Gnu Hunter

Victoria's ALP Police Minister and his wife will not attend the local Deer Park ALP Branch meeting tonight.

Asked if he had concerns for his own safety, Mr Haermeyer said he was not going to tonight's meeting "because of the unsavoury activities that have gone on in the branch there for some time". Police are investigating after four Alliance candidates found shotgun cartridges in their mail boxes. "It has been pretty heavy and I really don't want to say much more than that,' Mr Haermeyer said.

Victoria's police commisioner has dismissed claims that those responsible for putting shotgun cartridges in the letterboxes of four Labor Party members were connected to Melbourne's underworld.

In November last year the Police Minister's wife Ms Tonya Stevens was accused of punching a member at the same Labor Party Deer Park branch during a rowdy meeting concerned with branch stacking.

Ms Stevens (who happens to be an Australian Workers Union official) has again been accused of physical assault. This time she is accused of assaulting the director of a factory.

Tonya's husband has had his hands full fighting corruption within his State's police force.

Further allegations of police corruption in Victoria have surfaced, with an alleged leaked top-secret police report linked to the death of a police informer in Melbourne earlier this month.

Terrence Hodson and his wife were shot dead in their Melbourne home two weeks ago, a short time after a top-secret police intelligence report detailing his informer activities was allegedly leaked to the underworld, the ABC said tonight.

The contagion is spreading:

THE stain of corruption besetting Victoria Police has spread to the nation's premier crime-fighting body, with a former Victorian drug squad detective now working at the Australian Crime Commission facing criminal charges.

The detective, who runs one of the ACC's most sensitive units, has been interviewed by Victoria Police's Ethical Standards Department detectives.

Meanwhile, a top corruption investigator is pleading for protection for himself and his family. Three other investigators have also reported being threatened.

ONE of the state's top police corruption investigators has blasted Victoria Police over a lack of protection in the job.

Detective Sergeant Simon Illingworth, of the ethical standards department, has broken his silence about his life of fear after receiving threats while investigating corruption within the police force.

Melbourne has had over twenty highly public gangland murders since 1998.

One of three men accused of shooting up the Lakemba police station in 1998 was released on bail (doh!). He disappeared to Lebanon almost immediately but stayed long enough to berate his mates at the Lakemba Mosque for not being strict enough in their Islamic beliefs. The look of the Sydney suburban police station was described by New South Wales' police chief Peter Ryan as being like a scene from Northern Ireland. How no one was killed is a miracle.

Saleh Jamal has now been caught in Lebanon "armed with weapons while planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Lebanon and elsewhere." He is also wanted for the 1993 bombing of a McDonalds store in Beirut. His brothers have been convicted of helping and financing the terror group which carried out the McDonald's blast.

While being held in jail, here in Australia, for the Lakemba shooting spree he came "under the influence of hard-line Islamic teachers".

When out on bail, and before fleeing overseas, he attended the Haldon Street prayer hall at Lakemba run by our good buddy Sheikh Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud. Willie Brigitte has named the Sheik as the chief recruiter for Jihad in Australia.

The Sheikh's little prayer hall has come in for lots of attention lately. The blogroll of Zoud's proteges that visited or frequented the prayer hall is truly interesting.

Willie Brigitte, who was arrested by the French, has claimed he visited the prayer hall while recruiting for a major terrorist strike at targets that included a US base, the Sydney Olympic Games and Sydney's small nuclear reactor that is used for medicine and scientific research.

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, the 34-year-old Sydney architect charged with seven terrorist offences on April 22.

Izhar Ul Haque, who was taken into custody on April 15 but who is now out on bail (doh!, doh!).

Mentioned in the same Sydney Morning Herald item is Zeky Mallah, the first person charged under Australia's new terrorism laws, was arrested last December and charged with planning a terrorist act. Zeky Mallah and Jack Roche were students of Sheikh Feiz Mohammad also of Sydney's south-west suburbs.

You don't think there could be more arrests do you?

Not happy with their prayer hall, Zoud's small band of followers have fished around in their pockets and come up with $2.7 million to buy a grand new mosque. A mysterious businessman, that no reporters seem interested in, was one of the main benefactors.

It's time to close the prayer hall.

The State of Victoria's constitution may be amended to recognise the contributions of Victoria's aboriginees.

The Victorian Government will amend the state's constitution to recognise the contribution's of Victoria's Aboriginal people.

Premier Steve Bracks told the ALP state conference in Melbourne this morning that the Government acknowledges Victoria was established without proper consultation, recognition or involvement of Aboriginal people.

"I'm very proud to announce that during the next sitting of Parliament, I will introduce a bill to amend our constitution in Victoria," he said.

It was interesting that the Labor Party, being so much in favor of consultation, did not consult with the opposition party before asking for support for the proposal even though it requires 60% support in the parliament to change the constitution.

The amendment will acknowledge that Victoria was established and the constitution passed without proper consultation, recognition or involvement of the Aboriginal people of Victoria," he said.

Perhaps some future court will rule that, due to the inclusion of this change, the entire original contents of the old constitution will be invalid, and they'll have to start again.

Guys, if it ain't busted don't fix it.


Update: Patrick Hawke at the Observation Deck wants your support to stop this.

Victorian ALP members have been distributing shotgun cartridges in the letter boxes of their fellow members.

Four cartridges were placed in the letterboxes on Tuesday night. They were found by Jeff O'Donnell, Les Tarczon, Marion Martin and Robert Mammerella, all associated with the Labor Alliance faction.

The Sunday Age reported last week that the faction was involved in a long-running and increasingly nasty turf war with the Labor Unity faction. Tonya Stevens, the wife of Police Minister Andre Haermeyer, was accused of assault and threatening to bomb a member's house at a branch meeting last November. Ms Stevens denied the claims and has sought legal advice.

To do well in modern science or engineering you have to get your answers to mathematical problems right. You can't blame your wrong answers on either the United States of America or upon the Greenhouse Effect. The bridge an engineer builds will either stay up and serve its purpose or it will fall down and kill people. It is for this reason that as the final years of schooling draw nigh and young people are prepared to enter the real world it becomes necessary to have more highly rigorous examinations to ensure that those bridges won't fall down.

The problem we've got is that kids coming through the school system are being steered toward soft subjects where everyone is a winner and where getting it right doesn't matter so much. They are being prepared for life as arts graduates or highly educated sales assistants. The damage is being done early so that by the time the Higher School Certificate exams roll around it's too late.

Associate Professor Terry Gagen, of Sydney University's School of Mathematics and Statistics, warned last month of a generation of "maths illiterates" in the making.

The introduction of general maths, the easiest of the three courses on offer, has produced disappointing results, with 10 per cent failure rates [3000 students failed] in the HSC in 2002 and 2003.

Many students complained after last year's exam that the questions were "too difficult" and the course was "too hard". And because maths is no longer compulsory in years 11 and 12, a growing number of students are avoiding maths altogether.

...The number of students enrolling for HSC maths is declining. The failure rate in HSC maths has increased to 10 per cent...

The average age of NSW maths teachers is now 52. The average age of retirement is 55.

Recommendations from the NSW Board of Studies review of maths education won't come into effect until 2007.

In future, watch out for those road signs that say "Bridge Ahead".

FEDERAL Treasurer Peter Costello today slammed Victoria's religious vilification laws, saying religious harmony would not be promoted by representatives of different religious groups spying on each other to collect evidence for court cases...

...He said religious leaders should be free to express their doctrines and their comparative views of other doctrines, although advocating violence or terrorism should be an offence...

..."I do not think that we should resolve differences about religious views in our community with lawsuits between differing religions.

...Mr Costello said no-one liked vilification.

"But if rival camps start sending informants to rival meetings so they can take legal proceedings against each other in publicly funded tribunals we shall not enhance our openness or tolerance," he said.

"The proceedings that have been taken, the time, the cost, the extent of the proceedings, the remedies that are available all illustrate in my view that this is a bad law."

Peter Costello was refering in part to this case currently before the court.

Michael Moore interviewed Nick Berg before his untimely death but the interview has been cut from the film. Berg was staunchely pro-war. That of itself might be the reason that Moore cut the interview out of the film, or it might have been through thoughtful consideration for the feelings of the Berg family.

But maybe Moore actually attacked Nick Berg onfilm in his usual sarcastic way to humiliate or denigrate Berg. If there was the usual clever editing involved well who knows how it would look onscreen, especially now that Berg has been killed. The public might not like what it sees.

The footage of an interview with Berg "is approximately 20 minutes long. We are not releasing it to the media," Moore said in a statement. "It is not in the film. We are dealing privately with the family."

Neither Moore nor his representatives would describe the nature or contents of the interview with Berg, who held staunch pro-war views.

Moore is keen on conspiracy theories so here's one: Let's see the film, Michael! What have you got to hide?

In another surprise development Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 has found a distributor just in time for the US election. You know I believed him when he said the film was being blocked by the vast right-wing conspiracy. What a lucky break.

If you consider the Miss Universe 2004 competition to be exploitation and bourgeois decadence you should not look at this. Under no circumstances should you look at any other photo of Miss Catherine Daza Manchola a.k.a. Ms Columbia who is referred to demeaningly as a "weapon of mass destruction".

Ms Australia and Ms USA are just bombshells.

This paranoic episode printed in the Fairfax media passed off as journalism goes onto the Gnu Hunter fact file as one of the worst disgraces in the Australian media since the war began.

Richard Neville and the Sydney Morning Herald implies that the beheading of Nick Berg was perpetrated by the United States of America.

Possum believes "the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a 'black operation' by US psychological warfare specialists ... to provide the media with a moral relativity argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib". The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives.

It is on a par with Margo Kingston's claim that "Nuclear weapons were used in Vietnam" and that Saddam and his terrorist allies "have every right to attack back".

It is in the same league as Terry Lane's disgraceful "The hate that dare not speak its name" where he wishes for Iraqi victory and the defeat of his country.

And in the broader Australian media it almost gets to play onfield against John Pilger's treacherous outpourings on the ABC where he approved "the killing of American, British or Australian troops."

Michael Hiteshew at Chicago Boyz asks the question in the USA:

Does Al Qaeda have an election strategy?

Has it occurred to anyone else that Al Queda may have an election strategy for the USA? Maybe a string of mass-casualty suicide bombings, à la Madrid, six weeks or so before the presidential election?

What would be the likely political impact on the electorate? Rally behind Bush & Co.? I don't think so, really. Here's what I think might happen...

Read the whole thing...

With no bipartisanship in the war on terror our opposition parties expose us to a higher level of risk by giving the appearance that a terror strike and a change in government will yield strategic benefit to the terrorists.

Jack Roche has pleaded guilty and been convicted of planning a terrorist attack.

In November 2002 ASIO raided Jack Roche's house and the houses of other suspected extremists.

You will remember the furore that erupted in the press, all of it directed at the Howard government. The Left of politics (Labor, Greens, Democrats, Socialist) and Islamic groups all queued up to denounce the raids in a hungry press.

The Australian Council for Civil Liberties called the raids a stunt**.

Liberty Victoria called for the officers involved to be disciplined.**

The NSW Council of Civil Liberties called it harassment.**

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle and other politicians expressed "concerns" about ASIO's conduct.

We don't know why they've taken this Rambo-style approach," Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour said after yesterday's raids in the Melbourne suburbs of Preston and Broadmeadows.

"We find it totally unnecessary - terrorising women and children and raiding different homes at any time of the day and night."

An investigation was mounted into ASIO over the raids arising from a complaint lodged by Sydney solicitor Stephen Hopper, Jack Roche's lawyer seeking compensation. Mr Hopper turns out to be a fine lawyer earning his crust helping other upright citizens.

Mr Hopper said his clients had not been aware of Jemaah Islamiah "until the stuff was on TV".

Thankfully the ASIO officers were not punished, and despite the best efforts of some people, Jack Roche was not released to plot again. Instead he has pleaded guilty to plotting a serious terrorist attack, and hopefully he'll be put in jail for a long time.

ASIO officers obviously disrupted the activities of those around Jack Roche in Australia.

Those who were so quick to denounce the government, and the officers, for short-term political gain should be ashamed and should apologise.


**Some info (asterisked) was derived from an Andrew Bolt item published November 2002 [No link, sorry].

Update #1: Here's the media's new angle on the Roche guilty verdict. So he rang them big deal. They would have been watching him and his buddies like a hawk 24 by 7 and when they had enough evidence they acted, disrupting the cells, preventing the attacks and banging Jack Roche into jail sending a powerful message to others who would think about following suit. Those being "harrassed" on the borderline of arrest scurried off overseas. Well done.

Update #2: According to Philip Ruddock ASIO did stuff up the call.

Jack Roche, Islamic terrorist, has pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist attack.

Roche changed his plea to guilty mid-trial. His very forthright admissions to the authorities gave him little choice. We should pay attention to things that he has said since the time of his arrest:

Roche said he was not the first choice to set up a terror cell in Australia, but that another caucasian living in his adopted home city of Perth in Western Australia state was preferred by Hambali and the Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI). "You see, Hambali first requested him. Hambali has already met this person, this Australian," Roche said. "He did some training in the south of the Philippines before."

Roche would only identify the man by his name of Abu Ishmail but said when police raided his home they asked questions about the man using his Western name.

Roche's arrest and the raids on other suspects would have disrupted the activities of other would-be terrorists. Some will have fled overseas, others will be playing doggo or scurried underground. Not many will have given up. Complacency is not an option.

Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald takes a cheap poke at the US and indirectly Australia.

The USA says he is a warlike nation and that is due to it being a Utopian nation. He quotes Zachary Karabell in his history of "American Utopianism, A Visionary Nation", to argue that "the US cycled through six manifestations of this urge to create a perfect world."

Let's examine his urges:

First was the Puritan vision for a City on a Hill in the 17th century;

Fleeing from religious and political persecution, people from all over Europe came to the New World to help create a new world.

second was the ideal of individualism and freedom that took hold during the American Revolution in the 18th century;

The ideals of individualism and freedom taking hold is of course a bad thing, right?

third was the drive to national union from the promulgation of the constitution through to the Civil War in 1863;

National unity, the abolition of slavery and the establishment of the world's first democratic nation were also bad, right?

fourth was the impulse to territorial and economic expansion in the late 19th century;

What? All the US states except Hawaii and Alaska were already US territory by 1851. Alaska was bought from the Russians who were happy to take the cash. He must be talking about the Midway Islands and Hawaii or the battle with Spain for Cuba. Congress also acted to authorize the U.S. annexation of any small island that was unclaimed by other governments.

fifth was the belief in the transforming potential of government through the New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society of the '60s;

The successful drive to lift America out of the Great Depression and the 1960's explosion of individualism worldwide that makes his rantings fashionable.

and the sixth was the internet revolution, the New Economy and the New Era.

This is just a display of how with it he is.

Has the so-called war on terror opened the seventh phase of American Utopianism, a drive to purge the world of terrorists, of enemies and of evil?

A war to purge the world of terrorists is according to him a "so-called war on terror".

Please name the countries that the US colonised when the world was at war in the 20th century, when all of Europe and Japan were stricken to their knees, and American power was total including sole possession of nuclear bombs?

The wicked US military has just hyped up the discovery of a sarin gas shell by declaring it to be an old one.

Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the 155-millimeter artillery shell was made by the Iraqis before the 1991 Gulf War. The source of the bomb is still under investigation.

The evil empire has not yet got around to planting the thousands of WMD expected by Philip Adams or Andrew Wilkie. That the clever evil empire continues to suffer the media onslaught is just more evidence of its cleverish naughtiness.

Make no mistake, if the US can't find those chemical weapons in Iraq, it'll smuggle some in and plant them.

- Philip Adams.

The New York Times has acknowledged that its pre-Iraq War coverage beat up the case for war because some of its Iraq coverage "was not as rigorous as it should have been". It said "it had failed to sufficiently challenge or qualify controversial information or failed to revisit questionable claims as more information became known."

Six stories in particular were cited as depending upon information from a small circle of Iraqi informants or information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on 'regime change' in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks."

The New York times has been highly critical of the Bush government's intelligence failures.

In response to the Gnu Hunter's previous post about Fame, IowaHawk has decided he wants more of it:

From The Gnu Hunter comes word that my fame surpasses that of the Prime Ministers of Iceland and New Zealand. And this -- this -- is suppose to thrill me? No offense to those of you who might be Icish or New Zealese, but it's like winning a three-way bicycle race against George Bush and John Kerry.

Sure, maybe "Almost Famous" is good enough for the Poobah of some obscure third world hellhole like New Zealand, but that crap is simply not going to fly in the cutthroat, Google-eat-Google world of bigtime blogging. So this morning I called my publicity team in on the carpet and demanded an answer: why the hell am I paying you people?

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."

- (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

Self professed well-brought up academic Elspeth Probyn is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney. She attended a discussion forum on campus and shared the stage in a panel consisting of notables including herself and Miranda Devine. The professor recounts in the Australian how she sniggered as Devine is abused by the learned crowd and almost shouted down:

The event started with a bang when Devine was roundly heckled. As a well-brought-up academic, I felt it wasn't a particularly proud moment. But I had to smile at one of the loudly shouted slogans: Miranda Devine Right-Wing Slime.

It's catchy and apart from slime (not necessarily a bad thing), it's absolutely true. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more self-satisfied and unquestioning right-winger.

How very Left brained. She and her colleagues couldn't condone that sort of rowdy behaviour, no not at all, titter, snigger, dog-whistle, wink, wink.

It's good that everyone knows up front what you are supposed to say on campus in the modern universities of thought.

Forgetting the hecklers for a moment the Professor reflects upon the futility of her dead-end job:

It also started me thinking – dejectedly – about teaching a subject about which anyone can have an opinion. What is the point of reading through dense texts, conducting research and trying to formulate decent arguments about gender issues if it's the loudest, most publicly voiced opinion that gets to count?

She then goes on to remind us that she is writing an opinion piece that rails against Miranda Devine's opinion pieces.

Stolen generation member Pamela Young addressed the sorry day celebration. Malcolm Fraser and Senator Aden Ridgeway will help wrap up festivities at the Sydney Opera House tonight.

The day is designed to give the community the opportunity to participate in activities to acknowledge the impact of the policies of forcible removal on Australia's indigenous populations.

Andrew Bolt contends that only around six people have ever come forward to contest in court or prove that they were of the "Stolen" Generation.

This phrase "stolen generations" was coined by Professor Peter Read, who suggested some 100,000 children may have been taken from their families.

But in a speech in London eight years ago, he named just two of them -- former ATSIC chairwoman Lowitja O'Donoghue and Aboriginal leader Charlie Perkins.

Already you see the problem. Neither, it turns out, was stolen. Perkins was the son of an Alice Springs woman who was deserted by her husband after giving birth to her 11th child, and who begged a priest to at least give her brightest boy an education.

O'Donoghue, as I later reported, was sent with her siblings to South Australia's Colebrook Home by her white father when he'd decided he no longer wanted them or his Aboriginal wife...

...And so I say the "stolen generations" is a myth, and a lethal one. White children are robbed of their history, and black children of faith in the only society that can help them. White children are told lies, and black ones are fed the hopeless resentment of Redfern.

Ms Pamela Young contends to be of the "Stolen" Generations, so throwing down a gauntlet to Andrew Bolt's wild claims.

For those of you who think that an independent remuneration tribunal setting politicians' salaries will put an end to politicking on that issue take as a lesson how Alan Ramsey puts the boot into John Howard over the independently assessed salaries of bureaucrats.

When the Gnu Hunter was a boy growing up in an Australian country town his bestest school friends were in chronological order English, Aboriginal, Yugoslav, Spanish, German, English and Dutch. Parents and teachers at our large schools encouraged all of us to play together and treat each other with the same respect we expected for ourselves. The concepts of racism and social division were introduced to us via the TV courtesy of our social and political elite and then later via our high school teachers. Andrew Bolt recalls a similar experience from Back of Bourke.

I didn't even know the word racism when I was a boy, growing up alongside Aborigines. Danny was my best mate and school captain in Tarcoola Primary, and was, purely incidentally, Aboriginal. His father was a foreman in our railway town.

Nor do I ever recall my parents, with their Dutch accents and my mother's weird dishes for community suppers, being treated like aliens. Just pitching in gets you anywhere here.

I don't think that you are alone in your experience Andrew.

According to 'Google News', within the last 15 minutes, there have been 20 new news items on the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There were over 100 within the last hour.

There have been no new news items on the discovery of a sarin gas binary "mix in flight" artillery shell since yesterday.

Worldwide, on the net, according to Google, there have been 8 news items about the sarin gas shell published within the last 2 days.

The ink literally curdled on the page but Philip Adams has a word of praise for the Howard Government.

Readers will appreciate that I find it hard to praise the Howard Government. I deplore our involvement in Iraq as well as our internment of refugees – particularly in neighbouring Nauru. But what we're doing in the Solomons is as important as it is expensive (it will cost us perhaps $1 billion before we return home and that won't be by Christmas). We're doing a marvellous job.

DNA testing was required to confirm the identity of the remains of poor brave Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

This development is likely to spark outrage among Iraq's Shiites. Passions will be aroused. Heads will roll.

Leftoid film director and Cannes Film Festival Jury President Quentin Tarantino censors a nosey reporter:

The jury president became testy with a French critic who expressed surprise that the directors on the jury praised Fahrenheit 9/11 as great cinema when it struck him as more like television.

"I think you're coming from a very narrow view. I think you're talking about pretty pictures," said Tarantino. "A film can be funny and that's all it has to be. It can make me cry, it can make me laugh, it can disturb me, it can elate me. This film did all of those, all right? Pretty pictures be damned."

When the journalist disputed his definition of cinema, Tarantino snapped: "I don't need you to come back on it, either," and removed his headphones so he could not hear the French to English translation.

Mamdouh Habib is not taking his medication.

"A soldier convicted Friday of deserting his U.S. Army unit in Iraq is the son of Nicaragua's most prominent leftist singer, who wrote the line "Let's fight the Yankee, enemy of humanity" into Nicaragua's former Sandinista anthem.

The father, Carlos Mejia Godoy, condemned Friday's verdict, saying his son, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail and a bad conduct discharge in retaliation for having mentioned abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers."

And after he wrote his song, Carlos the jackal took his son to live not in the worker's paradise of China or Russia. He took them to where he knew they'd be safe, and cared for and welcomed. He went with his family to America so they could grow up as "enemies of humanity". The evil Americans took them in and gave them a home despite the father's hateful slander.

(via Byron_the_Aussie)

The Physical Laws of the Universe are immutable. They are the same here as they are there. They are now as they were then. You could not read this page if it were otherwise.

The Laws of Physics are everywhere the same: except within certain graven images and the minds of the credulous.

God does not put His hand inside His creation. He does not break the Physical Laws that He made. He will not move one blade of grass, or move one stone, or save one life, or millions.

Indescribable misery and suffering beyond reckoning goes unattended, but the statues in Churches weep on cue for the unscrupulous and the credulous. And the punters pour in and unhook their purses and believe. It truly is a miracle.

"The morality of every religion is bad. They all make up new species of crime and bring unhappiness in their train. When I hear a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal though I know some instances of very good men being religious. "

- (David Hume 1711-76)

Scientists have devised a simple way of measuring FAME. It's called Googling. All you have to do is put a name into Google and the bigger the number of pages returned the more famous you are. You scoff? It's been scientifically proven!

In the spirit of scientific enquiry the Gnu Hunter went experimenting in Google and came up with these results (All names were entered into Google using "quotes" eg. "George Bush"). The results are as follows:

George Bush is much more famous than Osama Bin Laden, but Tony Blair and John Kerry are almost as famous as George Bush.

Demonstrating the perversity of the modern media, Michael Moore is more famous than the Beatles or Albert Einstein.

John Howard, the Australian PM rates highly but the Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham, who is that?. Patrick Hawke's Observation Deck is more famous than Mark Latham.

Instapundit is more famous than Andrew Sullivan and Tim Blair is almost as famous as John Howard and is "seven times" more famous than Mark Latham (Let's vote Tim Blair for Leader of the Australian Labor Party!?).

New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clarke is only slightly more famous than NZ Pundit but not as famous as Professor Bunyip or Margo Kingston.

YESSS!! The Gnu Hunter is more famous than the Prime Minister of Iceland !


George.Bush.....2,880,000
Tony.Blair......2,470,000
John.Kerry......2,440,000
Michael.Jackson.2,320,000
Saddam.Hussein..2,270,000
Michael.Moore...2,200,000..(Movie.Genius)
The.Beatles.....1,700,000
Albert.Einstein.1,500,000
Elvis.Presley...1,490,000
Osama.Bin.Laden.1,450,000
John.Howard.......657,000..(Australia's.Prime.Minister)
Instapundit.......582,000
Babe Ruth.........501,000..(Baseball Legend)
Andrew.Sullivan...472,000
Tim.Blair.........378,000..(Future.ALP.Leader)
Michael.Howard....201,000..(UK.Opposition.Leader)
Observation.Deck...96,300..(Patrick.Hawke.-.PM.for.NZ?)
Mark.Latham.(who?).54,900..(Unemployed)
Bill.Whittle.......46,400
The.Road.'Surfdom..27,300
Andrew.Bolt........22,900
Troppo.Armadillo...19,100
IowaHawk...........15,400
Margo.Kingston.....12,400..(Jester)
After.Grog.Blog....10,400
Bastards.Inc........6,480
Professor.Bunyip....6,290
Helen.Clarke........4,770..(New.Zealand's.Prime.Minister)
A.E. Brain..........4,280
NZ.Pundit...........3,610
SlattsNews..........3,360
Gnu.Hunter..........3,340
David.Oddsson.......3,210..(Iceland's.Prime.Minister)
Mangled.Thoughts....2,940
Mike.Jericho........1,480
Todd.McKenzie.......1,330
Chrenkoff.............484
Niner.Charlie.........421
Jose M. Pereira Neves.273..(P.M. of Cape Verde)
Che.Is.Gay............250
Indolence.Log.........242


It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

If you like, find a prime minister (or President) who is less famous than a nominated site listed above and I'll update the table.
**Sincere apologies if I've omitted anyone famous.

Update: I hereby declare a long-term goal to increase Fame to exceed Helen Clarke's.

The headline and the story in Britain's Independent newspaper leave little doubt that American forces are out of control and kill anything that moves. This includes murdering journalists who get too nosey. You believe that, right?

Ever since the occupation began, there have been regular stories of American soldiers who were attacked by insurgents on the streets of Iraqi cities and reacted by spraying the entire area with wild, indiscriminate gunfire, killing and maiming innocent Iraqi bystanders. Other accounts, however, are even more sinister.

Before he was jailed for a year last week for failing to return from leave, another soldier who served in Iraq, Sergeant Camilo Mejia, said a friend of his, a sniper, had shot a child about 10 years old who was carrying an automatic weapon. "He realised it was a kid," said Sergeant Mejia. "The kid tried to get up. He shot him again." The child died.

Few images exist of such incidents, not least because journalists seeking to record them have ended up dead themselves.

The War against Terror could be lost by this kind of reportage.

"What have you done? I'm completely overwhelmed by this". Thus spake Zarathustra Michael Moore upon winning the prize for the BEST film at the Cannes Film Festival. Do you need any more convincing that the Left have overtaken the film and media generally. It is imperative that balance be restored for the sake of democracy if for no other reason.

That a film created from slander, half-truth and misrepresentation, which panders to the emotive preconceptions of the liberal judges and audiences, can win such a prestigious award is a scandal. It's also dangerous.

It will be a big hit at the box office, inevitably.

When the White House was asked for a comment, there was none.

The time for not commenting upon bias has passed in the same way that trying to ignore terrorists has passed.

Trying to ignore either is no strategy.

Thousands of people around the world will base their assessment of George Bush and the War on Terror entirely upon this film. It will "inform" the opinion of many millions more in the way that only moving images can.

What is being done to counter it?

Moore has claimed that this film will see the ouster of George Bush and he may be right, who yet knows? Certainly it could be the difference between winning or losing in a close election especially when combined with a hostile press.

The Left of politics believe, or at least say, that the media is controlled by the Right but where is the evidence for that?

Their influence in the media is assuming Orwellian dimensions.

The Sydney Morning Herald was derelict in its duty by not reporting information about the Abu Ghraib abuses that had been openly posted on the US Military's official website in January of this year. Spokespersons for the Sydney Morning Herald and the international media have not yet contacted the Gnu Hunter to explain how this information about the misdeeds of seven serving soldiers could have existed so prominently on the internet for so long without them knowing about it. How much did they know and when did they know it? Rumors persist that some journalists knew of this information, or knew where it can be found if required, but did nothing about it. The Sydney Morning Herald admits that it could have known as early as January 16 about the abuse allegations made against seven people and the resulting inquiry by the military to expose and punish the perpetrators.

The Australian Government could have learnt of the abuse allegations in Abu Ghraib prison as early as January, a US military spokesman and Pentagon official say.

A spokesman for the US military's Central Command in Tampa, also known as Centcom, said the first reports of abuse were posted on its official website on January 16, just three days after being reported to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"We [the public affairs division] do not contact each government that is part of the coalition," said a Centcom spokesman.

"But when we post information, it is public knowledge and the Australian Government is as free as anyone to read it.

Including the media's investigative journalists who could have followed up and investigated the very terse press release just the same as anyone else. For the SMH to allege that anyone, themselves included, could have gleaned any meaningful detail from that tiny press release is just a tad disingenuous don't you think.

The problem was there were no nude pictures until about three weeks ago. Now the Sydney Morning Herald has been featuring these pictures front page of its website every day since the pictures became available.

Bill Whittle has posted another great essay at his site. If you've never read Bill Whittle or if you don't know who he is: the man writes inspiring and thoughtful essays about the American people's relationship with power and their place in the world. Most of his essays take around 30 minutes an hour to read so go to the loo first and grab a cuppa. If you haven't got an hour go read bits of it, you'll be very glad you did. Ready? Let's go.

Catastrophes are only catastrophes; disasters are only disasters: they are not the end unless we decide they are. And so, let us, right here and now, decide that they are not the end. Because this is something we need to understand, something we need to feel deep in our bones: We are so strong, as a nation, that nothing can stop us when we set our minds to something. Nothing. We can only stop ourselves. All the players know this to be true. Al Sadr knows it. France and Germany know it. The Jihadis know it. The UN knows it. You and I know it.

Because we, the American people, are the only ones who can decide whether or not to give up in failure and defeat or carry on to the victory of a free and stable Iraq, we find we ourselves – the common, average American – are to be the battleground. We are the soldiers. We are the weapons. We are the targets of the enemy strategy. Our hearts, our spirit – that is the front line. All the players know this, too. This is our war, more than it is the Marines’ or Al Quaeda’s...

...

The presence of Las Vegas makes a mockery of these [islamist] people’s lives. They have been taught that they are God’s own chosen people – but they are humans, as human as we are. And so, shackled to an ideology determined to wring every precious drop of enjoyment out of life, they look across the world to see a group of people enthusiastically breaking every commandment they were ever given, and not only do these heathens succeed and prosper beyond the wildest tales from the Arabian Nights, but they are enjoying themselves beyond any measure as they do so. These tortured souls can vaguely guess, lying in bed late at night, that even the lowest and most common working man or woman in America can, once a year, travel to Las Vegas and live a few days in luxury unknown to the grandest Caliph in the very flower of their history.

You’ve got to admit, if that were you – that would suck.

The success, the strength – indeed, the very presence of the United States tells them that their religion has been lying to them. They, who follow every stricture, who submit to every admonition, who put away every single shred of enjoyment have been told they are the chosen people of God, and that the World shall become their domain and its citizens their slaves and concubines.

Not happening.

Wow.

Imperial stormtroopers have subjected Australian Guantanomo Bay detainees, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, to months of daily decapitations. The beheading incidents took place over several months on Imperial ships in the Great Gulf just weeks before a wedding was targeted by a Death Star. Forty-five guests were reported killed and ninety-seven of those are said to be women and children. The news comes as the holy shrine of armageddon was surrounded by Imperial Walkers. A fleck of paint has been reported as missing from the dome resulting in calls for the extinction of all life on the Imperial home world. No, it's been found, oops! too late.

As everybody knows Hicks and Habib were beheaded by Imperial stormtroopers again and again in Egypt. The news comes hot on the heels of the first guilty plea by one of seven accused stormtroopers at the centre of abuses committed at the Death Star prison. We have pictures.

The allegations of beheadings come from al-Qaeda freedom fighters just released from Guantanomo Bay and have been confirmed as true by the lawyers for Hicks and Habib. Just in, we have more pictures of the naked Iraqis for you to look at. There's also a picture of a grinning idiot. A leaked document received yesterday by the Times titled "The War of the Worlds" has more pictures of dogs. The leaked document was published in a press release we received in the mail from the Imperial Palace and published on the internet last year.

The same seven stormtroopers arrested previously continue to be still under arrest and are still charged with the same charges we reported last month. We have more naked pictures for you to look at. Three pictures of dogs and one of the same grinning idiot but in this shot she's making fun of a dead person's head.

Someone wrote and asked the Times about the so-called War on Terror and the alleged Sarin gas attack (no pictures sorry) and the alleged beheading (once) of Nick Berg (no pictures allowed). Details of these alleged allegations can be found on page 42 under the weather map.

John Pilger, award winning journalist, who is in favor of Iraqis killing Australian troops was interviewed on Dutch National Radio:

"Not all the Americans in Iraq are those who torture and murder, or course they're not, I don't know how many are doing it, I know it is systematic throughout the United States military I think that's been revealed."

Forum host Andy Clark: "You're talking about Abu Ghraib…."

Pilger: "Iraq is becoming a colony in the classic sense."

John Pilger: "Yes, yes but I'm also taking about American military tactics since, I suppose, the massacre of the native Americans, it's always been frontal assault… During the Second World War American attacks were to sacrifice its own soldiers by frontal assaults from everywhere from Omaha Beach, at Normandy, through to the Pacific landings...

A useful idiot letter was read on air:

"Half the population here still thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11."

Pilger said that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks Americans had been subjected to the most intense brainwashing programme in modern history.

The man is insane.

How much does this news of the assassination of the head of the Iraqi Governing Council have to do with this news about the raid a day or two later on the offices and home of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi.

First we heard that the Doctor's wives were going to decide the election. Now via Alan Ramsey comes the news that it's really Generation X. You dolts never thought about politics but now you do because of Mark Latham.

"I mean, for the first time generation X is interested in politics, largely because of Mark Latham. In fact, I think they are almost the key to the election."

And who is generation X?

"Late 20s and 30s. They've been totally disengaged by the political process. Now they're just starting to get vaguely interested for the first time in ages.

An interesting item in the Australian today. I wonder why we haven't read this news before?

...detractors of the Bush administration invariably invoke the 1949 Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which affords protection to captured legal combatants...

...Article II of the Third Geneva Convention denotes that parties to the treaty are not required to apply it to every conflict they fight. In fact, this provision indicates that parties to the Convention are under no legal obligation to accord the privileges of the Convention to a captured foe, if that enemy is not a party and does not itself apply the Convention in practice.

So, running around a war-zone, not in any army but armed to the teeth, in the service of al-Qaeda and international terror does not make you a POW. It makes you an enemy combatant, who must be kept from causing harm, but you are not a POW under the Third Geneva Convention.

Advocates for Hicks seek to erode the essential distinction between combatants and civilians, and between the permissible and the impermissible in warfare. To afford POW status to the Guantanamo detainees would undermine the international treaty system that is one of humanity's best hopes for restraining the horrors of war.

And in addition to ignoring the above, the media also ignores this undisputed fact:

In letters to his family, Hicks boasted that he willingly underwent military training with the Taliban, and then volunteered to fight with Lashkar-e-Toiba, an al-Qa'ida-affiliated Islamic terrorist organisation that is outlawed in Australia.

Hicks was captured while fighting for the Taliban. He wore neither uniform, nor any other sign that would identify him as a combatant. This violation of the law of war, along with his active combat role with LET, caused Hicks to forfeit any right to be treated as a POW. Hicks, moreover, is ineligible for the broader safeguards afforded by the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Article V of this treaty stipulates that people suspected of hostile acts shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present (Fourth) Convention if a security threat might ensue.

While they pose a threat to their fellow citizens, or the citizens of our allies, illegal combatants captured in war zones and held at Guantanamo Bay must stay precisely where they are.

And "Bob Brown", in the English language, is coming to mean shameless.

Arthur Chrenkof writes:

Help me to celebrate a little milestone on my blog - 40,000 visits since I started eight weeks ago - with a little competition:

REDESIGN THE MIDDLE EAST

Let's face it - the British and French imperialists have stuffed up the job after the First World War, and most political developments in the region since then have largely served to make the situation even worse.

To our numerous enemies we are already neo-conservative neo-imperialist Orientalist crusaders who want to impose their radical vision on the Middle East and remake the region in our own image. So why not actually pretend for a minute we're God (or a god), and have a think about what to do to make the Orient a bit less of a mess than it is now (or better still, to actually make it work for its long-suffering residents).

Google reveals one possibility.

Malcolm Farr and News Limited think that John Howard is in fear.

He is in fear of the "Doctor's Wives". (Cue the scary music...)

They are set to rebel and because of them most Liberal metropolitan seats are considered at risk unless the sitting MP has a double-digit margin.

There must be dozens of them per electorate. Enough to guarantee any election to Mark Latham.

Malcolm is tuned into the mind-waves of the "Doctor's Wives".

They have opposed the Government's border protection policy and cannot forgive John Howard for Tampa.

Now they are angry over Australia's presence in Iraq. They are appalled by the atrocities committed on Iraqi prisoners and believe Australia has been tarnished.

Malcolm Farr is senior political correspondent at the Daily Telegraph.

The Redfern Inquiry is degenerating into a whitewashed farce. Miranda Devine reports this disgraceful news:

Submissions by Redfern sergeants Huxtable and Frank Reitano, among the most knowledgeable, were not provided to members of the committee conducting the inquiry. Nor were they published on the inquiry website, as 22 other submissions were.

Outrageous.

If you relied only on reading this you would get the impression that ordinary Australians are protesting John Howard's Anniversary Party and the numbers so huge that a large police presence is required.

But if instead, you read this you will know that the protest is in fact being organised by the "Stop the War Coalition" which is yet another front for the violent and extremist International Socialist Organisation and others from the Socialist Alliance.

I guess the journalists are just too busy reporting the news to check stuff like this.

Iowahawk creates a blogsite for Yasser Arafat.

Visitors are extremely welcomed to the website of Mr. Excellency Prisedent Yasser Arafat. The State Information Service sheds informing lights on various life aspects and activities and blogging thoughts of Mr. President and many happy friends across the lands...

You will enjoy stature of his people's and rise of his independent state, and to play excellent online martyrdom games if the visitor has Flash 5.0 or higher-version. Your inquiries to Mr. President will be replied, too! Hitting PayPal button, please.

According to this Age report, US troops have killed 40 people at a wedding party, and the attack was timed so it would occur just hours before a US soldier was sentenced to a year in jail for abusing Iraqi prisoners.

US troops were accused of killing 40 people at a wedding party in an Iraqi desert town hours before a US soldier was sentenced to a year in jail for abusing Iraqi prisoners.

This item describes how reporters have been asking almost every celebrity for their opinion on the war. Anti-war celebs are most numerous and are very popular with the press, so when Tom Hanks spoke reporters were taken aback.

Earlier in the day, even Tom Hanks, on his very first visit to Cannes to promote the European release of the Joel and Ethan Coen-directed The Ladykillers, was called upon to comment on the conflict.

The multiple Oscar-winning actor, who has played an active role in preserving the experiences of World War II veterans since making Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, noted how that generation of combat veterans starkly contrasts with the current one being created.

"We're in an extremely tough time," the actor said, "not only in the United States, but around the world. It's a very confusing time. We're up against a type of philosophy that we don't quite understand.

"This is not as it was in World War II," Hanks said. "I think then we had a pretty good idea of twin evil empires that were bent on world domination. And that required a different sensitivity in order to go out and volunteer and say, `We're gonna stop this.'

"We are in a sort of grey area now that defies logic and defies common sense more often than not. But at the same time, on an individual basis, man by man, woman by woman, we have to just welcome (soldiers) home and say thank you for coming back. We thank you for your sacrifice, and God bless you."

Silence followed the statement.

I'm sure it did. They hadn't prepared any questions and couldn't conceive of any to suit the occasion.

The recent discovery of a "mix in-flight" sarin gas artillery shell, rigged as an improvised roadside bomb, has been misrepresented by big media. You would have thought that the discovery of one live mass-produced WMD would be big news.

The ABC news report that I heard and most of the other media stories I read that night said that it was an old shell left over from the Iran-Iraq war, pre-Gulf War One, and that it was no evidence of any recent WMD programs.

That is NOT a correct observation based on the evidence at hand. Blaster's Blog is all over this and has heaps of info and apparently well informed analysis.

Iraq had NEVER declared "mix in flight" sarin gas artillery shells to the UN and the UN never discovered them.

The shell was made AFTER the first Gulf War, it was mass-produced, and it used technology that noone knew Iraq had, until now.

The alternative, that the shell was not made in Iraq and was brought into Iraq, would mean that whoever imported it would have to know what was in it. A disturbing development in the insurgency.

So where did this round come from? If it is Iraqi, it is certainly a new development - right under the noses of the UN inspectors (potential NY Post headline: "Blix Shits Brix"). It is not an old round from the Iran-Iraq war, or from shelling of Kurds or Shi'ites after the Gulf War. And this is not the sort of thing that someone put a single one together in the lab - it came off of a production line somewhere.

Even more troubling, if it isn't Iraqi, where did it come from? If it came from another country, then certainly the people who planted the IED knew what was in it.

This is huge, HUGE news.

Either way the Sarin gas attack, which was so quickly dismissed by the major media, is more interesting than the initial media reports would lead you to believe.

Update: More here and here and here.

Hans Blix thinks its an old stray.

(via Instapundit)

JANET ALBRECHTSEN continues to delight with another great opinion piece in the Australian.

Yet on Abu Ghraib the media has failed to deliver context. The media frenzy began only when photographs were uncovered because the media understands the devastating power of an image...

...A media willing to incite Arab outrage but spare our own is not a media interested in balance. This one-sided reporting of our own misdeeds eats away at our resolve to stay the distance. Indeed, one suspects that is its purpose. ..

...The media's skewed reporting of Iraq raises one question: Can Western nations successfully wage war – any war – anymore? If Adolf Hitler were rampaging through Europe now, would we have the stomach to fight him, to accept the carnage inevitably required to defeat him? Or would media images of our own brutality cause us to surrender.

Tony Abbott is a good politician but would make an equally good journalist or opinion writer. In fact, he once was a lawyer and a journalist.

Check this out. It's a piece Abbott wrote for the Australian newspaper today and makes excellent reading.

In the aftermath of September 11, Blair declared that Britain “should remain the closest ally of the United States . . . not because they are powerful but because we share their values”. Blair’s instinctive response to the attack on New York was to go to America in a demonstration of solidarity, just as John Howard’s instinctive response was to invoke the ANZUS treaty for the first time in its history. Britons and Australians instinctively understood, in a way that Europeans did not, that this was not an attack on America but an attack on civilisation.

There's something special happening on the Australian Blogging scene.

His name is Arthur Chrenkoff. Today Arthur posts a huge blog that is an encyclopedia of good news from Iraq.

The news is so good that Arthur is getting a Sullivan link avalanche and an Instalanche, simultaneously.

Can the Chrenkoff blogspot server bear up under the strain?

Tim is back.

Morgan is demanding over $2 million to "not rock the boat".

Executives at Trinity Mirror, the tabloid's publisher, have indicated to him that they will honour the terms of his contract so long as he "keeps his nose clean and doesn't rock the boat" by stoking the row over the faked Iraqi pictures and his subsequent dismissal, sources claimed.

Now that Morgan has gone does this leave John Pilger without a mentor and benefactor? Here's hoping.

To beef up coverage, he brought in the left-wing journalist John Pilger, a sharp critic of President Bush who once unabashedly branded the United States "the world's leading rogue state."

Private Lyndie England who loves being photographed while leading leashed prisoners around or while mocking their genitals has admitted that she did it just for fun. A week ago, in a bid to deflect some of the legal heat, she was saying she was having lots of fun but it was strictly "under orders".

She did not say if she was also under orders when engaged in her publicly naked consensual sex acts.

Three of the seven abusers from Abu Ghraib prison were women. The prison was run by a woman.

Ms Lorraine Buntz, the school principal who banned kids from playing ball games, swinging on the swings or running around before school began has resigned after a backlash from parents who've had enough.

Lorraine Buntz stepped down from St Mary's Primary School in Melbourne's Williamstown after parents complained about the policy, and the Catholic Education Office censured the school for failing to consult parents.

It is understood Ms Buntz was responsible for the school's policy of banning children from running, playing ballgames or using the adventure playgrounds before school.

Denmark's crown prince Frederik has obviously booked the space shuttle for his honeymoon suite.

During the dinner, Frederik pledged his love for Mary, telling her father, John Donaldson, that "I will love her and I will protect her with all my heart."

Then he told Mary: "I love you Mary. Come, let us go, come let us see. Throughout a thousand worlds, weightless love awaits."

If all it takes to change a government in a democracy is for a liar to make a movie then we've got problems.

US President George W Bush's election hopes could be blown apart by a film to be shown at the Cannes film festival, which is why the White House is trying to keep it out of US theatres, its director, Michael Moore, charged...

...He vowed that Americans would see the documentary soon, even if it took illegal means, and that once it was widely seen, Bush and his government would realise their political future is "totally f....d", Moore said.

"Bowling for Columbine" earnt over $120 million US dollars. Michael Moore's latest disgrace could probably do the same:

The film focuses on how Americans and the White House responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacking attacks and traces links between the Bush family and prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden...

...But the film is most effective when focusing on raw emotion. The camera pans in on a grieving mother, her voice cracking as she reads out the last letter she received from her son before he was killed in Iraq.

Telling how she collapsed on hearing the news over the phone, she said: "Your flesh just aches. You're just not supposed to bury your own son."

The poor woman. Her son's sacrifice and her grief exploited for a quick hundred million bucks gotten via cheap political trickery that many will see as witty.

The Federal government is about to accept the last 150 Afghan asylum seekers who were sent to Nauru as part of the Pacific Solution. The governments highly successful strategies in reducing the influx of boat arrivals will see the end of the Pacific Solution real soon. Fearing a loss of publicity the Labor party and the Sydney Morning Herald have decided that they have to call for the end of the Pacific Solution. See, this way it will be all their doing. Labor calls for an end to the Pacific Solution and Lo, as it is written so it shall come to pass.

As the numbers of detainees on Nauru are about to rapidly decline, Labor again calls on the Howard Government to end the costly Pacific Solution," he said.

Next year the detention centres may all be closed down if no new arrivals occur. This is disastrous news for Labor and the Left of politics. They just LOVE having people in detention centres. They see votes there. Victim industries and NGOs have sprung up all over the place supported or subsidised by the unionists at Trades Hall. Public donations will dry up for the Refugee Action Collective, which is largely a front of the International Socialist Organisation. What will they have to think of next?

Hee hee. Seeing arch-republican Richard Butler grovelling to the royalty of another European country, himself clad in British Vice-Regal regalia, Ha! oh, no, make it stop. Heee hee ha ha ha....

PUT a princess's tiara on a pretty Tasmanian girl and -- pffft -- hear the air go out of the balloons of our puffed-up republicans.

As the Gnu Hunter has previously pointed out, Paul McGeough has some serious problems. One of them is known as Professor Bunyip who catches the "alleged" reporter pool-side borrowing a line or two from Maureen Dowd.

Two Liberal senators known as the Odd Couple have been travelling the world meeting their political and literary heroes at taxpayers' expense.

In the past year, George Brandis and Brett Mason travelled together to the US, Britain, France and Cuba.

At the end of their six-week "study tour" - which cost taxpayers more than $40,000 - the junior senators produced just a three-page report on their travels.

They then left for Cuba hoping to meet Castro, but came away disappointed.

Their time in Havana was not a total waste - they managed to get into a cigar factory, a cabaret and a number of museums.

Not good.

The Premier of NSW is in no doubt that Redfern suffers more from the self-inflicted harm of substance abuse than of any prejudice from the wider community.

"I think the problem at Redfern is the corrosive, awful problem of heroin dependency rather than racism," Mr Carr said.

"It's heroin and grog that's undermining the community in Redfern."

Sgt Paul Huxtable of Redfern police in his submission to a Parliamentary inquiry says:

More than 1 million syringes were handed out in The Block under a government-funded needle exchange program in 2001.

At the current price for heroin of $50 per street deal, "if the current syringe handout is consistent with 2001, we have an annual turnover of over $50 million tax free", he said.

"I acknowledge these figures are coarse, however nobody can argue that there is not an enormous amount of heroin being moved through The Block pulling in enormous amounts of money," Sergeant Huxtable said.

He said The Block's problems had "little to do with race and everything to do with pure old-fashioned human greed. It is about the protection of a lucrative heroin trade".

"There needs to be recognition that the crime problems at The Block are far greater than any racial problems.

"The real enemy of the young Aboriginal people are not the police but their Aboriginal kin who peddle heroin and by doing so commit them to a life of unemployment, poverty, misery and crime."

With coppers like Sgt Huxtable at Redfern police it's no wonder there are tensions between aboriginees and police in Redfern. He'll have to go.

With $50,000,000.00 per year tax free trade at stake voices in support of the status quo would be very strong indeed. Follow the money Sergeant...

Just shut up will you.........for God sake.

- Anthony Rizk providing some feedback to Margo Kingston.

I read this item and thought what an odd piece to get air time and print space, and then I realised that the reporter is insinuating but not actually saying out loud that he thinks Powell was CENSORED by his over zealous press aide. The allegation would be ridiculed if he just came right out and said it, but the message gets out to those who want to hear it. I think Margo Kingston calls this 'dog whistling'.

What will happen in the Left half side of the media if George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are re-elected?

Will it be business as usual in the media? Would they reform? Could they go on with the constant barrage of anti-US, anti-Howard rhetoric? Would they distance themselves even further from the will of the People who make their choice at the ballot box? So many questions, I haven't got a feel for how they'd react. I hope it would cause them to rethink or at least moderate the tone of their wilder barracking, but maybe not.

And, if Bush, Blair and Howard lose? What then?

Three months after the Redfern riot nothing has changed except that police now have no choice but to avoid confrontation with local hoodlums.

"Leading police officer, Sergeant Paul Huxtable, has broken ranks to deliver a jarring insight into the depth of Redfern's neglect and the no-win job of keeping its peace. Despite political assurances to the contrary, the suburb's notorious Block is beyond conventional police control, Huxtable argues. With almost 300 street robberies - many of them frighteningly violent - in the first three months of 2004..."

..."One thing that people have to understand is that February 15 wasn't just something that appeared out of the blue"..."Redfern police have been subjected to extreme and unprovoked acts of violence on an almost weekly basis for as long as I have been there."

....In the days following the riot, Police Minister John Watkins offered Commissioner Ken Moroney his unreserved support and gratitude for courageous action by police. Yet at latest count, Redfern Local Area Command is about 30 officers short of its authorised strength...

...Opposition police spokesman Peter Debnam says the direction of NSW Police under the Carr Government is still media management as opposed to effective policing strategies on the ground.

Labor is in disarray. Their front bench doesn't know what their tax policies are.

The Democrats have a new election slogan. They're calling themselves the "Lie Detectors".

The Greens think the Democrats slogan sucks and have said so.

And John Howard says he wants to keep leading the Liberals in the next government.

The progressives have to keep progressing otherwise there's no progress, right?

In a bid to get students to calm down as they enter the classroom, St Mary's Primary School, in Williamstown, is prohibiting children from playing ball games, running around, or using the adventure playground before the school day begins.

A letter sent to parents last Friday informed them that, from this week, students would be supervised in the yard between 8.30am - when the school gates open - and 8.50am, when children were allowed into class.

But according to the new rules, "games will not be permitted at this time, nor any activity on the adventure playground, as this will be essential to children entering the classroom in a calm manner".

The letter says the decision was partly based "on experiences in other schools", as well as "growing concerns about safety issues and legal responsibilities in our 'before school' routine".

Update: Our kids need more male teachers.

"In 250 public state schools in the state of New South Wales the only man on campus, if there is one, is the gardener"

(via Walter Plinge)

You know the media are getting DESPERATE for something on John Howard when they resort to this:

Melissa Morphet, Mr Howard's neighbour, buys bread two or three times a week. Asked if the Prime Minister would know the price fellow Kirribillians paid, she said: "Probably not. I have never seen him down the shop."

Mr Howard may be able to juggle economic statistics but he doesn't know the prices of basic grocery items. Asked the cost of an ordinary loaf, he said it was 90c. A loaf costs between $2.80 and $3.30 at Mr Howard's corner shop, Kirribilli Village Store.

[humor on]
One shopper, can't remember who, said of Howard, "He didn't know how much a loaf of bread was? He's got to go. I couldn't vote for him now."

Activist, Jaundice Spazm said, "Innocent Iraqis must pay the price of bread every day. Howard and Bush pretend they don't know, but it's a lie. Fundamentalists like them say 'Give us this day our daily bread' but they won't fetch it for themselves, oh no."

"I care. I really, really care about this issue. I'm so good. Do you like me?", she said.

The International Criminal Court will make a ruling on the Loaf Price Affair.

Margo Kingston threw up and started writhing on the floor when she heard the news. "Australian'''s are all ashamed because of this. Regime change must happen now!" she foamed.

Mr Mark Latham was not interviewed to ask if he knew the price of bread because we all love him and of course he would know. Not like Howard or Bush. A press release from his office said what we said he would say: "John Howard's opponents will seize on it as evidence that he is out of touch - especially with poor families."

Kevin Rudd, God we love that man, he adjusted his glasses even even higher on his nose, looked wiser and more intellegent than ever and said, "The Howard Government is off its loaf. Howard has been complicit in this whole affair. Every Labor politician will know the price of a loaf of bread before this day is through. 40 million Australian's are on the breadline.", and he shuffled his papers, adjusted his glasses and went back inside for drinks.
[/humor off]

Update: Like many blokes I'm less informed than the P.M. on the price of bread, but my missus, the wife of a poor Gnu Hunter, says "What ordinary person shops at the corner store anyway?. Ordinary people [not journalists or posh folk in Kirribili] buy their groceries from the supermarket where a loaf of store-brand bread CAN be purchased for 99 cents."

Technology and symbols of power like the World Trade Centre Building are all targets for Osama Bin Ladin and his followers who want to revert to the Middle Ages glory days of their religion.

That's why, having assisted indirectly with the demolition of two of the world's taller buildings, Osama Bin Ladin's family company may now reap the rewards of building the world's tallest building in the arab country of Dubai. At nigh on 500 metres the building will easily be the largest building in the world.

Much was made by the Left of politics about what the Bush administration knew about possible terror threats in the lead-up to the September 11 attacks in 2001, but what would have been their reaction if George Bush had acted to decisively stop the terrorist attack?

Greg Easterbrook shows us what probably would have happened:

AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: washington, april 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."

When dozens of U.S. soldiers were slain in gun battles with fighters in the Afghan mountains, public opinion polls showed the nation overwhelmingly opposed to Bush's action. Political leaders of both parties called on Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan immediately. "We are supposed to believe that attacking people in caves in some place called Tora Bora is worth the life of even one single U.S. soldier?" former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey asked.

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George Bush finds no benefit in reading the newspapers, except for the sports pages.

"I like to have a clear outlook," he told the author in one of two interviews. "It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterisation, which simply isn't true."...

... Bush said his "antennae are finely attuned" to what he considers political bias in news reports.

"I can figure out what so-called 'news' pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news.

"So I'm keenly aware of what's in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I'm also aware of the facts," he told the author.

This sounds like an excellent way to stay focussed on the job. Since he gets the facts firsthand why would he need to read someone's secondhand opinion?

The editor of Britain's most vitriolic anti-war newspaper has just been sacked because the paper now admits that the sensational front page photos that pretended to show British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were a hoax. Most people in the world "know" the picture of a man dressed as a British soldier urinating on a hooded Iraqi prisoner. Problem is IT NEVER HAPPENED. It was a hoax to earn money from the sale of the photos. The hoax story will be known to the minority or media consumers but the images and effects of the alleged abuse are now known worldwide to the majority and they are still being reproduced in media stories as supporting "fact" throughout the world.

Poor...what's his name? you know the guy they murdered by hacking and sawing his head off while he screamed and gurgled with his hands tied behind his back. All for the camera. Well, you know that guy who's disappeared completely from the media? Maybe we'll never hear about him again.

Just like Daniel Pearl decapitated in Pakistan or the courageous Fabrizio Quattrocchi shot through the head.

The major media refused to cover these stories with pictures because it would inflame tensions. Readers would go getting the wrong ideas about terrorists and extremists.

The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age are still chock full of stories about the photographs of nude and abused Iraqi prisoners. This story is starting into its third week with no sign of going away as the liberal media milk it for its anti-Bush, anti-Howard quality.

Margo Kingston alleges the US sent its own untrained children to Iraq to supervise the Abu Ghraib prison.

So, the bloke [Rumsfeld] who designed America’s debacle in Iraq and sent kids without training to Abu Ghraib goes to the scene of the crime to tell his troops that while the small fry will fry, “I’m a survivor”.

Here's a story about the kid she's referring to, twenty-one year old Pte England joyfully engaging in public sex acts with the other few sadists at the centre of this storm. England has alleged that the "chain of command" (i.e. her old fellow sadist corporal and sergeant buddies) ordered her to hold the leash and pose in the photographs.

Paul McGeogh believes the US military action to unseat or unsettle Shiite cleric and murderous thug Moqtada Sadr is nothing more than revenge.

This week's grotesque beheading of a Jewish-American in Iraq came after the appalling scandal of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their US captors, which followed the debacle of the American attack on Falluja, which was retribution for the butchery of four American security contractors in the same city, which Arab observers claim bore the hallmarks of a revenge attack for an unspecified American act at some point in the past 13 months.

KISS bass player Gene Simmons has caused uproar among Australia's Muslim community.

Simmons' derided Muslim Extremists during an interview on Melbourne's 3AW radio.

"Extremism believes that it's okay to strap bombs on to your children and send them to paradise and whatever else and to behead people," he said yesterday.

Simmons' believes the West is under threat:

"This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it's going to just live in the sands of God's armpit you've got another thing coming," he said.

"They want to come and live right where you live and they think that you're evil."

Simmons said the United Nations approach did not work and the west had to "speak softly and carry a big stick".

Australia's Muslim community have reacted strongly on local media. The chairman of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Yasser Soliman, threatened:

"I think it would be good for overseas speakers and commentators to be given some sort of advice in regards to our vilification laws here," he said.

Mr Soliman makes reference to the State of Victoria's new and controversial "crime-speak" law. His Islamic Council has already launched a case against two Christian pastors who were preaching in a Church seminar. The seminar topic was something like Islam versus Christianity. Two under-cover Muslims were sent to the meeting to record what was said and came forward to the hearings as being offended by the talk. The Islamic Council launched proceedings in the courts and the judge is now deciding on his verdict.

It remains to be seen if the Islamic Council will try to prosecute Mr Simmons.