Everything Old is New Again #3

When President Obama announced his intention to remain a player in the Asian Hemisphere in May 2012, I wrote of how politicians do not run the world.

How the world is run by secretive backroom bureaucrats in departments similar to our “Foreign Affairs”.

How they have become the One World Government all the Conspiracy Theorists warn us of.

Every now and then accidents happen and they briefly appear in the light, as has happened this week with “Prisoner X”.

Using “Trove” I was looking through old editions of “The Argus“, a now defunct Melbourne Daily.

In the issue of Saturday 10 February 1940, before Japan entered WW2, this cartoon appeared.

Because of my position in time I immediately thought of a USA vs China problem but then I realised it is actually Japan on the other end of the rope of “Good Relations”. Just as today, America and China are on opposite ends of a similar rope of Trading Relations. Each country needs the other to survive economically.

My perspective suddenly began to jump backwards and forwards as I read this John Garnaut article in The Age of 16th Feb 2013.

In part it reads, “WITHIN two decades the United States will be forced out of the western Pacific, says a senior Chinese military officer, amid concerns that increasingly militarised great-power rivalry could lead to war.

Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu’s. . . . . .   interpretation of one facet of what the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, calls ”a new type of great-power relationship” adds to the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding China’s strategic ambitions.

Concern about China’s strategic ambitions has grown since last year’s Chinese occupation of islands administered by the Philippines in the South China Sea and, particularly, China’s continuing brinkmanship with Japan and its security guarantor, the US, in the East China Sea.Japanese leaders have accused China of locking weapons-guiding radars on Japanese targets – which China denies – while Western military sources say Chinese planes, ships and submarines have challenged Japanese-controlled waters and airspace around the Senkaku Islands.

Some security analysts say Australian political leaders are in public denial about the stakes involved and invidious choices the nation may have to face.

”It’s the most dangerous strategic crisis that the US has faced – that the world has faced – since the end of the Cold War,” said Hugh White, former deputy secretary of the Department of Defence.

China and Japan, he said, were drifting closer to a war that could draw in the US. ”This makes rather a nonsense of the mantra we hear both from Gillard and Abbott that ‘we don’t have to choose between the US and China’,” he said.

The cartoon above was published just 21 months before Pearl Harbour. It is looking as though Australia will need to make a choice between China and America rather soon.

Stilnox and the Great Australian Sporting Sleep

It seems that the sleeping drug “Stilnox” has come into the headlines over the past couple of days.

Grant Hackett, Swimming Star of the 2000 & 2004 Olympics and almost star of the 2008 Olympics, has revealed that he was prescribed the drug by the Australian Sw2imming Team doctor from 2003 as he was having problems sleeping.

What was not told to him and what may not have been generally known is that there are side effects.

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Dizziness
• Anterograde amnesia
• Hallucinations, through all physical senses, of varying intensity
• Delusions
  
• Altered thought patterns
• Ataxia or poor motor coordination, difficulty maintaining balance
• and on and on and on! Go read the rest on the Wikipedia site on this link.

“The revelations prompted (AOC president John) Coates and AOC chief operating officer Craig Phillips to review the peak sporting body’s medical manual following the claims aired by Hackett.

The revised medical manual includes a new section dealing with “sleep and relaxation strategies” and officials will be able to search rooms of athletes if they are suspected of using prescription medications at the Games.

“I understand our swimmers and others have for some time now been practising other relaxation techniques that would overcome the necessity to taking a sleeping drugs,” Coates said.

“We’ve also decided to better highlight the guidelines attached to the team medical manual in respect of the use of caffeine.

“Because we are very worried about the vicious cycle of athletes taking caffeine as a performance-enhancer then needing to take drugs such as Stilnox to get to sleep,” Coates said.

So, from the admissions of one troubled athlete who has retired, talking about events from four years ago, there have been sudden and profound changes to the rules Australian athletes are forced to live under.

Just weeks before the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

In totally unrelated news, I note that the Australian Olympic Team is being sponsored by a Vitamin and Health tablet Company. This is really good news as anything healthy is good for athletes.

Especially if it can be used to increase advertising power and the credibility of the product.

Swisse  have done a great job tying their “Ultivite” range into a healthy, sporty, Australian lifestyle.

As I was walking through my local Chemist Shop yesterday I was pleased to note that they have quite a range of products. I was particularly taken by two products I hadn’t seen before.

And I thought to myself, “That is interesting. I wonder. Nah! It couldn’t possibly be linked.”

There is no way that Grant Hackett would be receiving money from Swisse to make the startling revelations above with this precise timing. Or that there is a possibility of an advertising campaign linking Australian Olympic Athletes to a Swisse sleep enhancing product.

So I wandered off to write the Stilnox story above knowing that there will never be any connection between the two thought strands in my mind.

As I wrote just below the bouncing Kangaroos. It is totally unrelated news.

China Vs United States – Why Australia Will Lose!

Before I go any further, let me explain my position. I am on the “Left” side of politics. An anti-war greenie ex-ALP member. Yet it matters little where I fit on the internal political landscape. What matters is where Australia fits on the international landscape. This post is not about party political differences. It is about our hidden Government. And no! I am not a diplomat. Just an amateur student of world affairs informed by the past and reading the omens.

Every nation in the world has one.

Secretive and mostly working in the shadows. A Government body making commitments and friendships with people we never hear about.

Only ever showing the results of its machinations and activities in the occasional public announcements of its head.

It is the most important department any nation can have.

No, it is not Treasury, the department we are always worried about. The one that determines how we shall live. No. This department is even more important.

It determines whether we SHALL live!

And by what rules.

In Australia it is known as the Department of Foreign Affairs. In the USA it is the State Department. China has its Ministry of Foreign Affairs!

All the secretive connivings and agreements are basically about trade. About how one nation can either enrich itself or at the very least, not be disadvantaged by a change in trading conditions. Those spy novels we were brought up on were not about a clash of cultures but about a clash of economic theories. Capitalism versus Communism.

The current test of strength between the US and China is still about trade. Determining which form of Capitalism will prevail.

We never see the back room battles. We are distracted by the Fleming and le Carré stories of human daredevilry and pathos.

In the back rooms, at the highest levels schemes and plans are put into place which will mature in a decade or a generation or, in extreme cases, in a century. Plans laid and executed by people we never see, never vote for. The truly faceless government.

We often hear of the threat of a One World Government.

The favourite of the conspiracy theorists. The bad news is that we have had one for centuries. While our individual national Treasuries are handled by relatively well known financial wizards and publicly elected treasurers under accepted Governmental oversight of one form or another, Foreign Affairs operates outside of and above the political hurly-burly. It is party-less and almost unaccountable.

The information it deals with puts our current Australian fixation with Thomson, Mirabella, Slipper and Pyne to shame. Diplomats need to know everything about everyone yet cannot admit to knowing anything. Which is why the Wikileaks’ dumping of huge numbers of confidential diplomatic emails was such a sin.

It is why Julian Assange will get no support from any Government in the world. Daniel Ellsberg only lifted the lid on his own country’s dealings. Assange has embarrassed the entire World Government. Which is why Gillard is so obdurate about not intervening and  helping him. Foreign Affairs has spoken! He must be turned into a horrible example. No one must be allowed to play with the levers of power, opening “Realpolitik“, as Henry Kissinger described it, to the public view.

We only see stuff-ups when they lead to a war. For, although they are a One World Government, there are still factions and alliances and the ultimate threat is not an election but armed conflict. Diplomats handle the day to day matters within a framework set by the real rulers of the world. To be the Foreign Minister of Australia or Britain, to be the Secretary of State of the USA, to be the equivalent in Russia or China is to be close to and beholden to the true holders of power. In recent times, Kevin Rudd has shown that he knows where the biggest game in the world is taking place.

Dictators and madmen sometimes come to power.

Not everything always goes to plan. Luckily, regardless of the self-perceived immortality of these international irritants, they are as mortal as the rest of us. Yet they can create disturbances in international relations. I first saw a fictional account of this in the incident of the “Mule” in Isaac Azimov’s Foundation Series. Six hundred years into a thousand year galactic history which had been planned and predicted by a social engineer, a rogue element appeared. He appeared to totally derail the pre-laid plans yet, after his death, everything settled back into its predicted course.

Foreign Affairs is similar. Madmen and dictators may create ripples which appear to be overwhelming and miscalculations may cause huge wars with incalculable human tragedies yet somehow civilisation continues on. Hitler, Pol Pot and Kim Il Sung will be as irrelevant as the Ayatollahs when our descendants look at the sweep of history. The long range plans of the World Government will continue.

The Great War was begun almost by accident.

We saw a miscalculation early last century which resulted in two major wars and we may be seeing similar miscalculation now.

An Arch Duke was assassinated in a remote European State and, through a complicated network of treaties, the long-established British Empire and the newly-growing Germany went to war. In a lot of ways the so-called Second World War was simply a continuation of the Great War.

Over the past weeks there have been oil-field difficulties between China and long-term US ally, the Phillipines. In fact, China claims sovereignty over a large U-shaped area of the South China Sea, bringing it into dispute with several neighbouring countries. In recent months it has grown more assertive over the issue. Through a century-old treaty, the USA must come to the aid of the Phillipines.

There is a potential conflict ahead.

Between Australia’s long-term ally and its new-found giant trading partner.

With hundreds of ships plying the seas between Chinese ports and Australian mining ports and with a newly negotiated US Marine base in Darwin, along with other US bases within this island nation, the potential for spill-over of any conflict, verbal or actual, between the fading old and the growing new Superpowers must involve Australia.

We are too small to ignore the demands of the US. Yet we are too important a supplier of raw materials to China for them to allow us to become simply a US base in a potentially “hot” conflict.

Put into this context announcements by President Obama last year have an ominous import for Australia.

In the game of chess there is a situation known as Zugzwang. A player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen his position is said to be in zugzwang.

Australia’s foreign Affairs Department has successfully negotiated us into Zugzwang. We must make a move and whatever move we make, we must lose!

Forget about changing the situation by changing the Minister. He is always helpless, regardless of era, party or desires! He is a prisoner of the true rulers of Australia.

All we can do is sit and wait.

And worry about our children.

The Right and Polite Discourse

Political  discourse has always been robust in Australia.

We are proud of our free speech and ability to call an idiot politician a nong.

That “free Speech” has taken a right turn for the worse and now, in most countries in the world, what is happening in Australia would attract the attention of the security forces.  Although they all seem to be looking only at Left-Wing activities.

Not at the words appearing in print, on our TV’s and coming out of our radios.

Words which call for the death of, or physical harm to, our elected leaders.

In most countries, that is considered terrorism or incitement to terrorism. Somehow, it is all just good fun in Australia. Robust has taken on a new meaning.

Wendy Harmer has collected a list of ten insults and threats to our current Australian Prime Minister. Written like that they seem almost innocuous.

Here is another collection and this time the anger and hatred jumps out at you!

Can we please get back to calling our leaders “nongs”? It would be so much easier on our national blood pressure.

Thank You, Dr Bob Brown

From the conscription fights of the late 1960′s, through the Lake Pedder protests in the 1970′s; from the Franklin Dam to the decriminalisation of homosexuality you have been in the forefront of Left-wing activism.

When you were elected to the Tasmanian Parliament after your jailing over the Franklin Dam protests you introduced a wide range of private member’s initiatives to Tasmania. Freedom of information, death with dignity, lowering parliamentary salaries, gay law reform, banning the battery-hen industry and advocation for nuclear free Tasmania were all issues you introduced and promoted.

Always a prophet, in 1987 you introduced a bill to ban semi-automatic guns which was voted down by both Liberal and Labor members of Tasmania’s House of Assembly, nine years before the Port Arthur massacre.

Moving to the Federal sphere in 1996 you were, as in Tasmania, a lone voice in the beginning. As in Tasmania, you have helped the Greens grow into a position of influence. On the greater stage of the entire continent, you have carried on your fights for the environment and for human rights without compromise even when it was “not politic” to do so. You showed your constancy by returning to the fight for Peace with your welcome and determined opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation of Afghanistan.

Now, at 67, you are retiring. Watching your resignation speech and your off the cuff answers to the assembled media, I have been struck by your good humour and humble thanks to all your colleagues, your partner and even to the media which has, at times, made your life Hell.

“I am sad to leave but happy to go. It is good knowing that the Greens have such a depth of talent and experience lined up for leadership – I could only dream about that a decade ago”, Senator Brown said.

“It is prime time to hand over the reins. I offer a huge ‘thank you’ to the 1.7 million Australian voters who elected our Green team, and to my 9 colleagues: they have made each Green year in this parliament better than the year before – though the best is yet to come. For example, our policies for fairly taxing the resources boom and carbon polluters, uniquely enable the Greens to fund a national disabilities insurance scheme, the Gonski education reforms, Denticare, renewable energy businesses, as well as progress on High Speed Rail linking our major cities.

“I also thank my splendid staff, including my longtime friend, confidant, and fount of good political sense, Chief of Staff, Ben Oquist,” Senator Brown said.

Despite the huge increase in the power and influence of your creation, The Australian Greens, you, Bob Brown have not forgotten that activism is about small causes, about small people doing small things. In your resignation speech, you referred to having time for, “…fresh green pursuits including writing, photography, music, occasional talks, bushwalking, and getting out with Paul to see Miranda Gibson who has been perched for 120 days 60 metres high, in defence of a giant tree facing destruction in central Tasmania,” 

While fighting for the big things in our world; peace, human rights, climate change and “a fair go”, you have not lost sight of the small things. That a single tree has value, that a single life has value is still an important part of your philosophy. You have always stayed connected to your roots.

You have given so much of your life to us. I hope your retirement is long and, when you escape doing the dishes, that it is filled with a joyous rediscovery of all the things you have sacrificed to bring your vision, a great vision, of Australia’s future closer to fruition.

Thank you, Dr Bob Brown, Honourable Citizen of Australia.

Vintage Adverts

Walkabout Apr 1st, 1948

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #10: An ISP filter is the best option out there.

Calls to provide parents with tools to control their children’s access to the internet are well founded and practical. An optional, computer level filter would be far more efficient and cost effective without handing over unnecessary power to a government body. And this is the plan that Australians actually want. GetUp’s Galaxy phone poll found that 86% of Australians think that parents, not the Government or Internet Service Providers, should have the primary responsibility for protecting children online.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

There are the ten big lies which our Government are telling us.Of course it will not help to simply cast your vote for the Conservatives. They would not dare to alienate the “Church Vote” by dropping the filter.

“It will only filter “RC” content.” But watch how quickly a filter will quickly remove sites about “Bypassing the AU Internet Filter”.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #9: The filter would be impenetrable.

No matter how smart filtering technology may be, there is always someone smarter. The current model of filter has already been cracked. In fact, there’s a good chance your children can show you how. What’s more, organisations around the world are already developing ways to get around the filters of oppressive regimes. One that’s doing a particularly good job in helping Iranians get around their Government filter is Access Now (hyperlink:http://www.accessnow.org/), founded with the support of organisation’s like Avaaz.org, MoveOn and Australian organisation GetUp.org.au).

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #8: If you’re anti mandatory filtering you’re pro child porn.

Conroy, through his argument in parliament and in the media, has constructed a universe where those who question mandatory filtering are, by extension, in support of child pornography. Surely he wouldn’t accuse people within his own party of being pro child porn. Would he?

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #7: The filter will not make the internet more expensive.

The filter itself is pricey. The Government has set aside $44m for the scheme for four years. In 2004 a government report said “given the limited benefits of an ISP-level filtering system, the costs of a mandated requirement to filter do not appear justified.”  The same Government report estimated that a filter of this kind would cost $45m to establish (the equivalent to putting over 300 AFP officers on the online beat) and $33m each year there after. Because much of the burden of maintaining the filter may fall to ISPs it isn’t unfeasible to imagine the costs being passed on to consumers.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #6: The ISP filter is similar to ones in other Western democracies.

Senator Conroy made this claim and then later admitted that in fact no Western democracy has a mandatory ISP level filter designed like Australia’s. Surely we don’t want to join countries like Iran, China and Saudi Arabia with their harsh and ineffective censorship approach.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #5: This plan is no different to what is already done with books and films.

OK, so that’s a little bit true. But that’s the problem. We don’t use books and films to communicate one to one or store our family photos. A mandatory filter would give the government permission to scrutinise a space which is both public and private in a way current censorship laws could never allow. The mass concerns of the hundred thousand plus Australians who’ve taken action on this issue are beginning to be heard with the Government appearing to cave in on whether Government officials or classification board members review websites that find themselves on the list. But here’s the point – while with movies we can keep an eye on the classification board and what they are blocking, there’s no way to know which sites will be on the blacklist under the Government’s current proposal. Informing the public of which url’s are on the list may have its own problems. Clearly then, censoring the internet just can’t work (and we’re only half way through our list).

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #4: The filter has been proven in Government trials.

Testing and scaling are two very different things when it comes to filtering mass amounts of content. On top of this Stephen Conroy’s test criteria appear to only have been formulated after the test began. With that kind of logic we should be glad Conroy isn’t designing the national curriculum.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #3: Conroy’s filter will stop your kids viewing harmful stuff online.

The filter is designed to block material which is defined Refused Classification by the classification review board. This means that the ISP filter won’t help you protect your child from viewing things that you might prefer they don’t see—- only parental control can do that. It’s a bit like hiring a really expensive babysitter who lets your six-year-old watch whatever they want. On the internet you simply can’t outsource parenting.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie # 2: The filter won’t slow connection speeds.

The filter is not equipped to process large bandwidth sites such as YouTube or ABC iView. Google, owner of YouTube, has said that filtering such volume sites is not technologically possible, without an extremely serious impact on internet access speeds. Why? Imagine a tub of yoghurt. In this tub there are a few billion bacteria- almost all of which are good for you. But just one of those germs is believed to be salmonella. In order to get rid of the bad one but keep the billions of good ones, every single germ has to be checked for nastiness. And meanwhile you’re still waiting for your smoothie. No wonder this kind of a filtering won’t work.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.