12 posts tagged “politics”

US military planned nerve gas test on Aust troops

The US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops. Defence files have revealed the United States military was planning to test deadly nerve gas on Australian troops in a far north Queensland rainforest in the 1960s.

Australian Defence Department files obtained by Channel Nine show the US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops by aerial bombing areas around Lockhart River.

The plan never went ahead, but American survey teams inspected the proposed testing site.

The prime minister at the time, Harold Holt, vetoed the plan.

His former staffer, Peter Bailey, says the Australian government was concerned that its Cold War alliance with the US would be damaged if it did not acquiesce.

"If they weren't pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped, so I think ministers were very aware that this was probably our one main support," he said.

Former Democrats Senator Lyn Allison has told Channel Nine the current Government should make the documents public.

"There's apparently a whole unit which the minister says didn't conduct testing but I think we need to know what they were doing and it is time for these documents to be released," she said.

"Let us have a look at what was being contemplated just 40 odd years ago - it's not the deepest, darkest history of Australia we're talking about."

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/06/2295601.htm

 As if England testing their bombs and doing nuclear tests on our serving men wasn't enough, America thought they could just murder 200 of our men as well! Wasn't it only a few months ago that Cheney was trying to pressure Howard into taking all their nuclear waste and burying it in our country too? When are we going to stop being used as canon fodder and scientific experiements and respected as a nation? Enough! If it's not good enough for your back yard it is not good enough for ours.

"If somebody exposes themself to a World Youth Day participant they face a fine of $1,100, but if they wear an anti-Catholic t-shirt, the fine could be $5,500," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/01/2290436.htm?section=justin

What if, like I, you are a Catholic, lapsed may it be, and wear an anti-Catholic t-shirt, do you still get fined? I could wear the t-shirt and expose myself at the same time and go for the full menu.

 

Did they start the Spanish Inquisition and no one told me? This is Australia right? When did we adopt a national religion?

Is the UN nothing but a graveyard for old politicians? Our former foreign minister Alexander Downer is resigning from parliament and is taking a part-time job with the UN.  The man was part of a government that tried to reintroduce the white Australia policy through slight of hand and the UN hires him!

 

To use the words of Greg Norman’s former wife, when commenting on the nuptials of Norman and Chris Everett – “they deserve each other”.

I don't understand, why is it a "bad thing" that Obama has declined public money for his campaign? To me, an outsider, I would have thought that was a good thing - more money for things like health and education rather than making advertising companies rich. Seems more ethical to me. Is it because McCain has no hope of matching? Old man gripes?

I also understand exactly what Michelle Obama meant when she said that she was finally proud of her country. I felt the same way when we threw out the John Howard's Liberal government and voted in Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party. I was ashamed to be Australian when we invaded Iraq, I was ashamed of Australia when we allowed refugees to drown at sea rather than give them sancturary, I was ashamed of Australia when we paid small Pacific Island nations to detain our refugees to avoid giving them refuge. I was ashamed of Australia when we introduced a citizenship test that discriminated against anyone not white and educated. I was ashamed when the Liberal party made the horrific existence of many Aboriginal Australians a political issue after years of indifference to try to win an election. Only now am I proud to call myself Australian again after many years...yes Michelle I hear where you are coming from...

 

First woman to be elected to the Commonwealth Parliament

Enid Muriel Lyons (nee Burnell) was born in the far north-west of Tasmania at Duck River (now Smithton). In 1915 at the age of seventeen she married Joseph Lyons, the then Minister for Education and Railways and Tasmanian Treasurer (he later became Prime Minister). They formed a strong political partnership and had 12 children together.

Enid was a teacher and was concerned with political issues and the public arena delivering her first political speech in 1920. Her intention was to attract the support of women and advocate in the area of public responsibility and liberal feminism.

In 1943, four years after her husband's death, Enid Lyons became the Federal member for the Tasmanian seat of Darwin (renamed Braddon in 1955). Enid was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and, jointly with Dorothy Tangney (WA), one of the first of two women elected to the Australian Parliament. Her concerns included:

In the new Liberal Country Party Ministry under Menzies, she was appointed Vice-President of the Executive Council, making her the first woman to enter a federal cabinet. During this time:

On retirement due to illness her public activities included:

In 1980 she was awarded the Order of Australia. Dame Enid died in 1981.

I  know that Sean Hannity is a very conservative, conservative but lately he has been sounding hysterical. Does he really think Obama hates America? Does he honestly believe that Obama will bomb the nation, and bring pestilence and plague upon the nation if he is elected President? He keeps harping on about the so called “friends” of Obama when blind Freddie could see that they were merely means to a political ambition, a means to an end. Every politician does the same…cultivate people. It is how the game is played.

Hannity is hysterically crying about the monster under the bed in the same manner our previous Australian government tried to colour the man who is our new Prime Minister. Do they not realize that the important subjects that really matter to the general public are the issues that directly impact their daily lives? Elections are about health, education, fuel and mortgages. People want a change to the same old, same old and Hannity is one of those poor media people who just can’t accept that the “times they are a’changin “

I had a very odd moment this afternoon.  Jerry Springer was speaking with Hannity today and I had to agree with Springer! Who would have have thought! Springer was trying to tell Hannity that he was missing the reality of why Obama was popular and Hannity just talked over him all the time as is his style. If you can’t win the argument just shout louder, isn’t that right Sean?  In the end, Springer just laughed and said that if Hannity kept harping on about the stupid issues and missing the important stuff, and he hoped that he would, it would guarantee a win for Obama.

None as blind as those who cannot see.

The thing that upset me most was Hannity saying that they shouldn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, who they elected for President had no bearing on any other country.  As an inhabitant of a country that got pulled into the Iraq War with America I take umbrage at such a comment.  Hannity rabbits on about America being the LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD (self appointed) and in the same breath that decisions made in America has nothing to do with any other country.

Wake up! The rest of the western world has changed and like some crazed gatekeepers, people like Sean  Hannity are so busy shoring up the borders and trying to keep things from evolving, and are so frightened by change, that they can’t see that they are in danger of making America a pariah, and more than irrelevant, but  an international joke. They have already cemented the perception that America is a self centered bully in the minds of most other nations, its time they stopped creating moral panic and came to grips with the fact that people want to do things differently this time around.

Good luck, America. Remember you are the land of the brave.

Like birds on the water. That’s how one survivor described the sight of over 300 bodies of fathers, mothers, and children, scattered over kilometres of ocean when the sun came up on October 20th 2001.

These people, mostly refugees from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, had travelled in some instance for years in search of somewhere safe to live their lives. Many of the women and children were on the boat because their husbands had come on ahead to Australia, only to be caught in our changing political tide and locked in detention or a newly devised Temporary Visa system which took away their rights to re-unite. Left without support, these mothers and young children were easy prey for people smuggling operators.

Crowded onto a fishing boat only 19.5 metres long, packed so tightly that teenagers had to climb on the roof and mothers hold children on their laps, the passengers were terrified even before they left port. One man attempting to take his family off was pistol whipped and forced back.

Armed Indonesian military supervised the boarding. A patrol boat escorted the leaky vessel out of the port of Lampong. Another sped by the vessel later that day. As the boat got into difficulties, passengers heard a twin engine plane overhead and set fire to clothing to try and signal for help.

When the engine failed in heavy seas, the SIEVX tipped over and sank. Over a hundred people survived the sinking, but no rescue came through a whole afternoon and night. But something appalling and inexplicable took place; reported by all survivors later to United Nations interviewers in Jakarta. Two large military vessels arrived in the night, shining spotlights on the water. A Zodiac style boat was launched. The people in the water started calling and swimming towards the lights, but the boats restarted their engines and sailed away. Dozens more people died, some giving up in despair and just allowing themselves to drown.

Eventually, the next day, after 20 hours in the water, fishing boats came across survivors, including Faris Kadhem a father whose wife and seven year old daughter had drowned, and Amal Basry, a mother who had lost sight of her teenage son when a big wave dragged them apart. Both begged the fishermen to search, and about forty more survivors were eventually found. Amal’s teenage son was among those found alive. But 353 others had died, either in the original sinking, or during the long night without rescue. Rescuers reported an awful sight, the body of a tiny baby, born during the nightmare of the sinking, still joined by its umbilical cord to its dead mother, afloat in the water.

The people of SIEVX were brave people, trying to give their children a decent life. They could so easily have been safely living among us now, their kids at school with ours. In a modern era, with planes going overhead, satellites, radar, GPS, such a mediaeval tragedy should never have been allowed to happen. And in an era of serious climate change, when millions more refugees will be created in coming decades, we need to have systems in place to manage this more competently. 

The SIEVX Memorial takes a simple first step. It says - these lives were sacred. We won’t forget them. Over a thousand Australians, most of them children but also churches and community groups from every corner of the country, have made something beautiful, haunting, and full of power, to try and bring about a better Australia.

http://www.sievxmemorial.com/about-sievx.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The movie marathon continued today and we finished with License to Wed with Robin Williams/Mandy More. Laughter, happy ending so it met the criteria. I did notice though that her career was being a florist. Of course it was her own business, modern woman that she was, but she was a florist. In some other movie she was a chef.

Has anyone else noticed that in recent movies the women all have jobs like florist or chef? An outsourcing of the domestic. In the 1980s and 1990s all the women in movies seemed to be either some high flying executive, or a lawyer, or a journalist. Something corporate and very professional. Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail, of course owned her own bookshop, but that is a maternal roll as she is the keeper of the literary canon so to speak. Preserving the culture.

What is happening here? Is this our message or Hollywood's? Is it an effort to reinforce the glass ceiling, put the little woman back into the domestic, or is it our choice, merely a sign of the time? Art imitating reality?

To me, it is a bit like the Yummy Mummy label. Where did that come from? What about Yummy Daddy? Or Delicious Daddy or whatever. Why does he get left off the hook when not only does she have to be responsible for the production of a new life, but heck she should keep her figure and every hair in place at the same time. PLEASE!

Is that the sign of this decade - cup caking baking young women? And why are we all acting as though making a cup cake and whacking a mass produced sugar flower on the top is an art form and something we need to coo over? My second cooking lesson in home economics class was cup cakes [or patty cakes, as we called them way back then]. No magic, just basic butter cake.

So, are we being sent back to the domestic, or are we choosing the domestic? Or are we having a foot either side? I just hope we aren't going back to the bad old days when I remember an aunt's in-laws  judging her by the height and lightness of her sponge cake. She had a mental break down at 40 after raising 5 children (including a set of twins which gave her 5 children in 5 years!) because she couldn't maintain the sponge standard and took to preaching  someone's word on street corners for a year or two. Is the end of feminism nigh? 

Let them cook their own cupcakes, I have a life to live!

I baked a birthday cake for my Mum today as well - a sultana buttercake which I iced with pale lemon icing and bright yellow daisies. Finished Daughters cake, the chocolate cherry bundt fruitcake, which got rich chocolate icing and pink and purple flowers, her favouirte colours.

 

We had to vote for the Mayor and local councillors today. Seemed such a non event after the excitement of our histroy making change of federal government last year when a sitting Prime Minister actually lost his seat! Such joy to see him tumble, the racist, misogynistic pig! However, local government does impact on your everyday life - we all complain if the garbage doesn't get collected, or if we run out of water! So tried to give it some thought. I expect most of the sitting members will be returned.

 

After we voted, my husband and I went to the local garden centre to buy petunias. We got Bobby Dazzlers!

I had a couple pots that needed freshening up now that the summer planting

has faded. Petunias are always good for a long show. We ended up staying there for lunch. The food is always lovely in the restaurant. He had a great looking salmon dish, with all sorts of prawn and shell fish. I had a savoury muffin - sounds boring I know, but I love them. It is probably the sour cream I love most, but I will always order a savoury muffin, or seafood chowder before anything else. Too predictable. They seated us next to a lovely fountain that actually had water gushing from it! Since the drought struck so hard most fountains have been switched off around the city so it was lovely to see some flowing water. I didn't mind the odd drop that bounced on to me at all. I was wishing I had my camera to take a photo but I had left it on charge at home, ensuring plenty of photos for tomorrow.

I watched the Obama interview with Major...???? on fox news. I think Obama was very weak in his responses. I think he lost respect. He lost mine. Ignorance is no excuse under the law, and I think it is inexcusable, no matter what the subject, to say that I wasn't there, so I didn't know. Not a great excuse for someone wanting to be President - oh I didn't know my people were cold and hungry, I wasn't there... Politicians -  they are made of a different fabric, very pliable! I can understand the anger of the black community, and they have every right to voice that anger, but isn't a President suppose to unite people? Care about all members of the flock? It seems very odd to me.

And how about leaving Monica Lewinsky out of all this? Does the poor woman have to be persecuted for the rest of her life?

 

It is awful to think that Rupert Murdoch tries to influence politics so in Australia and America. I have always been indifferent to him, but after watching fox news lately...that man is evil. He tried to direct debate in our election, and the Australian newspaper is still so pro Liberal party even though we threw them out of government. It is so funny to hear fox news say they are "fair and balanced" and "use only the facts". It is all so orchestrated. And the way everyone talks over everyone else and no one ever gets to finish a sentence. It is like watching comedy. Only it is frightening at the same time.

We have a saying in Australia..."when America sneezes, Australia gets pneumonia". The current economic situation is making everyone worried. Luckily we have a new government that understands globalisation, and not having your eggs all in one basket. Anyway, hence my interest in the Presidential election.

 

I have no interest in the upcoming Olympics. It should not have been given to China considering their human rights record. I suppose we all want to court their market though. Got to love capitalism. Doesn't matter what happens to our fellow human beings as long as someone can make a dollar out of it somewhere, all is great!

 

I have a running joke with my daughters that I am in fact Queen of the World...except on Wednesdays (one must rest one day), I sound like it tonight. Opinion on everything! Such is life I guess...