universality

The court heard that Mr Doomadgee, 36, was drunk and walking towards the post office when Hurley pulled up in a police van on the day in question.

"There is not a lot of evidence as to what Cameron (Mulrunji) Doomadgee did to deserve being arrested," prosecutor Peter Davis, SC, said. "Mr Doomadgee resisted being arrested and he resented it. That might be the spark that caused all this."

An autopsy of Mr Doomadgee's body revealed his liver had been "cleaved in two" while his portal vein had been ruptured. He also suffered broken ribs and a bruised jaw.



http://www.justice.qld.gov.au/courts/coroner/findings/mulrunji270906.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_deaths_in_custody

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/rciadic_summary/

An indigenous Australian is 11 times more likely to be in prison than a non-Indigenous Australian, and in 2003, 20% of prisoners in Australia were Indigenous, and 10 of the 39 deaths that occurred in prison custody (26%) were Indigenous.
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Could we vouch for our own behavior under these circumstances?


The Warsaw Ghetto uprising.




The first operations carried out by the Jewish underground were directed towards the Jewish collaborators: high-ranking officials in the Jewish Police and Judenrat accused of assisting the Germans, Jewish traitors who helped the SS soldiers capture their own people and lead them to their death. Along with the execution of traitors and collaborators, the underground began collecting money for funding the purchase of weapons and ammunitions from the rich people of the ghetto.

The Gazan population is being thrown into more misery by an Israeli blockade of electricity, fuel and even food. (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that it will be a humanitarian blockade; if you believe that, I have a bridge over the River Jordan you can purchase inexpensively from me). UNRWA is warning against the blockade. With an unemployment rate of 50% and widespread malnutrition, caused by the ordinary everyday Israeli pressure on Gaza, the territory's population can't take much more extra deprivation without an immense human toll being exacted.

If Bush and the Israelis couldn't live with a Hamas electoral victory, they should have excluded Hamas from running a year and a half ago. - Juan Cole

The most difficult thing to try to understand about the current situation in the occupied territories is not why its happening, but why hasn't it happened sooner. The parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the present state of the occupied territories are, I know, far fetched, the closer truth would be the state of the townships in south africa under the apartheid regime, yet the idea is the same, at what point does a society under extreme pressure with little in the way of hope begin to turn upon itself. And is it the final straw for the formation and birth of something better?

The Israelis have long demanded the impossible, complete capitulation before meaningful dialogue, while at the same time reneging on any form of restraint upon their own actions. They point to the withdrawal from Gaza as a sign of their own largess, while at the same time firing an average of 300 artillery shells a week into the tiny enclave and blockading the sea and land crossings under a thousand dubious rationales, starving the residents of even the most basic of needs.

The US made its demands clear, aid would be cut off if elections were not held, then cut off all aid when elections were held because they didn't like the outcome. The European Union, in a sop to the post-Iraq histrionics of the Bush regime, did the same. The world looked the other way while the people of the occupied territories were held hostage to living up to the demands for democracy. Perhaps we need to revise our own desires to see anything other than our own narrow interests writ in others lives and nations and end all this blatant hypocrisy in calling for democratic governance, we can clearly see that it doesn't live up to the ideals we call for. Do I contradict myself, very well, I shall contradict myself and call it foreign policy.

The PLO overturned its decades old call for the return of all the old lands of Palestine and recognised Israel and the right of the state of Israel to exist, as demanded by the UN, the US and Israel itself. In return they received, an increase in the rate of building of settlements, an increased expansion of the territories beyond the UN mandated borders of 1967 claimed by Israel, vast increases in the numbers and frequency of checkpoints, a "security" wall built predominately on occupied territory, targeted assassination's, an increase in poverty, a decline in security and little that could honestly be called progress on a two state solution.

Its near impossible to say as the Israelis have said that they are seeking an equal partner to create the possibility of a solution when all their actions are designed to weaken and destroy and the other side. Arial Sharon spent his life pursuing the justifications of the settlers and championing their cause, the mere fact that he gave a fraction of leeway towards the end of his murderous life, does not in any way overlook the horrors he perpetuated, yet he was seen as the one who in the end was looking for and endorsing that "equal" partner. Give me a break.

When a few Palestinians cheered the sept 11 terrorist acts, or openly supported the dictator saddam, they did so in the full knowledge that each shell and bullet fired into their midst came with a US made or financed stamp upon it, knew that the each of their olive groves torn from the ground to make way for the illegal settlers homes was made possible by the billions provided by the US treasury. Any idea that the US could be seen as an honest broker in talks had shattered on a thousand demands given in by US administrations to the immensely powerful Israel Lobby in Washington.

Now we have such luminaries as the the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, and President of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Dore Gold, spouting such well worn tripe and hate at the Palestinians, attaching the cliches of the war on terror as though it were truth in their complicity to the current state of events.

Dore Gold: Hamas is a radical Islamic group, coming out of the Muslim brotherhood, which has branches in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the Muslim brotherhood is the basically, the founding father of a lot of radical Islam we're seeing today in the region, including Al Qaeda.

We cant have democracy, we cant have peace, we cant have an equal partner or give one inch of stolen ground, because all roads lead back to al queda. Pure emotive rubbish designed to sway western opinion

Hamas provides these extremely radical organisations with sanctuary.

Its a short step to calling Hamas the architect of 9/11, and their ends any semblance of rational discussion.

what we ended up getting was this radical regime, which is now hosting Al Qaeda affiliates... if we're not careful about blocking off the entrance points into the Gaza strip.

The big lie, we are starving Gaza, blockading humanitarian supplies, invading to stop what the western leaders fear most, a guy in a cave in afghanistan. Ludicrous in the extreme.

TONY JONES: Yes of course, the argument by your opponent is that Israel caused these states or mini-states or whatever you like to call them, to fail in the first place.

Dore Gold: ...unfortunately the Palestinian people elected Hamas in the January 2006 elections, and Hamas rather than moderating with power, seems to be more extreme than ever, as I said, is hosting organisations that openly affiliate with Al Qaeda.

DORE GOLD: Well, in my personal opinion, Mahmoud Abbas is a man I personally negotiated with. I understand that he has tried to build a reasonable civil society among the Palestinians, but he had a very difficult time in doing so. Well, the question is: "What do you have to work with?"

When Mahmoud Abbas was first appointed to the post, he tried to negotiate the release of prisoners from Israeli jails to shore up a degree of support form his people and show that he had some authority, the Israeli's, under Sharon, deliberately snubbed his request, instead they negotiated directly with Hama's and released a cache of Hamas supporters directly undercutting Abbas's authority. The Israeli's do have direct complicity in the current battles between Fateh and Hama's, they have spent the past twenty years cultivating them for the very purpose of being able to declare the idea of a partner in peace to be dead.

DG: Today, there's still Saudi support for Hamas, but most of the support comes from the Iranians. The Iranians see the Hamas takeover as a golden opportunity to spread their influence to their eastern Mediterranean, to the Palestinians, to build up a military presence there. And I think that those military dangers, that Iranian penetration is going to be the source of the real crisis here, with all due respect to the constitutional difficulties the new Palestinian Government faces.

So we come full circle to where the right of Israel would like it to be with the justification for a military adventure in Iran and the final death of the peace process and a two state solution. We cant have peace when all roads lead to war, even when the roads are paved in lies and deception.

When the first Jewish collaborator was shot in the Warsaw uprising was his last thought of finding a partner in peace, or were his thoughts of trying to find some semblance of harmony in an impossible situation. We face an impossible situation now, with options no less stark, just a hundred times more tangled than the black and white our leaders and spokesmen spout in their facile cliches.

lying your way towards democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Lockerbie/Story/0,,2105327,00.html

Its hard to believe, but prior to the War on Terror, there were unfair, politically motivated trials of "terrorists" whose charges were the result of political expedient fixes and manipulated outcomes, but this would have to be one of the worst. The lockerbie bombing was one the worst terrorist act prior to September 11, 2001, and probably the biggest miscarriage of justice ever seen under the international criminal justice system.

Nothing much about it made any sense, unless you took into account the happenings on the political stage, none of which should have made one bit of difference if justice were to be truly served. The trial and its ridiculous out come have tainted the international courts and coloured international diplomacy for nearly two decades.

Without going into all the too many details, the trial judges accepted as proof the word of a man whose story changed with each payment he received, called the man and firm who made the timer on the bomb (an international firm) unreliable and mistaken while ignoring all proof which said they were completely correct, discounted the most likely outcome in favour of a far fetched fantasy and generally behaved as though they were lapdogs to the wishes of the Thatcher/Regan/Bush agenda. The story the judges accepted as true in the delivery of the bomb, even they admitted relied upon a set of circumstances that were to say the least tortuously bizarre, went along these lines, the bomb arrived in Malta and was placed aboard a pan am flight, unseen (except by the paid informant), traveled to germany through two stops, unseen and uncounted, was placed aboard another flight, unseen and uncounted, to london, where it was then placed aboard its final pan am flight. The ignored a witness who said that he had not only noted the bag being placed aboard the flight directly in london, they ignored the only document which stated explicitly that the only unaccompanied brown bag was to be found in the london leg of the flight.

Not only this, the initial suspects, a PLO splinter group (contracted out by the Iranian Government) who had a history of making and using the exact same devices (and who had one of the bombs of the exact same make go missing), were mysteriously overlooked as suspects, despite all evidence pointing to them. Why? Because by the time the need for suspects to be tried came around, the political circumstances had changed. Initially the suspected instigators of the bombing where Iranian, seeking revenge for the US downing of one of their passenger liners over the gulf by the USS vincennes, however the US/Brits needed Iran on side for the first gulf war against Iraq, so we end up with Libya as the culprit, being as they were, the Hitler De Jour of the time.

So if the defendant Megrahi is finally proven innocent, will the international community apologise to Libya for forcing the country to pay reparations for a crime it did not commit, do some soul searching and clean up the international courts or will the US and Brits simply move onto Iran, today's Hitler de jour, as though nothing has happened. That's my favoured outcome, forget the corruption of justice with a further blast of politically expedient nonsense. Like the invasion of Iraq, the true story will not be told for a hundred years.

..................................................................................

Straining the bounds of credibility is hardly a new thing for the Howard government, outright blatant, lying to the electorate in the face of months of bad polls is now becoming the norm for this font of devious scumbags.

"and the governments plans for broadband will not cost the public purse a cent" Peter Costello has repeated said, even as he rolls out a further $1.9 billion to give to his preferred supplier on top of the $4.1 billion to add to the $600-900 million. So nearly $7 billion dollars given over to supplicant telcos just does not register in the eyes of our treasurer. Is this because it is all going to shore up support in liberal marginal electorates it can be wiped out as a phantom expense?

Not only are their spin on the costings a complete lie, their spin on coverage is a complete lie. The only way that their wireless technology can deliver the speeds they are "promising" to 99% of the population, is if only 10% of the population uses it, anything above that will slice gigabytes off the supposed speed of the downloads.

Senator Coonan admitted last night that the Government's rural and regional wireless network could become overloaded. "That can happen to any system," she said.

Combine this with the knowledge that anyone who lives beyond the optimal range of the relay towers, 20 km, will face a coomensurate reduction in rates and the governments admission that its plans for 99% coverage relys upon a 50km range with an unproven technology and we have a plan that adds up to a complete crock of shit. An expensive, pre-election quick fix, aimed purely at marginal liberal electorates. How much more of my money will this flailing, useless, vision less, retrograde government throw at getting itself re-elected? How many more lies are in store besides those already being trotted out on unions, global warming, the state of the economy and the sun shining from that hole in the PM's constantly shifting arse?

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"The chances of democratic progress in the broader Middle East have seemed frozen in place for decades," Bush said at the National Defense University at Fort McNair. "Yet, at last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun."

Bush, putting Mubarak on the spot, delineated what he would consider acceptable conditions for elections in Egypt: "freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties."

"It should be clear that the advance of democracy leads to peace because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbors," he said. "It should be clear the best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance kindled in free societies."

GW: A free Iraq will not destabilize the Middle East. A free Iraq can set a hopeful example to the entire region and lead other nations to choose freedom. And as the pursuits of freedom replace hatred and resentment and terror in the Middle East, the American people will be more secure.

With all the talk of democracy flowing like very cheap wine from the lips of our power drunk overlords, you would think that it meant something. Instead, we know from experience it means nothing. In Iraq, 80% of the population say that they had no idea who they were voting for in their much vaunted election, between 70 and 80% also say that they would not vote for the same crowd of bickering clowns again. When the PLO recognised Israel and were voted into office, they were ignored and sidelined by Israel, who preferred to give concessions to Hama's over Mahkmood Abbas, then when Hama's were elected, they refused to deal with them and hermetically sealed them into the twin prisons of the West Bank and Gaza.

When Egypt held sham elections, the Bushies endorsed the sham. When the Saudis held sham elections, and backtracked on even those, the Bushies held them up as signs of "progress". Donald Rumsfeld held up Algeria's military dictators and their obliteration of democracy as a guide to how they should rule Iraq. When Ms Marcos 2 rigged and blatantly stole the Philippines election, the Bushies increased her military budget and increased their ties. While Putin has spent years whittling away at even the pretence of having an open, honest and democratic system, GW has practically given the guy a handjob with each passing meeting (until his mild little rebuke a couple of weeks ago). The Bushies endorsed the fraudulent Ukrainian election, before backtracking and belatedly supporting the Orange revolution.

Despite a hundred threats to the Palestinians to cut off funding if they didn't hold elections, the second they did and Hamas was overwhelmingly elected, they cut off funding. In Iran, they are spending vast amounts of money and calling for the overthrow of the democratically elected government. In Lebanon, they are doing the same by sidelining 60% of the population who voted for Hezbollah.

This list of hypocrisy is not by any stretch of the imagination complete (indeed it is barely a start), we simply need to acknowledge one fact, the Bush call for democracy is not a call for democratically elected governments, its a call for nations to elect governments that the US wants to be elected. Anything else will simply be rejected and punished accordingly, in the new american century, would we expect the myth to be any less. Bush, like Howard, is a masterpiece of spin over the any semblance of truth or honesty or sense.

"Olmert and President Bush want to seize the opportunity offered by recent events in the Palestinian territories in order to move forward towards future peace talks," a senior Israeli official said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday said that "we're at a critical juncture for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, one at which the choices are ever more clear". "We must take hold of this moment to make new progress toward the vision that President Bush laid out five years ago this week: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security."

spin, torture, lies. all in a days work for democracy.

hung over there (and here)

cut and paste

(the lazy mans opinion on the world)

A LEAKED email from Communications Minister Helen Coonan shows the government's $1.9 billion broadband plan is targeted at marginal seats held by coalition MPs, Labor says.

Lawyers are to make fresh moves to overturn the conviction of a Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing after new evidence emerged. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is widely expected to announce later this month that it has serious concerns about the conviction of Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, jailed for life in 2001 for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie.

Legal concerns about the conviction centre on the reliability of testimony from the Maltese shopkeeper who played a key role in identifying the Libyan as a suspect, and the quality of the forensic evidence about a fragment of circuit board allegedly found at the crash site. The commission, which has been reviewing the case for nearly four years, is ready to return the case to an appeal court in Edinburgh. Many legal observers believe Megrahi's conviction will be quashed, in effect clearing Libya of responsibility and increasing pressure for a fresh investigation into the identity of the terrorists behind the atrocity.

ISRAELI tanks moved into northern Gaza last night as the military drew up a plan for a large-scale incursion into the Strip

Gaza residents "are in a cage, and the door is closed," wailed Samira Abou Khanazsh, 47, who makes a living buying cheap goods in Egypt and selling them back home in Gaza

The word didn't crop up when a second wave ushered in the Christians, whose clergy organized them into a vocal, cohesive bloc. Nor did it come into play with the villagers who were simply absorbed into remote desert communities because their tribes straddle the Syrian-Iraqi border.
But the word definitely applies now, as shell-shocked Iraqis of all backgrounds pour into Syria at the rate of nearly 1,000 a day. In fact, "crisis" may not be strong enough, as the flow of Iraqis becomes a torrent. At least 1.4 million are already here, according to the United Nations, each with a story of terror and trauma and a need for services that is stretching Syrians' patience. Many believe the number may be higher.
"What's their future, the 2 million Iraqis here? They can't work, they have to renew their residency cards, they live in poverty. It's an explosive situation," said Lourance Kamle, 32, a Syrian relief worker whose agency focuses on Iraqi refugees. "Make a war? Fine. And what comes after? The Americans should come here and see all these poor people because that's the result of their war."
Bush administration officials have long accused Syria of not doing enough to stop al-Qaida sympathizers from slipping into Iraq, but they barely mention the far larger number of Iraqis who cross the border in the other direction. The United States remains at the bottom of the list of countries that have accepted Iraqi refugees, though the State Department has promised to admit as many as 7,000 this year. Syrian schools and hospitals are overrun with Iraqis. Housing prices have soared, sowing resentment and anger in Syrians who can no longer afford to live in their neighborhoods.

Chinese police have detained 168 people accused of involvement in slavery that trapped victims in scorching brick kilns, as outrage over official complicity rippled through the usually tame nation's news media. Of those held, 48 were caught in Shanxi province and the rest in neighbouring Henan, where hundreds of teenagers and poor farmers, and even some children, were trapped or cheated into kilns, mines and foundries, the China Daily reported.

The Justice Department recently put the 2005 US prison population at 2.19 million, or one inmate for every 136 inhabitants. In France, by contrast, the prison population is one inmate per 1,000 inhabitants.

In Florida, Richard Paey, wheelchair-bound after a traffic accident, was given 25 years in jail for buying more pain medication than his doctor had prescribed. Even if Paey, in jail, is legally getting more morphine pumped into his body every day than the amount found on him at the time of arrest, the minimum sentence was upheld by an appeals court in December.

In Georgia, 21-year-old Genarlow Wilson has served two years of a 10-year prison sentence for child molestation -- for getting oral sex from a 15-year-old girl and schoolfriend during a party, even though he was 17 at the time. A judge ordered Wilson released from jail, but a prosecutor appealed the decision, arguing that in Georgia the minimum sentence for such sex crimes was 10 years behind bars.

Elisa Kelly and her ex-husband George Robinson began purging a 27-month prison sentence in a Virginia jail for serving beer and wine at their son Ryan's 16th birthday party. The parents said they feared Ryan and his friends would drink behind their backs, so they chose to buy the drinks and supervise the party themselves. But in Virginia, where you can drive a car at 16 and vote, buy a gun or join the military at 18, it is against the law to drink alcohol before 21.

Recent months have seen a spate of insurgent attacks damaging bridges and disrupting transportation routes, but this week insurgents managed to bomb at least four, starting first with a bridge near Mahmoudiya on Sunday, which collapsed, killing three soldiers. A suicide car bomber struck a major bridge in Iraq's volatile Diyala province on Monday, reportedly cutting the span that links Baquba to northern villages. Insurgents bombed a bridge over a major highway for the third consecutive day on Tuesday, and on Wednesday a bridge on the main road between Tikrit and Kirkuk was destroyed.

Findings of the investigation suggest that at least some of the Iraqi Police the Americans were training ultimately turned on them prior to the attack and perhaps cooperated in it. And many of the soldiers who were there definitely feel betrayed by Iraqi Police they had grown to trust to some degree. U.S. troops who fought the attackers Jan. 20 say many of the Iraqi Police on hand did nothing to help them during the fight and seemed indifferent afterward. None of the Iraqi security forces on hand sustained any injuries, according to the report. The attackers fired only on the Americans.

"No one was shot," says Sgt. Michael King, describing the Iraqi Police immediately after the attack. "No one twisted an ankle. No one jammed a thumb. Nothing." The investigation report adds that one senior Iraqi Police official even seemed happy after the attack as he talked into a cell phone and walked among the wreckage of the aftermath laughing.

Turkey is considering setting up a narrow security zone inside Iraqi territory to stop Kurdish PKK rebels who have been given safe harbor in Iraqi Kurdistan from raiding into Turkish territory and killing and blowing things up. The United States has signalled its coolness to the bruited plan.

Seven children were killed in a US-led coalition air strike against a suspected al-Qaeda safehouse in eastern Afghanistan that also left several militants dead, the force said today. Its forces "confirmed the presence of nefarious activity" at the site before getting approval to attack.

Official Versions of the Pledge of allegiance:

1892:"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

1892 to 1923:"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

1923 to 1954:"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

1954 to Present:"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

w

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey has accused the ACTU of using "American-style" tactics. "This is American-style politics on a scale we have never seen in Australia and it is funded, it is authorised, it is written by the union bosses for Kevin Rudd," he said.

Have you ever been had in clubland?

"I hope that I'm an example to other young people." - Paris Hilton, prior to 1st her incarceration.

I think that sums up the present state of the universe, perverse and not more than a little bit twisted, its all so anthropomorphic.

Its an election year and Howard fresh from his "we are doomed" speeches to the party faithful, has leapt around like the cartwheeling, say anything, do any backflip, spin merchant that he is. today he is obviously on the happy pills as some polls are starting to show the Libs gaining on labor.

“The union issue resonates strongly,” Mr Howard told Coalition MPs, according to a party room spokesman.

And so look forward to lots more of what we have recieved so far, at least one derogatory comment on unions with each passing minister who can get his or her presence in front of the media. Julie Bishop, she of the blazing, manaical stare and spokesperson for private education funding, in a short sharp spot on the ABC this morning managed to get her shot off while talking up the issue of performance pay for teachers

"the state governments taking orders from their union bosses"

was her little focus group tested vignette. The substance of what she was saying was long on how little substance there is in her proposal, promising a study, to be released, like all liberal policies, after the election. Her only problem is that her push for extra dollars for teachers is faced by her own admission that the commonwealth will not put one extra dollar into education to fund it, therefor the logical conclusion is that for evry teacher deemed worthy on her scale of receiving extra pay for performance, will of course mean that another teacher will have his or her pay cut by the same amount.

But what the fuck its an election year, there will be bucket loads of promises backed up by "studys", "reports" and eminent panels looking into everything and nothing, all making their findings well after the electorate has passed its judgement through the ballot box. Right now we are living in the time of focus group speak, anything which registers well in a focus group will find its way into the speeches and occasional mime act of both parties. Its more important to be telling the people you are doing, than in any way doing.

Newspapers are having their fun too, especially the Murdoch dailies, they've taken to the greens like rottweilers on a newborn, you cant have a headline or story about the Greens without the obligatory headline "extreme greens". The H-Sun had my favourite over the long weekend, "Extreme Greens Cannabis Shame", one of the greens policy advisors admitted that she had helped organise a festival in Nimbin. Oh the shame, the ignominy, oh the friggin hippys are about the rule the world. The platform of the greens calls for an overhaul of the nations drug laws, the obscene and counter productive Zero Tolerance approach, the greens also call for the eminently sensible end to the 35 year old War on Drugs, replacing it with more harm minimisation, rehab and education, hardly world shattering and backed by the AMA and any number of other medical, law enforcement and legal groups.

Mothers of overdose victims are calling for Ms Leonard to resign and say the revelation raises major questions over Mr Barber's judgment. Jillian Parker, whose daughter Janelle died of a drug overdose at 15, said: "This woman should be dismissed. They must have known her background. It really raises questions about the Green Party."

I have yet to meet one mother, father, child or lab rat who has ever died of cannabis poisoning, so who ever the H-Sun spoke to was clearly talking through their arse, not that it would worry the Sun, most of their regular columnists make an artform of rectal speak. The main thing was to get someone to utter a doubt about those "extreme greens". Look forward to many ads in the H-Sun from extreme christian cults braying at the bob brown and his party, who only want to take it to the max, and sort out the utter shit from the truly extreme shit that the libs and conservatives love to foist on the population. Personal responsibility is fine and the pursuit of happiness is wonderful, as long as it only involves your boss taking away your penalty rates and has nothing unionistic or bolshi about it. Personal freedom is a right, just not your right, remember, we decide, you choose to obey the decision, that is freedom.

Meanwhile, as Bush gets mobbed (and his watch stolen, hahaha) in Kosovo for fronting up to Clinton's legacy, the good people of Kosovo have forgotten that part of Bush's stump speeches from the good old days of 2000 had a distinctly different tone, he used the intervention of the US in the region as an example of what he would not do, not as he now claims, a shining example of the power of the people and US policy. How quickly a semi-liberated people forget, maybe they just didnt get to see any Fox news in 1999-2000. Still with the US death toll in Iraq passing the 3,500 mark, approval ratings very near to surpassing Nixon, a swag of scandles in each and every corner of his administration and the complete inability to get a sigle bill passed in either congress or the house of reps, taking credit for a previous presidents success's is such a small thing. I think the guy needs a hug before he is rightfully impeached.

H-Sun news flash "Paris Finds God in Jail", so God is a woman after all, (why else would she be in a womens prison). Those americans, I suppose they have her in there on either terrorism charges or for war crimes, she did wipe out several civilisations without regards to due process or even much of a reason. As Mr Dawkins says, God is one of the most loathsome mass murderers ever to grace the pages of fiction. So god really does bless america.

distortions on a windy day

To the good people of Turkey, an urgent update from the Australian Government, this man is a violent terrorist and habitual drunkard looking to despoil your women, steal your heritage and be massaged in a steam bath.

His name is not important, he is bound to be travelling under one of his psuedenoms, Big Scratchy, PKK Devinne or Limper Octaviopus, and has been known to frequent Smallgoods factories in his evil guise as a freelance sausage maker. Dont be fooled into him exposing his meat, it is not as he will claim, refridgerated.

Notice the evil elongated forehead, the ugly scowl suggesting he is about to commit dastardly acts, notice the bulge in the centre of his frame, it is either a bomb or maybe some smuggled wild life. The beverage in his hand is not alcohol, it is liquid hasish, I've seen the documentary on your country, Midnight Express and know that you will treat him fairly and justly in accordance with your traditions. If not just stab him in the buttocks, he deserves it.

But above all, be alert and alarmed, if you have to panic, well damn it, panic and act harshly, remember mercy is for those without guns.

.............................................................

I accept and understand that large media organisations are inherently conservative, the Sunherald and the Australian are predominately feeders of the howard government line, while the fairfax press are much more liklely to give credence and expansion to those with a differing view, televison in australia has managed to avoid the extremes of say the Fox news republican propoganda. Yet i was struck last night by the differences in approach by the various news programs to a single story, the price of petrol.

Channel 9 is clearly spruiking for the flailing, permanently confused, flip flopping Howard Government. When discussing the current price of petrol and the ACCC role in examining costs, 9 had Howard and Costello both earnestly declaring that what the ACCC wants in terms of powers, the ACCC would get, as long as it asks for it, a noble sentiment of complete useless rhetoric.

Channel 7 on the other hand was the only station to point out just how meaningless this statement was, the ACCC by law cannot ask for more powers, the government has to give them more power, creating a catch 22 which Howard used to get his slimey features on the news displaying a sense of concern over something he has clearly chosen to do nothing about. 9 then added a negative Rudd story to the end of this peice by clipping the opposition leader asking about question about an additional troop requistion to Afghanistan, cutting it in such a way that turned a question into a statement. So 9 turns a peice of Howard puffery into a positive spin, while framing Rudd in a negative light through clever editiing.

Are we reaching a point where our major commercial television news are starting to branch out into ideolgical streams, staking out their obvious voting intentions in the run up to the election? Ive always thought that Laurie Oaks in his sunday time slot used sloppy and soft questioning of Howards cohorts, allowing them to use their time to push false and totally misleading rehtoric with barely a whimpering challenge from the tubby "journalist", where as the opposition (wether it be green, labor or democrat) are challenged on almost all points. Add to that the pre-ponderance of conservative/government figures on the 9 network and it all adds up to what I see as 9's wish to see the Howard riegn continue.

We need an australian Media Matters, and we need it now to challenge the status quo, besides the ABC's media watch.

http://mediamatters.org/index

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Will our great culture warrior, the disgrace in high lift pants, C. Pyne, highlight this story in his waste of billions of dollars with the unwinnable War on Drugs.

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2614895.ece

Zero tolerance equals zero ideas plus bucket loads of tax payer dollars and cheap votes. I do notice after the Grand Mufti of Poonce, C pyne went after the AFL with his media whore buddy, G Brandis, that there position has been just a little on the silent side of mute. Could be that their postion was so totally and blatantly ridiculous and designed to do naught more than push their over appreciatiated faces into the nightly news, that they are just embarressed by the unwanted exposure of their stupidity. But then who could accuse such a blatant, gasseous, waste of air, time and space as C Pyne of even being capable of understanding what embarressment is, he gives one B. Bishop a run for the money in the get in front of a camera at any cost stakes.

anomolous

How much do I loath that twittering, blob of noxious gas, the right honorable, Christopher Pyne, grand mufti of poonce? So much that i refuse to answer on the grounds that I may be charged with a voilation of the english language.

All that may be beside the point, if the opinion polls are worth more than the papers they are published in ($1.70 for the age I think), but that doesn't mean my hatred is any less, the election is still months away and the brazzen little asswipe is being paid by me (and you) to roam the country, hiking up his trews to shoulder length and pontificate before any camera within reach on any and all subjects that PM Howard half way believes to be a vote winner.

But I am curious about a few things, not many, just a few. How do the governments sums add up, in an effort to chase Rudd down the rabbit hole of popularity, treasurer costello, the limp biscuit of primeministerial challenges, declares that not one cent of public money will be spent on his and helen coonans backflip to telstra to roll out broadband. While at the same time handing over $600 million of the publics money, then maybe upping it to $900 million, on the back of the $4.1 billion it is already dolling out to the telco's to do the things the government are saying the telco's and the "market" are doing for free. Meanwhile they criticise Rudd for even mentioning public money? Will the electorate be fooled again with the trust me tag, in the face of such blatant bullshit?

And then there's the utter, meaningless drivel on global warming that Howard et al. are trying to spook the people with. They are committed to targets, but wont set targets, and then attack anyone who does, except their own little nuclear whore ziggy S., who contradicted everything howard said and gave a tick tot he Labor party. They are committed to emmissions trading, but refuse to mention any how where's or why's other than to launch into another report to compliment the report launched last week, which Howard promised would be the only report this country would ever need to read again, the most comprehensive and diffinitive, ever published on global warming and climate change. With the notable exception that it answered no questions beside posing the eternal one, do we need another report on this thing? Short answer, we gots to, coz we didn't even bother to try in the last one. There is and has been nothing honest in the coalitions ideas on global warming, it smacks of one ugly Texan's (GW, if you must know), late model conversion to something like accepting science as being scientific. The bottom line on global warming is this from the PM and GW, we will set up the frame work for something, or options therin, let the market decide wether it wants to do something, then something or someone else, can worry about it after the next election. Frame works already in place are driven under a pile of ideological drivel, with the whispered promise of Kyoto Mrk 2 while bagging the Kyoto Mrk 1, as French inspired, one world hate mongering. The less said about GW and Howards alternatives the better, mainly because its hard to work out what it is they are saying, other than, I want to be seen to be doing, I just dont want to do.

The there's the several hundred million they are about to spend in addition to the billion odd they've already spent on IR laws, and the flips and flops and general chaos of that complete muddle. Luckily Joe Hockey is utterly without shame, he can sell his grandmothers virginity one minute and the next flogg her off as the greatest lay mankind has seen, the next without blinking, blushing or showing any emotion beside glorious optimism in the next great stalinist five year plan. Or whatever Howard puts in front of him at that second, he truly is the Pangloss of the coalition.

Howard believes that he is slowly ticking off the boxes of items that he needs to get himself re-elected, no blubbering tears for him late into election night, he wants the people to believe that his thoughts and ideas of a mere few months ago were non core. His hubris and eel flavoured slimeyness has grown beyond what even I, with my florid imagination and stacks of german pornography, thought he could reach. Will he succeed in convincing the people yet again to trust him. Sweet jesus, I hope not, and if he does, well, then you, and yes, I am looking at you, deserve every bit of what you will get, and thats going to be a roll back of everything he has whispered in your ear for the last six months.

Core and non-core promises be buggered, he will go you hardcore with the bullshit till election day.

As for C.Pyne, he is just the symbol of all that is wrong, a reeking gas wafting over our lives. I hate the muthafucker.

the big bang theory...again

How do you respond to a fantasy? You cant say its true, you cant prove its not about to happen, you cant regard it as though it happened and you cant live your life as if the fantasy were true when clearly its nothing of the sort.

Its another day and its another set of headlines loudly hailing the thwarting of another plot which would have ended the world as we know it. Devastion on a scale unimaginable to all except those with an imagination and calculator, 10 x 9/11 x 4, the east coast of the US utterly uninhabitable, terrror upon terror upon crippling terror. The "War On Terror" rolls along as one big fabricated headline, you cant get much of a headline out of "four men charged with outragously stupid idea that would never have worked, no matter how much they tried".

The problem is that the prosectutors in the war on terror seem to be able to believe things that are plainly impossible, and things that are impossible and already guarded against, they roll their headlines over as if the worst case scenario were the everyday and really, just par for the course. Four tonnes of plutonium, easy get, most street corners, cemtex the same, the question is not how people can get the stuff to wipe out the world, the question is, if all the prosecutors claim were even marginally true, why the world hasnt been blown up a dozen times by 12 year olds concocting dirty bombs in their lunch hours.

Four men, with no money to buy explosives, with no explosives, no means beside their goverment informer to get the explosives, with no expertise in bombmaking or detonation, were going to override all the safety features built into 26 miles of pipelines and refineries and blow up new york. C'mon, once again, its the dirty bomb, the plot to blow up the brooklyn bridge, the sears tower demolition all over again. Outlandish ideas, and oversized plots require at least a modicum of knowledge about whats possible, not just downloading a picture from google earthwatch.

Still the prosecutors of the war on terror are determined to wring every last dollar out of the governments coffers to fight the good fight, and you can only do that with "plots" that make the average James Bond movie look down right realistic.

"The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable."

Whats really unthinkable is those in authority saying that the "plotters" lacked the money, the expertise, the ability, in fact in all areas of actually making the plot work, they lacked, except the ability to spot a police informer goading them into saying something stupid and incriminating. Chalk up another victory for the war on terrors budget, it just got bigger by a factor on one fantasy explosion that wiped out new york. I feel safer already.

I bet the plot gets a hell of a lot bigger before they get to trial, then gets considerably smaller when the need to present evidence overwhelmes the desire for their shot at the nightly news. By then its old news and the budgets grown comensurate with the mast head.

nothing but spin, but a whole world of spin equals action (somehow)

First questions first before my tiny brain goes into outrage overload and I forget just what the hell irked me just a few seconds ago. Who leaked the tape of Electrical Trades Union leader Dean Mighell to the press? We know it was made by

http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/

who then onsold it to the government body the Australian Building and Construction Commission. MM denies that it leaked it to anyone, that leaves the ABCC. So the government body set up after another of Howards Little Bitch's (terrence cole) predetermined royal commissions (like the AWB royal stunt, no charges, not one sigle prosecution, just a lot of mud and rumours spun about), is leaking politically biased information on behalf of the Liberals. Hmmmmm....
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Lets see, the Howard government does a complete backflip months from an election and commisions a report on the need for action on climate change. Well I dont want to pre-judge whats in the report (part of my weekend reading), but according to anyone who has a copy, it is a next to useless waste of taxpayer dollars and a truly shameful waste of very expensive printers ink.

>it sets no targets
>it sets no goals other then the obvious "we need to do something"
>it sets no price on carbon
>it doesnt examine the costs, other than to say there are costs
>it doesnt make for good toilet paper, but it I bet its the most expensive toilet paper since the AWB cole commision report.
>suprise, suprise, it looks a lot like a memo people put on the fridge telling them to do something they know they really dont want to do, but know that they have to at the very least look as though they are doing something (i gots lots of those, all involving housework and three unfinished novels, one sez something about removing the dead cat from my sink)

This is the document Howard yesterday said will be the only document you will ever need to read on climate change and would make his detractors (60+% of the population) eat his barren, ideologically driven loincloth. Methinks the man has swallowed a few too many of Tony Abbotts groveling platitudes, maybe he should consult someone outside his sphere of influence and get the Grand Mufti of Poonce, C. Pyne to tell him he really is the greatest PM since Menzies or Alexander the not as Great as John.

Maybe just one person with some expertise in C02 emmsions or climate science on the "expert" panel may have helped shape a document that wasn't simply a sop to the big polluters and those who wish to be seen to do something as opposed to really doing something. But then the report does state that we dont need to even think about the problem till 2012, so I am off to go burn a few more tyres in the back yard in honor of the reports findings, or lack therof. What a fucking embarressing joke this "government" is becoming the closer we get to the election.

http://www.pmc.gov.au/publications/emissions/index.cfm

Margret Jackson, how the hell did this person get to be on the panel? Oh thats right, the finding says that airlines should be left out of emmisions targets, my mistake, I should have reached the conclusion well before I came up with the connection.
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On the day that GW has announced that he believes that global warming just might be a problem, what do we find his appointed hacks in the depths of the administration saying in the face of their own departments findings.

That global warming/climate change is a bonus that mankind should be eternally grateful for.

This morning on NPR, NASA administrator Michael Griffin was asked, “Are you concerned about global warming?”

His answer: “I’m aware that global warming exists” but “[w]hether that is a longterm concern or not, I can’t say.” Griffin said he is “not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/31/griffin-nasa-global-warming/

So we left with GW spin as something approaching policy, it's as if simply putting out a press release acknowledging climate change will result in a decrease of CO2 emmsions. Meanwhile in the back room, the same folks who put together GW's energy policy, the fossil fuel industry, continue to fund climate skeptics and pump millions into corrupt sleaze bags like US senator tedstevens to thump the tables of power into doing absolutely nothing.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/30/stevens-veco/

But then thats not the only problem, here is one of the front runners for the Republicans on evolution.

Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

I do believe that we have Lamarkian Principles, alla 1790, being espoussed by a man who wants to run the free world. How do you get mankind outside of science's realm, surely he/we dont fit, we are placed here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by gods hand, nothing to do with evolution. Tough luck australopithicus, your just one of gods little jokes. Like Republicans and gravity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/opinion/31brownback.html?_r=1&oref=slogin