Julia Gillard’s naive display over e-mails is shocking April 15, 2008

dpm Julia Gillard’s spin on allowing bosses to read staffs e-mails was like a decomposing fish in the face.  I don’t mean who did what to whom at the Christmas parties, she tried. Well, that’s exactly the sort of e-mails the bosses will read. As we’ve realised over the last few weeks most bosses are so crooked those who are owed money by them send gangsters to collect their money.

Come on Julia most bosses are bullies and will tease, taunt and hound their staff over minor but inappropriate e-mails: it gives the bosses more control of the private lives of staff. There could even be intimidation and blackmail, or setting up staff by contacting those people with whom they have relationships

Who for Christ’s sake imagined that because they’re senior executives that bosses have any morals at all? It would seem to be exactly the reverse if you look at those who have been before the courts over the last 12 months. How did she become dpm with such naivety on display?

AFL thugs (like Barry Hall) thrive in a cheats game April 15, 2008

AFL thug Barry Hall threw punches that showed he has been training in another sport – boxing. Throwing a left without looking is a technique that has been developed on the timing bags, and the straight left is the most effective weapon against an attacker who knows nothing about boxing. It is the most commonly thrown punch, for not only is it an attacking punch but also a defensive one in that it keeps the knowledgeable at bay.

And then to pretend innocence like a schoolyard bully appealing to a supervising teacher is pathetic. The game is being played by dolts who imagine a pained look to the umpire will get them off a charge for gross brutality. The first blow delivered by Hall was also a cowardly and sneaky.

Still, it can be put down to the game itself. It’s a cheats game. It depends for its appeal on highflying marks. Mostly these marks are taken while the knees are in the backs or shoulders of an opponent. For this transgression of the no pushing in the back rule a competitor is only penalised if he doesn’t mark the ball. If the knees are on the shoulders or in the back of an opponent and the mark is missed a free kick is given. To have consistency in that rule would remove the appealing spectacle from the game. What can you expect from a game that encourages brutality on all levels?

THE US, AUSTRALIA AND INDONESIA ARE LOCKED IN A DEVIL’S PACT FOR OIL April 12, 2008

The US, Australia and Indonesia are locked in a Devil’s Pact to extract oil from East Timor. That’s what the invasion and the incredible diplomatic shenanigans of the past 30 years have been all about. It’s strange that in all the reporting of the East Timor trouble lately there has been no mention of oil, despite well over 200,000 East Timorese being previously murdered over it. For a time it was the only country in the world with a falling population rate. Australia and Indonesia have pulled so many swifties to get their hands on the oil. They have even done deals among themselves (remember Gareth Evans doing a deal with Indonesian Foreign Minister while in the air over Timor) while totally ignoring East Timor. (Of course it has now been decided by the UN that the oil in the Timor Sea is East Timor’s.)

The earlier strategy from Australia was to agree to help remove the Indonesia military from East Timor but in 1999 they allowed – by delaying entering East Timor by several days – the murder of 1,700 dissidents, women and children included, and the complete destruction of all of Indonesia’s infrastructure, mainly the delivery of power, water, transport etc and it has not been replaced. This was punishment for the East Timorese voting for independence in 1999. And it was all about oil.

Now we have decided to be more subtle, having a loony army officer attempt to assassinate the country’s leaders.

And now Indonesia has revealed what a bogus and immoral country they are ( and Australia is just as guilty). They have freed all the Indonesians responsible for the massacres and destruction of 1999. All those army officers were blameless. Notice how Australia is not complaining about the legal scandal. We won’t of course unless the major players, the US decides that it is all too blatant. There is a precedent for that. The right wing Ford Foundation was the first conservative organisation to speak out on the human rights infringements in East Timor after the invasion – an estimated ten years after the event. But it was enough to begin turning the US and Australia around, slowly, so that a “spin” solution could be found.

The eventual spin solution occurred in 1999. How do we know it was spin? because Australia later attempted to defy a UN ruling on the illegality of Australia extracting the oil from a southern tip of the oil field they claimed was in Australia’s territory. It was discovered it wasn’t so now we’re trying to starve and criminally neglect the East Timorese while pretending we’re trying to save the country. See My novel Cleaning Up published by Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton) in 1993 WHICH STATED THAT UNDER THE GUISE OF SAVING EAST TIMOR THE US, AUSTRALIA AND INDONESIA WERE ATTEMPTING TO DESTROY IT.

Tattersalls and Tabcorp are playing a dangerous game – they could be up against retrospective legislation. April 11, 2008

IF Tattersalls and Tabcorp think they’re going to win against the Brumby government so they can continue their greedy snuffling in the trough they’ll have to lobby very keenly.

THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FARMERS THAT SUED THE KIRNER GOVERNMENT OVER THE EVAPORATIVE BASINS IN THE MALLEE, IN AUSTRALIA’S FIRST CLASS ACTION, WERE WINNING THEIR CASE HANDS DOWN WHEN THE KIRNER GOVERNMENT REALISED THEY WERE ABOUT TO LOSE. AND ON THE DAY BEFORE THE COURT WAS TO BRING DOWN ITS JUDGEMENT THE STATE GOVERNMENT PASSED RETROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION THAT THREW THE FARMERS CASE OUT OF COURT

THEY LEGISLATED THAT THE GOVERNMENT COULDN’T BE SUED OVER THE MATTER. OF COURSE TATTERSALLS AND TABCORP HAVE A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY FOR “LOBBYING” SO THEY JUST MIGHT MAKE IT. OF COURSE BRUMBY MAY BE PLAYING AN EDGY GAME AND HOPING FOR OFFERS. NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS.

China knows the governments of the world are lukewarm on Tibet protests April 6, 2008

I love Kevin Rudd’s dedication to diplomatic style. Today we have him saying he may not go to the Olympic games but only because his schedule may preclude it. The spin here is that the Chinese will know that he may not go if their record on human rights is further blighted by more murderous oppression of civilians in Tibet. He didn’t antagonise them by saying Australia is not going because you’re a bunch of murderous tyrants with genocide on your mind, he just delivered them a slap on the wrist to give them some idea of the temperature on the issue. He didn’t follow Germany down the road to banning their team from participating. Germany has contemplated the effects of attempted genocide for quite sometime now, and emotion runs strongly in such circumstances.

So, giving China the temperature – which is that world governments are lukewarm on Tibet protest – he is really spying for them. “Hey, Kevin has given us the goods again we’ll do more trade with Australia.” Not quite so simple perhaps, and Kevin may indeed be letting them know that there is a more moderate way for them to go and to cool it on murdering people in Tibet. But this diplomatic instinct of Kevin’s does obliterate the strong abhorrence of such actions and so doesn’t have the desired effect of China discovering that they can’t go around killing innocent people without stimulating world condemnation.

This week’s evidence of why we shouldn’t trust governments and business March 30, 2008

Apart from the stockbrokering firm who who went bust for a billion and who sold their clients’ holdings (not illegal just irregular), there are the various spins from federal and state government.

The new billion dollars that was for the Victoria’s Murray-Darling cocooning was actually not new money but for the food bowl programme under John Howard. The Australian allowed us to see that in the columns of Glen Milne’s excellent investigative piece. He didn’t castigate Minister Wong for being part of the misleading spin but maybe he should have. She will be the preventer of all good things to help climate change and the effects of same.

Yes, and the third example is again to do with water. Here’s a quote from political reporter, Rick Wallace, “The First Mildura Irrigation Trust is under investigation by Finance Minister Tim Holding for investing $4.5 million it borrowed from the state treasury in funds affected by the crisis. The trust which is facing the sack, is thought to have lost $750,000. Can we really trust anyone to do anything about climate change?” And it’s only Monday.

Wayne Carey is a watcher March 28, 2008

Wayne Carey always managed to organise a place in a bedroom or bathroom where he could see himself performing, according to a former and occasional companion. Beware you watchers. Don’t look into your own eyes.

The Australian Government was forced to lift their ban on Wilfred Burchett March 24, 2008

Having forced the Australian Government to lift its ban on Wilfred Burchett I flew into the country with him in 1970. As News Editor of The Sunday Observer I had convinced proprietor Gordon Barton  that such an action would lift the circulation of the paper, and that a valid argument for such a course was that an individual born in Australia should always be allowed to return. Once we were in the air to New Caledonia to pick him up the government caved in.

We were surprised that it was so easy to turn the government around because we had envisioned much opposition. In the event there was only a bomb threat to our light plane phoned in by a French journalist (who warned me it was to happen) paid to do so by a correspondent from a Melbourne paper. However the real reason for being allowed to bring Burchett in from the cold was possibly his appointment, a few weeks later, with Nixon and Kissinger and his being quizzed by them on North Vietnam.

Myself and photographer Bill Veitch spent an evening with Burchett some days before the flight and we discussed his communist party membership. He denied official membership but admitted that his Paris news agency that supplied, at different times, news to official Russian and Chinese publications and slanted that news in such a way that it adhered to the propaganda policies of those countries. I argued that to do that could only be interpreted as being employed and trusted by communist countries, and therefore he was to all intents and purposes acting as a communist cipher.

I wrote the story for the Sunday Observer but the then editor, David Robie and management, decided it was inappropriate for The Sunday Observer to aid an individual who admitted to such collaboration and it was omitted from my story.

Swim team captain Grant Hackett wants the Tibetan outrage to die down – it will with the murder of dissidents March 21, 2008

Australian Olympic swim team captain, Grant Hackett, says he hopes the Tibet outrage dies down a bit as the Games approach. A sort of callow response to what is an attempt at cultural genocide on the part of China. He means of course that he hopes the media coverage of the murder and oppression of the Tibetans fades away. It will, as China murders and jails the dissidents. Good thinking, Grant.

Australia has always kept an eye on China for America March 18, 2008

The first time I was aware that we were spying on China for America was a trip to the Peking Trade Exhibition on an RAAF VIP jet with Deputy Prime Minister Dr Jim  Cairns in 1974.

Approaching Hong Kong – then still under British rule – I was in formed by a technical sergeant on the plane that we were carrying electronic equipment to detect and examine the Chinese Defence systems. “It’s the same stuff that Nixon took in on his visit. The CIA installed it.”

“Great,” I replied. “I’ll be leaving the plane in Hong Kong.”

“Don’t worry about,” he said. “It’s installed in the other electrical systems.”

“You mean the toaster, stove stuff.” In those days – I was a considerable wit. He thought it such a wet comment he didn’t respond. A moment later he said, “Listen they’ll never find it, they can’t even make crystal sets.”

I didn’t mention it to Jim because it had too much of a set-up feeling attached to it. Two other people, including the office manager mentioned it to me, and I realised I was supposed to do something with the information. I did indeed think I should tell Nation Review’s correspondent, Mungo McCallum, but didn’t want to embroil him in a hoax. The Australian’s Greg Clarke also deserved a break on a good story.

We were an extra day in Hong Kong so I had plenty of opportunity to begin a diplomatic break with America (little did I really know). I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it from Jim because he may have pursued a bureaucratic pathway that would have revealed him as vulnerable.

It wasn’t until we were in China that I realised that the story was a real one. The bureaucrats were running around in a state close to hysteria in case the Chinese discovered the electronic probing system. They may have all gone to jail and/ or faced execution.
The Chinese had suspected something because they had wanted the crew to fly in without their uniforms. Australia (Gough and Jim) held fast. If the crew had been in civvies and the gear discovered, they would have been prosecuted as spies .