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.

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 .

A nuclear facility providing nuclear fuel is a dud March 14, 2008

The Guardian is such a great newspaper. It always covers – unknowingly – the results on many of my speculations. This time they report on a nuclear plant, built for over a $1 billion, to provide atomic fuel for foreign power stations has produced almost nothing since it was opened six years ago.

And where did they get this information? From the government. The Sellafield plan which was opposed by green groups as uneconomic – was predicted to produce 120 tons of the stuff annually. It barely managed 2.6 tons. Notice how green groups’ predictions are mostly proved right.

My prediction was a little different. It was that the plant would lay waste to the surrounding countryside and, finally, cost billions to clean up. That announcement is still to come. It’snot quantum physics to establish such logic, America’s Washington State is in such shock over its nuclear waste it will be getting rid of future stock to Australia.

George Bush senior forced from the Australian Embassy in Peking by Bill Green March 10, 2008

I ripped a leather coat from the back of George Bush senior when he attempted to throw me out of the Australian Embassy in Peking (as it then was) in 1974. As he ordered me from the Australian Embassy I reached behind him, grasped the coat on either side of the vent and ripped it from him. The coat was an inferior “deer skin” coat, really pigskin, and the stitches were also weak. He had purchased the coat in China. I had also purchased one that day. We were in the crowded bar of the Embassy after a day at the Peking Trade Exhibition.

George was then the senior officer with what amounted to the China-America Liaison office that was created to win America permission for an Embassy in China. The Americans were piggy-backing on our Embassy, run by a young and terribly competent Stephen Fitzgerald.

The incident began when two trade exhibitors drank a little too much and thought I was a suitable candidate for verbal abuse because I was the press secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Jim Cairns, and he didn’t attend the drinking session. “Your fuckin’ boss is a pink lefty aresehole,” seemed to be the best they could produce but it was yelled into my ear every few minutes. I chose to ignore them until one pushed me and fell over, as did his companion shortly after.

I repaired to the toilet off the upstairs foyer. On emerging I was approached by the Hong Kong Trade Commissioner and told that the Ambassador had asked me to leave the Embassy. I smiled at him. He had imagined shock, horror and a humiliating exit.

“Are you going?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He waved to two embassy guards to remove me. They came towards me across the foyer and I ran at them to at least have some momentum. They fell down and as I descended to the bar again I grabbed an aboriginal spear from the wall of the stair well. On approaching the table where Stephen was drinking I asked him if he had asked me to leave the Embassy. “Certainly not,” he said.

Returning to the bar I was handed a drink by Greg Clarke, Murdoch’s man in Tokyo, who had flown in with us in the RAAF’s VIP plane. Within a moment an American declared himself the culprit (he had obviously prevailed on the Trade Commissioner) and demanded that I leave the Australian Embassy. “But you’re a fuckin’ American,” I said. “How can you demand I leave the Embassy.”

“You’re leaving,” he said. I grabbed his coat and ripped it from his body. People emerged from everywhere to hold us. I heard someone ask if something should be done. Apparently not because several other people had already fallen over, obviously dead drunk. I saw George Bush senior leaving the Embassy bar with friends. I didn’t think too much about it except a Trade bureaucrat insisted I pay for the coat (I believe he was a senior in Trade). Not having a cheque book I borrowed one from a colleague. Fortunately the cheque later bounced.

However, the night was far from over. Stephen declared the bar shut sometime later and Jim’s press entourage left to be driven back to the hotel. At the hotel I asked for my bag from the boot. The driver refused to open it (all drivers then were members of Chinese security) and I approached the boot that had no handle and I imagined it was a Chinese puzzle. I lifted the number plate but it came off in my hand. I kicked the bumper bar but it fell off. Things looked dire.

The driver began to remonstrate with me in an abusive tone. I tied his car aerials in knots and began to walk away. Greg Clarke told me I’d have to apologise because the driver had called for the PLA (they had replaced the Red Guard) I turned back and said, “Sorry, mate.” I headed to the hotel foyer as fast as my dignity would allow.

There are many other aspects to this story, some I covered in my novel, Compulsively Murdering Mao, (Hodders), but I found I had to write the story on my blog because I woke up laughing about it some weeks ago, and that was a change.

Several times I have attempted to sell this story but I discovered editors tend to run from it. I know I could have if I persevered but having begun a career as a novelist I was reluctant. Would it cloud my reputation? I needn’t have worried.

Premier Brumby is as big a mug on GM as the farmers in his state March 6, 2008

GM crops for Victoria means our Premier (Brumby) is as slow as the farmers in his state. Any mug researcher would know that if you’re mixing vegetable, bacteria and animal, that the resultant cross requires meticulous study. As usual science fiction has been there before us and there are many gross results. If everything so far mentioned in science fiction has come about, or is being strived for, we must take the warnings within the genre very seriously.

But for the reality at the moment, America is stuffing itself on GM foods and we now have the spectre of a growing and obscenely fat American creature (they know who they are and they should be reminded that it may just be the fault of their government). Not only that but unsourced allergies are racing away with the health of Americans. Has there been any tests done on these mutant foodstuffs to gauge the exact reasons for the massive increase in allergies? No. Need anymore be said? Well the companies that create GM foodstuffs are so influential they don’t have to. The rest of the world can follow the Americans into health limbo.

Premier F***k Features Brumby needs a lesson in reality March 4, 2008

“Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.” A Lewis Mumford quote I read on a blog today and it is in total contrast to Fuck Features Brumby’s pathetic plans to build Melbourne as a mediocre city of the future. Let’s go further out, he says. Let’s add another million people by 2028. Problem is the city will have at its centre a dead bay, engineered courtesy of Cunt Features, and thousands of acres of sprawling housing without any sense of community. Check the suicide rates on the present housing estates, their lack of libraries, entertainment centres, children’s bookshops, and wonder just where this Melbourne Club backed numbers man checked in his soul. Progress, he rants. Progress towards what? he should be asked. He has no vision for urban community centres, beyond that they should be built.

Doesn’t the poor bugger realise that the planet cannot cope with more: rain is becoming a rarity, and sprawling cities are not making for great lifestyles. Smaller communities are better and they encourage social interaction and creativity. I’m living in a town of 300 odd but we have a famers’ market that caters for 4,500 every third Sunday of the month. There are thirty committees in town and they’re often quite comic but when the library was closed, in existence since the gold rush, a third of the town turned up to protest. As a crime reporter I’ve observed the total disintegration of families and kids that live in the high rise abortions that previous visionary (not) governments foisted on us with great fanfare. There needs to be organic growth. And by the way, the answer to affordable housing (one of the reasons he’s opening up agricultural land to subdividers)is taxing those that are driving up our cost of living. These include mining, oil and power companies, and massive agricultural corporations. They are making the money not those on pitiful wages. And yet everything they produce is reflected in in the inflationary figures. And does Brumby have a plan to slow down production and replace such consumer substances with progress in social education and how it can be encouraged? Because spin is Brumby’s reality he only imagines he has

Let’s leave the last word to Lewis Mumford, from his mammoth book, The City in History: “Will the city disappear or will it turn into a vast urban hive? – which would be another mode of disappearance.”

Our political motor mouths haven’t woken yet to the chaos about to descend. They discovered the environment six months ago.

McCain a Republican puppet who can’t physically surrender March 2, 2008

The Republicans want McCain because it’s impossible for him to surrender. They have at their head a dyed in the wool puppet. With his arm affliction (he can’t raise his hands, or arms above his shoulders because of a hero crash in Vietnam) the only way he could surrender is if his advisory team hold his arms up for him. Or his wife. Or anyone at all.

Brumby and Port of Melbourne are pushing Victoria on its face over channel dredging February 25, 2008

The Port of Melbourne Authority, the Brumby government, and local businessmen who are all supporting the gouging of almost pristine Port Phillip Bay should have, for the planets sake, erred on the side of caution.

It appears that not only will they endanger the Bay but will also be lined up for the damage to the planet (remember UN laws allow us to sue those responsible for careless decisions leading to the delivery of carbon into the atmosphere).

A leaked UN study (John Vidal, The Guardian) states that the true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed. Shipping is responsible for 1.12bn tons of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of main greenhouse gas. Aviation is responsible for 650 million tons, just half that of shipping. It’s under intense pressure to lower that figure so imagine how shipping is about to feel it.

What mugs we are in Victoria. We think the game now is fast development wins. Sorry, now the environment of the planet is going under, a slow approach to development is required. And it won’t be us controlling the visits of ships but the UN (with its laws on environmental responsibility). Perhaps all countries should retire from Free Trade and all the rampant carrying of cheap goods between countries. It would appear that we should have encouraged manufacture here. It’s a different game now boys, but of course we’ll try and squeeze as much money out of the transport system as we can.