responsibility to uphold the law. Doing that can only mean revealing what's going on, breaking that secrecy. It means giving higher priority to your promise to uphold the constitution and the laws than to your promise to keep secrets.

TONY JONES: Do you really believe that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a breach of the constitution because of the way it was taken?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Oh, absolutely. For one thing, we have signed and ratified the UN Charter, which makes very clear the conditions under which it's legitimate to go to war and when it is not and without the sanction of the UN Security Council and without a direct attack on our own armed forces or our country, it can be repelled immediately under the UN Charter and under our constitution. Then, beginning a war initiating hostilities is aggression. It's a crime against the peace. It is the sort of thing that entitles one to a trial in an international criminal court such as Nuremberg and that's the crime for which people were hanged at Nuremberg and in Tokyo. In our constitution it's also necessary that that decision be taken by the Congress, if there's been no direct attack on the armed forces, and the President does have the constitutional authority to respond to that immediately - he may lie about it, as in the case of the Tonkin Gulf when he told Congress we'd been attacked when, in fact, the evidence was very unclear on that and in fact, we had not been attacked. But in the case of Iraq he didn't even pretend that there was an immediate threat. He did pretend there was a long-term threat. The evidence for that was very weak, and in fact non-existent, invalid. He did pretend there was a long-run attack. That does not make it a preventive war legal. The fact is, there was no way for Congress to make that war legal under the UN Charter, and the UN Charter is the highest law of the land on this matter.

TONY JONES: Daniel Ellsberg, your recent article is entitled 'The Next War' and you've talked a lot in this interview about Iran and about the war plans drawn up by the Pentagon, but isn't that what the Pentagon has always done - coldly examined all the military options and sent them up to the President for a decision?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Of course there are contingency plans all the time. But what has been leaked, what has been disclosed without authorisation and without attribution so far, is that the White House itself and very specifically Vice-President Cheney has asked for plans to be prepared ready to be enforced or executed on a strict timetable, in fact the earliest timetable was last year but more recently we've heard that it was 1st of October - Time magazine had that. Now that's not your ordinary contingency planning. That's planning that the President has shown a great interest in and an interest in being able to execute on a very short and strict timetable. That's - I can tell you as somebody who was involved in the planning process in the government, that is regarded as an operational plan to be taken very seriously. The fact that it has been asked for by the White House is to be taken as a serious indication that the White House wants to be ready to carry that out on a moment's notice and we in the public and Congress should also take it very seriously.

TONY JONES: Well, we now have the example of North Korea. They've gone ahead and tested a nuclear weapon and the US response has been pragmatic. They realise evidently there is no real military option without risking a regional conflagration. Do you not trust in the end the commonsense of your own President?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I wish I could say yes. Of course I would like to have trust in the commonsense of my president. No, I don't. We've had this president for five years now. I would say that the judgment that he and his advisers have shown not just in Iraq but in an entire range of situations have earned him the greatest distrust and scepticism. Indeed, I would say that if there was an Opposition party in the House, in the Senate, he has richly earned impeachment and I would say, though the trial hasn't been held, conviction on a number of grounds through breaking the law and of showing absolutely miserable judgment. It's widely said, widely believed that there's little chance of attacking Iran because that is so obviously crazy. I agree. It's crazy. It's illegal. We've talked about that. We haven't even talked about the retaliation to be expected, which overweighs any potential benefits that could be understood from this aggression. But the same was true of Iraq. It's said that the military don't want to attack Iran. I think that's true, but they didn't want to attack Iraq. They did when they were ordered. I'm glad to see civilians control the military but that has a downside, too. It means they'll carry out crazy plans and basically that was true in Vietnam. I was a part of what was essentially horrible judgment. I was a low-level point - I don't want to take on airs as being a major war criminal. But the fact is I did participate in terrible decision making in which, by the way, Australia participated in a way that does your Australian leaders no credit whatever, to have joined that hopeless and illegal war in Vietnam. So, in fact, I believe Australia's leaders were quite upset that I released the Pentagon papers because it showed the degree to which they had been manipulated rather easily into joining that terrible effort. So unfortunately, I have to conclude at my age now, I've seen a number of cases in which a number of men who are individually intelligent; I'm not saying individually they're crazy or even stupid - they may be in some cases - I don't know President Bush, in a way. But I don't have to assume that he's stupid to be following a stupid policy. The people inside are not necessarily less intelligent than the smart guys that I worked for and was one who got us into Vietnam. And to say that is to say that the fact that they would be stupid as well as illegal and crazy to attack Iran, that is not reliable assurance that these same people will not put us into Iran, the ones who got us into Iraq.

TONY JONES: Daniel Ellsberg, that's where we'll have to leave you for now. It's been fascinating to talk to you; hopefully we'll be able to do it again some time.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Video of above interview is availalbe from
ABC | abc.net.au

© 2006 ABC | Privacy Policy

JUST WAR

2006-08-07T19:24:00.000+10:00

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from hanaady salman, sent to As-Safi, sourced from angry arab news service at here

make a difference with YOUR banking

2006-07-30T15:48:00.000+10:00

Do you know who your money is working for? Who it's invested with? Goals in the US? (like ING does); Kraft foods (owned by Philip Morris).
uranium mining; arns dealing, or hundreds of other nasty businesses that you wouldn't want to know about.

No doubt you've heard about "ethical investment". If your not happy about not knowing what your money is used for, think about this investment option (that calculates interest daily, and pays monthly, at competitive rates).

Oxfam Australia

04 Jul 06
A little banking can bring big change - New Bendigo Bank Account makes contribution to communities around the globe

Since 1992, Bendigo Bank account holders have contributed over $3 million to Oxfam Australia through payments to the Ethical Investment Trust. The Trust was initiated by Oxfam Australia to encourage and support a fairer and more equitable world. It supported ethical ventures within Australia and directly contributed to the work of Oxfam Australia with poor communities around the globe. From July 1, a new account will see a continuation of the relationship between the community-focused Bendigo Bank and Oxfam Australia to serve people who seek socially responsible investment options.

From 1 July, Oxfam Australia will directly manage its relationship with Bendigo Bank, following the conclusion of the Ethical Investment Trust.

From 1 July, Bendigo Bank will change the account name from Bendigo Ethical Investment Cash Management Account to Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Account. The new name clearly states who benefits from the account.

Offered exclusively by Bendigo Bank, the Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Account provides banking benefits for you while supporting the work of Oxfam Australia. With competitive interest calculated daily and paid monthly, plus the convenience of at-call access through the Bendigo Bank branch network, phone or e-banking, the Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Account functions like any normal cash management account. The difference being, that whenever you open a Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Account, Oxfam Australia benefits.

Oxfam Australia uses the funds to support its long-term development programs, emergency relief work and advocacy campaigns in over 25 countries and in Indigenous Australia.

How does it work? Oxfam Australia receives money from the Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Account in the following ways:

1. Oxfam Australia receives a commission from Bendigo Bank of up to 0.5%* p.a. of the balance of all Bendigo Oxfam Australia Cash Management Accounts.

2. Bendigo Bank forwards Oxfam Australia the interest earned on individual accounts should you choose to direct all or half of your interest to Oxfam Australia.

Even if you choose to retain all of the interest earned, Oxfam Australia still benefits.

Bendigo Bank’s unique community banking model allows for a "community of interest", a collection of stakeholders from the not-for-profit and community sector sharing a common purpose. This exciting new account is offered to all who wish to be part of a community that makes a difference here and abroad.

For information on how you too can make a difference, drop-in to your nearest Bendigo Bank branch, or register your interest at www.oxfam.org.au/cashmanagement.

Media Contact: Marlene McIntyre on 0407 515 559 or (03) 9289 9415
see recommended sites for web addess.

another reason to elect howard out

2006-07-27T16:04:00.000+10:00

GetUp.org.au - Action for Australia!

Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Guest Blog by Major Michael Mori - Military Lawyer for David Hicks*
Unfortunately, politics have replaced justice in the case of David Hicks.

David has been detained for four and a half years without trial, and has been in isolation for the past four months. He sits in a concrete room for 23 hours a day. He is allowed one book per week and one hour outside his cell for exercise in what best could be described as a large dog kennel, and to shower.

I will visit him shortly to see if there is any improvement in his living conditions since the recent announcement that part of the Geneva Conventions will apply to David. We have tried in the past to get David working on his high school certificate which is something that David has put his heart into. The conditions that he is kept in make this difficult to accomplish.

The four and half year delay, so far, in bringing David to trial is due to the fact that David did not violate any international law so the US had to make up charges and an unfair system that would rubber stamp the charges without question. Had the US used a real court system like the courts-martial, we could have had a trial within the first year. But of course, David would have been acquitted which would not have served the political agendas in the US and Australia.

All David has wanted is a fair trial and Australia did nothing to obtain that for him since a fair trial would have proven David's innocence.

The Australian government keeps saying we can not prosecute David in Australia. That is simply because David has not violated any law, Australian or international - not that the laws don't exist. If the charges against David in the commission system were valid international law crimes, Australia could charge him with these offenses. But the charges made up against David by the commission system are not real. Every time the Australian government says "we can not charge Hicks", they are in fact saying "David Hicks has not violated any law". But the Australian government tries to use this as a reason to abandon him. It should be reason to stand up for him and bring him home to his family.

The recent ruling by the US Supreme Court finding military commissions illegal vindicates everything the legal experts in Australia have been saying for the past four years. It highlights the fact that the Australian government must have blindly followed the US Department of Defense without receiving any internal advice on the legality of the commission and chose to ignore advice that the commissions were illegal such as Lex Lasry's report for the Law Council of Australia in 2004.

There have been discussions and hearings in the US Congress on establishing a new military commission. Again it would only apply to non-U.S. citizens and may very well be a duplicate of the unfair commission system. Unfortunately, I do not expect any "new" system that maybe set up to try David to be any fairer or to be completed in the near future. It may take another year before David sees the inside of a courtroom. This will be five and half years from the start of David's detention in Guantanamo.

Clearly, a case of justice delayed is justice denied.

I'd like to thank GetUp members for your attention to David's case.

Major Michael Mori

* Major Michael Mori is a major in the United States Marine Corps, and was appointed by the United States Government as the defense lawyer for David Hicks in the Military Commission process.

Posted by Major Michael Mori at 11:11:31 AM
(130) Comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006
David Hicks can be tried in Australia
David Hicks remains imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay because, the Australian Government claims, there is no basis for him to be prosecuted under Australian law. This is simply not true.

Hicks can be charged and tried in Australia, under existing Australian law. This contradicts the Attorney-General’s claim that the only way to bring Hicks home is to free him – another myth perpetuated by a Government that seems more than willing to forfeit justice for political convenience.

Expert advice commissioned by a partner at the Gilbert + Tobin law firm (sponsors of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law) confirmed last June that the actions alleged by the US Military Commission, since found by the conservative US Supreme Court to be an illegal body, are offences under Australian law.

Australian law recognises crimes of the nature alleged by the US that occur outside Australia – including in the conflict in Afghanistan. Expert opinion is clear that Hicks can be charged in Australia with offences including terrorism, training with and aiding the enemy, and conspiring and attempting to do the above. Moreover, both the High Court and the State Supreme Courts can hold these trials. The Australian Government would not have to create any new laws to do this. But the Attorney-General will not make public his legal advice suggesting the contrary, on which he stakes his argument for not bringing David Hicks home.

Meanwhile, the Law Council of Australia has argued that David Hicks must either be tried immediately before an existing US court or repatriated.

The right to a fair trial is a principle the Government should be actively seeking to uphold, regardless of their view on David Hicks’ guilt. Our legal system is there to ensure those who break the law are dealt with properly, and if the Government believes there is evidence that David Hicks has done something wrong, then they have no reason not to try him at home.

Posted by Lily at 8:46:28 AM
(5) Comments

Friday, July 21, 2006
Press Conference - Australians demand justice

The lineup features ABC TV's Margaret Pomerantz, GetUp's Brett Solomon,The Hon John Dowd AO, QC (President of the International Commission of Jurists, also former NSW Attorney General & former NSW Liberal leader), Catholic Bishop of Parramatta Kevin Manning, and the SecHEREretary of Unions NSW John Robertson.

Posted by Lily at 4:08:54 PM
(1) Comments

GETUP AUSTRALIANS your voice counts

2006-06-19T15:58:00.000+10:00

What is GetUp?

GetUp is a new political movement to build a more progressive Australia.

GetUp brings together like-minded people who want to bring participation back into our democracy. GetUp.org.au members* use the latest online tools to act on the most important issues facing the country.

Why do we need GetUp?

After nearly a decade of conservative government, our country has changed. Millions of Australians don't like the direction we've been heading. On 9 August 2005 the Coalition Government took control of the Senate. It now has more power than any government in a generation.

The other political parties aren't providing a strong opposition, and the media is dominated by a handful of right-wing voices. People need to take politics into their own hands. GetUp provides them with a way to do this. GetUp.org.au members are building a ground-up movement of Australians who want to act, not just complain.

What do GetUp.org.au members do?

GetUp.org.au members take action. By signing up for updates, GetUp.org.au members will receive emails alerting them to new campaigns and providing ways of taking effective action. Whether it is sending an email to a member of parliament, calling a talk back radio station, or helping to get a television ad on the air, GetUp.org.au members will always be asked to take targeted, coordinated and effective action.

How can I get involved?

All you have to do to get involved is sign up to get email action updates from GetUp. It doesn't cost anything to join GetUp.org.au, and members can join and leave as they wish.

GetUp communicates with the members through email. When you sign up for updates we will ask for an email address and some basic information about where you live. We need this information to help provide specific local opportunities for you to get active.

Privacy matters to GetUp, and we'll always protect your privacy.Getup knows that our members are busy people and we will only contact you with specific opportunities for action.

Who runs GetUp?

GetUp has a small staff, who produce GetUp updates and keep the website current. GetUp.org.au members carry out the real work of GetUp. They make the calls, they send the emails and they supply the financial support.

GetUp was founded by Jeremy Heimans and David Madden, two young Australian graduates of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government who have worked at the vanguard of the new online organising and campaigning techniques in the US. In 2004, David and Jeremy helped start a national campaign on the decline in America's standing in the world under George Bush. This campaign gathered thousands of online supporters and millions of dollars in donations to support a national television advertising campaign. Prior to this, Jeremy and David worked on issues of global poverty, conflict, and development.

GetUp's Executive Director Brett Solomon has been working on social justice and development issues for more than ten years. In that time he founded and coordinated the International Youth Parliament with Oxfam, was appointed Campaign Coordinator at Amnesty International Australia and has consulted to Focus on the Global South.

GetUp also has a board that advises the staff. The board includes community organiser Amanda Tattersall, who helped develop the concept for GetUp, union leader Bill Shorten, Green activist Cate Faehrmann, and technology entrepreneur Evan Thornley.

GetUp brings together progressive people from all political backgrounds and parties, but is independent of all parties and receives no government funding.

* GetUp.org.au online members have no legal or other obligations to GetUp Ltd and may choose to participate or not in GetUp campaigns as they see fit.

ON TURNING 59 SOME COMMUNAL MUSINGS

2006-04-16T14:43:00.000+10:00

Alexx, queer cultural terrorist extraordinaire, hoping all the best things come your way for your birthday and the years ahead, fun, love, lust, pleasure, euphoria, peace and regime change. Go you good thing! Love, David Abello

Hey Alex and Paula, I've not known the two of you long but it has been an absolute pleasure meeting folks such as yourselves. Here's wishing you good people all the best! I'm off to Dublin in 2 days but do keep in touch. Take care of yourselves and each other. Love, Sanja (Bobbie - I'll let Angela or Phil explain).

Firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY Alex, as in the card, it's been a long journey and as I see it, an extremely fruitful, bright and generous life. You my friend have been an inspiration & true friend in all the years i have known you. In my younger years as a teenager you welcomed me into you life & your family, who are still to this day considered family, though not by blood. I wish always for you much peace & happiness, much of which i now believe you have found in your beloved friend Paula. As always you will remain close to my heart & remembered as one of the true friends that knew me well.
Love, light & laughter. Colin Xo

Dear Alexx, have a very happy birthday and enjoy the year ahead, that's the real world as well as cyberworlds, blogospheres etc. Keep on confounding the heretics. Good luck to you and Paula and if you're getting married, have a lovely wedding day too. Also my friend Jan Dooley wishes you a happy birthday too. Paula can tell you about her. love Kate xx

Dear Alex and Paula, thank you for inviting me to your house this beautiful sunny afternoon, the space you live in feels as positively energetic and lovely as you both are. I love the Gaugin too. Thank you for your friendship, vision and wisdom. Wonderful to see Middlesex and Pilger on the bookshelves, wonderful ideas and histories. With my love always, Matthew x

Freeze a jolly good fellow .. Freeze a jooly freize ... have another glass and wish the man a happ pp what was it agian//? Lets go harvest some more OLIVES yea!! HIPPY BURTHMARK 2 U and so say all of us ... you. -Jen

Dear Alexx & Paula ... turning over a new leaf takes on a whole new meaning when you're 59
Wishing you a wonderful start to the future .. may your love & friendship continue to shine brightly, as they are cherished by many. To be able to share your celebration with you has been very special .. thanks for including us . Love & hugs ... Bev

Since when has Alexx had two "xxs"? A blogg site this might be, but spelling still has it's place! For many that place is a blogg, I mean a bog in the north of Ireland. But let's get down to cases. Inspite of the confusion over the number of "xxs" in Alex's name there can never be any confusion over Alex, he is and always will be a man blessed with a wondeful wit, a warm heart and the wiley wisdom that comes from the observers calm eye. Happy birthday sweet one, when it comes to your birthday the numbers don't count. (They don't read nor write either!) Love peace and blessings. Angelina

Happy Birthday Alex, to a wonderful guy and a man of sheer grit determination and integrity. Knowing you over these last 12 months has been nothing short of pleasure and delight. I personally wish you a very happy 60th birthday with lots more to come and thank you for allowing me to share this happy afternoon and time with you and your beloved Paula. With lots of love and best of wishes. Sincerely, Phil Ryan.

Spending easter with Alex sure beats 'hangin round the Cross' - a bonus because it's also the celebration of that most important of birthdays - the last before you officially become one of Hawke's silly old buggers. Of course, Alex, if you're like me, and we are both Aries, you'll never be 'old'. Silly of course, and a bugger, but not old. I have lunch with Fabian every Tuesday. As the Greek woman at the sandwich bar says every time, "enjoy yourself". DU

Well, my dearest, you insisted on me being the last but not the least so I shall have to try and do justice to this closing statement.
I do so wish you a very happy day today. Indeed, I see in the bright glow in your eyes that it is just so.
It gladdens my heart and brings tears to my eyes to see you surrounded - at last (I know this party has been a long time coming!) - with all your loving friends who I do know really, really do hold you in the highest regard.
You are such a simply, truly, authentic man - all the way through - wearing your heart on your sleeve and with such deep and genuine love and passion and care for those around you and the world at large. Gentle and strong, ingenuous and clever.
You are gold and silver, sun and moon to me; husband, brother, father and child to me. Above all, you are my soul's mate. In the darkest of dark nights I look across and your hands grip our little ship's wheel along with mine. Then do I know we shall come through to safe harbor.
Happy Birthday, dear Alexx from your Paula.

"NEVER SAY NEVER"

2006-04-09T12:44:00.000+10:00

That's what Howard said when questioned whether he would sell uranium to India. Obviouly he was lying again, fully aware that he would agree to sell it to them.
India has not signed the Non Prolifereation Nuclear Treaty, but Howar maintains that they have an impecable nuclear history. What does that mean? Is it impecable because they haven't lauched a full scale inihilation of Pakistan (yet)? Well there's little chance of that these days. We don't do that these days. Brinkmanship is the name of the game. Like between Russia and the US, China and Taiwan. North Korea is a bit of a wild card as well as an economic basket case. I don't think Taiwan has the bomb yet, though it's bristling with US armaments. Then there's Israel and....umm well Arabs aren't allowered to have a bomb. So Israel just has to play with itself.

Anyway we are happily going to sell uranium to India, China and Taiwan. This will, in the case of China free up it's own reserves to be used for it's nuclear arsonal stockpiles.
What are these countries going to do with waste? Send it back here to store in our outback? There's no way they would spend the ten billion dollars that Sweden is on storng it's waste underground.

Now Howard is starting to push another agenda. Creating a nuclear reactor for us. The Labor party has already caved in on uranium mining. Howard would love to control nuclear power, if only because it's anathema to anyone with progressive sensiblities, including the Greens. With the Labor party irrelevant, nothing can stop Howard with doing whatever he likes.
Beaseley's only hope is that the IR laws bite so hard before the next elections, that he will get a shoe into govt. If they do bite so hard, Howard will make 'adjustments. He also will have to survive a leadership challenge from Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, two contendors both as bad leadership material as each other.

It's indicative of Howard that he would want nuclear power, when European countries are closing down their reactors. Nuclear power is a backward step, and not a reasonable answer to greenhouse gasses.

WEST PAPUA -NEW VENUE FOR WAR ON TERROR?

2006-04-03T18:55:00.000+10:00

Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says he wants to retain good relations with Australia. (this is rich from a PM who is to preside over the execution of two Australian nationals).
"But he said Indonesia would not tolerate elements from other countries including Australia if they supported separatism in Papua province". ABC online news 03 04 06

What a joke Yudhi. There are many in Australia who support the plight of dispossesed people, and are especially angered when these people are denied basic human rights, and are treated as were the Timorese. Not so long ago we took this 'province' from you and gave it back to their rightful owners. If separatism in Papua 'province' is what it takes to achieve this, then its on the cards that it will happen. Not this year, or next year, but when the UN wakes up and realises what is going on there, and Australia wakes up and gets out of Iraq, we would be keen to intervene. Australians are always keen to support the downtrodden. Maybe not our governments, but soon enough when they get the picture.

So you won't tolerate elements like me? Tough.

Bill Leak is The Australian's daily editorial cartoonist. As one of Australia's leading satirists and most respected portrait painters, Leak divides his time between ridiculing his subjects mercilessly in his cartoons or immortalising them in oils. He has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize on ten occasions and his portraits are included in the collections of the State Library of NSW, Parliament House, Canberra and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. He has won eight Walkley Awards, one of which was for Brown Nose Day in 2002, and nineteen Stanley Awards including eight Gold Stanleys for Artist of the Year.
Bill Leak's cartoons can be purchased through www.newsphotos.com.au. Each print is signed by Bill Leak and produced on high-quality photographic paper, either colour or black-and-white – depending on how it appeared in the paper. The prints are $75 for A4 size (approx 28cm x 20cm) and $125 for A3 size (approx 30cm x 45cm). All prices include GST, postage and handling

ANOTHER BLEEDING VISITOR

2006-03-28T01:37:00.000+11:00

We had another visitor last week. Condoleza Rice penetrated our airport in her armoured car; four follow up vehicles, and a gunship helicopter (just in case). Little Johnny was beaming – he needs these ego boosts, because he knows the war n Iraq is a god-awful mistake that we will leave with the US and our tails between our legs. Like the British did in the Suez debacle. Still it’s nice to be praised in public, even though she told him in private that things aren’t looking good.
B.. But Bush said he was winning…I saw him on TV…
“Oh don’t listen to that weasel. He won’t save his skin, and anyway I’m going to be the next president”.
“So what will you do?”
“Call in the UN and pullout. Two deaths a day is bad enough, but if Iran gets stuck in then we’re done”.
“Oh I see…”
“How many casualties have you had?”
“None.”
“Jesus Christ no wonder you want to stay.”
“Well I’ve never been in a war and neither have any of my cabinet ministers or my back benchers. I’ve been told it’s character building….”
“Fuck! Getting horribly wounded and maimed is no joke….”
“Gee I never thought of that….You know Pete has always wanted my job…..”
“Well you don’t want to be the one to pull the plug.”
“No you’re right…but what about George?”
“Don’t you worry about him…you need to worry about number one”!
“You”?
“You’re darn right!

Howard stands on the podium with Condoleza next to him.
“We both expressed to each other the need to be firm regarding the war on terror.”
From the back: “Did you discuss the uranium issue’?
“Err…we had a full and frank discussion about many issues. We see eye to eye on everything”.

That night in bed: “so when are you going to give Peter the nod”?
“When he kisses my arse. In public”.
“Like you did Bush”?
The silence is deafening.

THE LAST VISIT

2006-03-27T19:42:00.000+11:00

What could our govt. do with 3 million dollars? Quite a few useful things to improve our standard of living; instead it has degraded it by wasting it on a freeloading visitor from Britain –Betty Windsor, who happens to be the richest woman in the world (owning a few choice pieces of property in Sydney) and is our queen. This woman is the epitome of the inequality in Western society, and the insidious power of the rich. We didn’t want her here, we didn’t need her here but she came anyway, at Johnny’s request, and the public simply ignored her. Gone are the days when we lined up ten deep in the streets too wave and get a glimpse of her. We are grown up now.
The organisers of the Commonwealth Games had the right idea - they snubbed her by refusing to play her song, playing ours instead. Not even a twenty one-gun salute could make up for that indignity.

Couldn’t she be a nice person despite these qualities? Not really, we know enough about her through Dianna, to never want to see her again.

Don’t be fooled by another Howard lie: we did not vote to retain the monarchy. We voted against Howard’s ploy to let the pollies vote for our president. We’ll get another go with or next PM – Costello (who is a republican).
We are still left with a perplexing question – who murdered Dianna? Did MI6 act independently? If not who authorised them to carry out the hit? What happened to the cyclist who was first on the scene, while she was still alive? Why didn’t the police interview him?

How sad would it be for prince William to become King and wonder if his rels were implicated in the crime of the century – but no…he must have a pretty good idea of why and how his Mum and her lover were murdered.

GREEN TOMATOES AND LOSS OF VALUES

2006-01-31T14:17:00.000+11:00

Chances are that any Australian under forty has never tasted a real tomato.
The ‘tomatoes’ on sale today throughout Australia, and probably in many overseas countries are not real tomatoes. They are merely a marketing ploy to approximate what real tomatoes look like. That is where the similarity varies from the reality.

The tomatoes of my childhood, the real authentic tomatoes, had an exquisite flavour nothing like today’s fakes. It was not just one flavour, but a cacophony of different complementary but distinct piquancies. It was so nice it was often eaten like a fruit. You certainly wouldn’t even attempt to do that to today’s phoney substitutes. They don’t look like real tomatoes, they don’t taste like real tomatoes, and they have no aroma, which real tomatoes exuded.

Real tomatoes had three basic grades, green, for future use, firm, for salads (tomato salad with shallots, sea salt and drizzle of olive oil was a salad to die for); and softer tomatoes, or cooking tomatoes. These were merely firm tomatoes that had been stored for a while, and decided to grow old gracefully. They merely went softer, and prepared themselves for stuffing, or to make delicious sauces and other culinary deeds. You could buy cooking tomatoes, which would be wrapped in newspaper, and go into your string bag. Today’s ‘tomatoes’ have lost the genes to age gracefully. They get horrible sores and get thrown out. What a calamity to happen to one of our staple foods. Today’s ‘tomatoes’ are still grown, bought and consumed, like there is a mass societal amnesia on what tomatoes are all about –orgasmic flavour!

I suspect that some guys in black suits decided that profits would increase if tomatoes were grown more like cricket balls. No spoilage. ‘Tomatoes’ were a commodity and they should be able to get from the farm to the shops to you to your children, who in no way would be coaxed to eat such an abominable chemical commodity. Sometimes children have an innate sense of what is uneatable.
Real tomatoes, it seems, had a fatal flaw. They retained the ability to grow old gracefully, and like the prima Dona that they were, demanded to be treated with kit gloves. Genetic engineering removed that supercilious smile from their face, and instead of growing old gracefully, they kept up appearances for a few days, then dropped dead. You couldn’t buy green tomatoes, to store and use when they were soft to your liking. Who in today’s stuporous marketing clientele would buy a green tomato? Well they don’t exist anymore anyway, the gas chambers see to that.

Green tomatoes had balls! That knew exactly what they were about. They would slowly achieve a beautiful colouring, improve their taste, and if they weren’t used within a week or so, they would settle down to become a cooking tomato. No sweat, they just did it for us, for our health and our psychic well-being.

What other foods are being changed under our noses, for economic reasons? All genetically modified foods, labelled and unlabelled.

Want your children to start loving tomatoes? Growing tomatoes in a veggie garden is fun, but you can do better. There are many seed companies in Australia that sell organic heirloom tomato seeds. This is the real McCoy. Tomatoes that smell like tomatoes; tomatoes you and your children will love eating, tomatoes that still remember how to become cooking tomatoes. Their seeds will always regrow. Be the first on your block to start a revolution!
I’m not getting paid for this, it’s just a service I like to do for my readers. You can mail order these extraordinary seeds from a number of companies.

Jankala organic seed QV I just purchased some from them. Fast reliable, and no postage charges.

Eden Seeds QV is also a good site to check out.

The English site of Garden Organic, (formerly The Henry Doubleday Society) is good for an overview of organic gardening: QV

Kali Orexi!

THE PEOPLE GOT IT RIGHT

2006-01-12T14:05:00.000+11:00

WE need to take some time, now in 2006, (1000 days since invasion) and remember the struggles of 2003, when millions of people world wide protested against the proposed illegal invasion of a sovereign state.
This was an unprecedented event. Like these women at Byron Bay, NSW, on 8th Feb 2003, millions of people world wide did not want their children to have a legacy of such a tragic war. It now has turned out much worse than we feared it might. With over 100, thousand Iraqi dead, countless wounded and over 2000 US deaths, unkown wounded, we are staring US Empire ambitions in the face.
The US is borrrowing $2 billion dollars a day (sic) (much of it from China) to finance this war.
One (early) aim of the invasion was to bring democracy to Iraq. You cannot impose democracy at the point of a gun. And what about OUR democracy? The free world overwhelmingly opposed the US proposed action. We were laying candles in the rain. We knew we were right, and history has shown this to be so.
It is important now to remember our struggle, our hopes and desires for reason, diplomancy and peace to prevail. We need to cherish our ideals, and know in the end, we will prevail.
This site will help you recall our valiant struggle. For more, accurate information, see my recommended blogs, and web pages.

HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE

2006-01-10T13:55:00.000+11:00

Senators unite across party lines to accept petition from 8000 signatures, in front of Parliament House, re stripping Abbott of veto power. Ru486 passes senate vote.
If you live in Australia, give your voice a platform, join Getup today.

MY WISH LIST FOR 2006

2006-01-01T17:25:00.000+11:00

Firstly, Bush, Blair, and our much hated Prime Minister to appear before the International War Court to answer for crimes against humanity.

All foreign troops be removed from Iraq, and the aggressors set up talks to agree to massive reparation funds for the Iraqi people.

A commission is set up, with full legislative powers, headed by Pat Dodson; Lowitja O'Donoghue (our next governor General)
and Malcolm Fraser to work out policies in the best interests of our indigenous community.

A similar commission, again with full legislative powers, be set up with Tim Costello, St Vincent de Paul, Sydney City Mission, to tackle the problem of our burgeoning homeless numbers, our dispossessed and related drug problems.

Our federal govt, makes substantial cuts to our defence spending, and uses savings to legislate that every house in Australia be fitted with solar power generators.

Desalination plants are dismantled, and recycling plants are established.

The transcript of the three-hour interrogation of Prince Charles by Scotland Yard, over the Murder of Princess Diana, be made public.

We make a full apology to the Captain of the Tampa, and promise that in future we will honour international law of the sea. Read about how a civilised country reacted to the Tampa issue: here
Read about how Howard and Frankenstein are blundering against world opinions: here
The Elgin Marbles, illegally purchased and criminally kept by the British Museum, be returned to Greece, and damages be paid to the Greek nation.

Our sedition laws to be immediately repealed.

We make a public declaration that any capital punishment metered out to an Australian citizen in any country will be read as a declaration of war. At the same time we begin a world wide campaign to end capital punishment, with the aid of the UN and Amnesty International

We campaign for the removal of Coffey-Anan as head of the UN, but also declare the Downer is also unfit for the position.

Marriage, adoption rights, and full civil rights be granted to any two people who wish it.

Overseas marriages, by more enlightened countries also be recognised by the Federal Government.

The Labor Party realises that to win government, they must ditch Beasley, and remove Julia Gillard from the front bench, ending her blatant push to be PM, and recognising that victory can only be possible with the support of Greens preferences.

The Federal government tears up the free trade agreement with the US, and warns China that no agreement would be possible without substantial human rights implementation. We also withhold our coal and iron exports to China, pending a timetable being set up by them to begin these changes.

We set up four more universities, and open all universities to free non-fee places granted to any citizen from our indigenous community and from third world countries.

We ban all overseas call centres from access to our networks.

We reclaim all telecommunication satellite links from Singapore, and nationalise Telstra: Optus; our airports; all our tollways, and pass legislation that our Opera House can never be privatised.

We go over all the cuts that Costello has made over the last ten years, and reverse most of them, giving us an immediate boost to our standard of living.

Just a few things I wish about. I know many of them will happen eventually. I know I missed a few, but I can always add some. Also I will add some pics, and links.
Declare war a bit strong? Well it would never come to that, but it will stop the murders.

HOWARD'S LEGACY OF RACISM AND DIVISION

2005-12-13T13:32:00.000+11:00

It's very ironic, that Howard states that he sees 'no underlying racism in Australia". This coming from a much hated PM who has adopted and championed racist policies of Hanson, won an election with racist lies, presided over racist immigration policies, including deporting Australians. Howard has bred a climate of division and racism in Australia. Extreme right groups are naturally taking advantage of this.
Here are some well researched articles from Indymedia:

Neo-Nazis helped to bring disgrace to Sydney's Cronulla beach
by Mark Fontaine 11:32pm Mon Dec 12 '05 (Modified on 12:41am Tue Dec 13 '05) article#62300
Neo-Nazi agitators and far-Right group such as Jim Saleam's Australia First Party were involved in drawing the lynch-mobs to Sydney's Cronulla district on Sunday.

From the TV coverage and press reports, it is clear that the lynch-mobs were not just looking for "people of Middle Eastern appearance". They were looking for anybody of ANY exotic background. One TV station showed how the lynch-mobs pounced on two young men who were not Middle Eastern at all -- they were two students from Bangladesh, which is next-door to Burma, nowhere near the Middle East. Another bulletin reported how the lynch-mobs targeted an Australian man of Italian background (presumably he had a brownish complexion).

Here are some media mentions of Jim Saleam's Australia First Party and other neo-Nazi agitators:-

1. The Australian reported: "Far-Right groups, including Australia First, distributed inflammatory literature at the beach, as did skinhead groups. Australia First NSW secretary Jim Saleam confirmed that his group had been distributing anti-multicultural and anti-immigrant literature at the beach. Mr Saleam also confirmed the group had helped mobilise people for the demonstration." -- THAT NEWS ITEM WAS FOUND HERE

2. The Daily Telegraph (which itself often tries to stir up xenophobic feelings among Howard's battlers) reported: "A number of groups, including the notoriously racist Australia First Party, sought to manipulate the incident and exacerbate ethnic tensions." -- THAT ITEM WAS FOUND HERE

The Sydney Morning Herald reported: "White supremacists were among those who took part in yesterday's race riots in Sydney's south, Police Minister Carl Scully said today." -- THAT ITEM WAS FOUND HERE

On Monday 12 December (the day after the riots) Channel Seven's "Today Tonight" program reported that the lynch mobs had been encouraged by shock-jocks at Sydney's talkback radio stations -- for example, Jason Morrison at 2GB and Tim Webster at 2UE.

On Monday morning, 12 December, Channel Seven's "Sunrise" program (at 7.00am) indicated that another Sydney shock-jock -- Stan Zemanek -- was also an offender. (Zemanek is an ordinary man of appalling ignorance and is therefore popular with Howard's battlers.)

cartoon: Bill Leak

LIVING WITH A TRANSSEXUAL WIFE

2005-12-09T19:40:00.002+11:00

Well we're not actually married yet, but it's on the cards. After three years and four months, it's no longer a case of "maybe" but "when".

I remember us walking out of Westside Private Hospital after her sex reassignment surgery and wondering what lay ahead for us. How long would she take to heal; how would our makeshift sitz bath work; how would the operation change her; how would it change me, and more importantly how would it change us?

Well I can report that everything is going fine, and to the surprise of some, we are still as in love as ever.

Twenty-two years ago, after a TM group meditation, a group of us went to Sydney's best ever macrobiotic restaurant, The Source, at Bronte Beach. This was where I met this tall god, and there was an initial attraction, a good mix of chemistry, so we became friends. The problem was me being queer, and him hetero, we soon went on our own different paths.
In 2002, after two marriages, Paula was born and decided to look me up. I was still single and queer (though labels aren't my thing, I guess I was sometimes bisexual during those twenty-two years). Well the attraction was still there, and certainly the friendship took off from where we had left off. And the rest is history.

I guess you want an explanation of how a queer guy can live with a transsexual woman, and even contemplate marrying her. Surely, you say, that's a recipe for failure - is it not? Actually no, it's not. When you start with friendship, add chemistry, attraction, respect, maturity, life experience, and mix with a good sense of humour, heaps of TLC, and discover that you're best friends on top of everything else: Voila!

We had the support of friends, relatives, gay and lesbian friends, transsexual friends, straight friends. And not a few fans from our very public stint on Channel Nine TV and the photographic gallery exhibition Intimate Encounters.

Now you're still puzzled.

Are you still gay, or have you been somehow converted?

Silly question! A gay guy is queer for life. His sensibility is gay. He is a great cook. I still enjoy gay movies, gay novels, gay friends, but then so do bi-guys, and not a few straight guys.

Queer guys make the best lovers, because we are totally opened to our feminine side, and we always aim to please. Paula has never tried to "convert" me, she likes me too much as I am.

I still watch "Queer as Folk" religiously. Who would have thought that Brian would decide to marry Scott?

My lifestyle has changed drastically a bit like Brian's. No more serial monogamous short-term tragic love affairs. No more having to be out on Saturday nights. Now I'm content to stay at home with Paula. Change is what life is all about. If you don't change, you die. I've given up my "cheap thrills", but I have gained so much. And I've finally learnt about and embraced "commitment".

I know gay guys who are real couples, and I used to envy them, but it never worked for me. Now I have invented a different (for me) type of couple. A man and a woman. The man has a disability and is queer. The woman is transsexual and straight.

It's perfect!

THE FREE WORLD AND MORAL AUTHORITY

2005-12-08T23:21:00.000+11:00

Harold Pinter gives Wilfred Owen Award Speech - 18 th March 2005

This is a true honour. Wilfred Owen was a great poet. He articulated the tragedy, the horror and indeed the pity – of war – in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more pitiless.

But the “free world” we are told (as embodied in the United States and Great Britain) is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches 100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi dead. As General Tommy Franks (US Central Command) memorably said: “We don't do body counts”.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East”. But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well President Bush himself answered this question only the other day when he said “We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation”.

I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.

What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?

I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.

Harold Pinter

EXECUTION AND FIRST WORLD MORALS

2005-12-08T22:52:00.000+11:00

For decades, Australia has outlawed capital punishment. This is right and proper, and we share this outlook with other enlightened countries. The US is one notable exception, and we recall that President Clinton had to conduct an execution, on his political path to becoming a President.
“Conduct an execution” is a euphemision for state sanctioned murder.
In Australia recently we have again revisited this can of worms. We have witnessed our (much hated) Prime Minister shed crocodile tears over the grief of Van Nguyen’s mother. We stood by and saw his inept attempt at seeking clemency from the Singaporean authorities. He changed his tack when he read the Neilson polls that showed 47% of Australians supported the murder of one of our citizens. “The message “ he said, “is stay away from drugs”. That was so deep, such an insight; it just made it clear why we hate our PM so much.

Singapore is a tin-pot dictatorship. Gatherings of more than two people are not allowed. They have an average of one hanging a fortnight. The population is kept ignorant and downtrodden. It is a clean antiseptic environment, brisling with expensive armaments. The type of island state that Howard only dreams of controlling.
Typically, Howard has blurred the relevant issues, and while feigning opposition to the death penalty, mouths the platitude that Australia has no right to tell another sovereign country how to conduct itself and how to apply their laws. This is not an issue. The issue is that Howard and his cronies have a duty of care to ensure that none of out citizens is subjected to cruel or unusual treatment, in this case State authorised murder.
If Howard’s son had been tried for a similar crime in Singapore, or any other totalitarian regime, he would be flown back to Australia the same day. A human life is a human life, except when it has blue blood. Then it’s more valuable. The German government had no trouble extricating one of its citizens from Singapore for a similar crime. It also demanded and got its citizens out of the Guantanamo Bay hellhole, as did the French and the English. Why not David Hicks? Howard doesn’t like him. He has already (illegally) implied that he is guilty. And his mate George Bush might rouse on him if he tried that.
Howard is a paper tiger. Asian countries know that, and he knows it too. Trying to convert our Asian neighbours to value human life, to follow the UN imperatives is beyond him. They laugh at him and wonder how such a coward ever got to hoodwink the Australians into voting him into government. Well we wonder that too. Often.
The issue is not so much about capital punishment, but about our right to extradite our citizens and deal with them as we see fit. We owe them that, and nothing less.
The law council is annoyed at Howard for not doing enough to save Van Nguyen. Howard would just rather watch cricket, and wait until all the fuss blows over.
It won’t blow over so easily. The Bali Nine are next to face a brutal regime. We are watching to see how our Government squirms out of this one. Also there is that guy in Kuwait. Yeah that’s the country with a marvellous Utzon designed parliament house. Trouble is they haven’t got round to using it yet. Democracy is so much trouble in places like that. And why do you need democracy when you have a US base on your home soil.
Howard will say it’s not in our region, not our concern. One day Teflon Howard might realise that...no it’s not Teflon…it’s shit.

RECOMMENDED SITES

2005-11-30T15:58:00.000+11:00

Hi folks, this is just a message to alert you to my new recommended sites listing, seen on the bottom left hand side. This is in no way a comprehensive list, but as well as being a list of important sites, it contains something for everyone. It will be added to periodically, containing new sites I have come across, as well as some I have saved over my seven years of trawling the web. ENJOY!

Our Religious War

2005-11-06T16:24:00.000+11:00

Photo source ABC online news

The present war between the US and Iraq (which the US is losing) is in many ways a religious war. The war was proposed by Zionists in the US Govt. and implemented by the Christian fundamentalist backed Bush regime. The invasion of Iraq was opposed by Muslim fundamentalist, and millions of people who demonstrated world wide. The conduct of the war by the US has breached Geneva conventions, and left it open to charges of war crimes.

The standing of the US has plummeted, The Blair Govt. has been damaged, and the OZ Govt. simply follows the US line that all is well. We have no real policy on Iraq, and will only pullout when the US does. We only joined the war because the US demanded it, and expected it, and because we presently have no opposition party. Our next Labor president may not even be born yet. Possibly, (hopefully) if the US economy falters, it could cause us to rethink our love affair with Costello. Another possibility is that given enough rope, the Liberals will hang themselves. People will see how reckless they have behaved, and begin seeing the consequences of their IR reforms. The last straw might be when they move to abolish The Senate (a move which Labor is dearly wishing for) but this is a long shot as even Howard/Costello will realise it would cause too much disquiet amongst the ignorant masses.

Photo source Indymedia

If Latham had won Govt, Rudd would have been downgraded, our troops would have been removed from Iraq, and we would not have a terrorist threat. The problem with the proposed anti-terrorism laws is that we don’t need them, won’t use them, but are giving the Govt. of the day powerful laws to use against us. We do not trust the Liberals (going by Howard’s record) and we certainly can’t trust the Laborites (given that Beazley caved in on sending our troops to Iraq, and now caved in on accepting these new, dangerous (Draconian, according to Beattie, who also supports them) laws. The unfortunate fact remains that whatever the polls show, the Liberals will have the preferred President for the distant future. These are the depths we have sunk to.

What is our standing in these religious wars in the Middle East and Iraq? For all intents and purposes, we are following the far right evangelical Christian-led Bush regime. It is counter productive to Australia’s interests. It is counter productive to our International standing.

Anyone who watches SBS, NPR, reads international newspapers, or cares to find out the truth being denied to us by our misleaders, knows what folly we are committing. It is a serious matter, and will not be rectified easily or quickly.

We might indeed have to wait for the next Labor president, who hasn’t yet been born.

ASIO Does Bush Regime's Bidding

2005-09-15T15:35:00.000+10:00

Why was US peace activist Scott Parkin harassed, held in custody, and deported? Simply because that is what the Bush regime requested.
ASIO is no longer in need of funds, as it was during the period when it accidently bombed the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, using explosives made by the CSIRO, in 1978.
However it seems its mentality and B-class movie actions are as twisted and warped as they were back in 1978. In deporting Scott Parkin, it is mis-usuing its powers, declaring anyone it picks to be "a threat to Australia's National Securtiy". This needs no clarification, no explanation, and the victim can be detained and deported without being charged for any offense.
This is government sanctioned terrorism. In our so-called war against terrorism, anyone is fair game, and our defenders stoop so low, that they absollutely lose the plot.

ASIO detains US peace activist
The World Today - Monday, 12 September , 2005 12:14:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
ELEANOR HALL: Even without the new anti-terrorism laws being proposed by the Federal Government, action has been taken against a US peace activist, who's been deemed by ASIO to be a threat to Australia's national security.

The lawyers for Scott Parkin say the history teacher is likely to be deported later today. His visa has already been revoked by the Immigration Department and he's being held in police custody in Melbourne.

But Greens Senator Bob Brown has accused the Government of persecuting the man for his views, and a friend and colleague of Mr Parkin in the United States says she's shocked at the events here in Australia, as Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: American history teacher Scott Parkin has spent the past three days in the Melbourne Custody Centre, after the Immigration Department cancelled his Visitor's Visa.

Last Wednesday ASIO officers telephoned him and asked him if he would agree to be interviewed. His response was, do I have to?

ASIO didn't have a warrant, and Scott Parkin declined to be interviewed.

The next day ASIO declared him a threat to national security and contacted the Immigration Department.

Scott Parkin's lawyer is Marika Dias. She says her client is shocked.

MARIKA DIAS: He has been involved in a number of workshops with local activists, environmental activists and other groups, but they have all been around, and he is himself a staunch advocate of peaceful protests, and they've all been around non-violent strategies.

Certainly, he has strong views. With regards to the war in Iraq, for example, he's very much of an anti-war stance.

ALISON CALDWELL: Marika Dias says Scott Parkin is likely to seek deportation back to America. She says he'd rather go home than pay for another day in custody. When he's at home, Scott Parkin is a high-profile activist in Houston, Texas.

One of his main targets in recent years has been Halliburton, the American corporation which has secured several contracts in post-war Iraq.

Scott Parkin was in Sydney during the recent Forbes conference, where he took part in several Greenpeace protests, including one outside Halliburton's local office.

MARIKA DIAS: There are many, many people who do not support right-wing governments, and that doesn't necessarily make them a threat to national security. I mean, certainly, I'm sure that everyone would agree that there needs to be freedom of expression in that regard.

ALISON CALDWELL: The World Today asked the Attorney-General and the Immigration Minister for interviews, but both declined.

Speaking on Southern Cross Radio this morning, the Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was asked to explain why Scott Parkin was given a visitor's visa in the first place.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: People, people do come where information that may not be known to you at the time has come to notice later. I mean, those situations do arise, and you'd expect us to act.

ANDREA BUFFA: People in the States are starting to find out about this, activists, people that know Scott, and some people are out protesting in front of the Australian Embassy in Washington DC today.

ALISON CALDWELL: Andrea Buffa describes herself as a peace activist with the group Global Exchange. She's known Scott Parkin for 18 months.

ANDREA BUFFA: I do not know of Scott ever being involved in anything violent. He's a political activist. He has spoken at (inaudible), he's organised rallies and vigils.

He has participated in non-violent disobedience in the style of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther-King Jnr, but that is definitely not the same thing as any kind of violence or any kind of a terrorist threat. He justÖ he opposes US Government policies and he's a political activist.

ALISON CALDWELL: What did he tell you about his plans when he arrived here?

ANDREA BUFFA: He went to Australia and he was planning on travelling for six months just as a way of taking a break and figuring out what he wanted to do next in his life, and I think for the first part of the time that he was in Australia he was just hiking and camping and enjoying being there, and then he hooked up with Greenpeace in Australia, and I think he was doing some work with them, and then I read a newspaper report that lately he was participating in some protests, including a protest against Halliburton.

ALISON CALDWELL: Are you surprised that something like this could happen to Scott in Australia?

ANDREA BUFFA: I'm very surprised. I am not surprised that in the United States the Bush administration since after the attacks of September 11 has been trying to paint anyone that opposes their policies as supporting terrorism, but I am shocked to hear that this is going on in other countries.

And Scott is just, he's just a regular guy, he's a very sweet guy, and it's just unimaginable that he's being held in jail and called a national security threat. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

You know, I think it should be of concern for everyone there, in terms of your right to express your opinions about US Government policy and Australian Government policy.

ELEANOR HALL: Andrea Buffa is a fellow peace activist and friend of Scott Parkin, and she was speaking there to Alison Caldwell.
from ABC radio national http://www.abc.net.au/news/
photo courtesy of independent media centre: http://sydney.indymedia.org/radio.php3

more info from AAP

An American peace activist facing deportation from Australia may have
been arrested for political reasons on orders from Washington, Greens
leader Bob Brown said tonight.

Scott Parkin, a teacher and activist who was once arrested in the
United States, was detained yesterday by Australian Federal Police on
the authority of the immigration department.

Mr Parkin's lawyer Marika Dias today said Mr Parkin was told he'd been
arrested, and had his visitor's visa cancelled, because he was
considered a threat to national security.

Mr Parkin - who had been teaching peace activism workshops in Melbourne
- is being held at the Melbourne Custody Centre, where protesters
rallied today against his detention and expected deportation.

Ms Dias said authorities had not told Mr Parkin why he was considered a
security risk in Australia.

Senator Brown said he had serious concerns about the reasons for Mr
Parkin's arrest given his history of activism against US military
contractor Halliburton, which has close ties to US Vice President Dick
Cheney.

"I think the big question here is whether it's a political arrest and
deportation," Senator Brown said.

"It seems to have nothing to do with terrorism.

"The Howard government will do whatever Washington asks of it and I am
very concerned the request for his arrest came in the wake of
information from Washington ... because he's an absolute thorn in the
side of Dick Cheney, Halliburton and profit making deals that apply in
Iraq."

Senator Brown said he doubted the order for Mr Parkin's arrest had come
from Australia's security services, given that he was cleared for a
visa months ago.

He said the government had been "very secretive" about Mr Parkin's
detention and would not say under what law he had been arrested and
held, nor why.

Ms Dias said Mr Parkin had been involved in one non-violent protest
against Halliburton in Sydney, but no arrests were made at that rally.

Her client was now considering whether to appeal the decision to cancel
his visa, Ms Dias said.

"Really it seems to be that there are simply no grounds for this
decision," she said.

"He certainly feels that a grave injustice has been perpetrated here.
He feels targeted. He feels, I suppose, that he's been treated very
unfairly."

Ms Dias said up to six AFP and immigration department officers took Mr
Parkin from a Melbourne cafe on Saturday.

He was now paying about $130 a day for his detention.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told the ABC that Immigration Minister
Amanda Vanstone had made the decision to detain the American after a
security check.

He said visas could be revoked for a number of reasons.

"I'm not going to comment on matters about which assessments are made
by competent agencies," he told the ABC.

"The only point I'd make is that in relation to those matters, there
are provisions by which the decision can be challenged if people are
inclined to do that."

National Anti-Deportation Alliance spokeswoman Liz Thompson said Mr
Parkin had done nothing wrong.

"He's a hippy giving workshops on peace, non-violent direct action,"
she told the ABC.

"I'm baffled. We'd love to know what the secret stash of information on
this guy is, that makes him a threat to national security."

Melbourne activist Rory Gutterson was among 30 people who protested
against Mr Parkin's detention outside the Melbourne Custody Centre.

He said he believed the detention was part of a wider government
campaign to silence Australian activists.

"Thousands of people have committed exactly the same 'offence' that's
not actually illegal, as Scott has done," Mr Gutterson said.

"We've spoken out against war, we've spoken out against detention and
now we feel threatened by this and this is the government's aim."

Mr Parkin arrived in Australia in early June and was planning to leave
Australia in September, Ms Dias said.

She said a number of "high-profile" Australian lawyers had offered to
act on his behalf, but that he would have to stay in detention if he
pursued an appeal.

Greenpeace spokesman Dan Cass confirmed Mr Parkin had been arrested in
America as part of a Greenpeace action, but said his treatment in
Australia was unwarranted.

He described Mr Parkin as Australia's first political prisoner, telling
the ABC: "This only encourages us to think that when the
Howard-controlled Senate looks at review of the ASIO laws, Australia
will be facing potentially police state powers." -- AAP
link HERE

An Unpleasant truth about Australia

2005-08-09T17:40:00.000+10:00

Last Update: Monday, August 1, 2005. 6:02am (AEST) From ABC Online News

Motivation revealed: Rois says the the goal was for Australia to stop oppressing Muslims. (Reuters)
Iraq war prompted attack on Aust embassy: suspect

By Indonesia correspondent Tim Palmer

The key conspirator arrested for the bombing of Australia's embassy in Jakarta last September says the attack was launched because of Australia's involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

The claim has been made to police by 30-year-old suspect Rois, who will face a verdict later this month for his role in the attack.

The transcript of the police interrogation of Rois, which took place just two months after the bombing killed 11 people outside Australia's Jakarta embassy, shows the suspect being asked the purpose of the attack.

Rois told police it was because "the Australian Government is one of America's allies that gives most support to the American policy of slaughtering Muslims in Iraq".

He said that the bombers' goal was "for Australia to stop repressing Muslims especially in Iraq".

Rois criticised Australia's interference in other Muslim countries, including Indonesia.

Rois also told police the mastermind of the attack, Malaysian Dr Azahari bin Husin, had said funding for the bombing came from Osama Bin Laden by a courier.

But Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock has told Channel Nine he is sceptical of Rois's claims.

"The linkage with Iraq is of course what you would expect them to say but bin Laden was active in relation to promoting terrorist activity well before any engagement in Iraq," Mr Ruddock said.

"Australia was targeted first back in the year 2000 in Singapore by the bin Laden operation."

-------//---------

The truth of the matter is obvious, though it i still being denied by Howard.
We were and still are targets for terrorism because of our part in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This threat has been amplified by Howard prancing around with Bush, a spectacle he rejoiced in, and one not missed by those who want to punish us. The queston now is not whether we will be targeted by terrorists on our soil, but when and by what means.
Howard is playing a dangerous game, and as usual, he is being loose with the truth.
Terrorism has never solved a political problem, but it is outrageous that Howard has left us open to such barbarism.
The coalition is not winning the war on terrorism in Iraq. It has already lost. The US will once again install a puppet government in Iraq, (one who is lready showing signs of being tyrannical and repressive, and has requested us to send more troops) and then retreat from a situation it had no concept would happen, and one it has no clue how to handle.

The US has already signaled it will reduce its troop numbers in Iraq, in response to pressures at home from the unacceptable body count, and the opinion polls which threaten the Bush government. It will have installed a regime which no one trusts, and a strengthened military who might prove to be a problem in the future. If the Sumis are not satisfied with their representation in the new government, then civil war will follow, ans we are seeing evidence of this already. With our involvement the US has opened up a new theatre of terrorism where any tin pot group with a chip on their shoulder can join in and learn the ropes.
An estimated 25,000 CIVILIANS have been killed in Iraq.

The unpleasant truth about Australia, is that our Government (and our opposition) have no policy on Iraq. only a platitude by Howard that we wll exit "when the job is done". This is code for when the US pulls out, and tells us to get out too.

Another unpleasant truth about Australia is that in the next general elections, as in the last elections, no party (apart from the Greens) will mention Iraq. Not unless we suffer an attack by terrorists. Then we will hear another platitude by Howard:"we will not let our foreign policy be dictated by terrorist". Foreign policy? but Howard, remember, we don't have one!

Vegetable Soup Revisited

2005-07-12T17:01:00.000+10:00

This is one you might like to try - a few thousand times. Every time you do, it will of course be different. It will evolve, vary, and take into account the season, and your mood, and your muse.
Creative cooking is easy, but sometimes you need a kick-start. This is it.
There is no list of ingredients, these depends on seasonal availability. The one mandatory ingredient you must use is cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. “Pure olive oil” is simply not an option. Supermarkets sell this, Greek or Italian is best. Bit pricey, but priceless.
The vegetables should be of the freshest quality, and organic is a plus. If the vegetables are not fresh, the soup will fail and you probably won’t make it again.

Here is a sample to follow, to serve 2.

Take five cups of water, and bring to the boil.
While the water is heating, add the following
I small onion sliced
1 small carrot cut thick
I small potato, diced
I handful of snow peas, toped and cut into three
Three or four cloves of garlic finely chopped
Turn the soup down to a low simmer

A handful of okra (only is soft and tender) cut into two. These give the soup a smooth consistency.
I medium tomato, diced (can buy tinned organic ones from supermarket)
I/4 of a red capsicum, sliced.
I medium wedge of pumpkin, diced
I cup of sliced mushrooms. If you're into super foods, Shitaki mushrooms are the ones to seek, fresh from your local supermarket (Coles in Sydney). They have interesting medicinal properties. Description:

google found:
ï Shiitaki mushrooms contain an antiviral substance known as lentinan, which stimulates the immune system to produce more interferon, a natural compound that is known to fight cancer and viruses.

ï Additional studies demonstrate that shitaki extract promotes the activation of macrophages, and the proliferation of bone marrow cells, thereby possessing an immuno-stimulating activity and anti HIV effect.

ï Shiitaki mushrooms also contain an important source of vitamin D needed for calcium absorption, which is not found in many foods.

ï Shiitake mushrooms contain lentysine and eritadenine, two ingredients that help lower the level of fat in the blood, which aids in lowering the blood pressure, and reducing fatigue. This is also used in the Orient for sexual dysfunction, aging, gallstones, ulcers and diabetes, to name a few.

ï Shiitake are free of the natural carcinaogens found in the common white button mushroom.

ï The shiitake does not lose its nutrient value when cooked at high temperatures.

now add...
Any herbs you are growing, or bought fresh, finely chopped.
Include some celery, with some green celery leaves.

To give the soup more body, and nutrition, add half a tin of cooked beans. Buy the organic ones from your supermarket.
Alternately you can add tofu, or add some buckwheat at the beginning (try 1/4 cup) or lentils ¼ cup again, at start. (Both will cook in time by the time soup is ready).
Now add I/4 cup of the olive oil.
Season according to taste:
We recommend Organic Shoyu, (if you prefer plain salt, use sea salt. Free running salt should be thrown away), and Red Ochre Bush Tomato & Chilli Dipping sauce (from you supermarket).
You can add brocoli spikes about 10mins before soup is ready. Brocoli overcooked is yuk.
Grated fresh ginger is nice too.
Taste soup regularly –you will be amazed at what you have created.
Simmer for further 15-20mins.
Enjoy!

Can be served neat, or blended, or topped with grated Parmesan cheese or lemon juice, and with sour dough organic bread – a complete meal.
To make it chunkier, cut food larger, esp. potato and pumpkin.
Pumpkin cut small will dissolve, which you might like too.
Regulate how thick you want it, by adding water, but only a small amount.
If you have a food processor by all means use it to make preparation easier.
This is sample only, there are thousands of vegetables to use, and variations you can make, like adding small tin of coconut milk, or Bonsoy soya milk.

Next time you will make it different. You’ve got some ideas already.
Slow – Foods is fun, eh?

What My Dog Taught Me

2005-06-20T17:47:00.000+10:00

Well it’s a lesson I haven’t mastered yet, maybe never will. Ricky lived in the present. When we left the house he howled with grief, and maybe self-pity. It was an immediate response; true for the present time he was in. When I returned, it was pure joy, no thought of the time he had suffered. He experienced only what he felt at the time. This was not to say he had no memory, he was very intelligent and knew all the cues we gave. When I picked up my keys he held his breath: It was either “yes you can come” or a shake of my head, “Nup, can’t take you this time”. This was always followed by a pat on the head. He was sad, of course, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he was being denied my company, or because he thought I was in some way rejecting him. I couldn’t explain to him that I wasn’t going to his favourite park (Macarthur’s Park), but shopping or visiting a friend. The dejection was the same, and when I reached the bottom of the steps, the howling began, and pierced my heart. When I returned, however late, the joy was immediate and all was forgiven, and forgotten.
The ethos behind his behaviour was unconditional love. Unwavering, constant, unconditional love. All he asked of my was my company. What he gave to me was priceless.

we won so now we have some hope for our future

on the Future of Labor and Gillard

Divisions

alexx Karydis from my Facebook page

Sometimes I come across stuff on Facebook I want to share, not because I totally agree with it, but because I'm not sure, and because I believe a divergence of views is valuableJo Harrison

New Ideas for 2012

Disclosure

Andronicus Chocolates

livestation -how it will change you

Ginger men -Yipeeeee

slow- foods secrets of essene manna

olive tree learning

URANIUM MINING the facts

Rudd's priorities wrong

G20, what's a G20??

Less is More - Our New Life

Time to end MANDATORY DETENTION

The Pope and condoms: compassion missing

Activists to hand out condoms in protest against 'immoral stance'

An interview with South African Bishop Kevin Dowling, an AIDS activist

END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT?

Olympic Tragedy

Charter of Rights

Why a Charter of Rights is important to Indigenous Australians

ABOUT TOM CALMA

NSW now a FAILED STATE

budget matters

our right choice: the VW Polo TDI

Vegans leave the smallest footsteps

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 4 open sesame!

Secret of a vegan Kitchen. The humble Cashew

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 2 Pumpkin Soup

Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 3 Greek Food

give us this day, our daily vegetables

SORRY....at last

a conversation with god

David Hicks's Statement

Love Is....

Mamdouh Habib and the old Cronies

Honeymoon 2007 style

WE WON

Love and Marriage....tying the knot.

SIEV X REMEMBERED

GETUP help make a difference

Detention: Hell at Villawood

Concerns over Haneef Affair

A GRAB FOR POWER

QUEER as FUCK

numero 60 communal blog

SOUR DOUGH BREAD...for LIFE!

Saddam's Execution (from New Matilda)

GLOBAL WARMING is here

Daniel Ellsberg on Vietnam, Iraq and Iran

JUST WAR

make a difference with YOUR banking

another reason to elect howard out

GETUP AUSTRALIANS your voice counts

ON TURNING 59 SOME COMMUNAL MUSINGS

"NEVER SAY NEVER"

WEST PAPUA -NEW VENUE FOR WAR ON TERROR?

ANOTHER BLEEDING VISITOR

THE LAST VISIT

GREEN TOMATOES AND LOSS OF VALUES

THE PEOPLE GOT IT RIGHT

HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE

MY WISH LIST FOR 2006

HOWARD'S LEGACY OF RACISM AND DIVISION

LIVING WITH A TRANSSEXUAL WIFE

THE FREE WORLD AND MORAL AUTHORITY

EXECUTION AND FIRST WORLD MORALS

RECOMMENDED SITES

Our Religious War

Photo source ABC online news

Photo source Indymedia

ASIO Does Bush Regime's Bidding

An Unpleasant truth about Australia

Vegetable Soup Revisited

What My Dog Taught Me

Sometimes I come across stuff on Facebook I want to share, not because I totally agree with it, but because I'm not sure, and because I believe a divergence of views is valuable

Jo Harrison