After all the trouble we\ve gone to, the whole plan's gone bung.   It turns out, as some folks were warning years ago, that Australia''s new tanks, part of a mullti-nation Coalition of the Willing fleet of M1A1 Abrams, are too heavy to ride the Halliburton railway to Darwin.

Freightlink, the consortium that Cheney set up to run the line for 50 years after KBR built it. has denied, according to today's Australian, that there's a problem, saying that they're working closely with defence on military transport issues.

There's a video link from the inquiry room to that which the journalists watch from.  Vision from the Kovco inquiry is supposed to go to no other place even within the amry barracks at which the hearing is being held.  Howvever the Daily Telegraph reported that the inquiry has been halted, all of the journalists evicted from their room and their belongings searched, due to a believed wire-tap by Sky News.   Sky and the Tele have since reported that this was not the case.   The fact, however, that the inquiry believed that an infiltration occurred and acted accordingly belies the level of paranoia at which the inquiry is being conducted.  Perhaps the Austtralian public should consider a similar methodology.

The old saying is that a person might be  so lucky as to fall into a bucket of manure and come out smelling like roses.  There's a fair chance that whoever named the AWB's reputation recovery plan may have been overly optimistic.

Along with their departments, three Australian ministers, those of Defence, Trade and Foreign Affairs, are now swimming in that proverbial bucket.

Project Rose was conceived when AWB knew that the UN Oil-For-Food Inquiry was going to suggest that the company was bribing Saddam for wheat deals by giving him money to buy weapons with.   It is also likely to be connected with the activities of Australia's ambassador to the U.S. as another part of a continued cover-up program to conceal that AWB, a formerly Government controlled agency, was funding what became an enemy army.

Today the courts have ordered that AWB hand over piles of documents it didn't wish the Australian Inquiry into the matter to possess.  It managed to suppress some, but over half the documents that it wished concealed will now become available for public scrutiny.

 "Anybody who understands the changing character of the South Australian economy at this time will understand these transitional arrangements are an intelligent response.’’ Said Prime Minister Howard today.

The Wizards of South Oz have been busy this week, spinning straw into gold,  Chinese purchase of our uranium is meant to offset Adelaide manufacturing jobs going to the land of the Great Wall? Not likely.

It was bad enough that the uranium deal, in which an Australian listed company will sell all its ore to Beijing and beyond,was announced before treaties were signed, three-mine policies officially abandoned and in general showing some responsibility and accountablitiy wth our deadly treasures.  The timing of the information's release did,  however, bump the Electrolux off-shoring to the day's second place story for a while, at least until the press conference. 500 whitegood jobs will be globalised into China, Poland and Mexico.  The impact of the event has been softened by a joint Federal/S.A. rescue package

Figuring that if Australia has 36%, and South Australia has three quarters of that, then our state must surely, apart from any other reason, be one of the most stragegically important places in the world.

How could any self-professed superpower feel anything but duty-bound to protect such an important asset, especially if it might one day depend on the ore for its survival ?  What an Achilles Heel the place could become if it's defence was left to the natives.

So we get B-2s on bombing simulations from Guam, a run of "joint trining exercises" that will turn parts of the State into simulations of the Persan Gulf and Afghanistan, Christ knows what monitoring the desert from just outside our vertical territory limit of 100km.

The episodes of Doctor Who that were screened on the weekends surrounding 6/6/06 concern the freeing of an ancient Beast from beyond the dawn of time.

The story, currently being broadcast in Australia, must have made many more people aware of the possible symbolism of the date than if it had been broadcast at another time. To achieve this would have required a considerable timespan of forward planning, and you have to wonder whether the writers and producers were simply timing for dramatic effenct and publicity or whether they may have been attempting to alert the populace to vigiliance of possible psychological manipulation of events emenating from that point in time.

When Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar and a "cast of thousands" of Australian dignitaries launched the Adelaide-Darwin in early 2004 everybody was talking about what a boon to Australian exports Mr Cheney's conquest of the Australian desert would be.  Of course, nobody was talking about uranium at the time....

Well, the inevitable has happened, and we're going to see boxcars of yellowcake trundling from Adelaide to Darwin within the next few years,   Immediately following the announcement of opening of a new Australian uranium mine (at Honeymoon in South Australia's far north east

On Wednesday S.A. MLC Sandra Kanck made a speech on assisted suiced that has been removed from the electronic version of Hansard. Read it here

What a load of bollocks.. if I reprint it I could be fined ten thousand dollars. However suicide advocate Phillip Nitschke is allowed to do so from his New Zealand website.

While writing this I have just gone on local ABC Radio and informed the rest of Adelaide that they can read a Parliamentary speech that has been effectively banned by their Government.  I hope they do so.

Sandra Kanck is right.. these laws need to be changed.  Everybody is criticising China for censoring political issues, yet the problem is obviously alive and kicking in Australia

 Downer must be beginning to panic that his chief of staff might be implicated in the kickback scam... he's getting him out of the country pronto!

From the office of Lord Alex Of Australia- I have today announced the appointment of Innes Willox as Consul-General of Australia in Los Angeles.  He will succeed John Olsen.  Mr Willox is expected to take up his appointment in September 2006.

The Los Angeles Consulate-General takes in southern California and the adjoining south-western states of the United States, an area that is equivalent to the world’s fifth largest economy and a major centre for the global entertainment and technology industries. 

I've just seen the main story in today's Advertiser, of the commercial spaceport trials to be conducted by NASA at Woomera/. 

[excerpt]

In a boost to South Australia's credentials as the defence state, U.S.-based Rocketplane Kistler secured a $272 million NASA contract to launch rockets from Woomera, carrying cargo to the station.

 [excerpt]

After a trial of five launches, NASA is expected to decide around 2009-10 which company is capable of better servicing the space station. It is possible both could be selected, Rocketplane Kistler said.

If successful, the Woomera site would be used to launch cargo such as fuel and food to the station as often as every two weeks.

As NASA requires the K-1 to have crew transportation capabilities, however, the Woomera site could see the first astronauts leave from Australia.

If this account is true then the manner in which Halliburton's action might be perceived diplomatically by the Iranian government is of concern for us all.  If the dismissal of Iranian nationals is interpreted as possible "damage control" in the face of activities that might prove to be bad publicity for the company, then the Iranians might assume an angry bell is tolling. 

On the other hand, if the Iranians suspect that the action is an attempted act of reverse psychology then they might be unhappy at the attempted provocation and respond angrily.

Then again, if it's perceived as double-reverse psychology they might just lie low for a while.

"Why Aug. 22 as a date for its announcement regarding its [Iran's] nuclear program? That is when it's said the Prophet Muhammad made his ascension into heaven from the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem."

 

 Conflict In The Middle East:( From Investors' Business Daily) As a top cleric warns of a strike on Tel Aviv if the West takes action against Iran's nuclear program, it's clear the real winner was not Israel or Hezbollah. It's Tehran.

Club Troppo's Nicholas Gruen posted this bell-ringing article by a former UK ambassador, and it's ringing out danger.  Have a look at this extract  for a different point of view to that of the mainstream media:

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

Halliburton, the scandal-plagued oil company, that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run, sold an Iranian company key components for a nuclear reactor, Halliburton sources revealed.

Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000, during which Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran.

Halliburton, which sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian Government, was secretly aiding one of Iran’s top nuclear program officials on natural gas related projects and provided the official's oil development company with the components last April, the sources said.

Bear in mind when you read this that there are Raytheon people wandering around Antartica, and that the reasons that Raytheon have identified Adelaide as a hub are probably similar to those I gave in Halliburton's Adelaide.  

Reprinted from Raytheon's website, this speech explains South Australia's new military role in the world better than I can:

An address by Mr Ron Fisher, Managing Director Raytheon Australia

To