The Flight that Fought Back
Seven showed a film last night called. "The Flight that Fought Back", about flight 93 that was more than likely shot down by a US Fighter Jet.
Yet somehow the documentary failed to mention this and basically gave us the whole al-queda is bad, bush is good, and america are heroes.
What a load of Babylonian bullshit.
Royal Assent
First A little info on
Royal AssentAn
Heres a PDF of the new terror laws.
Channel Nine Doing a special on 'Perths Weird Weather'
Should be interesting..... Although chances are they'll tell us its our fault and global warming is the cause.....
Weather is freakin wierd
Today the clouds are insane.
Lines at right angles, electricity looking spikes coming out all seemingly coming from one focused point to the west.... possibly antartica?
I need my damnit camera back.
Raytheon
Lets develop crazy shit and call it defense:
http://www.raytheon.com/
Lancelin is US military weapons testing range
THE US Military is testing shit in lancelin.
Umm so it's real then.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/lancelin.htmhttp://www.seaswap.orgHeres some articles out of google's cache.
Australia Cancels SAS’s Leave The Defense Department has canceled leave for special forces troops as part of contingency plans for a possible war in Iraq, acting Prime Minister John Anderson said Thursday. Anderson said defense chiefs had canceled vacation for Australia's elite Special Air Service commandos. "It (cancellation of leave) just applies to the SAS at this point in time," Anderson told reporters. In a radio interview earlier Thursday, Anderson said the government still hoped diplomacy could avert conflict and that it had made no decision to send troops.
The United States and Britain moved closer to a full war footing against Iraq this week by announcing the dispatch of thousands more troops and weapons to the Gulf region and by voicing misgivings about Iraq's commitment to disarm.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is currently on vacation, is a staunch supporter of President Bush's hardline stance against Baghdad and has not ruled out supporting American forces in a military strike, even without a United Nations mandate. Canberra sent 150 SAS commandos to Afghanistan for more than a year but brought them back in December, saying they were no longer needed as the operation there turned toward nation-building. However, Canberra still has warships and air force planes deployed in the region. The Defense Department said Thursday that Australian and U.S. navy fighter jets are to begin bombing exercises in Western Australia state next week.
Beaches near the town of Lancelin, 80 miles north of the state capital Perth, will be closed for five days from Jan. 14 while jet fighters from the USS Abraham Lincoln and Australian aircraft drop non-explosive bombs on targets, the department said. The U.S. aircraft carrier had been in Perth for Christmas after a six-month deployment in the Indian Ocean. It left 10 days ago for its homeport in Everett, Wash., but the Pentagon on Dec. 31 reversed its orders and told it to return to Perth.
Australian defense officials say the exercises are routine.
09.12.2003, Guardian Roundup, December 10th ------------------------------------------------- From: The Guardian, Tuesday, December 09, 2003 http://www.cpa.org.au , mailto:cpa@cpa.org.au , mailto:guardian@cpa.org.au ================================================== The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, December 10th, 2003. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee:
"The Guardian": Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ********************************************** INDEX 1. Star Wars Madness 2. Howard, Vaile In All Out Push For Free Trade Agreement With Us 3. New Law Criminalises Disclosure Of Information Regarding Asio 4. African Americans In Peril Under Patriot Act 5. Us Pressure On Iran 6. Culture And Life: Terrorism And Drugs ***********************************************
1. Australian Govt Signs Up For Star Wars Madness "We are appalled by the Howard Government's decision to sign Australia up to the United States missile defence plans", said Dr Hannah Middleton in a media statement on behalf of the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition last week. The US program is estimated to cost a minimum of $30 billion and Canberra is not giving any estimates of how much Australia will be expected to contribute. With a defence budget already running at over $43 million a day and Medicare and education in desperate need of more funding, this is irresponsible, she said. The Howard Government is dragging us into a massively expensive, controversial and still-experimental system that will make Australia complicit in US plans to turn space into an arena of war. Furthermore, the US is not building a defensive system. It is planning to militarise and control space. The US Space Command report, Vision for 2020, speaks of dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment". The US Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan says the United States intends to dominate the world by turning space into the crucial battlefield of the 21st Century. "Air Force Space Command has the vision and the people to ensure the United States achieves space superiority today and in the future", say the US planners adding that the US will not allow any other power, including its allies, to get a foothold in space. Denounced Most competent authorities have already denounced the Star Wars project. A report by the General Accounting Office of the US Congress warned that Bush' s drive to erect an anti-missile system is hampered by immature technology and limited testing, raising the risk of failure. In February 2002, Australia's Office of National Assessments said that the US missile defence system could provoke a regional arms race and "would not be in Australia's diplomatic or security interests". The announcement by the Australian Government that it is signing up to Star Wars has been followed by a report in The Australian (December 6-7) that the Government is to purchase long range missiles from the United States. These missiles have a much longer range than any missiles presently available to the Australian Air Force and can be fitted with either conventional, nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. No other country in the Southeast Asian region has such long range missiles in its arsenal and the Australian Government's action will inevitably provoke an arms race in the region to possess similar or even more deadly weapons. It is clear that the Australian Government and its US masters are rushing the militarisation of Australia and the Asian region. It involves US bases in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and on ships and aircraft in the region. These steps are all preparations for a large war in the future to contain and overwhelm the People's Republic of China and impose US domination over the whole of Asia. Base for tanks and troops Australia is being turned into a base for the stockpiling of weapons (by establishing a base at Darwin to house US tanks and troops), by renovating the naval facilities at Cockburn Sound in WA to take larger US warships, by using Lancelin (also in WA) as a bombing range and weapons testing area, by upgrading Pine Gap spy facilities and by building up the armed forces of Australia to be used whenever and wherever the US command decides. Australian military, air and naval forces are being steadily integrated into the US military structures by the adoption of military equipment supplied by the US and similar training and command structures. It is called "interoperability" which means that Australia's military forces are becoming a de-facto arm of the US military. The Australian Government is also purchasing three new warships which the Pentagon says are cover against some "longer range threats against the west coast of the USA". China has expressed concern about US plans to surround it with Tactical Missile Defence (TMD) deployments in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea and on ships and planes throughout the region. The Howard Government signed up for theatre missile defence when it announced on November 7 that work would start on three new air-warfare destroyers by 2006. It is expected that they will be equipped with the US Aegis radar and missile systems. Defence Minister Robert Hill says this program is not "specifically designed to protect continental Australia". Destabilise the region China has repeatedly warned that US plans for missile defence will be destabilising and will provoke a new regional arms race. Development of TMD weapons, the Chinese say, counteracts confidence-building efforts in the region and is bound to undermine the global strategic balance. Another important Australian facility under the effective control and command of the US is the spy base at Pine Gap. It has already been involved in the supply of information used in the bombing of Yugoslavia and in the Iraq war. It has been involved in the Star Wars program for more than a decade. New radomes built at Pine Gap are for the latest satellite system called Space-Based Infra-Red System. Media reports indicate that 50 new homes are being built at Alice Springs for additional American staff coming to Pine Gap. Far from achieving security for Australia, the Government's policies and war preparations will inevitably result in a much wider war in the Asian region, ith possibly tremendous casualties and the destruction of any respect for Australia in the region. Australia is already widely regarded as the deputy sheriff of the US and Australia's militarisation and effective integration into the US military command structures and its use of US equipment will confirm that belief. There is no benefit for Australia in the Howard Government's rush to militarise Australia. Our security will be damaged, trade and diplomatic relations with our regional neighbours will be negatively affected and our sovereignty will be diminished. It has been said that President Bush is the most dangerous President to have ever occupied that position in the United States. It can be added that Prime Minister Howard is the most dangerous and warmongering Prime Minister that Australia has ever had. ***********************************
2. Howard, Vaile In All-Out Push For "Free Trade" Agreement With US The Howard Government is redoubling its efforts to get an Australia US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed, sealed and delivered as quickly as possible. Negotiations between the two governments resumed last week with Trade Minister Mark Vaile doing his best to promote a pact during his lengthy US visit. by Bob Briton The PM and his Cabinet hope to present a secretly negotiated deal as a fait accompli to parliament and use it to steamroller the necessary legislation through both Houses. The numerous eloquent contributions to the debate over local content at the Australian Film Industry (AFI) awards landed heavy blows against the government's sell-out position. The Prime Minister responded using ambiguous language. He said that Australia would not undo longstanding policies such as the local rules on existing media. He would, however, be prepared to be "fairly flexible" about new media forms. In other words, local content rules may lapse when digital TV services take over. Howard knows there is little support for the abolition of media ownership rules, the import of genetically modified food without labelling, or for water privatisation, just to take a few examples of likely outcomes. The Government feels vulnerable over the weakness of its commitment to the highly popular Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - a target of the powerful US pharmaceuticals industry. Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA; a pro-regulation lobby group in the US, told the ABC that we should hold on to our wallets if the PBS is watered down as a result of negotiations. "This is going to be a slippery slope and if the drug industry gets some concessions this year, they'll come back next year for the next set of concessions." Howard chooses his words carefully. "I want to make it clear that we are not going to trade that wonderful facility away in the free-trade negotiations, we're not. The PBS in its essential character is just not on the list and is not up for grabs or not up for negotiation." [Emphasis added] The PM makes much of the need to offer concessions in return for permission for Australian agricultural produce to compete on US markets. We should take note of what happens when smaller nations negotiate "free trade" agreements with what the Howard Government delights in calling the biggest and most dynamic economy in the world. Chile signed an FTA with the US that takes effect in January. To get the US to set aside 15 barriers to trade, Chile had to drop 52. Among other impacts, cheap US wheat is set to wipe out local production. Chilean Christian Democrat Senator Jorge Lavandero now protests, "this is not free trade, this is a political imposition. We are practically giving up our sovereignty." The sacrifices made in the name of agriculture could prove worthless. NSW Greens Senator Kerry Nettle pointed out the flaw in the government's line to The Guardian in a recent interview: "Travelling in rural communities I've heard farmers say that what stops them being able to export their produce into the US are the agricultural subsidies that the US Government pays to its farmers. Agricultural subsidies cannot be on the table in a bilateral trade negotiation. They can only be negotiated on in multi-lateral negotiations." The US is in no mood for such multi-lateral talks and has already rejected requests for an end to the subsidies in its negotiations for an FTA with Brazil. This did not stop the US demanding changes affecting investment, intellectual property rights, government procurement guidelines and other aspects of Brazil's independence. The movement opposed to the changes being floated to local media content, the PBS, our quarantine regulations and a host of other vital safeguards must keep up their resistance to the FTA threat to our national sovereignty. We must not let the government trade significant gains made by the people over decades in a few weeks of this final round of "free trade" negotiations. Write now to PM Howard, Mark Vaile and your Senators calling for a halt to negotiations and the public release of Australia's and the US's negotiating stances. ************************************
3. New Law Criminalises Disclosure Of Information Regarding ASIO Actions The ASIO Legislation Amendment Bill 2003 was rushed through Parliament during the final sitting week of the year. The legislation adds new, alarming secrecy provisions to earlier legislation giving ASIO broad powers to detain and question in secret anyone who might have information about a terrorist act. Spokeperson for the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Peter Noble, explained that journalists, doctors, lawyers, friends and family members and even parliamentarians would all be prevented from speaking out about any knowledge they may have of ASIO's activities for a full two years after someone has been detained and questioned. There is a five-year jail term attached to the new offences. Given that ASIO is invariably involved in domestic "anti-terrorism" measures, these offences will have the knock-on effect of insulating the domestic "War on Terror" from the public gaze. "The public has a right to know about how our intelligence agency is using the broad ranging power it has been given", Mr Noble said. Senator John Faulkner, Labor spokesperson on Special Minister of State issues and Public Administration and Accountability justified the ALP's vote for the Bill thus: "The fact is that ASIO, as they have gone about their important work, have discovered some loopholes in their new laws when questioning people about terrorism, especially when those people are foreign nationals", he said. "The amendments are technical in nature." "It is plain common sense." Senator Bob Brown of the Greens said of the ALP's cave-in: "Latham Labor has capitulated to John Howard at the first hurdle." "The ALP and Government rejected Greens amendments that would have inserted a public interest test and protected journalists who disclosed information which did not threaten national security. "Latham Labor has joined John Howard in this remarkable assault on fundamental rights." He called Labor's argument in Parliament that the legislation is merely "technical" as "fatuous". The legislation also allows ASIO to discriminate against suspects who require an interpreter to answer questions by allowing for them to be questioned twice as long as English speaking suspects. *****************************
4. African Americans In Peril Under The Patriot Act Myths about the Patriot Act and how it affects the Black community are downright deadly. A potent myth is that the Patriot Act only affects a tiny number of Arabs and Muslims who were rounded up immediately after September 11. Some lament that immigrants are grabbing attention away from the problems of civil rights abuses and police violence against Blacks. In reality, however, the Patriot Act is not a shift, but a dangerous extension of unjust policies and practices that put all people of colour in jeopardy, even Blacks, in the USA. by Tammy Johnson We are not talking about a handful of highly scrutinised suspects here, but whole communities that have been victimised in the name of "national security". Eighty-two thousand men from 24 Muslim countries were required to register with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some 13,000 were detained and face deportation for minor or technical violations, such as failure to report a change of address. Thousands more have become targets of hate crimes, fired from their jobs interrogated by the FBI without a lawyer present, and jailed or deported due to INS bureaucratic snafus. Blacks know that you don't have to be a "foreigner" to be labelled an enemy of the state. So laws that imprison individuals without stating a clear charge or providing access to an attorney send up red flags. Lost in this debate is the plight of Black immigrants, who also suffer from unjustified detention and deportation. For example, US Attorney General John Ashcroft used the "national security" rationale to justify the indefinite detention of Haitian immigrants seeking asylum. His order had nothing to do with whether the immigrants themselves are dangerous. Ashcroft's twisted logic is that detaining Haitians would discourage others from coming to America, thus preventing the diversion of Coast Guard resources from homeland security initiatives. When I step a bit closer to the situation, as a Black woman I am alarmed to see familiar abuses taken to a whole new level. The story of Abraham, a Sudanese refugee in San Jose, California, illustrates the chilling link between the Patriot Act and racial profiling as we know it. Ironically, he was on the way to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) office to collect papers that would prove to his employer that he was in the country legally, when he was stopped for "driving while Black". Facing the barrel of drawn police guns, he realised, "they thought I was Black American". Police did not give Abraham a ticket for speeding, but extensively questioned him about his immigration status. Most important, the atmosphere in which the government has expanded its powers makes cops even bolder about racial profiling. Kenny Dukes, a young African American man, was killed by Chicago police officers in August. Dukes had returned home from a picnic with his girlfriend and was walking to the front door when the officers yelled at him to stop. Not realising that they were calling him, he continued walking with his back to the street. Although there was no warrant for his arrest and Dukes was not carrying a weapon, they shot him seven times in the back. The good news is that communities across the country are exploding myths around the Patriot Act and making these connections. At public hearings in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, San Jose and Alameda, California, immigrant and Black leaders are standing together to take on government-sanctioned racial profiling. This is not a new struggle. The Black community knows that the same racist fervour that inspired the recent shootings of Sikh cab drivers in Richmond, California, also led to the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas. The system that proposed asking people to turn in their neighbours using vague definitions of a "suspect" though the TIPS program (Terrorist Information Prevention System) is the same one that targeted African American leaders through COINTELPRO. The targeting of whole communities through the Patriot Act is not just an "Arab thing" or a "Muslim thing". It's also a "Black thing". Tammy Johnson is director of the Race and Public Policy Program at the Applied Research Center. ColourLines Magazine. ******************************************
5. US Pressure On Iransilence About Israel Under duress from the United States the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to pressure Iran to come clean on its nuclear program. This, despite the fact that the IAEA has conducted inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities and is presently satisfied that Iran fulfils its international obligations. The USA however keeps on claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. This is the same course of harassment that the US and its allies applied to Iraq over its non-existent weapons of mass destruction. There is, however, one Middle Eastern country, which definitely possesses nuclear weapons, but has not received attention or inspections from the IAEA. Its name is Israel. Furthermore, Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons. Non-proliferation analysts estimate that Israel has up to 200 such weapons. Only recently, IAEA head Mohamed El Baradei, called on Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons arsenal, saying all Middle East nations would benefit from ridding the region of nuclear weapons. "In my view, every country in the Middle East, including Israel, will benefit from establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East as part and parcel of a comprehensive peace in the region", Dr El Baradei said. Mr Mordechai Vanunu, a courageous Israeli whistleblower is serving a life sentence at present for having revealed that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The United Nations General Assembly and IAEA General Conference have adopted 13 resolutions since 1987 appealing to Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. All have been ignored. ********************************* 6. Culture And Life: Terrorism And Drugs Terrorism is not a movement or an ideology. It is a tactic. And you cannot destroy a tactic. by Rob Gowland The "war on terrorism" is nothing of the sort, as we know. An excuse to allow the US and its few allies to attack countries and governments for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with markets, resources and global domination. That the US of all countries would use "the threat of terrorism" as a cover for its aggressive plans has considerable irony that Guardian readers will readily recognise. What country has devoted more time and resources over the years to training terrorists than any other? Give you one guess. Take the right-wing feudal Islamic fundamentalists, for example (these days invariably lumped together as "al Qaida" to give "terrorism" form and substance). The US sought out, armed and trained the feudals in Afghanistan to overthrow the revolutionary government there. Former Canadian diplomat and Professor of English at the University of California Berkeley Campus, Peter Dale Scott, in a recent article points out that according to George Crile, in his book Charlie Wilson's War, "about the CIA's arming of Islamists during the Afghan War", the training provided by the US agency included "urban terror, with instruction in car bombings, bicycle bombings, camel bombings, and assassination". Scott thinks some of that training is coming back to haunt the US now in Iraq. The CIA also trained fundamentalists in Somalia (in the mid '70s, Somalia, remember, had a pro-Soviet government and a vibrant, left-wing people's movement). They too, later, used their US training to bring down US helicopters when Bush's father tried to assert US power in their country. Scott again: "One trainer of the Somalis, Egyptian-born Ali Mohamed, was also a veteran of US Special Forces and the CIA. While allegedly still on the US payroll, Mohamed had been recruiting and training Arabs for the US-supported Afghan War, at the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, New York. This served as the main US recruiting centre for the network that after the war became known as al Qaida. "In 1993, ... Mohamed was picked up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada in the company of an al Qaida terrorist. Almost certainly he would have been arrested; but Mohamed insisted that the RCMP put in a phone call to his FBI handler. The call quickly secured his release." I'll bet it did! Scott's most recent book is Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (published in 2003 out of Lanham, Maryland, by US publisher Rowman and Littlefield). Here is a potent little extract from it: "I have no evidence that the United States intervened militarily as a conscious means of maintaining control over the global drug traffic. However, conscious decisions were definitely made, time after time, to ally the United States with local drug proxies. "... Furthermore, drugs from regions where the CIA has been active have tended to migrate through other countries of CIA penetration, and more importantly through and to agencies and groups that can be classified as CIA assets. "In the 1950s opium from Indochina traveled through Iran and Lebanon to the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles and the Sicilian Mafia under Lucky Luciano. In the 1980s mujahedin heroin was reaching the Sicilian Mafia via the Turkish Gray Wolves, who worked in tandem with the Turkish Army's Counter-Guerrilla Organisation, which functioned as the Turkish branch of the CIA's multinational 'stay behind' program. "The routes shifted with the politics of the times, but the CIA denominator remained constant." The CIA's involvement with the Sicilian Mafia dates back to before the agency was even called the CIA, to when it was still the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Using mob connections on the New York waterfront (another denominator that has remained constant), the OSS/CIA organised for the Mafia in Sicily under Salvatore Giuliano and others to massacre members of the Communist anti-fascist Resistance, in advance of the US invasion of Sicily. The "War on Drugs" is as phoney as the "War on Terror". Drug trafficking, and the money it generates, is an integral part of the global capitalist economy. The huge amounts of cash generated by drug trafficking (and the profits from the laundering of that cash) provide "legitimate" businesses and capitalist entrepreneurs with plentiful funds for takeovers, funding of election campaigns, bribing officials and manipulating markets. And it has been known for many years that this money is a major source of supplementary and unsupervised funding for the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA). This black money allows the CIA and the NSA to clandestinely carry out operations expressly forbidden by Congress, to foment civil strife including war, and to fund CIA activities in the USA where the agency is not supposed to operate at all. Clearly, the best contribution George Bush could make to a real war on drugs would be to close down the CIA. Hardly likely! *End* subscribe/unsubscribe mailto:info@solidnet.org, http://www.solidnet.org
