Don't believe the lies, critically analyze!

Codes need to kick their gambling addiction @rdhinds

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:33:00 +0000

SOCIAL responsibility is a weighty term. Heavier than a baseliner's legs after five sets on clay with Rafael Nadal.

In recent times, those words have spilled freely from the lips of Australian sports administrators. As they justify their government subsidies, try to control the unacceptable behaviour of participants and fans or mingle corporate and ''charitable'' enterprise, we hear an awful lot about the wonderful contribution sport makes to society. We are told how trivial games can help tackle divisive issues, or inspire hope among the downtrodden.

Sometimes this chest-beating is justified. You only need witness the ugly incidents still taking place on the field and in the grandstands in the English Premier League to appreciate how well the AFL and NRL have tackled the issue of racial vilification. Weeks after Chelsea's John Terry allegedly taunted Queens Park Rangers' Anton Ferdinand, the dispute had not been properly addressed. No one knows whether Ferdinand will shake Terry's hand when the teams meet in an FA Cup tie tonight.

On-field racism will never be stamped out. But here, at the elite level at least, officials have implemented strong rules and systems to demonstrate it will not be tolerated. As a consequence, Aboriginal players, particularly, have been encouraged and emboldened. Some have consequently emerged not merely as stars, but as community leaders.

Next week the NRL will showcase its indigenous talent at the annual All Stars match on the Gold Coast. Forget the inevitable staged appearances and cross-promotions. You only need consider the private testimony of players on both sides to know what this game has come to mean. To understand, particularly, the pride it engenders in men who once might have been forced to live not only on the fringe of the game, but of the community.

This is sport walking its social responsibility talk. As it does in other areas such as charitable causes, community fitness programs and - if you remove some awful exceptions, such as the NRL's embarrassing cheerleading squadrons - even women's rights.

But, when it comes to social responsibility, sport has a bottom line. One horribly exposed by the sad dependency of the leading codes on poker machine revenue.

When Julia Gillard abandoned her pledge for meaningful poker machine reform this week, the AFL and NRL quietly toasted a significant ''victory''. Unencumbered by $1 limits and mandatory pre-commitment, the aces would keep spinning in the clubs. The only mild threat is Gillard's stalling device - an absurd trial in mostly middle-class Canberra, from where anyone who wants to dodge pre-commitment and put their entire pay packet down the slot can drive a few kilometres to neighbouring Queanbeyan.

Confronted by sad tales of gambling addiction, and well aware that poker machines rob those who can least afford to lose, you would think our ''socially responsible'' leagues would have found alternative revenue streams. Just as they did when cigarette advertising was banned.

Perhaps the football codes cannot help others tackle their gambling addiction because they are still battling their own. The sick dependency on revenue from poker machines and corporate bookmakers diminishes everyone who is involved. Even the Channel Nine commentators who gave their scripted support for the poker machine lobby during the NRL finals.

The lobbyists rhetoric about poker machines providing ''freedom of choice'', and ''paying for community facilities'' is so blatantly self-serving it barely warrants response. Not when you have spoken with the administrator of an investment fund, who admits his company cynically targets the lowest demographic. Put the machines in the new estates with low-cost housing and little alternative entertainment or public transport. Then watch the punters swarm in like bees to the honeypot.

Or if you have lived, as I once did, in the same street as a large, 24-hour poker-machine venue. See the punters wander out in the morning, eyes still spinning like the reels upon which they have been fixated. See them wander slowly away, pockets empty but still entrapped. They are seldom gone for long. They'll find the money somewhere.

Which is why it is sickening when the lobbyists and opportunists hide behind weasel words such as ''entertainment complex'' and ''community hub''. Pocket the money, but call the pokies what they are: a poor tax.

A tax on the very people rugby league, particularly, purports to champion. The so-called ''battlers'' who they are encouraging, with ever louder voices, to buy memberships, merchandise and television subscriptions.

The hard sell on memberships often comes with a tinge of emotional blackmail. ''Do you support the game?'', ''Do you love your club?''.

But when it comes to poker machines that love and care is not returned. Sorry, we're just putting on the show. That money you couldn't afford to lose? That's your responsibility.

rhinds@smh.com.au
Twitter - @rdhinds

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@Stratfor Mexico's Drug Cartels

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:56:00 +0000

Analysis

According to the Mexican government, cartel-related homicides claimed around 12,900 lives from January to September 2011 -- about 1,400 deaths per month. While this figure is lower than that of 2010, it does not account for the final quarter of 2011. The Mexican government has not yet released official statistics for the entire year, but if the monthly average held until year's end, the overall death toll for 2011 would reach 17,000. Indeed, rather than receding to levels acceptable to the Mexican government, violence in Mexico has persisted, though it seems to have shifted geographically, abating in some cities and worsening in others. For example, while Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, was once again Mexico's deadliest city in terms of gross numbers, the city's annual death toll reportedly dropped substantially from 3,111 in 2010 to 1,955 in 2011. However, such reductions appear to have been offset by increases elsewhere, including Veracruz, Veracruz state; Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state; Matamoros, Tamaulipas state; and Durango, Durango state. Over the past year it has also become evident that a polarization is under way among the country's cartels. Most smaller groups (or remnants of groups) have been subsumed by the Sinaloa Federation, which controls much of western Mexico, and Los Zetas, who control much of eastern Mexico. While a great deal has been said about the fluidity of the Mexican cartel landscape, these two groups have solidified themselves as the country's predominant forces. Of course, the battle lines in Mexico have not been drawn absolutely, and not every entity calling itself a cartel swears allegiance to one side or the other, but a polarization clearly is occurring.

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@Stratfor Polarization and Sustained Violence in Mexico's Cartel War

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Editor's Note: In this annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of 2011 and provide updated profiles of the country's powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2012. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses we produce throughout the year.

As we noted in last year's annual cartel report, Mexico in 2010 bore witness to some 15,273 deaths in connection with the drug trade. The death toll for 2010 surpassed that of any previous year, and in doing so became the deadliest year ever in the country's fight against the cartels. But in the bloody chronology that is Mexico's cartel war, 2010's time at the top may have been short-lived. Despite the Mexican government's efforts to curb cartel-related violence, the death toll for 2011 may have exceeded what had been an unprecedented number.

According to the Mexican government, cartel-related homicides claimed around 12,900 lives from January to September -- about 1,400 deaths per month. While this figure is lower than that of 2010, it does not account for the final quarter of 2011. The Mexican government has not yet released official statistics for the entire year, but if the monthly average held until year's end, the overall death toll for 2011 would reach 17,000. Though most estimates put the total below that, the actual number of homicides in Mexico is likely higher than what is officially reported. At the very least, although we do not have a final, official number -- and despite media reports to the contrary -- we can conclude that violence in Mexico did not decline substantially in 2011.

Indeed, rather than receding to levels acceptable to the Mexican government, violence in Mexico has persisted, though it seems to have shifted geographically, abating in some cities and worsening in others. For example, while Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, was once again Mexico's deadliest city in terms of gross numbers, the city's annual death toll reportedly dropped substantially from 3,111 in 2010 to 1,955 in 2011. However, such reductions appear to have been offset by increases elsewhere, including Veracruz, Veracruz state; Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state; Matamoros, Tamaulipas state; and Durango, Durango state.

Over the past year it has also become evident that a polarization is under way among the country's cartels. Most smaller groups (or remnants of groups) have been subsumed by the Sinaloa Federation, which controls much of western Mexico, and Los Zetas, who control much of eastern Mexico. While a great deal has been said about the fluidity of the Mexican cartel landscape, these two groups have solidified themselves as the country's predominant forces. Of course, the battle lines in Mexico have not been drawn absolutely, and not every entity calling itself a cartel swears allegiance to one side or the other, but a polarization clearly is occurring.

Geography does not encapsulate this polarization. It reflects two very different modes of operation practiced by the two cartel hegemons, delineated by a common expression in Mexican vernacular: "Plata o plomo." The expression, which translates to "silver or lead" in English, means that a cartel will force one's cooperation with either a bribe or a bullet. The Sinaloa Federation leadership more often employs the former, preferring to buy off and corrupt to achieve its objectives. It also frequently provides intelligence to authorities, and in doing so uses the authorities as a weapon against rival cartels. Sinaloa certainly can and does resort to ruthless violence, but the violence it employs is merely one of many tools at its disposal, not its preferred tactic.

On the other hand, Los Zetas prefer brutality. They can and do resort to bribery, but they lean toward intimidation and violence. Their mode of operation tends to be far less subtle than that of their Sinaloa counterparts, and with a leadership composed of former special operations soldiers, they are quite effective in employing force and fear to achieve their objectives. Because ex-military personnel formed Los Zetas, members tend to move up in the group's hierarchy through merit rather than through familial connections. This contrasts starkly with the culture of other cartels, including Sinaloa.

Status of Mexico's Major Cartels

Sinaloa Federation

The Sinaloa Federation lost at least 10 major plaza bosses or top lieutenants in 2011, including its security chief and its alleged main weapons supplier. It is unclear how much those losses have affected the group's operations overall.

One Sinaloa operation that appears to have been affected is the group's methamphetamine production. After the disintegration of La Familia Michoacana (LFM) in early 2011, the Sinaloa Federation clearly emerged as the country's foremost producer of methamphetamine. Most of the tons of precursor chemicals seized by Mexican authorities in Manzanillo, Colima state; Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco state; Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state; and Los Mochis and Mazatlan, Sinaloa state, likely belonged to the Sinaloa Federation. Because of these government operations -- and other operations to disassemble methamphetamine labs -- the group apparently began to divert at least some of its methamphetamine production to Guatemala in late 2011.

In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf cartel, Sinaloa in 2011 affiliated itself with the Knights Templar (KT) in Michoacan, and to counter Los Zetas in Jalisco state, Sinaloa affiliated itself with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG). Sinaloa also has tightened its encirclement of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (VCF) organization in the latter's long-held plaza of Ciudad Juarez. There are even signs that it continues to expand its control over parts of Juarez itself.

Los Zetas

By the end of 2011, Los Zetas eclipsed the Sinaloa Federation as the largest cartel operating in Mexico in terms of geographic presence. According to a report from the Assistant Attorney General's Office of Special Investigations into Organized Crime, Los Zetas now operate in 17 states. (The same report said the Sinaloa Federation operates in 16 states, down from 23 in 2005.) While Los Zetas continue to fight off a CJNG incursion into Veracruz state, they did not sustain any significant territorial losses in 2011.

Los Zetas moved into Zacatecas and Durango states, achieving a degree of control of the former and challenging the Sinaloa Federation in the latter. Both states are mountainous and conducive to the harvesting of poppy and marijuana. They also contain major north-south transportation corridors. By mid-November, reports indicated that Los Zetas had begun to assert control over Colima state and its crucial port of Manzanillo. In some cases, Los Zetas are sharing territories with cartels they reportedly have relationships with, including the Cartel Pacifico Sur (CPS), La Resistencia and the remnants of LFM. But Los Zetas have a long history of working as hired enforcers for other organizations throughout the country. Therefore, having an alliance or business relationship with Los Zetas is not necessarily the equivalent of being a Sinaloa vassal. A relationship with Los Zetas may be perceived as more fleeting than Sinaloa subjugation.

On the whole, Los Zetas remained strong in 2011 despite losing 17 cell leaders and plaza bosses to death and arrest. Los Zetas also remain the dominant force in the Yucatan Peninsula. However, the CJNG's mass killings of alleged Zetas members or supporters in Veracruz have called into question the group's unchallenged control of that state.

In response to the mass killings in Veracruz, Los Zetas killed dozens of CJNG and Sinaloa members in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, and Culiacan, Sinaloa state. Aided by La Resistencia, these operations were well-executed, and the groups clearly invested a great deal of time and effort into surveillance and planning.

The Gulf Cartel

The Gulf cartel (CDG) was strong at the beginning of 2011, holding off several Zetas incursions into its territory. However, as the year progressed, internal divisions led to intra-cartel battles in Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. The infighting resulted in several deaths and arrests in Mexico and in the United States. The CDG has since broken apart, and it appears that one faction, known as Los Metros, has overpowered its rival Los Rojos faction and is now asserting its control over CDG operations. The infighting has weakened the CDG, but the group seems to have maintained control of its primary plazas, or smuggling corridors, into the United States. (CDG infighting is detailed further in another section of this report.)

La Familia Michoacana

LFM disintegrated at the beginning of 2011, giving rise to and becoming eclipsed by one of its factions, the Knights Templar (KT). Indeed, by July it was clear the KT had become more powerful than LFM in Mexico. The media and the police continue to report that LFM maintains extensive networks in the United States, but it is unclear how many of the U.S.-based networks are actually working with LFM rather than the KT, which is far more capable of trafficking narcotics. It appears that many reports regarding LFM in the United States do not reflect the changes that have occurred in Mexico over the past year; many former LFM leaders are now members of the KT. Adding to the confusion was the alleged late-summer alliance between LFM and Los Zetas. Such an alliance would have been a final attempt by the remaining LFM leadership to keep the group from being utterly destroyed by the KT. LFM is still active, but it is very weak.

The Knights Templar

In January 2011, a month after the death of charismatic LFM leader Nazario "El Mas Loco" Moreno, two former LFM lieutenants, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez and Enrique Plancarte, formed the Knights Templar due to differences with Jose de Jesus "El Chango" Mendez, who had assumed leadership of LFM. In March they announced the formation of their new organization via narcomantas in Morelia, Zitacuaro and Apatzingan, Michoacan state.

After the emergence of the KT, sizable battles flared up during the spring and summer months between the KT and LFM. The organization has grown from a splinter group to a dominant force over LFM, and it appears to be taking over the bulk of the original LFM's operations in Mexico. At present, the Knights Templar appear to have aligned with the Sinaloa Federation in an effort to root out the remnants of LFM and to prevent Los Zetas from gaining a more substantial foothold in the region through their alliance with LFM.

Independent Cartel of Acapulco

The Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA) has not been eliminated entirely, but it appears to have been severely damaged. Since the capture of CIDA leader Gilberto Castrejon Morales in early December, the group has faded from the public view. CIDA's weakness appears to have allowed its in-town rival, Sinaloa-affiliated La Barredora, to move some of its enforcers to Guadalajara to fend off the Zetas offensive there. The decreased levels of violence and public displays of dead bodies in Acapulco of late can be attributed to the group's weakening, and we are unsure if CIDA will be able to regroup and attempt to reclaim Acapulco.

Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion

After the death of Ignacio "El Nacho" Coronel in July 2010, his followers suspected the Sinaloa cartel had betrayed him and broke away to form the CJNG. In spring 2011, the CJNG declared war on all other Mexican cartels and stated its intention to take control of Guadalajara. However, by midsummer, the group appeared to have been reunited with its former partners in the Sinaloa Federation. We are unsure what precipitated the reconciliation, but it seems that the CJNG was somehow convinced that Sinaloa did not betray Coronel after all. It is also possible CJNG was convinced that Coronel needed to go. In any case, CJNG "sicarios," or assassins, in September traveled to the important Los Zetas stronghold of Veracruz, labeled themselves the "Matazetas," or Zeta killers, and began to murder alleged Zetas members and their supporters. By mid-December, the CJNG was still in Veracruz fighting Los Zetas while also helping to protect Guadalajara and other areas on Mexico's west coast from Zetas aggression.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization/Juarez Cartel

The VCF, aka the Juarez cartel, continues to weaken. A Sinaloa operative killed one of its top lieutenants, Francisco Vicente Castillo Carrillo -- a Carrillo family member -- in September 2011. The VCF reportedly still controls the three main points of entry into El Paso, Texas, but the organization appears unable to expand its operations or move narcotics en masse through its plazas because it is hemmed in by the Sinaloa Federation, which appears to have chipped away at the VCF's monopoly of the Juarez plaza. The VCF is only a shadow of the organization it was a decade ago, and its weakness and inability to effectively fight against Sinaloa's advances in Juarez contributed to the lower death toll in Juarez in 2011.

Cartel Pacifico Sur

The CPS, headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, saw a reduction in violence in the latter part of 2011 after having been very active in the first third of the year. We are unsure why the group quieted down. The CPS may be concentrating on smuggling for revenue generation to support itself and assist its Los Zetas allies, who provide military muscle for the CPS and work in their areas of operation. Because of their reputation, Los Zetas receive a great deal of media attention, so it is also possible that the media attributed violent incidents involving CPS gunmen to Los Zetas.

Arellano Felix Organization

The November arrest of Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha, the AFO's chief enforcer, was yet another sign of the organization's continued weakness. It remains an impotent and reluctant subsidiary of the Sinaloa Federation, unable to reclaim the Tijuana plaza for its own.

2011 Forecast in Review

In our forecast for 2011, we believed that the unprecedented levels of violence from 2010 would continue as long as the cartel balance of power remained in a state of flux. Indeed, cartel-related deaths appear to have at least continued apace.

Much of the cartel conflict in 2011 followed patterns set in 2010. Los Zetas continued to fight the CDG in northeast Mexico while maintaining their control of Veracruz state and the Yucatan Peninsula. The Sinaloa Federation continued to fight the VCF in Ciudad Juarez while maintaining control of much of Sonora state and Baja California state.

We forecast that government operations and cartel infighting and rivalry would expose fissures in and among the cartels. This prediction held true. The Beltran Leyva Organization no longer exists in its original form, its members dispersed among the Sinaloa Federation, the CPS, CIDA and other smaller groups. As noted above, fissures within LFM led to the creation of two groups, LFM and the KT. The CDG also now consists of two factions competing for control of the organization's operations.
We also forecast that the degree of violence in the country was politically unacceptable for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his ruling National Action Party. Calderon knew he would have to reduce the violence to acceptable levels if his party was going to have a chance to continue to hold power after he left office in 2012 (Mexican presidents serve only one six-year term). As the 2012 presidential election approaches, Calderon is continuing his strategy of deploying the armed forces against the cartels. He has also reached out to the United States for assistance. The two countries shared signals intelligence throughout the year and continued to cooperate through joint intelligence centers like the one in Mexico City. The U.S. military also continues to train Mexican military and law enforcement personnel, and the United States has deployed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Mexican airspace at Mexico's behest. The Mexican military was in operational command of the UAV missions.

As we have noted the past few years, we also believed that Calderon's continued use of the military would perpetuate what is referred to as the three-front war in Mexico. The fronts consist of cartels against rival cartels, the military against cartels, and cartels against civilians. Indeed, in 2011 the cartels continued to vie for control of ports, plazas and markets, while deployments of military forces increased to counter Los Zetas in the states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Veracruz; to combat several groups waging a bloody turf war in Acapulco, Guerrero state; and to respond to conflicts arising between the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas and their affiliate groups in Nayarit and Michoacan states.

While Los Zetas were hit hard in 2011, the Mexican government's offensive against the group was unable to damage it to the extent we believed it would. Despite losing several key leaders and plaza bosses, as noted previously, the group maintains its pre-eminence in the east. This is largely due to the ease with which such groups can replenish their ranks.

Resupplying Leadership

One of the ways in which Mexico's cartels, including Los Zetas, replenish their ranks is with defected military personnel. Around 27,000 men and women desert the Mexican military every year, and about 50 percent of the military's recruiting class will have left before the end of their first tour. In March 2011, the Mexican army admitted that it had "lost track of" 1,680 special forces personnel over the past decade (Los Zetas were formed by more than 30 former members of Mexico's Special Forces Airmobile Group). Some cartels even reportedly task some of their own foot soldiers to enlist in the military to gain knowledge and experience in military tactics. In any case, retention is clearly a serious problem for the Mexican armed forces, and deserting soldiers take their skills (and oftentimes their weapons) to the cartels.

In addition, the drug trade attracts ex-military personnel who did not desert but left in good standing after serving their duty. There are fewer opportunities for veterans in Mexico than in many countries, and understandably many are drawn to a lucrative practice that places value on their skill sets. But deserters or former soldiers are not the only source of recruits for the cartels. They also replenish their ranks with current and former police officers, gang members and others (to include Central American immigrants and even U.S. citizens).

2012 Forecasts by Region

Northeast Mexico

Northeast Mexico saw some of the most noteworthy cartel violence in 2011. The primary conflict in the region involved the continuing fight between CDG and Los Zetas, who were CDG enforcers before breaking away from the CDG in early 2010. Los Zetas have since eclipsed the CDG in terms of size, reach and influence. In 2011, divisions within the CDG over leadership succession came to the fore, leading to further violence in the region, and we believe these divisions will sow the group's undoing in 2012.

The CDG began to suffer another internal fracture in late 2010 when the Mexican army killed Antonio "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen, who co-lead the CDG with Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state. After Cardenas Guillen's death in November 2010, Costilla Sanchez assumed full control of the organization, passing over Rafael "El Junior" Cardenas Vela, the Cardenas family's heir apparent, in the process. This bisected the CDG, creating two competing factions: Los Rojos, loyal to the Cardenas family, and Los Metros, loyal to Costilla Sanchez.

In late 2011, several events exacerbated tensions between the factions. On Sept. 3, authorities found the body of Samuel "El Metro 3" Flores Borrego, Costilla Sanchez's second-in-command, in Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. Then on Sept. 27, gunmen in an SUV shot and killed a man driving a vehicle on U.S. Route 83, east of McAllen, Texas. The driver, Jorge Zavala of Mission, Texas, was connected to Los Metros.

The Mexican navy reported the following month that Cesar "El Gama" Davila Garcia, the CDG's head finance officer, was found dead in Reynosa. Davila previously had served as Cardenas Guillen's accountant. Then on Oct. 20, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Cardenas Vela after a traffic stop near Port Isabel, Texas. We believe Los Metros tipped off U.S. authorities about Cardenas Vela's location. (Los Metros have every reason to kill Los Rojos leaders, including Cardenas Vela, but cartels rarely conduct assassinations on U.S. soil for fear of U.S. retribution.)
On Oct. 28, Jose Luis "Comandante Wicho" Zuniga Hernandez, believed to be Cardenas Vela's deputy and operational leader in Matamoros, reportedly turned himself in to U.S. authorities without a fight near Santa Maria, Texas. Finally, Mexican federal authorities arrested Ezequiel "El Junior" Cardenas Rivera, Cardenas Guillen's son, in Matamoros on Nov. 25.

By December, media agencies reported that Cardenas Guillen's brother, Mario Cardenas Guillen, was the overall leader of the CDG. But Mario was never known to be very active in the family business, and his reluctance to involve himself in cartel operations appears to have continued after his brother's death. In addition, Costilla Sanchez is reclusive, choosing to run his organization from several secluded ranches. That he is not mentioned in media reports does not mean he has been removed from his position. Given his reclusiveness and Mario Cardenas Guillen's longstanding reticence to involve himself in cartel activity, it seems unlikely that Costilla Sanchez would be replaced. Because Los Metros seemingly have gained the upper hand over Los Rojos, we anticipate that they will further expand their dominance in early 2012.

However, while Los Metros may have defeated their rival for control of the CDG, the organizational infighting has left the CDG vulnerable to outside attack. Of course, any group divided is vulnerable to attack, but the CDG's ongoing feud with Los Zetas compounds its problem. Fully aware of the CDG's weakness, we believe Los Zetas will step up their attempts to assume control of CDG territory.

If Los Zetas are able to defeat the Los Metros faction -- or they engage in a truce with the faction -- they may be able to redeploy fighters to other regions or cities, particularly Veracruz and Guadalajara. Reinforcements in Veracruz would help counter the CJNG presence in the port city, and reinforcements in Guadalajara would shore up Los Zetas' operations and presence in Jalisco state. Likewise, a reduction in cartel-on-cartel fighting in the region would free up troops the Mexican army has stationed in Tamaulipas state -- an estimated force of 13,000 soldiers -- for deployment elsewhere.

Southeast Mexico

Some notable events took place in southeast Mexico in 2011. On Dec. 4 the Mexican army dismantled a Zetas communications network that encompassed multiple cities in Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi and Coahuila states.

In addition, Veracruz state Gov. Javier Duarte on Dec. 21 fired the city's municipal police, including officers and administrative employees, and gave the Mexican navy law enforcement responsibilities. By Dec. 22, Mexican marines began patrols and law enforcement activities, effectively replacing the police much like the army replaced the police in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 and in various cities in Tamaulipas state in August 2011. We anticipate that fighting between the CJNG and Los Zetas will continue in Veracruz for at least the first quarter of 2012.

We expect security conditions on the Yucatan Peninsula to remain relatively stable in 2012 because there are no other major players in the region contesting Los Zetas' control.

Southwest Mexico

In the southern Pacific coastal states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, we expect violence to be as infrequent in 2012 as it was in 2011. Chiapas and Oaxaca have been transshipment zones for Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation for several years; as such, clashes and cargo hijackings occasionally take place. However, direct and sustained combat does not occur regularly because the two groups tend to use different routes to transport their shipments. The Sinaloa Federation prefers to move its product north on roads and highways along the Pacific coast, whereas Los Zetas' transportation lines cross Mexico's interior before moving north along the Gulf coast.

Pacific Coast and Central Mexico

As many as a dozen organizations, ranging from the KT to local criminal organizations to newer groups like La Barredora and La Resistencia, continue to fight for control of the plazas in Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco states. Acapulco was particularly violent in 2011, and we believe it will continue to be violent through 2012 unless La Barredora is able to exert firm control over the city. Acapulco has been a traditional Beltran Leyva stronghold, and the CPS may attempt to reassert itself there. If that happens, violence will once again increase.

Security conditions worsened in Jalisco state at the end of 2011, and Stratfor anticipates violence there will continue to increase in 2012, especially in Guadalajara, a valued transportation hub. In November, Los Zetas struck the CJNG in Guadalajara in response to the mass killings of Los Zetas members in Veracruz state. The attacks are significant because they demonstrated an ability to conduct protracted cross-country operations. Should Los Zetas establish firm control over Guadalajara, the Sinaloa Federation's smuggling activities could be adversely affected, something Sinaloa obviously cannot permit. Given an increased Zetas presence in Zacatecas, Durango and Jalisco states, and Sinaloa's operational need to counter that presence, we expect to see violence increase in the region in 2012.
Unless a significant military force is somehow brought to bear, we do not expect to see any substantive improvement in the security conditions in Guerrero or Michoacan states.

Northwest Mexico

The cross-country operations performed by Los Zetas indicate that the group's growth and expansion has been more profound than we expected in the face of the government's major operations specifically targeting the organization. Such expansion will pose a direct threat not only to the Sinaloa Federation's supply lines but to its home turf, which stretches from Guadalajara to southern Sonora state.

In northwest Mexico, specifically Baja California, Baja California Sur and Chihuahua states (and most of Sonora state), the Sinaloa Federation either directly controls or regularly uses the smuggling corridors and points of entry into the United States. Security conditions in the plazas under firm Sinaloa control have been relatively stable. Indeed, as Sinaloa tightened its control over Tijuana, violence there dropped, and we expect to see the same dynamic play out in Juarez as Sinaloa consolidates its control of that city. Stability could be threatened, however, if Los Zetas attempt to push into Sinaloa-held cities.

Outside of Mexico

As we noted in the past three annual cartel reports, Mexico's cartels have been expanding their control of the cocaine supply chain all the way into South America. This eliminates middlemen and brings in more profit. They are also using their presence in South America to obtain chemical precursors and weapons.

Increased violence in northern Mexico and ramped-up law enforcement along the U.S. border has made narcotics smuggling into the United States more difficult than it has been in the past. The cartels have adapted to these challenges by becoming more involved in the trafficking of cocaine to alternative markets in Europe and Australia. The arrests of Mexican cartel members in such places as the Dominican Republic also seem to indicate that the Mexicans are becoming more involved in the Caribbean smuggling routes into the United States. In the past, Colombian smuggling groups and their Caribbean partners in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic used these routes. We anticipate seeing more signs of Mexican cartel involvement in the Caribbean, Europe and Australia in 2012.

Government Strategy in 2012

There is no indication of a major shift in the Mexican government's overarching security strategy for 2012; Calderon will continue to use the military against the cartels throughout the year (a new president will be elected in July, but Calderon's term does not conclude until the end of 2012). This strategy of taking out cartel leaders has resulted in the disruption of the cartel balance of power in the past, which tends to lead to more violence as groups scramble to fill the resultant power vacuum. Mexican operations may further disrupt that balance in 2012, but while government operations have broken apart some cartel organizations, the combination of military and law enforcement resources has been unable to dislodge cartel influence from the areas it targets. They can break specific criminal organizations, but the lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States will continue to exist, even after the organizations controlling them are taken down. And as long as the smuggling corridors exist, and provide access to so much money, other organizations will inevitably fight to assume control over them.

Some 45,000 Mexican troops are actively involved in domestic counter-cartel operations. These troops work alongside state and federal law enforcement officers and in some cases have replaced fired municipal police officers. They are spread across a large country with high levels of violence in most major cities, and their presence in these cities is essential for maintaining what security has been achieved.

While this number of troops represents only about a quarter of the overall Mexican army's manpower -- troops are often supplemented by deployments of Mexican marines -- it also represents the bulk of applicable Mexican military ground combat strength. Meager and poorly maintained reserve forces do not appear to be a meaningful supplemental resource.

In short, if the current conditions persist, it does not appear that the Mexican government can redeploy troops to conduct meaningful offensive operations in new areas of Mexico in 2012 without jeopardizing the gains it has already made. The government cannot eliminate the cartels any more than it can end the drug trade. The only way the Mexican government can bring the violence down to what would be considered an acceptable level is for it to allow one cartel group to become dominant throughout the country -- something that does not appear to be plausible in the near term -- or for some sort of truce to be reached between the country's two cartel hegemons, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation.

Such scenarios are not unprecedented. At one time the Guadalajara cartel controlled virtually all of Mexico's drug trade, and it was only the dissolution of that organization that led to its regional branches subsequently becoming what we now know as the Sinaloa Federation, AFO, VCF and CDG. There have also been periods of cartel truces in the past between the various regional cartel groups, although they tend to be short-lived.

With the current levels of violence, a government-brokered truce between Los Zetas and Sinaloa will be no easy task, given the level of animosity and mistrust that exists between the two organizations. This means that it is unlikely that such a truce will be brokered in 2012, but we expect to see more rhetoric in support of a truce as a way to reduce violence.

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@medialens Silence Of The Lambs

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:42:00 +0000

Seumas Milne, George Monbiot & ‘Media Analysis’ In The Guardian Wonderland

One of the original aims of Media Lens, when we began in 2001, was to engage in honest, open and rational debate with journalists working for major news organisations. It wasn’t about ‘bashing’ them or trying to make them look bad. We wanted to examine media assumptions, challenge journalists’ arguments and find out more about the unwritten rules of ‘responsible’ reporting.

One of the aspects of journalism that we find particularly fascinating is the extent to which even the best, most honest or most radical journalists can push back the mainstream walls enclosing media debate. How dissenting are they really permitted to be? And how might their presence in the media underpin the public’s perception of a ‘free press’?

As we noted in Newspeak in the 21^st Century, the journalist Jonathan Cook addressed these points in an eye-opening reply to one of our media alerts. Cook, who previously worked for the Guardian and the Observer, agreed with us that the most consistently challenging voices are systematically filtered out of the mainstream. He asked:

‘How is it then, if this thesis is right, that there are dissenting voices like John Pilger, Robert Fisk, George Monbiot and Seumas Milne who write in the British media while refusing to toe the line?’

But as Cook himself observed, this tiny group almost entirely exhausts the list of writers who can be said to confront the established consensus from a progressive perspective.

Cook continued:

‘That means that in Britain’s supposedly leftwing media we can find one writer working for the Independent (Fisk), one for the New Statesman (Pilger) and two for the Guardian (Milne and Monbiot). Only Fisk, we should further note, writes regular news reports. The rest are given at best weekly columns in which to express their opinions.’

With the exception of Pilger, none of these journalists ‘choose or are allowed to write seriously about the dire state of the mainstream media they serve.’ It is important, Cook added, that we recognise both the positive and negative roles these individuals play:

‘However grateful we should be to these dissident writers, their relegation to the margins of the commentary pages of Britain’s “leftwing” media serves a useful purpose for corporate interests. It helps define the "character" of the British media as provocative, pluralistic and free-thinking – when in truth they are anything but. It is a vital component in maintaining the fiction that a professional media is a diverse media.'

Consider Seumas Milne, for example. Since September 2011, we have been trying to engage with him to debate these vital issues. Milne is a regular high-profile Guardian columnist and an associate editor of the paper. Indeed, he was the paper’s Comment editor at the time of the September 11 attacks, motivating his Guardian retrospective as the 10-year anniversary approached last year. (‘9/11: A "babble of idiots"? History has been the judge of that.’)

The thrust of Milne’s proud boast was that the Guardian had bravely hosted a ‘full range of views’ that had been ‘blanked’ by most other media, attracting hostility and even vitriol from right-wing quarters. But this was a selective and conveniently self-serving assessment, closer to corporate marketing than honest accounting, as we put to him in an email two days later:

Hello Seumas,

Hope things are good with you. I thought your article on Monday was well-written and made good points. But it was also highly contentious in places and it can’t go unchallenged. I hope you’ll be willing to respond openly to this email, please.

You wrote that, following 9/11, the Guardian ‘comment pages hosted the full range of views the bulk of the media blanked; in other words, the paper gave rein to the pluralism that most media gatekeepers claim to favour in principle, but struggle to put into practice.’ And you said that you published ‘articles joining the dots to US imperial policy or opposing the US-British onslaught on Afghanistan.’

It may well be that you were able to do a better job of including voices of dissent than any other trusted pair of hands at the Guardian would have managed. But how many of these dissenting voices really ‘joined the dots’ in the way that Noam Chomsky does so well and so consistently? How many critical pieces in the Guardian portrayed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq accurately as wars of aggression, as judged by the standards of the post-WW2 Nuremberg trials? How many pointed out that Bush, Blair, senior government politicians and military commanders should, by those agreed standards, be tried for ‘the supreme international crime’? How many analysed the invasions and wars as an integral part of the West's longstanding attempts at global control and subjugation of peoples and natural resources, consistent with the demands of corporate-led capitalism? How many joined the dots by examining the role of the corporate news media, including the BBC and the Guardian, in enabling these wars of aggression? How many questioned the core assumption promoted by Western states that ‘we’ are the ‘good guys’?

Perhaps you’d be able to point to a handful of such comment pieces. But sadly they were swamped by a deluge of news propaganda, complacent 'journalism' and supine commentary elsewhere in the Guardian.

As I said at the start, your article was not totally wide of the mark. But it also fits with the relentless marketing of the Guardian as a supposedly open and power-scrutinising flagship newspaper of fearless journalism. The evidence that we’ve presented in two books (Guardians of Power and Newspeak) and hundreds of media alerts in the past ten years clearly shows otherwise.

Best wishes

David (Cromwell)

(Email, September 7, 2011)

The issue of marketing is highly relevant here. As Milne himself noted, ‘the most heartening response to the breadth of Guardian commentary after 9/11 came from the US itself’ where there was a dramatic increase in readership of the Guardian’s website. In fact, ‘traffic on the Guardian's website doubled in the months after 9/11, driven from the US.’ This is highly attractive to advertisers wishing to target relatively affluent and educated consumers. Indeed, ironically, the Guardian appears far more comfortable publishing the views of US dissidents writing on US issues, rather than their UK counterparts writing on UK issues. This makes good business sense, attracting US readers without stepping on too many powerful domestic toes here in the UK.

Almost three weeks later we still hadn’t heard back from Milne, so we nudged him. He apologised and said that he’d been on holiday ‘and then came straight back into party conferences. Will reply when have a window.’ (Email, September 27, 2011)

Almost two months later, during which time he’d continued to publish articles in the Guardian, we asked him when he might reply. He told us that he’d been ‘operating a bit below capacity’ after recovering from an operation, ‘so everything takes longer than usual, but will try and send something in next week or two’. (Email, November 22, 2011). We replied at once, sincerely wishing him a full recovery.

Just over two weeks later, and not having heard from him, we emailed Milne again following a piece he’d published on the rising threat of war against Iran:

Hi Seumas,

Hope you’re recovering well from your recent op. Good to see your new article on Iran. But a glaring omission is the media’s own role in stoking the flames; not least your own newspaper, the Guardian. Here’s a tiny sample:

A recent Guardian editorial asserting: ‘It really is time to drop the pretence that Iran can be deflected from its nuclear path.’

Julian Borger’s blog, with an appalling accompanying photograph helpfully depicting a giant mushroom cloud.

Julian Borger again, giving prominence to a quote from an unnamed ‘source close to the IAEA’.

And let’s not forget Simon Tisdall, in a disgraceful Guardian front page story in 2007.

Did you see our recent media alert on Guardian (and other) coverage [on Iran]?

It’s pretty clear why, as a Guardian regular, you’re not at liberty to criticise your own paper’s dismal record. It’s another example of the media silence that you’ve yet to address in my initial challenge [of September 7, 2011].

Why does this abysmal media performance appear to feature so low down in your list of priorities? It brings to mind the four-month wading through treacle, when you were the Guardian’s comment editor, to finally publish our piece that was critical of the Guardian over Iraq.

I hope you’ll be able to engage with this argument soon. (Email, December 8, 2011)

Four days later, with no response from Milne, we emailed him again and asked when he might be able to tackle the points we’d been trying to raise with him over the previous three months.
Still no response.

In the meantime, on December 19, 2011, Milne published a good historical analysis titled, ‘The "Arab spring" and the west: seven lessons from history’.

Milne’s case studies of British imperialism and media propaganda focused on the 1930s (Libya and Palestine), the 1950s (Iraq, Libya, Iran, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt) and the 1960s (Aden).

Welcome as this article was, we have yet to see an equivalent Guardian piece from Milne, or anyone else on the paper, examining the West’s recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, how they fit into the age-old imperialist framework and, crucially, the role played by corporate news media, including the Guardian, in paving the propaganda path; and then allowing politicians to get off the hook afterwards. Readers may recall, for example, the Guardian’s shameful editorial calling for Tony Blair to be re-elected in 2005.

We recognise that Seumas Milne was no doubt under pressure after a recent operation (although he was continuing to publish articles regularly). But even bearing this in mind, not to respond to the issues in our initial email after four months, despite repeated promises to do so, is disappointing.

George Monbiot As Don Quixote: Tilting At Safe Targets

As we saw at the beginning of this alert, the Guardian's George Monbiot is one of very few mainstream journalists who is regarded as fearlessly honest and progressive. His many supporters would surely expect that he would be willing and able to tell the unadorned truth about the media.
As he launched into a recent article under the stirring title, ‘The corporate press are fighting a class war, defending the elite they belong to’, it looked like readers were in for something special:

‘Have we ever been so badly served by the press? We face multiple crises – economic, environmental, democratic – but most newspapers represent them neither clearly nor fairly. The industry that should reveal and expose instead tries to contain and baffle, to foil questions and shut down dissent.’

Monbiot continued:

‘The men who own the corporate press are fighting a class war, seeking, even now, to defend the 1% to which they belong against its challengers. But because they control much of the conversation, we seldom see it in these terms. Our press re-frames major issues so effectively, it often recruits its readers to mobilise against their own interests.’

‘It's not just Rupert Murdoch and his crooks,' we were told. ‘All the corporate barons who corrupted our political system must be unmasked.’

And – alas - there was the fatal flaw in his approach. Perching on a horse and pointing a blunt lance at ‘corporate barons’, while overlooking the systemic failings of the whole corporate media system, is symptomatic of many a failed quest. The knight-errant Monbiot is no different in this regard from a multitude of other commentators writing for the corporate press.

Thus, Monbiot was happy to make jabs at the Mail, Express and Telegraph newspapers for their puff pieces on celebrities and pathetic attacks on the weak in society. And he was keen to hurl deprecations at the weekly Spectator magazine for its ignorance on climate change. These are all easy right-wing media targets. But with just a passing comment about the BBC, and nothing at all about the supposedly ‘liberal press’ - not least his own paper, the Guardian – the valiant adventurer missed the most important targets.

There was not a single word in Monbiot's article about the Guardian's scandalous 2005 support for Blair's re-election; the paper’s war-mongering over Iran (take a special bow, Simon Tisdall); Monbiot's thoughts on Western intervention in Libya and Syria (his mutism on these vital issues has been stunning); the Guardian’s crippling dependence on advertising (which he has, to his credit, discussed in the past, albeit in limited fashion: see here and here); and the paper’s corporate and establishment links.

One astute reader, somehow evading the over-zealous censoring Guardian ‘moderators’ on the ‘Comment is Free’ website, noted accurately:

‘And just like Ed Miliband, the Guardian merely pretends to confront the elite in the silly Kabuki theatre of British politics.

‘The truth is, at bedrock ,you are all pro capitalist market fundamentalists. Some of you are open about it. Others, like the Guardian and Ed Miliband, fake opposition.’

We asked the experienced journalist and film-maker John Pilger for his response to Monbiot’s article. He told us candidly:

‘Since George Monbiot completed his Damascene conversion and decided the likes of Fukushima were good for the planet, and that smearing those who challenged other orthodoxies might be fun, he has barely drawn breath. His latest crusade is journalism itself -- the corruption of “the entire corporate media”. The headline over his Guardian piece on 13 December read: “The corporate press are fighting a class war, defending the elite they belong to.” A given, surely. As the public has become more and more media savvy, many people understand this, just as they understand that articles like Monbiot’s are part of the problem.

‘He attacks Murdoch, the Mail, the Telegraph, the “sleazy crooks”, but not a splenetic word is directed towards the most influential corporate media in modern Britain: the BBC and the Guardian, the “new establishment”, as Max Hastings wrote.

‘Not a word reminds us of how the greatest, wanton slaughter of the new century - in Iraq - was so often subtly (and not so subtly) supported and apologised for in the pages of his own newspaper. (“The remarkable extent,” opined a Guardian leader on 25 March 2003, “to which US and British forces are attempting to reduce the risk of civilian casualties in the Iraq campaign is probably unprecedented.”)

‘Not a word from Monbiot reminds us that two credible studies found that the BBC -- despite the Gilligan episode -- had been virtually a Blair government mouthpiece in the run up to the bloodbath. In fact, both the BBC and the Guardian used their reputations to maintain Blair at a level of respectability long after his lies and high crimes were evident.

‘When Monbiot complains that the “corporate press” has “hobbled progressive politics”, he is dead right. His omissions serve the same purpose.’ (Email, December 24, 2011)

Far from being an ‘unreconstructed idealist, a professional trouble-maker’, as his Twitter bio would have it, Monbiot is a Guardian man, a corporate lightning rod conducting the raw energy of outrage and dissent down to the safe little 'box' of the Guardian website. There his readers are regaled with state propaganda, corporate adverts and assailed by the poisonous, system-supportive beliefs of his corporate colleagues. The corporate system got us into this disaster and the corporate media is the last place to encourage people to look for answers.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Please write to:
Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist
Email: seumas.milne@guardian.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/SeumasMilne
George Monbiot, Guardian columnist
Email: george@monbiot.info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/GeorgeMonbiot
Please copy us in on any exchanges or forward them to us later at:
editor@medialens.org

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The Armenian Genocide - Stephen Lendman @ActivistWriter

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:37:00 +0000

Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as:

"the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" that corresponds to other terms like "tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc." (It) does not necessarily mean the destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings....It is intended....to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of national groups" with the intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them. "Genocidal plans involve the disintegration....of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and" human lives.

In legal terms, the 1948 Genocide Convention used the same definition. They're binding principles. Nonetheless, America, Israel, and rogue NATO partners violate them with impunity.

On May 28, 1948, the UN War Crimes Commission prepared a report on "The Massacres of the Armenians in Turkey," saying:

On May 28, 1915, France, Britain and Russia denounced Turkey's "crimes against humanity and civilization." A key passage reads:

"In the presence of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and the civilization, the allied Governments (know) that they will be held personally responsible for the so-called crimes of all members of the Ottoman Government as well as those of the officers who would be involved in such massacres."

The 1920 peace Treaty of Sevres with Turkey required it "hand over to the Allied Powers the persons responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Turkish Empire on the 1st August 1914."

The Treaty of Sevres was never ratified. The Treaty of Lausanne (July 23, 1923) replaced it. Genocidal crimes were excluded. Instead, it was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty" for all offenses committed from August 1, 1914 - November 20, 1922.

On May 28, 1951, the (1945-established) International Court of Justice (ICJ) published an "advisory opinion" on "Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," saying:

The Convention followed "the inhuman and barbarous practices....during World War II, when entire religious, racial and national minority groups were threatened with and subjected to deliberate extermination."

The ICC also named past genocides, including "the Turkish massacres of Armenians...."

On July 2, 1985, the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities "revised and updated" the issue of genocide and preventing it.

Among those mentioned, it recognized "the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916."

France Passes Armenian Genocide Law

On January 23, Reuters headlined, "France passes genocide law, faces Turkish reprisals," saying:

France's Parliament passed a bill "making it illegal to deny the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide."

France already recognizes the genocide. The new measure makes denying it illegal. It also imposes a one-year prison sentence and $57,000 fine.

In response, Turkey threatened a "total rupture" of diplomatic ties. All economic, political and military ones were cancelled after France's lower House passed the law. Its ambassador was recalled, and Ankara said further retaliatory measures would follow.

Nonetheless, on January 24, the BBC said "President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to sign the bill into law before the end of February," ahead of April presidential elections. In fact, his UMP party proposed it. Enactment seems assured.

Moreover, an estimated 500,000 Armenians live in France. Sarkozy's trailing in the polls. Signing's perhaps a way to improve his chances. At this point, they're shaky at best.

Armenia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbanian said:

"This day will be written in gold not only in the history of friendship between the Armenian and French peoples, but also in the annals of the history of the protections of human rights."

Perhaps he didn't read Reynald Secher's book titled, "A French Genocide: The Vendee," in which he called France's actions against the anti-clerical Republican government during the French Revolution the first modern genocide. He also ignored France's complicity with America's modern genocidal history.

Today's Zaman, Turkey's English language broadsheet, reacted to France's new law headlining, "France ignores Turkish warnings, passes Armenian 'genocide' bill," saying:

On Monday, France's Senate passed "a controversial law making it a crime to deny the 1915 killings of Armenians was a genocide...." The lower House passed it earlier.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned hours before enactment that the measure "runs a high risk of wrecking Turkish-French ties...." He said Ankara would retaliate.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said measures have "already been determined." AK Party Deputy Chairman Omer Celik indicated they'll be permanent, not temporary. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag added:

"It is clear (that) relations between Turkey and France will not be the same."

Armenia's History

Armenia's located at the crossroads of three continents - Europe, Asia, and Africa. It's bounded by the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea to the North, the Caspian Sea to the East, the Syrian Desert to the South, Anatolia to the West, and the Mediterranean Sea to the Southwest.

Historically, it's been divided between Ottoman Turkey, Russia and Persia. What remains of Armenia became Soviet Russia's smallest republic in 1920. From 1918 - 1920, it was independent. In 1991, it regained independence when the Soviet Union dissolved. Currently, it borders Turkey, Georgia, Iran and Azerbaijan.

It was established around 7,000 BC. In 301 AD, it was the first country to accept Christianity as state religion. In the 11th century, Ottoman Turks invaded. In the 16th century, Armenia became part of their empire.

In the 19th century, Greeks, Serbs and Romanians won independence. By WW I in 1914, Arabs and Armenians remained under Ottoman rule. As it weakened and broke down, Armenian repression increased.

Called "infidels," discriminatory taxes were levied. Persecutions escalated. Tyranny followed. In some areas, Armenians were afraid to speak their language openly or read books on Armenian history.

In fact, Sultan Abdul Hamid (Ottoman ruler from 1876 - 1909) banned many. He established censorship to exclude Western ideas and thought.

From 1894 - 1896, responding to reform demands, pogroms massacred around 300,000 Armenians. In 1909, another 30,000 were killed in the Cilicia region.

Armenians responded in self-defense. Ottomans feared losing them entirely. At the turn of the century, they demanded democratic reforms and constitutional government.

In 1908, Turkish nationalists gained control. Armenian elation faded when terror tactics followed.

Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, Djemal Pasha, and others like them subscribed to elitist/racist Pan-Turkism. They believed Turkey was for Turks alone. Pluralism assuring equal rights for all minorities was rejected. Armenians threatened their ideology. Eliminating them became policy. On the eve of WW I, Ottomans were in crisis.

The 1915 - 1922 Genocide

In 1914, over 2.5 million Armenians lived in Ottoman Turkey. Today, only 100,000 remain. Mostly they reside in Istanbul and Western areas. The Eastern Armenian heartland was decimated.

On April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian religious, political and intellectual leaders were arrested, detained or exiled. Most were eventually slaughtered.

Within several months, about 250,000 Ottoman army Armenians were placed in forced labor battalions. They were over-worked, starved, or executed.

Without leaders or able-bodied youths, ethnic cleansing occurred throughout Ottoman Turkey and Asia Minor. Death marches followed. Men and older boys were separated and executed. Women and children were force-marched, raped, tortured, and otherwise abused. Most deportees died of starvation, disease, or massacres.

About 500,000 escaped to Russia, Arab countries, Europe or America. Ottoman Armenia was virtually eliminated.

A Final Comment

In 1918, Henry Morgenthau, US ambassador to Turkey, said:

"When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race: they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."

"I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

Morgenthau perhaps couldn't envision later WW II atrocities, nor America's subsequent genocidal history. He also ignored its past, including waging war against Native Americans, African Americans, poor and disadvantaged ones, and women.

Historian/activist Howard Zinn wrote how since inception, America committed "genocide, brutally and purposefully....in the name of progress." Our leaders then buried ugly truths "in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth."

At home, profit over human lives and welfare took millions of working American lives. Abroad it was far worse through direct or proxy wars, death squads, torture, occupations, alliances with despots, and neglect. Against Native and Black Americans, it was worst of all.

Over centuries, America reduced its indigenous population to at most 3% of its original total. In his book titled, "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present," Ward Churchill said:

Millions were "hacked apart with axes and swords, burned alive and trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, scalped for bounty, hanged on meathooks and thrown over the sides of ships at sea, worked to death as slave laborers, intentionally starved and frozen to death during a multitude of forced marches and internments, and, in an unknown number of instances, deliberately infected with epidemic diseases."

Shockingly, "every one of these practices (still continues in new forms). The American holocaust was and remains unparalleled, in terms of its scope, ferocity and continuance over time." Today, its entirely suppressed in mainstream discourse.

The African holocaust was just as grim. It resulted from 500 years of colonialization, oppression, exploitation, and slavery, much of it trafficked to America. Black Africans were captured, branded, chained, force-marched to ports, beaten, kept in cages, stripped of their humanity, and often their lives.

Around 100 million or more were sold like cattle. Millions perished during the Middle Passage. They were packed like cargo under deplorable conditions in coffin-sized spaces, sometimes atop one another.

They experienced extreme discomfort because of poor ventilation, little or no sanitation, and overall appalling conditions. As a result, dysentery, smallpox, ophthalmia (causing blindness) and other diseases became epidemics. Conditions below deck were dark, filthy, slimy, full of blood, vomit, and human excrement.

Women were beaten and raped. For some, claustrophobia caused insanity. Others were flogged or clubbed to death. Anyone thought to be diseased was dumped overboard like garbage. Arrivals with three-fourths of human cargos were considered successful voyages. The Middle Passage claimed as many as half of those trafficked. Estimates range up to 50 million lives lost.

Zinn called American slavery "the most cruel form in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave."

Is it any different now? In today's America, thousands of garment factory sweatshops exploit workers with poverty wages, few if any benefits, and long hours in unsafe conditions.

Two million or more farm workers are abused. They live in sub-poverty misery and no protections, even for children. In Florida and perhaps elsewhere, lax federal and state oversight lets owners chain workers to poles, lock them in trucks, physically beat them, and cheat them out of pay.

They also perform dangerous jobs and live in unsafe environments, contaminated by toxic chemicals. As a result, about 300,000 suffer pesticide poisoning annually. Many others experience disabling accidents.

Millions of other American workers are also exploited and abused. They range from Wal-Mart and similar enterprises to domestic servitude, restaurant and hotel workers, non-union factory ones, women forced into prostitution, and sexually exploited children.

Turkey's Armenian genocide was one of history's great crimes. America exceeded it manyfold, especially through permanent imperial wars taking many millions of lives and causing incalculable human misery.

Raging unchecked today, victor's justice alone triumphed.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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AND THE WINNER IS Hillsong’s power in determining the sound of Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:04:00 +0000

Angela Priestley

It's difficult to ignore the role of the Hillsong Church when determining who really runs Christmas in Australia. The Church not only commands the attention of its followers at this time of year, but can also dominate the music charts and put on some of the country's most extravagant Christmas pageants.
Around 20,000 people attend Hillsong Church services in Australia every week, a far cry from the 700,000 Catholics who regularly attend mass, according to a national count by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in 2006 (although some studies suggest Catholic Church attendance has declined since then).

Still, the Catholic Church is no rival when it comes to garnering the attention of its followers through entertainment, particularly via the power of song.

Over the weekend, the Hillsong Church put on six shows of its version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with 20,000 free tickets handed out for the event in the Church's Sydney heartland, Castle Hill.

This week, the Church is targeting the punters with the release of their Christmas CD, Born is the King. The album is currently sitting in the No. 20 spot on the ARIA charts, just behind The Acoustic Chapel Sessions. Its first single has amassed 268,000 views on YouTube.

It's not unusual for Hillsong albums to dominate the ARIA music charts, despite the fact many avid popular music listeners have never heard their tunes. ARIA Gold status has been granted to 18 CDs and eight Hillsong DVD's to date, with the Church able to boast a number of No. 1 ARIA hits, including their 2004 album, For All You've Done.

The 2011 music compilation, which features traditional Christmas songs as well as a number of tracks written by Hillsong musicians, is distributed by Hillsong Music Australia, the Church's own music label and sells for $15 online.

Hillsong Music Australia has sold more than 12 million records across the globe, following its first release in 1991 out of what was then known as the Hills Christian Life Centre in Baulkham Hills. While it predominantly relies on a team of volunteers, it employs 17 full-time staff, making it arguably one of the most successful independent music labels in the country. Its ultimate goal is to lead "people into an atmosphere of dynamic, powerful, and personal praise and worship," according to its mission statement online.

Senior Pastor Brian Houston is executive producer for the label and would see no shame in its success. Houston argued in his 2009 book, You Need More Money, that Christians should have a more positive view on money and wealth, and that they should seek to eliminate the "poverty mentality" that prevents them from enjoying their good fortunes.

Still, according to Houston, the latest release is not about record sales. "The purpose of this album - like all of our music - is to speak to the heart of people," he said in a statement. "The Christmas story is a message of hope and love; it is about family, faith and generosity and I believe that Australians have a lot to be hopeful for this year."

The Hillsong Church was not available to comment in time for today's deadline.

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Coke is full of rubbish - @Getup Seriously, 10c is piddling, it should be a $1

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:58:00 +0000

GetUp!

18 December 2011 14:46

Reply-To: info@getup.org.au

To: thestos@gmail.com

Have you seen the video starring you that everyone is talking about?

You're the superhero, standing up to Coke's well funded campaign to stop recycling legislation -- a scheme that would see people refunded 10 cents for recycling cans and bottles. It would will deliver massive benefits: 330,000 tonnes more containers recycled; 2.4 billion litres of water saved and littering reduced by 30%.

It's a win all round! Watch your video and spread the word: www.getup.org.au/coke-not-in-my-name

---Original email---

Dear Chris,

It's a win, win, win for everyone - and it has you in a red spandex suit! What is it? It's our new recycling campaign, launching today with this action-packed video starring none other than you:

www.getup.org.au/coke-not-in-my-name

Imagine if when you bought a drink, you got 10 cents back when you returned the empty can or bottle when you're done. Sound simple? Well it is. It's done all over the world and delivers massive environmental and social benefits.

But Coke is running a well-funded misinformation campaign against it, and has been harassing anyone trying to push for a refund recycling scheme that would reduce millions of tonnes of CO2 pollution and billions of litres of water. Not to mention removing lots of litter.

We need a new superhero to stand up to Coke: you. Consider this email your bat signal, and star in your own superhero video:

www.getup.org.au/coke-not-in-my-name

A successful deposit and refund scheme on cans and bottles has been operating for 30 years in South Australia, and many other parts of the world. But when the Northern Territory parliament tried to introduce it for 2012, Coke and its allies were there harassing them with false claims about its impact.

That means it's time for you to get out the red spandex and tell Coke they're full of rubbish!

Thanks for being a hero,
The GetUp team

PS - NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson, on the receiving end of Coke's well funded campaign, has sent a letter to GetUp members calling for your help. Hear his call and become a superhero for recycling today, with this video starring none other than you.

PPS - Apologies you may not be able to view this video on your mobile phone and those viewing the video with a slower internet may have to wait up to 20 seconds before the video plays. Be patient, it's worth it!

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Faceless net giants Google & Facebook writing own rule books

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:21:00 +0000

In the dark … trying to work out why their businesses have been blocked or suspended has confounded many online entrepreneurs. Photo: AP

Businesses have little recourse - or human contact - when resolving disputes with Google or Facebook, write Julian Lee and Ben Grubb.

Web minnow takes on Google over ban

Australians use them more than any other websites and to many they have become essential services, oiling the wheels of life and commerce at the click of a mouse.

But when Google or Facebook no longer wants you, it can be all but impossible to find out why, as internet entrepreneur Mark Bowyer and others have found to their cost.

Earlier this year Google banned ads from his travel website, Rusty Compass, because it said the site "poses a risk of generating invalid activity".

Almost four months and an appeals process later Bowyer is none the wiser as to what that means but is acutely aware of his dependence on an "arbitrary, algorithmic, human-free" service.

At every step Bowyer has been forced to communicate with the company through its website.

"I feel utterly powerless," says Bowyer, who says he is daunted by how much he depends on Google's services for his fledgling business - a website that offers independent travel advice to travellers to south-east Asia - from powering the search engine, providing analytics and directing traffic its way.
He is still unable to fathom what ''invalid activity'' Google is referring to, speculating that because a large proportion of his traffic comes from Asia - where ''click farms'' are often located - Google suspects he might be paying people to click on his ads.

"Of course, Google has the right to decide who it does business with. It doesn't have the right to terminate commercial arrangements mid-stream, withhold funds due, and run a closed appeal process that provides no information to the appellant," says Bowyer, a co-founder of the travel firm Travel Indochina.

Google has "redistributed" the $120 he earnt from advertising back to advertisers. He has consistently denied click fraud, even posing the rhetorical question to Google in his appeal: "Why would I take such a risk for such a low return?

"Since Google enjoys such extraordinary market power, it should be serious about its internal processes and the transparency and credibility of its appeal processes. And, pardon my naivety, but the introduction of a human face would be a good start."

Bowyer's dispute is similar to the three-year-long one the founder of the Aussie Tech Head podcast and website, Glenn Goodman, has had with Google over his Adsense account.

In 2008 Goodman accrued $100 in revenue from Google ads in the first six months of his business. But on the eve of getting the first payment he was suspended. Since the suspension he has submitted online appeals once every 12 months up until this year, when he phoned Google's Sydney reception. The receptionist merely advised him of the Adsense appeals procedure. ''I have given up,'' he says.
Like Bowyer, he says he's never clicked on his own ads and has no idea why he was suspended.

"It is very frustrating and to this day I do not know why my account was targeted," he says, adding that it has affected other methods of receiving ad revenue through Google such as through the video-sharing website YouTube and Feedburner, which inserts ads into RSS feeds.

"I was well aware of fraudulent clicks, and it wasn't due to this. It is due to another reason that at this stage is only known to Google.''

Google is not shy about letting users know it may not even get back to them, pointing out in emails to Goodman that it might take some time and that there is no guarantee his account will ever be reinstated.

They now face being permanently shut out of Google's network of publishers - which cover 70 per cent of the world's websites and in Australia generates about $700 million in ad revenue a year.
Goodman and Bowyer are joined in their frustration by Corinna Slade, a vocal supporter of horse racing and, in particular, jumps racing.

Slade runs a Facebook group for her business Australian Thoroughbreds, which sells and syndicates racehorses and has over 2000 members. On two occasions her personal page has been suspended and she has been prevented from using many of Facebook's services after what she suspects was animal activists reporting her for breaches of Facebook's terms and conditions.

The suspension of her personal account has prevented her from posting messages on her business Facebook page as she is the sole administrator.

Slade claims she tried to contact Facebook several times but "there is no place on Facebook where you can send an email or appeal the decision to lock a profile down''. Upon being told that she had "violated" Facebook's policies she was then diverted to a page which told her the duration of a block "varies depending on the nature of the offence, ranging from a few hours to a few days''. It also states that Facebook will ''not lift this block for you until the entire penalty time has elapsed'', offering no appeals process.

Slade says Facebook should have a way of being contacted or a proper appeals process. ''This contravenes freedom of speech, which I thought was a big deal in the USA, where Facebook is based.''
Facebook said it didn't ''comment on specific cases'' and directed Fairfax to the same webpage Slade was sent. Asked about its appeals process, it provided a link to a contact form for use only by users of an account that has been disabled for violating its policies.

But the Freehills emeritus partner Bob Baxt said Google's activity in particular might contravene consumer law which has been changed recently to strengthen unconscionable conduct - a legal concept that describes the harsh treatment by one party, usually a larger, more powerful entity, towards another smaller party.

Not knowing the full facts of the case, Baxt says: "If this is true and money is also being withheld by a merchant then it could contravene Australian consumer law. Taking someone's money, then telling them that they can no longer use that service and accusing them of some crime or breach but without giving them the reasons why could also contravene the act.

"This is the type of scenario that I think would be of interest to the ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission]."

Websites can be suspended for a variety of reasons, from posting racist or violent material to infringing copyright and tampering with its Adsense code. Google would not comment on specific cases - nor would it reveal how many sites it suspended - but a spokesman said users who posed a "risk to its advertisers" needed to be purged in order to "protect the health of its network".

A Google spokesman said that advertisers, publishers and users preferred to contact the company via its website but that "trained specialists" thoroughly investigated cases.

jlee@smh.com.au

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RailCorp sale of Sydney train passengers' USB keys sparks probe @ashermoses

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:47:00 +0000

Asher Moses

December 13, 2011 - 11:06AM

Sophos says RailCorp should be allowed to sell USB keys laden with personal information in order to protect the environment.

RailCorp's sale of 50 misplaced USB keys containing sensitive personal information about passengers has sparked an investigation by the NSW Privacy Commissioner.

Sophos, the computer security company that bought the USB keys from RailCorp's lost property auction for just over $400, obtained them to conduct an experiment into data left on lost USB keys.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology at Sophos, analysed the data contained on the devices and found two-thirds were infected with malware.

Two of the quirkier USB keys picked up by Sophos at the auction.

None of the USB keys was encrypted and, while Mr Ducklin said he did only a "cursory" analysis of the personal information contained on them, he found there were CVs, jobs applications, tax return information, photo albums, work projects, university assignments, minutes of meetings, software and source code.
"Don't be lulled into thinking that your personal data is unimportant unless you're a high-flying executive or have pots of money. Information about you is worth money to cyber criminals," wrote Mr Ducklin, adding there was an underground market for buying and selling personal information.

RailCorp, which has not said whether it accessed the data on the USB keys before selling them, was immediately criticised over the auction. It also sparked the interest of the NSW Deputy Privacy Commissioner, John McAteer.

The USB keys bought by Sophos at the auction.

Mr McAteer's office regulates privacy in the public service and said that since RailCorp was a public sector agency it had more stringent privacy obligations.

"We commenced our investigation on Friday and in the first instance RailCorp is going to answer a series of questions and based on the answers to those questions we'll look at what our next step in the investigation is – and if necessary we may speak to third parties to verify some of the answers," said Mr McAteer.

It is understood that the privacy watchdog may speak to Sophos but the company is not under investigation as the NSW Privacy Commissioner only regulates public agencies.

Mr McAteer said he would not jump to any conclusions but he was concerned RailCorp might have breached several sections of the NSW privacy laws concerning using and distributing personal information.

"If they weren't going to return [the USB keys] to the owners or destroy them they had an obligation to work out what was on there and if it was personal information they either had the obligation to cleanse it or to contact the person to whom it related," he said.

Mr McAteer said contacting each individual owner of the USB keys was impractical and the obvious response would have been to destroy the USB keys.

Mr McAteer said his investigation had "royal commission powers" and if a privacy breach was found he could make findings and recommendations but not fine agencies. However, he said individuals whose privacy had been breached could obtain damages from the Administrative Decisions Tribunal.
However, Mr Ducklin, in an email interview with this website, said he did not think RailCorp should be obliged to wipe the data on lost devices they sell "in much the same way that I don't think that ISPs should be obliged to watch your internet traffic and block pirated stuff".

"Apparently NSW Privacy thinks RailCorp should be wiping the keys, but I think NSW Privacy should be frying bigger fish – notably companies which deliberately collect my data for their own commercial purposes, promise to look after it, and then don't," said Mr Ducklin.

Mr Ducklin said if RailCorp was obliged to wipe the USB keys that would cost "way more" than they could be sold for. Already, Sophos paid about 50 per cent more than if they were bought new.

"Then they'll have to start destroying lost USB sticks instead. That would be an environmental shame – we're enough of a disposalist [sic] society already," he said.

Mr Ducklin ridiculed the idea that RailCorp could be expected to protect its customers from making IT blunders.

"What next? Will RailCorp be expected to police the trains looking for people using unsecured 3G wireless hotspots on their daily commute? For iPhone users who haven't set a device passcode?"
Mr McAteer's response was succinct, pointing out that he could only regulate privacy for the public service.

"The 'bigger fish' are beyond the jurisdiction of my office. The law says they can't use the info so they should destroy them. That's the law," he said.

RailCorp said it took the NSW Privacy Commissioner's concerns seriously and it would assist the office with its investigation.

"To ensure we continue to improve our processes RailCorp will be reviewing our guidelines regarding lost property prior to the next auction," a spokesman said.

This reporter is on Twitter: @ashermoses

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Abbott's positively negative @smh_news

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:50:00 +0000

Peter Hartcher

The Liberal Party is waking up to the realisation that their leader's insistent oppositionism is not helping the cause.

Tony Abbott addressed Julia Gillard directly across the dispatch box on Thursday and delivered the punchline to his censure motion against the Prime Minister: "The Australian public do not believe you and they want you gone."

Indeed, any reading of the opinion polls would support this contention. But because the electorate is rejecting Gillard does not necessarily mean that the people are embracing Abbott.

Sure, the Coalition has a commanding share of the vote and would win in a landslide if an election were held today. But Abbott personally is a very unpopular leader, in the same dismal league as Gillard. His approval rating in the Herald-Nielsen poll is minus 13. It should be of only the coldest of comforts that Gillard rates minus 18. In Newspoll the two are on an identical minus 21.

And asked who would make the better Prime Minister, the electorate rates the two a dead heat in the Nielsen poll and gives Gillard the lead in Newspoll. And the numbers in recent weeks are moving against the Opposition Leader.

Why? Abbott has done a powerfully effective job of highlighting Gillard as the problem, and in promising to cancel her out. He has offered himself as the human boot to stamp on the face of the Prime Minister. But it seems that Australians don't want to be led by an angry boot. The polls are telling us that as much as Australia would like to be rid of Gillard, it is loath to replace her with Abbott.

The Herald's pollster, Nielsen's John Stirton, says that of the 19 opposition leaderships measured in the Nielsen poll over the past 39 years, Abbott's average net approval ranks him the ninth most popular.

In other words, he's in the historical midfield. Not too bad, surely? The sting, however, is that Abbott is also one of the 11 who rated a negative average net approval rating. And none of the other 10 ever made it to the prime ministership. This does not destine Abbott to the same outcome but it does flag that he has a real problem.

The Abbott approach of angry oppositionism has reached a point of diminishing returns. Three developments this week further demonstrate its limits: the passage of the mining tax, the events in the Coalition party room, and Labor's increased margin in the House through the change in Speaker.

First, the government managed to get its mining tax passed by the House of Representatives, in spite of Abbott's huffing and puffing and angry bluster. This is the chamber where the Coalition's power is at its greatest. The bill's passage through the Senate early next year seems assured. It would then become law.

The mining tax is a prime example of the way the Coalition's eagerness to say "no" has led it to rush into silly positions. The Coalition leadership first decided to oppose the mining tax even while the details were still under wraps, with reporters digesting the details in the government's media "lock-up".

The mining tax is poorly designed. It is not ideal. But the tax on mining is the only tool now in prospect for Australia to manage the mining boom.

The boom, by elevating the Australian dollar, is hammering the competitiveness of every other export sector and every import-competing sector in Australia. Manufacturing, higher education and tourism, for instance, are suffering. Through this "Dutch disease" or "resource curse" effect, mining exerts a brutal force on the rest of the economy. It's a vast convulsive force that makes the carbon tax look trivial in scale by comparison.

It's unwise and probably impossible to try to stop the boom, as the Reserve Bank's governor, Glenn Stevens, has said. And it would be a serious mistake to re-regulate the floating dollar, which has served as the principal shock-absorber for Australia's economy. So all that's left is to try to manage the boom.

The mining tax is also inadequate - raising $11 billion over three years for redistribution to the rest of the economy by making a minor cut to the company tax rate, giving small business a tax benefit and enabling higher compulsory superannuation contributions is an extremely modest redress.

Yet it is the only tool on offer. The mining industry fought ferociously against the tax as first proposed by the Rudd government, then acquiesced in a negotiated bonsai version, the one that is now passing through the Parliament. Despite its flaws, the tax is not only economically rational as a tax on the super-profits of a finite public resource but it is also politically popular.

An intelligent approach for the Coalition would have been to work to improve the design of the tax. Instead, it rushed heedlessly to oppose it, latching onto metaphors like "you can't kill the goose that lays the golden egg". One senior official turned this around: "The mining industry is the goose that's stealing the golden egg."

When the Coalition realised that its position had led it to oppose higher superannuation savings for millions of Australians - gulp! - it had to execute an inelegant quasi-backflip. It announced that it would scrap the tax but keep the superannuation increases that the tax is enabling, leaving no way to pay for it. Over-eager oppositionism, amended by populism. Silliness becomes farce. And when members of his own party confronted Abbott over this in the Coalition party room this week, he grew angry and shut down the debate.

But the most potent political problem for the Coalition here is that the tax is now becoming law regardless. It joins another trademark of the Gillard legislative program, the carbon tax, in passing into law, exposing Abbott's impotence. How many times can he huff and puff without ever blowing the house down?

Second is the evidence in the Coalition party room this week that the Liberals' own polling is discovering the cost of Abbott's strategy to just say no. The deputy leader, Julie Bishop, took the unusual step of pointing out to the Coalition meeting that it had agreed to government policy recently in three different areas.

The party, she said, had supported the government commitment to a regional trade proposal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, its decision to sell uranium to India and its decision to bring a rotating deployment of US Marines to Australia.

And Abbott himself told the party that his speech to the Sydney Institute on Monday reflected the "positive agenda" of an Abbott government. Abbott likened it to a John Howard "headland" speech.

Abbott's speech was, nonetheless, overwhelmingly a tirade against Labor. If he wanted to deliver a real speech about what the party stood for, rather than against, it would look more like the maiden speech this week by the new senator for NSW, Arthur Sinodinos, John Howard's long-time chief of staff.

But the unprompted comments from Bishop and Abbott about the opposition's positiveness tell us that Liberal research is turning up the same thing that Labor's research is finding - that the overwhelming public impression of Abbott is of a naysayer. He is gifted at finding problems, but no use at finding solutions.

So it was no coincidence that Labor produced a glossy 14-page colour booklet this week to ram the point home. It stars Abbott on the cover and bears the title: "The Little Book of No." It also carries a cover quote of Abbott's: "If in doubt our job is to oppose."

Third, Labor's coup with the Speaker in the House this week has entrenched Gillard in power. Her minority government has become a little less minority and a little more government. By resigning as speaker and rejoining the bloc of Labor votes in the chamber, Harry Jenkins created a vacancy in the speakership. The government quickly filled it by nominating a Liberal turncoat, Peter Slipper.

This has the effect of cutting the Coalition's numbers by one, and increasing Labor's by one, widening Gillard's margin in the House from one vote to three. This gives the government a crucial extra life to survive the loss of a seat by death, misadventure or politics.

The lightning coup looks suspicious. Without any obvious compelling reason, Jenkins has awarded himself a 43 per cent pay cut, sacrificing $106,000 a year, and volunteered to cut his life pension by at least $13,000 a year. And this, he said, because he wanted to rejoin the world of policy as a backbencher.

In NSW this is the sort of deal that could be referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. There is no federal ICAC, however. Labor insists Jenkins resigned of his own accord.

Abbott's reflex response was to mount a censure motion in the House. A censure motion is the most serious rebuke that a Parliament can wield. If carried, it has the power to force a government from office. But like his overall strategy, Abbott has overused this to the point of diminishing returns.

It was Abbott's 34th attempt to bring a censure motion against this government. And for the 34th time, it failed. Gillard is increasingly likely to be able to run the full term of Parliament, meaning almost two years more. Abbott has ridden his horse of populist anger to exhaustion. A smart leader would spend the Christmas break thinking hard about how to look more like a credible alternative.

Peter Hartcher is the political editor.

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Coles/Woolworths: It's war; but how low can they go @smh_news

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:45:00 +0000

Consumers may be winning but at a hefty cost to the food industry, writes Stuart Washington.

Practically every child in Australia in the '70s, '80s and '90s used some of their pocket money to buy Allsep's lollies. Noses pressed against the corner shop's glass counter, grimy 10¢ coins would be exchanged for booty made by Allsep's: jelly snakes and bright yellow lolly bananas.

The company has operated in Melbourne since it was founded by Wally Allsep in 1934, serving literally generations of Australian kids.

Now that long history has a cloudy future. Earlier this year almost the entire range of bagged Allsep's lollies supplied to Woolworths was replaced by Chinese imports. And Allsep's is still dealing with the loss of one of its biggest customers.

Terry Allsep, the company secretary, explains how the contract was lost. ''We would not go down to the price they were demanding,'' he says. ''They claimed they could get it cheaper offshore.'' And they did.

The Victorian confectionery manufacturer faces becoming another casualty in the unseen supermarket war: Coles and Woolworths versus their suppliers.

In a Herald investigation, suppliers and retail industry veterans have spoken, on the condition of anonymity, about what they see as dirty tricks used by Coles and Woolworths to steal their profits.

Tactics include the deletion of brands such as Greenseas tuna to the benefit of Coles' private label brand; hardball negotiations including taking stock off the shelf until suppliers agree to new contracts; and demanding payment from suppliers for breakages that occur inside stores.

The suppliers have wind in their sails from the federal Industry Minister, Kim Carr, who has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to look at their complaints. And Senator Carr notes it is not just suppliers who lose out, airing a grim prediction about what Australian consumers can expect if suppliers are brought low by supermarkets exerting too much power.

''Over time, if our supply chains are so badly damaged, our choices are limited, they are reduced,'' he says. ''For us to provide food security for this country, we need a strong supply chain of food manufacturers.''

Underpinning Carr's fears is a realisation the overt push by the majors to increase goods they sell under their own ''private label'' badge will inevitably shove well-known brands off the shelves.

Woolworths has said it wants to double the amount of private-label goods it sells, which would lift private-label sales from about 20 per cent to British-style levels of more than 40 per cent. The research firm Nielsen estimates private labels will represent 40 per cent of packaged goods sales by 2015.

The appointment of Ian McLeod as managing director of Coles in May 2008 from a career with British retailer Asda re-energised Coles's private-label drive, with imported staff from Asda and Sainsbury's credited with using their homebrand know-how to lead the charge.

In lockstep with the growth of private labels is the fear many of these new products are being sourced from cut-price offshore manufacturers.

For example, Coles Smart Buy pineapple slices, manufactured in Thailand and sold for $1.11, compete with Golden Circle pineapple slices manufactured in Australia and sold for $2.29. And Woolworths Homebrand frozen corn from China ($2.99) competes with Birds Eye frozen corn manufactured in Australia ($3.99).

Woolworths says more than half of its packaged goods are made in Australia. Coles was unable to provide a similar figure.

THE power wielded by the two majors rests in supermarkets' domination of the broader food and grocery market, with their market penetration growing from 40 per cent in 1975 to 60 per cent in 1985.

Their combined take now stands at about 80¢ of every grocery dollar spent, leaving suppliers operating in a climate of fear: lose one of the big supermarkets as a customer and that could be the end.

The suppliers' view of their situation is reflected in the surly vernacular about price negotiations with Coles's ''buyers'' at its Melbourne headquarters, unflatteringly dubbed ''Battlestar Galactica''.

Suppliers talk of the practice of ''cliffing'': being forced to bid high for existing shelf space, or lose it all to a higher-bidding rival. To follow the metaphor, the failure to pay up results in being thrown off the cliff.

Greenseas, owned by Heinz, experienced just this practice earlier this year when John West successfully bid for shelf space, leaving John West and Coles home brand products as the major beneficiaries.

Price negotiations with supermarkets are widely known by an even more colloquial term. One industry veteran said: ''We all call it 'assuming the position'.'' In other words, bend over and take what's coming.

And it is not just the smaller manufacturers targeted by the big supermarkets that find themselves in awkward positions. The Herald has established that major global brands Coca-Cola and Nestle have been pushed around in recent months.

Coca-Cola was not advertised in Woolworths catalogues, a punishing move for even the biggest brand; and Nestle was told to withdraw its sales staff from Coles stores after what is understood to be a contract dispute.

A Woolworths spokeswoman denies it seeks shelf space fees. She says of tactics such as taking stock off shelves and refusing advertising during a renegotiation: ''We will look to advantage the products from which we can get a return in order to achieve category objectives.''

A Coles spokesman refused to comment on the details of its supplier relationships, describing its dealings as robust and within the law. ''Coles wants to retain and grow all of our trading relationships with suppliers,'' he says.

The pressure on Australian-branded suppliers is inevitable, says British retail expert David Hughes, who sees the shift to private labels as an international trend.

He says supermarkets worldwide are becoming dominated by the retailers' private-label brands at one end and large, multinational or national ''A'' brands, such as Coca-Cola and Nestle, at the other.

''If you happen to be in the middle there, the 'B' brands, you are going to be squeezed,'' says Hughes, a professor at the University of Kent Business School. ''If you come to the UK it's exactly the same. It's an uncomfortable time to be in the food industry.''

The easy comparison drawn from history is between Australia's food industry, now under pressure from retailers and multinational competitors, and the (almost vanished) textile, clothing and footwear industries that could not withstand cheaper competition from offshore.

Kate Carnell, chief executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, rejects the comparison. ''Are we quite comfortable with relying on imports for our food supply? I would suggest we're not comfortable, I would suggest it is different,'' she says.

Suppliers and industry veterans spoken to by the Herald paint a gloomy picture. They spell out a vicious cycle in which the big supermarkets' tactics make their brands progressively weaker.

It is little known that ''mark downs'', or sales, offered by the supermarkets are partly or fully funded by the supplier. This is a difficult concept, but it essentially means the suppliers take some (and usually all) of the hit on sales discounts, not the retailer.

As supermarkets' demands for sales have become more voracious, there is more demand for ''mark downs'' - and therefore more need for suppliers to take the hit.

So in the view of industry experts, a brand faces pressure on its finite ''brand-building'' funding, driving it from an ad campaign for its own benefit (''Buy Vegemite because it is great'') to a price-driven campaign for the retailer's benefit (''Buy Vegemite at Coles because it is cheap'').

''The manufacturer funds all the sharp prices,'' says one supplier's account manager.

And if the other big retailer sees those sharp prices, you can bet they are instantly on the phone demanding the same kind of discount - and the supplier takes double the hit.

Retail veterans complain the result is a lack of innovation in brands, with any innovations quickly mimicked by private-label brands anyway.

AT COLES headquarters in Toorak Road, Melbourne, there is what is known as a ''celebrate success'' bell, which is rung in the open-plan office at certain times. The sizeable bell stands in a wooden frame about a metre high, and it resounds through the office when the clapper is struck.

The supplier account manager says: ''I have been on the floor when the bell has been hit. My guy has to scurry away … us vendors [are left] sitting in the little fish bowls.''

The Herald has learned the bell is rung when a Coles buyer has managed to extract a bigger concession from suppliers. The ''success'' is put on a whiteboard in terms of the savings for Coles, and the huddle of buyers are told to continue their efforts.

The account manager says the experience is gutting for the waiting suppliers: they know one of their own has just ''assumed the position''. Coles chose not to respond to questions about the ''celebrate success'' bell.

Professor Hughes makes the point: ''… When you have a great deal of market power in the hands of one or two retailers, you will have abuses of power. That's in the nature of things.''

Senator Carr says Coles and Woolworths enjoy among the highest concentration of market power in the world. Urging suppliers to contact the ACCC, he says: ''This is all about the extraordinary power they hold.''

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What George Orwell Can Teach Us About Occupy Wall Street and Police Brutality @theatlantic

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:44:00 +0000

Why did police use baton strikes and pepper spray against nonviolent protesters on University of California campuses? Some say they're brutes. My colleague Alexis Madrigal argues their behavior is the logical result of aggressive police tactics adopted in the wake of the 1999 WTO protests. Peter Moskos posits that they're victims of wrongheaded officer training. Without discounting these theories, or minimizing the brutality involved, I'd like to offer a complementary explanation. It involves George Orwell and the length authority figures will go to avoid derisive laughter.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

A bit of background first.

On the U.C. campuses where I've spent time, there's always been a fraught relationship between students and campus police. For the officers, the job entails endless encounters with the minority of frequently drunk undergrads who get into fights, pull fire alarms, break windows, vomit, litter, blare music at 3 a.m., drive around at unsafe speeds, or even steal livestock. Especially for a working class cop who never went to college, it's easy to start seeing all students as entitled, self-absorbed brats, especially the openly disrespectful element.

The student perspective? Most are well-behaved, aren't particularly aware that a small minority of their classmates treat campus police with open disdain, and wouldn't do so themselves. At the same time, they can't help but see campus police as slightly ridiculous figures. They dress like real police and carry weapons, but aren't they mostly dealing with students vomiting in the bushes? What's the deal with the ones who tazed that kid in the UCLA library? Or the time they tried to charge a student with grand theft auto for driving a maintenance golf cart across campus?

Over the years, I've heard a fair number of slurs shouted at campus cops. Seldom were they "pig" or "fascist." Far more often, they diminished the power of the officer, using words like "fake cop" or "rent-a-cop".

This is where the power and class dynamics get tricky.

They are real cops. Employed by California, they are agents of the state. They've got weapons. And the pay is not bad at all.

On the other hand, campus police at U.C. Berkeley, and to a lesser extent at U.C. Davis, patrol kids who'd call themselves failures if they grew up to be cops; kids who have more opportunities than the children of the campus cops; kids who will mostly be more successful than campus cops; kids who even enjoy the ultimate loyalty of U.C. faculty and most administrators. Just look at what happened after U.C. Berkeley administrators sent in cops with batons, and U.C. Davis administrators sent in cops with pepper spray. Predictable altercations occurred. Batons and pepper spray were used. Images leaked. And suddenly the administrators were launching investigations! And issuing statements about how deeply they cared for the students! Did they fail to anticipate that the weapons would be turned on passive protesters?

They'd do well to read "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell's reflection on his time as a British imperial police officer in Burma, if so. To be clear, I don't think imperialism is an apt analogy when police forcibly remove Occupy Cal or Davis protesters. But I do think Orwell helps us understand why officers who aren't monsters might use wildly excessive force.

In Burma, Orwell remembers, every British police officer was a target of constant ridicule. "When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter," he writes. "This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves." The next passage captures what it is like to be a man trapped in a system you wouldn't have chosen and don't particularly like:

I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically - and secretly, of course - I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos - all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East...

All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

Perhaps you know the rest of the story. Orwell gets a call about a mad elephant stampeding through the village. It killed one man. Being the officer in charge, he is expected to do something.

So he sends for a rifle and tracks the elephant to a nearby field:

As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant - it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery - and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd - seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing - no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

Again, I am not claiming any direct analogy here. My point is this: At Occupy Berkeley and Davis, you have a bunch of skinny, hyper-earnest teenagers with high SAT scores. The vast majority have never even been in a fight. One day, they all lock arms on the quad, so administrators call in U.C. police officers, guys who are routinely ridiculed for not being real cops, and sometimes get ribbed by their colleagues in Oakland for having a laughably easy beat.

But that isn't all.

The U.C. police officers are dressed in riot gear. They're given guns, batons, body armor, face shields, and spray canisters of pepper spray. And they're sent out in force. If they were in a video game they'd be ready to face off against some bad-ass foe with machine guns and assault rifles. We're used to seeing officers like that in pitched battles on the street, or about to rush into a house filled with drug dealers. These guys are facing teenagers blocking a sidewalk.

But once they're out there -- people all around, photographs being snapped, video cameras rolling -- it's the cops who feel powerless. The kids won't listen. Nobody wants to be the one to say, "Um, should we retreat?" Had they left, the crowd would've burst into cheers at their expense. No one wants to make the first move either. Some of them seethe. Others feel embarrassed, like the macho high school wrestler forced to square off against a girl in practice. If he goes too hard he'll feel bad. If he goes too easy and loses he'll be humiliated and ridiculed.

He goes too hard.

Look at this video from U.C. Davis, that starts a bit earlier than most others, and pay attention to the student at the very beginning:

That's a kid who is aware of how absurd the escalation and excessive response is making the police look. They couldn't shoot the kid in the back with a paint ball gun, but neither could they bring themselves to let him win. What I see, when the now infamous cop pepper sprays the line of kids, isn't the cowardice of that malicious New York City cop who tried to surreptitiously pepper spray a group of women. I see a guy masking all his emotions because he doesn't particularly want to spray the kids in the face -- he doesn't seem to enjoy it -- but neither does he want to let them win, or admit to his fellow officers or his superiors that they'd been beat. As Orwell put it, "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."

Personally, I don't think that's any kind of defense. A man who can so casually pepper spray peaceful protesters has no place as a police officer on a college campus. I'd fire him immediately. But if I'm right about the situation (obviously I could be wrong) he isn't a monster. He's a guy who did the wrong thing after administrators forced he and his colleagues out among the students, equipped in such a way that they'd either end up looking like brutes or fools. Put a group of officers in that position and at least one of them will usually act like a brute, figuring it's better than being laughed at and looking powerless. As a municipal police officer once told me after he'd handcuffed and later released a smart-ass teenager for blowing bubbles at him, "If I let them show me up, how could I ever go back on patrol and be taken seriously?"

It's no good excuse.

Some police officers just think that way.

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Gittins/Mining Tax: Facts count, because what's mined is yours

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:24:00 +0000

Gittins: Mining your own business

It is vital that we can walk away from the mining boom with something positive for our future. Ross Gittins explains.

By far the biggest development in the economy in recent years is the mining boom, and it's likely to roll on for at least the rest of this decade. But Australians are having a lot of trouble getting their minds around the boom's implications. The area abounds with worries and misperceptions.

Economists keep banging on about the mining boom because it's the biggest factor driving the economy's growth. We've had a surge in export income because the world is paying such high prices for our coal and iron ore. And we're also getting huge spending on the construction of new mines and natural gas facilities.

The other reason economists get so excited about the topic is that this is hardly the first commodities boom Australia has experienced (the first was the gold rush) and most of our previous booms have ended in tears. We've quickly spent all the extra money coming our way, but that's led to rapidly rising prices. The authorities' efforts to stamp out inflation have ended up causing a recession and rising unemployment.

The present managers of the economy are determined to ensure that doesn't happen this time by keeping spending and inflation under control. This explains why, until recently, the Reserve Bank was always thinking about putting up interest rates, and why the Gillard government has been so keen to get its budget back into surplus.

But all the fuss people like me have been making about the boom has left many Australians with a quite exaggerated impression of the size of our mining sector. According to a poll conducted by the Australia Institute, on average people imagine mining accounts for 35 per cent of the goods and services the nation produces (gross domestic product).

But while mining's share of national production has increased significantly in recent years, it's still up to only 10 per cent.

Many of us see the main pay-off from an expanding industry as all the jobs it generates. So what proportion of the workforce is employed in mining? According to the Australia Institute's polling, our average answer is 16 per cent.

The truth? Even after all that expansion, less than 2 per cent. How could an industry responsible for 10 per cent of our production account for just 2 per cent of employment? By being intensely ''capital-intensive'' - by using a lot of machines and not many workers.

So, does that mean mining isn't really worth all the fuss? A lot of its industrial rivals will tell you so, but it ain't true. The true test of the worth of an industry is not how many people it employs but how much income it generates. And, particularly at present, mining is generating huge income. Do you realise it accounts for more than half the nation's export income?

The reason income trumps employment is that as income is spent it generates jobs. When you spend a dollar it percolates through the economy, supporting and creating jobs as it goes. So if mining creates 10 per cent of national income but only 2 per cent of national employment directly, that just means it supports another 8 per cent of national employment indirectly, in other (labour-intensive) industries.

Which other industries? For the most part, service industries. How can I be sure? Because after you allow for the 2 per cent of Australians employed in mining, the 3 per cent in agriculture and the 9 per cent in manufacturing, the remaining 86 per cent are employed in the many service industries: wholesaling and retailing (15 per cent), healthcare (11 per cent), construction (9 per cent), education and training (8 per cent), the professions (8 per cent), hospitality (7 per cent), public administration (6 per cent), financial and business services (6 per cent), transport (5 per cent) and many more.

Another reason I can be sure most of the jobs created indirectly by mining are in the services sector is that, for at least the past 40 years, all the net increase in national employment has come from the services sector.

Am I touching a nerve here? A lot of people are uncomfortable about the mining boom because they see it as temporary and they see digging stuff out of the ground as a pretty unsophisticated way to make a living. What do we do when it's over and what else do we do to make a buck?

It's true the sky-high prices we're getting at present won't last, but nor will they crash back to what we used to get. And we'll have a much bigger mining industry selling a lot more of the stuff than we used to. They may be non-renewable resources, but we've got a mighty lot of 'em.

What else can we do? What most of us have always done: sell services to one another and to foreigners. In these days of the information and communication revolution, most of the highly skilled, highly paid jobs are in the services sector. Those who find this intangibility discomforting are hankering after a bygone century.

It is true, however, that we must ensure we end up with something to show for this boom and that too much of the huge profit being made doesn't just end up in the hands of the mining industry's owners (about 80 per cent of whom are foreign). After all, the minerals they're mining are owned by all Australians, not the miners.

That's why it's good to see Julia Gillard's profit-based mining tax finally being passed by the House of Representatives, even though Tony Abbott's mindless opposition to it allowed the three big foreign mining companies to butcher the tax.

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Federal Police Investigation of political favours against News Ltd

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:21:00 +0000

FEDERAL police are investigating allegations that News Ltd offered a then-serving federal senator a ''special relationship'' involving favourable coverage if he crossed the floor on a vote of financial interest to the company.

The investigation was sparked by a statement given to them by the former Nationals senator, Bill O'Chee, who alleges a News Ltd executive said he would be ''taken care of'' if he crossed the floor.

The Herald has seen the nine-page statement, written by Mr O'Chee last month, after he was approached by a federal police agent inquiring into the matter.

The inquiry has been secret until today due to sensitivities around those involved.

Mr O'Chee, a Queensland senator between 1990 and 1999, has had a long and difficult relationship with the Murdoch press, which spent years reporting on his large parliamentary superannuation payout and an acrimonious split with his first wife.

The incident came to light during a recent conversation at an Australian airport between Mr O'Chee and a sitting MP, involving the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

The MP said they doubted anything similar would be unearthed in Australia's independent media inquiry. Mr O'Chee then relayed the incident.

The conversation was brought to the attention of the federal police last month. The matter is being investigated by the special references unit which deals with sensitive political inquiries.

Mr O'Chee has given a statement to the federal police. Yesterday a police spokesman confirmed an investigation had begun on November 4.

The allegations centre on proposed legislation regarding the creation of digital television in Australia, a bill called the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Act.

News, Fairfax - the publisher of the Herald - Telstra and Optus opposed the legislation because it proposed to give free-to-air broadcasters up to six new channels each free as part of the move to digital television.

It also proposed a ban on new TV stations for 10 years, protecting the existing operators.

In 1998 the Senate was finely balanced with two independents - Labor defector Mal Colston and Brian Harradine - holding the key to whether the bill would pass. The Howard government supported it, Labor had said it would oppose it.

Mr O'Chee was on the Senate committee involved in scrutinising the bill and was seen as a weak link in Coalition support for the bill as he had previously crossed the floor on other bills.

In the end, Labor secured some amendments and supported the legislation, making the independents irrelevant.

But there was a frenzy of lobbying before the bill arrived in the Senate, with the vote expected to go to the wire.

Mr O'Chee's statement says that in mid-1998 he received an invitation to lunch with a senior News Ltd executive and a lobbyist. The invitation was conveyed by the then state president of the Nationals, David Russell. Both men agreed it would not be proper to meet during the state election campaign then in progress, but agreed to a lunch afterwards.

Soon after the election on June 13 Mr O'Chee and Mr Russell arrived for lunch at one of Brisbane's most exclusive restaurants, Pier 9. By coincidence, Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Rupert, and Chris Mitchell, the then editor of The Courier Mail, were having lunch at another table.

When the Herald contacted Lachlan Murdoch yesterday he said through a spokesman that he could not recall the lunch.

Mitchell, who now edits The Australian, said he recalled a lunch with Mr Murdoch during which they encountered Mr

O'Chee but could not recall the presence of the News executive.

The News executive and the lobbyist declined to comment.

Mr Russell has also provided a statement which confirms the meeting and those present. While the Herald has not seen this statement, it is understood Mr Russell does not recall any improper offers being made.

During the meeting, Mr O'Chee said, the News executive argued that the digital conversion bill needed to be defeated because it would bankrupt regional free broadcasters which could not afford to convert to digital.

''I felt that these arguments were made up because News Corporation had no financial interest in non-pay television broadcasting,'' Mr O'Chee's statement says.

''[I] believed that News Corporation's real interest was the effect the digital conversion legislation would cause to its Foxtel business venture, because it would reduce the amount of people who would want to subscribe for these services.'' The executive then said that while it would be controversial for Mr O'Chee to cross the floor, ''we will take care of you''.

If Mr O'Chee was criticised for his decision, News would use its Australian newspapers to look after him, including running his media releases and opinion pieces. ''[He] also told me we would have a 'special relationship', where I would have editorial support from News Corporation's newspapers, not only with respect to the digital conversion legislation, but for 'any other issues' too.

''I believed that [he] was clearly implying that News Corporation would run news stories or editorial content concerning any issue I wanted if I was to cross the floor and oppose the digital conversion legislation.''

At this point, according to the statement, Mr Murdoch and Mr Mitchell rose from their table and came over. The statement says Mr Murdoch was surprised to see the News Ltd executive and said, ''I didn't know you were having lunch here today''. The executive then told Mr Murdoch: ''This is Bill O'Chee. He's going to help us with digital TV.''

Mr Murdoch and Mr Mitchell then left, and the lunch broke up soon after, with Mr O'Chee promising to consider the News executive's arguments.

A week later he called the executive and told him he would not cross the floor. ''After this conversation, it became almost impossible for me to get anything published in the Queensland newspapers which News Corporation controlled, even though I had been able to do so before the lunch meeting.''

Mr O'Chee lost his Senate position three months later.

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Arundhati Roy: Occupy Wall Street is "So Important Because It is in the Heart of Empire" @democracynow

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:18:00 +0000

Mumia Abu Jamal on the Occupy global movement

Renowned Indian writer and global justice activist Arundhati Roy is preparing to address Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday. She recently joined us in the studio to talk about the Occupy movement. "What they are doing becomes so important because it is in the heart of empire, or what used to be empire," Roy said. "And to criticize and to protest against the model that the rest of the world is aspiring to is a very important and a very serious business. So...it makes me very, very hopeful that after a long time you’re seeing some nascent political, real political anger here." She also discussed her new book, "Walking with the Comrades," a chronicle of her time in the forests of India alongside rebel guerrillas who are resisting a brutal military campaign by the Indian government.

Death, cricket and Peter Roebuck @theroar

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:08:00 +0000

Death and cricket are constant companions. In March 2007, in the West Indies, it was suggested that murder had taken place when Pakistan’s cricket coach Bob Woolmer was strangled.

A Jamaican jury’s open verdict made matters more enigmatic than ever.

The more one looks at cricket and its sad demise in terms of reputation – weakened over the years by the spot-fixing charges and match-fixing designs – vulnerability is evident.

The calm, indestructible cricketer, just as the game, is very much a fiction.

The game absorbs; it is meditative, entailing large periods of glum reflection, sessions of intense pondering in such positions as the ever-baffling silly point.

It is the game of supreme guile and masterful stratagems, a game that conceals as much as it reveals.
To instances of murder can be added suicide. Somerset and England batsman Harold Gimblett scored 123 on debut at number eight in a mere eighty minutes in 1935 after having his bat replaced by the renowned hitter Arthur Wellard.

‘I don’t think much of your bat, cock. Borrow one of mine’ (ESPN, Sep 24).

The innings won him the Lawrence Trophy for the fastest hundred of that season.

Gimblett proved a masterful stroke-maker on the field and a deflated, difficult individual off it. His anxiety was hampered by the unimaginative selectors, who were only generous to give him three Test matches – two against India in 1936 and a solitary show against the West Indies at Lord’s in 1939.
A life of mental illness and self-doubt came to an end in 1978, when he took his own life.

David Frith’s gloomy study ‘By His Own Hand’ noted the passing of at least 85 top cricketers in that manner, figures dissolved by crushing depression, hopelessness and paranoia.

The perplexing finger spinner Jack Iverson, and Turnip-Head Trott were such men. The Victorians were also very much in that mould – adopting suicide as an emancipative move from loneliness (Andrew Stoddart) or hypochondria (Arthur Shrewsbury).

Stoddart himself was something of a freak of nature – 485 for Hampstead against a hapless Stoics side on August 4 1886 being his stunning highlight, not to mention 10 rugby union internationals for England.

The late Peter Roebuck himself reviewed Frith’s book for the Sydney Morning Herald in December 1990. And he quoted those fateful lines: ‘Who hath gazed full in the face of beauty, Doth himself so unto death deliver.’

When the news of Roebuck’s demise in Cape Town came through on Saturday, intrigue came galloping with it.

An Indian news anchor suggested an element of ‘murkiness’ in his death. There was supposedly an officer in the room of the Southern Sun Hotel at Newlands when the fateful decision was made.
He was being questioned by Western Cape provincial police over an alleged sexual assault on a Zimbabwean Facebook friend.

Cricket tends to invite its own guile and giddy speculation. It demands it. Through the glass darkly, we find an intensely shy man who proved overly enthusiastic about standards, a person who would retreat to write his columns – firstly in long hand, dining alone in a simple restaurant.

This led to Roebuck blotting his copy book at stages. For one thing, it did feature a conviction of common assault against three South African 19-year olds in 2001 at Taunton Crown Court.

The cane was procured when the unfortunate youngsters proved unable to meet Roebuck’s exacting standards.

‘Obviously I misjudged the mood and that was my mistake and my responsibility, and I accept that.’
In terms of Roebuck’s own judgment, speculation of what wounded him, and those last minutes when was still alive, will remain. Did he depart life, as Cicero pondered over the younger Cato, rejoicing in having found a reason for dying?

Such questions remain unanswerable and deservedly so. We have a delightful, insightful oeuvre on the most sublime and enigmatic of sports, and we only regret that it was cut short.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

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Peter Roebuck - we hardly knew you, but you told the game like no other

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:13:00 +0000

Roebuck plunges to death from hotel window after police questioning

Tragedy far greater than 47 all out has struck cricket, and this should be a Roebuck column. But it isn't one, and can't be one, and never will be one again because the tragedy is Peter Roebuck. He is dead.

Two days ago, on the last morning of that bizarre Test at Newlands, he was at the coffee urn, talking intently with Allan Border about solutions for Australian cricket. Their coffees were cold. When the match ended, he filed his column and, since lunch was laid, he sat down to eat it and to mull over intractable problems in South African cricket with Tony Irish from the SA Cricketers' Association. He seemed his usual self, whatever that was.

The second-last person to see him alive was the ABC's Jim Maxwell, who had grown as close to him as anyone did. The last person was a policeman.

In these glimpses there were clues to Roebuck, cricketer, writer, broadcaster, coach, philanthropist, educator but above all, mystery. Clues must do; it is doubtful if anyone on earth knew him intimately. He chose it to be that way.

It is possible to say where he came from, but not where he belonged. After moving from England he kept houses in Bondi and Pietermaritzburg. He lived in three worlds because it suited him not to be tied down in one.

He was English by birth; in fact he captained England A once. He was an Australian citizen who cherished his work for Fairfax and the ABC. He played the Pom in Australia and the maverick in England. But he perhaps found his life's work in South Africa, where he created a community of 40 underprivileged South African and Zimbabwean boys and spent pretty much every cent he earned putting them through school. He talked endlessly about them. They were on his mind at the end.

Roebuck was eccentric. He was a tall, spare, fit man who lived an austere, almost ascetic life, not indulging in such fripperies as deodorant. His trademark was a tatty straw hat with a wide brim. It was one of few possessions found in his hotel room. On anyone else, that hat would have been an absurd affectation.

He was complex, intense, taut, edgy, opinionated, a little manic, mostly cheerful, sometimes broody. He was a contrarian, not for the sake of it, but because he always had another view. He spoke quickly, in a clipped tone, needing to get the thoughts out so that more could follow; his broadcast voice was his street voice. He did not do small talk, ever.

Cricket was his metier, but it did not confine him. He was widely read and supremely intelligent. He was also self-possessed, yet drew people to him. Women liked him, but often he was awkward in their company.

He was warm in his own way. Speaking to Fairfax's Chloe Saltau one day, he pointed to Shane Brown, the MCC's communications manager, and said: ''He has a nice face. You should marry him.'' She did.

He was social in cricket hours, solitary out of them. When the cricket caravaners headed out at night, mostly he would go to a cafe by himself, sit in a corner and read a book. He had the Pimpernel's ability to absent himself from a party suddenly without anyone seeing him leave.

He was a loyal friend who felt the pain of others as acutely as only the highly intelligent do. But he did not express empathy easily. He was flawed; of course he was. He fought to reconcile himself to his flaws, and it was the central drama of his life. He was tormented as only genius can be. The circumstances of his death attest to it.

He was estranged from his family and rarely mentioned them. He played for and captained a Somerset team that included such strong-willed luminaries as Viv Richards, Joel Garner and Ian Botham. He fell out with Botham, bitterly, and the repercussions lasted years. He excited spite towards him as only those who are different can. Botham delighted in marshalling malign forces in England against him.

He was a dedicated but dour opening bat. He made a century against the all-conquering 1989 Australians, but it took him all day.

Intermittently, he was touted as England captain. He did captain an English XI one day, in a match against the lowly Netherlands - and lost. There was a second match and England won it, he always pointed out.

He understood cricket and cricketers. He would spot the deficiency in a field setting, or a kink in a batsman's technique, and explain it. He wrote columns and books on cricket while still playing it. His writing was distinct: fluent, perceptive, vibrant, sometimes whimsical, almost a genre. He was stinging in his critiques, but affectionate in his appreciations and wise in his perspectives. He wrote much, yet no two pieces ever were alike.

For years, he wrote his stories on the back of scrap paper in a longhand scrawl that was illegible even to him. The shape of the story would become apparent to him as he dictated it down the phone to a copytaker.

At least twice, to meet urgent deadlines, he filed off the top of his head, after a fractious World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka in Kolkota in 1996, and when Ian Healy hit a six to deliver Australia victory in a tight Test at Port Elizabeth in 1997. Both were instant masterpieces. Eventually, but long after everyone else, he acquired a laptop and a mobile phone. He was pleasantly surprised by them.

And suddenly, impossibly, he is no more. In the small hours of Sunday, in the foyer of a hotel in Newlands, while police and forensic experts went about their business, there was a wake. It consisted of Maxwell, Drew Morphett, Geoff Lawson, this reporter and another. We talked about the part of his life we knew, because about Roebuck, everyone knew only a part. We babbled, really, because we didn't understand. We never will. But dimly, we already knew this: covering cricket will never be the same again.

Every column contained its gems - but when Peter really had his eye in, he sparkled like no other writer

"[Viv] Richards will not wear a helmet; he will not give the bowler that much credit." Photo: Bruce Postle

We could have filled our entire section with highlights from Peter Roebuck's articles. Patrick Smithers compiled this selection from a memorable career.

HAROLD LARWOOD
At 85, sprightly, humble, and still speaking in a broad Nottingham accent, Harold Larwood, scourge of Australia, is alive and well and living in Sydney.
Somewhat short-sighted, he potters around home in his slippers, listening to Harry Secombe and brass band records, polishing his mementoes, sipping tea with Lois, his ''missus'' of 63 years, chatting to such children and grandchildren as pop by.

An old man in repose, his battles lost and won, Larwood lives in a small and comfortable house with nothing grand about it, simply a house in a row of like-minded houses. He lives without pretension and fuss, in his own way and on his own terms, happy with his lot and determined to live on his merits, not on his name. It is this which makes him the most impressive former cricketer I have met.

ALLAN BORDER
A glint-eyed toughie, black hat and stubbled chin, the fellow who plays poker and spits in the spittoon.

MERV HUGHES
Watching from the safety of the press box, it was sometimes difficult to see how Mervyn Hughes took his wickets. Facing him on a slow pitch cleared the matter up.

SHANE WARNE
At the academy, Warne was a brazen dumpling. He did not look much like a cricketer for the supposedly modern era. From the start, though, he was fascinated with the intricacies and possibilities of spin bowling. Nonetheless, it was impossible to tell him apart from other promising youngsters. But Warne kept improving. He just did not stop. He relished the limelight and was fiercely competitive. Warne is full of bluff. His annual discovery of a new ball is proof enough of that. He understands the value of theatre and the rewards that await a man prepared to lead his life in public.

VIV RICHARDS
He talks about the ability of boxers to destroy an opponent before a fight. He describes the way each boxer stares, forcing lesser men into unsettling introspection. Richards studied the disdainful glares, the upright, confident appearance of champion boxers and realised that they betrayed not a glimmer of doubt, not a hint of vulnerability.

That is why Richards will not wear a helmet; he will not give the bowler that much credit. It is not that he is immodest - he rarely mentions his achievements, even in private - it is simply that he recognises that, to be the best, he must dominate.

PONTING AS A TEENAGER
Ricky Ponting may be the best thing since thick-cut marmalade. He is 17, wears a tiny, defiant goatee beard, a shadow of a moustache, has a pale face and feet that fairly skim across the turf. Already he is a batsman of intuition, power and confidence, one with a sense of stillness and space and a glint in his eye that belies his calf-country, Launceston, the country cousin of a country cousin.

SHIVNARINE CHANDERPAUL
As Shivnarine Chanderpaul, a waif with a pixie's face, was stroking his way to 62 on a Test debut made on his home pitch in Georgetown, Guyana, a female voice cried out across the ground: ''If this Chanderpaul think he marry a foreigner, he don think again.''

Another woman, selling biscuits and sweets by the side of a potholed road, said: ''I like dis boy, he so young and he play all de shots.'' Significantly, too, it was the Afro-Caribbeans who invaded the pitch as this frail teenager of Indian extraction reached his 50. Guyana has taken Chanderpaul to its heart.
He is a local lad, born into a humble fisherman's family in a fishing village, Unity, an hour's drive along the sugarbeet coast of a country whose population hugs the sea, the interior being thick forest. Unity is a subsistence fishing village, its wooden houses are built on stilts and its hospital and leper colony closed long ago, times having been hard in Guyana. Apart from a small field it has no sporting facilities, yet Unity has produced two Test cricketers, Colin Croft and Chanderpaul.

STEVE WAUGH'S LAST BALL OF THE DAY CENTURY AGAINST ENGLAND AT THE SCG, 2003
Steve Waugh's remarkable innings yesterday started with his team in trouble and fast bowlers pawing the ground. Has anyone heard this story before? Justin Langer had miscued a hook and a relieved Yorkshireman held the catch at fine leg as Australia sank to 3-56, a predicament commonplace years ago but unusual in these days of flourishing opening pairs. No sooner had the chance been taken than a familiar figure began to thread his way through the crowd gathered in front of the green-roofed pavilion, a man who comes to life in a crisis. Nor did it take him long to reach the sunlight. Waugh has always hated a fuss, and put on his gloves and started marching to the crease long before Langer's slow withdrawal had been completed. As far as Waugh was concerned, it was business as usual. He has played his cricket as a craftsman and a competitor, never as a romantic. It was 3.26 on a Friday afternoon and there was work to be done.

At Waugh's appearance, an ovation started to spread around the ground, for this was a moment of sporting significance, possibly the last appearance of a respected warrior. By stumps, the warm reception had been replaced by a roar, for Waugh had convinced the packed crowd he had no intention of going quietly with an unbeaten 102, reaching his century off the last ball of the day.

THE AUSTRALIAN GAME
Australian cricket might remain frustratingly Anglo-Saxon in some ways, but it does not exclude anyone and its heroes are down-to-earth characters. Beer is drunk at the matches, and working men's clothes are worn. A man who scores runs or takes wickets rises through the ranks. A fellow in a bad patch falls back. At practices, players bat in order of arrival and never mind that a first-grader must wait his turn. Crucially, the culture is strong. Even the sixth team plays competitively, with short legs and team talks and so forth.

THE SCG TEST AUSTRALIA v INDIA, 2008
If Cricket Australia cares a fig for the tattered reputation of our national team in our national sport, it will not for a moment longer tolerate the sort of arrogant and abrasive conduct seen from the captain and his senior players in the past few days. It was the ugliest performance by an Australian side for 20 years. The only surprising part of it is that the Indians have not already packed and gone home.

ZIMBABWE
A letter has arrived from a rising young cricketer in Zimbabwe, a well-educated black player eager to serve his country. It is also a letter from the betrayed, from a cricketing community let down by greedy, arrogant, hate-filled elders.

Of course it is idle to suppose that the opportunists running Zimbabwe Cricket might care about anything except themselves. But their paymasters, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, ought to rethink a close relationship that brings shame on their house. Perhaps, too, obedient television commentators with international voices will remember they are responsible for confronting tyranny.

THE PRESS BOX
The press box in Australia had no pretension or pecking order and this newcomer was treated on his merits, and never mind that he was from the Old Dart, had been to Cambridge and had spent most of his cricket career blocking furiously. By and large, the English cricket writers were unpleasant and miserable.

CORRUPTION
Never forget that at the time of his criminal activities, Salman Butt was captaining his country. Never forget that he was at the pinnacle of his career and at the top of a huge cricket community in a nation of 180 million people. Never forget that cricket is one of the few consolations available to the poor of that nation. Never forget that Pakistan is a troubled country with a fractured history and that cricket is its national game. The scale of the betrayal is numbing.

HIS LAST COLUMN
The team for the first Test against New Zealand has become a lot harder to predict. Mind you, a lot can happen in a week. It just did.

Legends lament loss of 'premier journalist'

STEVE WAUGH last night led a quartet of Australian captains in paying tribute to Peter Roebuck, saying cricket had lost its finest writer. Roebuck, 55, died at the hotel he was staying at in Cape Town, where he had covered Australia's first Test defeat to South Africa on Friday.

Waugh, who played alongside Roebuck at Somerset in 1988, said Roebuck was ''without a doubt … cricket's premier journalist''.

''He was never afraid to tackle the big issues in world cricket and would often be a lone voice if he believed strongly in the cause,'' Waugh said. ''As a captain I would always be keen to read Peter's take on the previous day's play. He had the unique knowledge, instincts and gut feel that enabled him to interpret body language, detect the subtle duels and tussles that would often be a precursor to a more defining moment.

''He was able to delve deeper into the technique and mindset of players due to his successful career as an opening batsman and captain for Somerset. His presence and views will be sorely missed.''
Mark Taylor, whom Waugh succeeded in 1999, said Roebuck's opinion was greatly respected as it was based on nearly 40 years' involvement in the game.

''He didn't write articles or say things which he thought would make himpopular,'' said Taylor, who watched Roebuck score an unbeat- en century for Somerset against Australia in a first-class game during the 1989 Ashes tour.

Roebuck wrote what he thought about the game, Taylor said. ''Not every player, me included, agreed with what he said all the time. We did know it wasn't based on a whim, it was based on a lot of experience.''

Greg Chappell said while Roebuck would be remembered fondly by ABC listeners and Herald readers, many would not be aware of the philanthropic work that he did with the charity The LBW Trust - Learning for a Better World.

''Something like 250 kids in cricket-playing countries around the world, underprivileged kids, are being educated through the LBW Trust, and that was from his vision,'' Chappell said.
''He had a very distinctive style and was a well-thought-of commentator and writer on the game.''
Another ex-Australian captain, Ian Chappell, said he enjoyed Roebuck's company not only for his insights into cricket but for his commentary on the game's pressing issues. Roebuck was also a campaigner for human rights and social justice in countries such as Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.

''We didn't talk so much about the game, more about things around the game, like corruption - he always had pretty good contacts - and things like Zimbabwe, which he felt pretty strongly about,'' he said.

''We'd talk about players a bit, and I always made a point of seeking him out because I enjoyed his opinions … he was a damn good writer, a colourful writer and he brought other things in life into it.''
Former Test paceman and commentator Geoff Lawson, who called the dramatic Newlands Test with Roebuck, said he was stunned by his colleague's death.

''A strong, independent, informed and inquiring mind, he will be missed by many,'' Lawson said.
''His death is a complete shock and unbearably premature.''

Cricket Australia's chief executive, James Sutherland, said Roebuck had been with the Australian team in Cape Town only hours before he died.

''He brought particular insight to his commentary based on his lengthy experience as a first-class cricketer and captain, and combined that with a singular flair for the written and spoken word,'' Sutherland said.

''He spoke his mind frankly and while one didn't necessarily always have to agree, you always respected what he had to say.''

The federal Minister for Sport, Mark Arbib, praised Roebuck for challenging the conventional wisdom with his fearless prose.

''A lot of [the] time I disagreed with his views, but I never doubted his fine intellect and passion for the game,'' Senator Arbib said.

The impact of Roebuck's death was felt around the cricket world. The Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle said he was ''devastated''. ''Peter Roebuck was meant to write about cricket in the manner Sachin Tendulkar was born to play it,'' Bhogle wrote on Twitter.

The riddle of Roebuck, who gave us so much yet gave so little away

Watching from the press box in 1993 ... Peter Roebuck. Photo: Ray Kennedy

Cricket's man of letters counselled others against getting too caught up in the game he spent his life playing and illuminating.

Peter Roebuck worked with dozens of young cricket journalists. If he thought highly of them, he would say, ''Don't get bogged down in this. The world is bigger than cricket, and you should see more of it.''

Of course, many stayed. Journalism is a profession, and the true professionals stayed because they enjoyed being good at what they did. Those who took Roebuck's advice, on the other hand, were left with a question: If this man of such intellectual depth and curiosity and the erudition to convert it into a luminous body of work thought that he knows nothing who knows nothing but cricket, what was he still doing in it?

This was the riddle of Roebuck. He was a born mentor who counselled as he wrote, with wisdom and an unimpeded view into the core of your being; yet it was impossible to know what he saw when he turned those eyes on himself.

A few months ago, I met the Somerset writer Stephen Chalke, one of the few to write in the same league as Roebuck. We were agreeing that Roebuck, like the great champions, was enjoying an Indian summer in the past three years. Chalke said, ''Peter could have been anything, a professor of literature or a High Court judge or a political leader.''

Roebuck came down from Cambridge as a lawyer, but became a teacher, a writer, a broadcaster and a cricketer. He played 335 first-class games for Somerset, 298 one-day matches, and more than 100 in a lively second career at Devon; many Australians first came across him when he began writing cricket articles in The Sydney Morning Herald while coaching and teaching at Sydney's Cranbrook School in the mid-1980s. He still played, and for a young cricketer he was a revelation. You met batsmen who ended up in Sheffield Shield and Test cricket, but no Waugh or Taylor could teach you as much as Roebuck. We had a gifted outswing bowler who got ball after ball pitching on the stumps and swinging late past the off-bail. Yet first slip might as well have kept his hands in his pockets. Roebuck didn't touch a thing. His discipline opened a window into how real first-class cricketers batted. He had no off-stump, really, because the moment the bowler had one going at top of off, Roebuck would tuck it behind square leg. He didn't make his runs fast, but you could bowl for a week, and the only person who decided when Roebuck got out would be Roebuck.

As a writer, he cleaved more to the amateur tradition than the professional, a Ranji or Fry when his colleagues were wage-earning Shrewsburys. He didn't use a computer until recently. Once he'd given it an amused look, as he might a front-loading washing machine, and went back to his old wringer. He believed something of his daydreamer's art was captured in the process of scribbling on a pad and dictating, with unflappable patience and courtesy, to the Fairfax copytakers. But he wasn't a dogmatist. Getting into strife when a copytaker once misheard ''deceit'' for ''defeat'' did not convert him to keyboards. He didn't want to put the copytakers out of work. But, when the company was phasing them out anyway, and when he discovered that typing didn't dissolve his ideas but even enabled him to refine them, he became a wry late adopter. He even had a personal website, never updated, in fact one of the internet's least helpful, but still he liked to mention it.

Roebuck was as great a broadcaster as he was a writer. Radio returned him to that immediacy between thought and expression. Cricket has been lucky with broadcasters, but never luckier than when Roebuck was painting play from the inside out.

He got inside without trying to court players' company. This could make him frustrating to work with, because News Limited's cricket reporters had comments men such as Mike Coward, Ron Reed and Robert Craddock who were good for a news tip. Roebuck had little idea what news was. The way he saw cricket transcended the day's cut and thrust. Getting close to players was not his focal length; he could see all he needed from the boundary, and what he lost in being outside the loop he more than made up for through intelligence. From a distance, he was more spot-on than anyone.

Did he know himself as clearly? His taste in cricketers tended to the solipsistic: he detested the showy, the shallow, the lazy, the smug. He saw no glamour in wasted talent. Having suffered from class snobbery, he absolutely detested it, and nothing could rile him more, after he became an Australian citizen, than to be described as an Englishman of any kind, even a former one. No reader doubted his pet hates, but they had a consistency. He could put Marylebone and the Zimbabwe Cricket Board in the same category because, no matter the superficial differences, Roebuck saw a unifying class prejudice and political toadyism. You knew, when he extolled the astringencies of early mornings, cold showers, hard runs and practice, his words were shaped by his battles with Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Joel Garner at Somerset in the 1980s. For many years he and Botham were like a long-divorced couple, exaggerating each other's failings, projecting them on to others. Roebuck's frustration with jazzed-up players such as Chris Gayle and Brian Lara seemed to be displaced feelings for Botham. But did Roebuck know he was writing about himself? Hard to say.

It was always hard to say, because there was a carapace of Roebuckness that not even his best friends could get through. It was the one remnant of his English upbringing that he couldn't shake off. He was instinctively generous - through counsel or guidance or financial aid, or more formally, through friends in coaching or the LBW Trust, a global charity for which Roebuck was a driving force. When he knew he was needed, generosity was his reflex. He helped more than he knew. Yet he was embarrassed by emotions and a hard man to convince of his own good deeds. He made us laugh very much more often than we could make him laugh. Sometimes, as he said, he forgot.

As a cricket writer, he was sui generis. He fitted neither the professional nor the amateur tradition. He was an educator who would have hated to be seen as a pedagogue, an artist who was more comfortable in the audience than on the stage. Was cricket not a big enough world for him? I think for Roebuck cricket was akin to a religion, not as a system of belief but as a series of texts that, if studied closely enough, could reveal some of life's secrets. The game had no importance as a vehicle for celebrity or career, but it could offer a portal into a greater world that he had the gift of sharing with his readers, full of magic and mystery, liable to change from black to white and back again in a moment. Chalke thought Roebuck could have been a professor or a judge, but concluded, ''I'm glad he does what he does, because we're the ones who've benefited.''

* Support is available for anyone who may be distressed by calling Lifeline 131 114, Mensline 1300 789 978, Kids Helpline 1800 551 800.

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Des Hasler Manly's two time premiership winning coach sacked

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:32:00 +0000

Hasler was controversially stood down by Manly's board on Wednesday over a series of alleged “serious breaches” of contract.

Hasler is accused of enticing staff to Canterbury while under contract to Manly.

Hasler denied the allegations, however the Manly board claim to have evidence to the contrary and after meeting on Friday terminated his contract

“We believed he has been actively involved in taking staff to the Bulldogs,” Manly chairman Scott Penn said.
Hasler, 50, was contracted to the Sea Eagles for 2012.

However with the announcement he will join Canterbury in 2013 and defection of key staff members the Sea Eagles board has opted to oust Hasler for assistant coach Geoff Toovey.

Toovey said he did not expect his relationship with Hasler to be tarnished as a result of the incident.

Toovey, who spent five years as an assistant under Hasler, will take the reins as head coach 12 months sooner than expect having been named as Hasler’s successor for 2013.

“From a playing group perspective they are very comfortable with Geoff,” Penn said.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done but it should be a seamless transition.”

Hasler has an “anti-poaching clause” in his contract that covers all staff and players however having been officially released Hasler is free to join the Bulldogs.

Hasler is expected to join the Bulldogs next week where Jim Dymock will revert to being Hasler’s assistant despite being named coach for 2012.

Hasler enlisted the services solicitor Danny Eid when he was initially stood down and may follow through with legal action against the Sea Eagles.

“We hope not but it’s his decision,” Penn said of the possibility of further action taken by Hasler.

Penn confirmed that the Manly board contacted Canterbury to seek whether the club had any interest in moving Hasler to Belmore a year earlier than expected.

“We did speak to the Bulldogs just to see if there was an appetite there,” Penn said.

“It was reported we offered him to them but that wasn’t the case.

“Having not spoken to Des, it was not our place to offer him.”

Penn said he makes no apologies for attempting to allow Hasler to defend back-to-back premierships however when the board got wind of foul play they had no choice but to act.

Hasler took control of the Sea Eagles in 2004 with his eight-year tenure coming to a bitter end ironically on Remembrance Day.

Des Hasler has issued a detailed statement addressing his shock sacking by Manly.

Des Hasler’s statement in full

I have not acted in any way improperly. Despite three requests being made to the Chairman of the Board of Directors since I was stood down on Wednesday of this week, I have still not been provided with any proper particularization of what it is that I am supposed to have done.

In fact, the Board’s lawyers did not even have the courtesy to respond to my most recent correspondence. It would have been simple, had the allegations had any substance at all, to provide me with the information to which I am legally entitled.

One of the allegations contained in the Breach Notice was that I had “disparaged the Board”, yet when I met with the Chairman on 10 November, the day after the Notice had been issued, he told me that he wasn’t pressing that.

The fact that the Chairman, and the Board, have been unable to provide me with the information to which I am entitled, along with the fact that one of the allegations which was made was withdrawn by the Chairman less than 24 hours later, provide the clearest possible indication that the allegations made against me are without any foundation whatsoever.

It would have been a very simple exercise to tell me how it is that I am supposed to have acted improperly.

I first approached the Board of Directors about my contract in late 2010. At that time I was contracted to the Club until the end of season 2011 but with an option for season 2012.

However, I proposed that I be provided with a new contract to allow me to remain at the Club until at least the end of season 2014 but the Board of Directors flatly rejected my proposal and expressed a desire to wait pending the team’s performance in season 2011.

Earlier this season, in about April, I was approached by the Board to discuss my contract. However, by June this year I had no firm offer from the Club and in these circumstances I exercised the option to allow me to remain at the Club for season 2012.

The negotiations continued in the course of which I continually expressed a desire to remain at the Club beyond season 2012. Quite apart from my own personal desire, it was obviously important to have stability at the Club so as to attract prospective signings and to re-sign players.

Players want to know who is going to coach them. I was told by the Club that my salary for 2012 would not be substantially increased over and above what I was paid for season 2011 and no agreement which was acceptable to me could be reached in relation to my salary for 2013 and 2014.

I then approached the Chairman of the Club and in view of the Club’s inability to provide a satisfactory offer for seasons 2013 and 2014, I sought a release from the exercise of my option for season 2012.

The Chairman informed me that no release would be granted and that if necessary, the Club would litigate the matter.

It was in these circumstances that I negotiated with the Bulldogs to become the Head Coach for seasons 2013, 2014 and beyond.

I have known Ken (Arthurson) for a long time but I don’t think that it is at all helpful to comment upon what he and others have said. I know in my own mind that I have not acted improperly.

Ken and the other Manly greats who have commented are obviously not directly involved and not aware of the facts. Whether they choose to accept what I say or not is a matter for them.

The Manly Board have unlawfully terminated my contract and I will be seeking further legal advice regarding my remedies in relation to that unlawful conduct.

As for my immediate future, I will be speaking with Todd Greenberg over the next few days. I am obviously looking forward to coaching at the Bulldogs.

I wish to thank the players and staff at Manly who have shown me great loyalty and support, particularly over the last several weeks. I wish them the best.

Because of the possibility of litigation in the immediate future, I will not be making any further comment.

FACTBOX ON OUTGOING MANLY SEA EAGLES COACH DES HASLER AND INCOMING COACH GEOFF TOOVEY

DES HASLER

Playing Career
Position(s): Halfback, Hooker, Five-eighth
Clubs: Penrith, Manly-Warringah, Hull, Western Suburbs
First grade appearances: 287
Premierships: 2 (Manly 1987, 1996)
Representative appearances:
NSW: 13
Australia: 12

Coaching Career
Manly 2004-2011
Record: 130-90-0 59.1%
NSW (assistant) 2003
Achievements
* Coached Manly to NRL premierships in 2008 and 2011
* Coached Manly to World Cup Challenge title in 2009
* Coached Manly to 7 NRL finals series (2005-2011) in 8 years as head coach

GEOFF TOOVEY

Playing Career
Position(s): Halfback, Hooker
Clubs: Manly-Warringah, Northern Eagles
First grade appearances: 286
Premierships: 1 (Manly, 1996)
Representative appearances:
NSW: 16
Australia: 13

Coaching Career
Manly (assistant) 2004-2011

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Keating's 'mace' spray @QandA

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:46:00 +0000

Former prime minister Paul Keating has likened ABC TV's Q&A program to the Punch and Judy show, saying he wouldn't be seen dead on it.

Fronting a Brisbane audience to promote his new book last night, Mr Keating said Q&A sometimes had reasonable panellists but often featured a "ragtag" bunch.

Mr Keating questioned whether government ministers should even participate in the weekly current affairs-focused show, saying they sometimes shared a stage with people "of no note whatsoever".

"I wouldn't be caught dead on it," Mr Keating said.

"If I was the prime minister I would not let federal ministers go on that program. You just wash the government through mud every time you turn up."

Mr Keating also had a barb for the presenter, Tony Jones.

"If you go on Tony Jones's [show] you need a hip flask of mace," he said.

"Imagine sharing a program with him."

Mr Keating made the lively remarks as he fronted a sold-out event at the Brisbane Powerhouse as part of his book tour.

The Labor prime minister from 1991 to 1996 said he did not agree with former federal minister Lindsay Tanner's criticism of the media for not properly covering debates about public policy.
Mr Keating, who touted the Hawke-Keating government's reforms including floating the Australian dollar and opening up the economy, insisted big public policy ideas generally gathered their own momentum.

"Those were big ideas and if you market them and tell the story properly you can cut through the static," he said.

"I think the static rises when the volume of the idea is turned down."

But Mr Keating expressed concern at the demands on leaders today to front numerous radio shows and media appearances each day.

The trend started with his successor, John Howard, and was continued by Kevin Rudd - the ousted Labor prime minister who won the 2007 election.

"You just did not owe them that much, but Howard did it all the time," he said of multiple morning radio interviews.

"Howard changed the template.

"It was like the police minister appearing at the scene of every road smash.

"He was out there every day."

During his on-stage conversation with ABC journalist Richard Fidler, Mr Keating repeated his previous calls for Australia to embrace its place in Asia and become a republic.

He said Australians must think of their nation confidently and with self-respect, "not [as] some derivative show that belongs to Washington or the House of Windsor".

"Psychologically, Australia must be in Asia," he said.

"We must find our security in Asia, not from Asia."

Mr Keating also weighed in on the anti-corporate-greed Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spawned spin-offs around the world but has been accused of lacking clear goals.

He said his only surprise was that such protests in the United States had not appeared earlier, for example at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.

"In the United States between 1990 and today, real wages have not increased, whereas in Australia real wages have increased by 36 per cent," he said.

"If you were in the Democratic Party in America you would hang your head in shame [at the lack of progress]."

Mr Keating appeared at the Brisbane Writers Festival event to promote his new book, After Words: The Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches.

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Could Biomass Technology Help Commercialize Biochar?

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Efforts to coproduce biochar with biomass-fired electricity are progressing, but the power and agriculture sectors still have a lot to learn about each other.

A nascent biochar industry is emerging in connection with biomass power technologies that coproduce electricity and char via gasification and pyrolysis.

A single source of biomass could ostensibly create multiple revenue streams, with systems calibrated to produce more electricity, biochar or bio-oil when one is more profitable than the other.
Research shows biochar improves soil fertility, decreases water pollution and even mitigates heavy metals. The charcoal-like substance has enthusiastic support from researchers and the sustainability movement, but it has been slow to commercialize.
“This is a brand new industry with a chicken-and-egg problem,” says Kelpie Wilson, project development director of the International Biochar Initiative. “You have lots of research but not a lot of supplies.”

For now, however, large biomass power producers are neither equipped to create biochar nor are they interested in making it. The creation of biochar leaves less energy for power production. Also, there is no established market for biochar in industrial agriculture.

Supporters say biomass operators will soon see more revenue from biochar since organic farmers and garden centers are starting to demand it for soil blending. EPA clean water regulations could open nutrient credit exchanges to biochar, setting the stage for a biochar boom in agriculture and environmental mitigation.

Focus on Power Production

While those biochar markets evolve, pyrolysis and gasification operators are gaining ground with distributed energy systems that serve businesses in need of electricity and biomass disposal.
Pyrolysis entails heating woody biomass or manure in kilns with no oxygen. Gasification heats biomass with limited oxygen. Heat breaks down wood or manure, creating synthetic gas, or syngas, which can be burned for process heat or steam. Conventional biomass power combusts feedstock into ash; pyrolysis can convert biomass into a phosphorous-rich char that retains moisture in soil.
Phoenix Energy manufactures gasification systems that produce biochar while generating electricity with modified diesel engines. Its 500-kW system — the country’s first grid-tied gasifier with air permits — uses waste wood to generate 100 percent of electricity for a pallet company in Merced, Calif.

“We make a business out of this because it is an ROI-driven investment,” Phoenix Energy CEO Greg Stangl said.

The customer pays about 20 cents per kWh retail for electricity generated on site, while Phoenix Energy incurs about 6 cents per kWh in expenses for feedstock and operations. It earns about 11 cents per kWh wholesale by selling to the grid. Phoenix Energy is awaiting permits for two 1-MW systems that will use orchard trimmings to sell electricity to agriculture facilities in Northern California.
“You do not need a subsidy to make this work for that subset of customers who use power and have biomass fuel,” Stangl said.

That California business model would not necessarily work in states with lower rates.

Scalability of Biochar

Phoenix Energy generates 5 to 20 percent char by volume of woody biomass feedstock. The 500-kW system produces one ton of biochar per day, and that sells for less than $100. Competing systems can generate far more biochar, however.

“In dollar terms, it doesn’t even show up on the radar screen,” Stangl said. “I really want to believe that biochar will be more profitable but, until you start making $3,000 per ton, it’s worth more to make electricity.”

Biochar typically sells for $200 to $600 per ton, according to the International Biochar Initiative.
The biochar/biomass power industry could learn about scalability from the market for poultry litter and manure ash. Livestock waste ash lacks nitrogen but contains phosphorous, so it is sold as a fertilizer amendment.

Fibrowatt’s 55-MW plant in Minnesota creates 100,000 tons of ash from 600,000 tons of poultry litter every year. The ash sells for $90 per ton. Prices have fluctuated between $45 and more than $100. Still, the ash amounts to less than 20 percent of revenues.

“We’ll never build a plant based on the output of ash,” said Paul Kelso, a Fibrowatt spokesman. “I just don’t see how biochar or ash could ever be a driver for a plant.”

Nutrient Credit Exchange

Manure and poultry litter biomass still hold promise for biochar in states mandated by the EPA to begin “nutrient diets” to reduce runoff of nitrogen and phosphorous. The oxygen-depleting nutrients are known to create “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nutrients in watersheds often come from livestock and poultry farms. Efforts to clean Chesapeake Bay spawned a nutrient credit exchange in nearby states. In Virginia, the trading scheme is limited to “point sources” like wastewater districts, but the legislature could include biochar trading when it opens the exchange to “non-point” sources.

Peter Thomas, a nutrient credit broker with Coaltech Energy USA, predicts large-scale production of biochar within 12 months. Many projects, he says, will develop near the Chesapeake Bay and California dairy farms.

“The generation of renewable energy, the gasification of poultry litter and dairy manure to produce phosphorus-rich biochar, and nutrient trading are all about to become inextricably linked, resulting in an economically viable model,” Thomas said.

Conventional biomass power plants that burn manure and poultry litter also hope to benefit.
“There would be some value in us removing poultry litter so nutrients are not going into the bay,” Fibirowatt’s Kelso said.

Environmentalists, however, want the program to focus on biochar credits — Fibrowatt has been met with opposition throughout the Chesapeake region.

Erich J. Knight, a biochar advocate in Virginia, opposed Fibrowatt’s planned poultry litter plant in Page County, in part, because it would have increased emissions and required trucking manure long distances. Knight said many who opposed the large plant support smaller gasification systems that coproduce biochar and electricity.

“Local, decentralized plants of 1 MW to 15 MW make way more sense from all perspectives,” Knight said.

Regulatory Climate

The biomass power industry faces long-term uncertainty since the EPA said biomass-fired power plants may require the same CO2 permits for coal-fired plants. Gasification and pyrolysis leaders say they can help the industry prove to a skeptical public that biomass can be a clean energy source.
“We generate a lot less particulates because there is never direct flame contact” with biomass, says Mike Ballantine, president of International Tech Corp. (ITC). “In a combustion chamber, oxygen and turbidity generate a lot of particulates.”

The company manufactures thermal recovery units (shown below) that use pyrolysis to ignite flue gas, creating steam that powers turbines. A unit requiring 4,000 pounds of green waste per hour generates two tons of biochar and 2,500 kilowatt hours of electricity. ITC hopes to announce a contract with a major corporation in coming months.

Fibrowatt’s Minnesota plant released 445 tons of carbon monoxide and 361 tons of nitrogen oxides, among other emissions in 2009, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Fibrowatt gets its poultry litter — a mix of chicken droppings, feed and bedding — from farms across Minnesota.
Homeland Renewable Energy Inc., Fibrowatt’s parent company, developed a process for lowering nitrogen oxide and particulates by recycling water and waste heat captured from gaseous emissions.

“We can meet clean air requirements,” Kelso said.

He worries that multiple pyrolysis and gasification systems might evade the scrutiny and regulation that comes with a large biomass plant.

“Our downdraft gasification is inherently lower in nitrous oxide emissions than natural gas,” said Phoenix Energy’s Stangl. “We have clearly demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that we can get an air permit in the toughest place in the U.S.”

Understanding Ag Science

A 2010 study in Nature Communications says biochar is 20% more effective at mitigating climate change than bioenergy because it slows the rate carbon returns to the atmosphere while increasing agricultural productivity.

Biochar comes with inherent competing interests between biomass power and agriculture, but research and outreach efforts are starting to close the gap in understanding. Farmers say they will express greater interest in biochar coproduced with electricity if it is rooted in agriculture science.

“You don’t want to create a negative legacy by applying the wrong char to the wrong soil,” says Jeff Novak, a USDA soil scientist.

His research shows char produced at temperatures of 300 to 400 C have good qualities, but chars produced at temperatures exceeding 600 C can become alkaline. Chars that improve southern soil can also lead to nutrient imbalances in other regions.

Recognizing these concerns, the International Biochar Initiative has begun an effort to standardize and certify char products.

“Electricity production isn’t our focus, although we are very interested in energy capture when biochar is produced,” says Wilson, the group’s project development director. “The ultimate goal is to have an impact on climate change.”

Bioenergy

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SBS Insight tonight: Clubland, pokies reform

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 01:51:00 +0000

Add Your Comments

Promo

Clubs and anti-gambling campaigners are in a bitter fight over poker machines.

Under proposed reforms, gamblers will have to set a spending limit before playing the pokies.

Clubs say the change will threaten their very survival, taking a big chunk out of their revenue. And that, in turn, would impact the services they offer communities.

But those supporting reform say the changes will only affect high-risk problem gamblers, and most Aussie punters won’t be affected. And they say clubs – which enjoy tax breaks – aren’t channelling enough of their poker machine money back into the community.

Insight brings together two key players spearheading each side of the debate – Independent MP Andrew Wilkie and Anthony Ball from Clubs Australia – as well as ordinary club-goers and gambling experts to examine what’s at stake.

Meet the Guests

Andrew Wilkie
Andrew Wilkie is the Independent Member for Denison in Tasmania and an advocate for poker machine reform. In September last year, Andrew signed an agreement with Prime Minister Julia Gillard for the introduction of a national, mandatory pre-commitment system by 2014. This will require poker machine players to set limits on the amount of money they’re prepared to lose.
Anthony Ball
Anthony Ball is the Executive Director of Clubs Australia, the national association for clubs. Clubs Australia is leading the ‘Won’t Work, Will Hurt’ campaign and says mandatory pre-commitment won’t help problem gamblers, but will hurt thousands of clubs and the communities they support.
Betty Con Walker
Betty is an economist and former New South Wales Treasury official. She is also the author of Casino Clubs NSW. Betty says the bulk of poker machine profits do not go to community groups and sport sponsorship as most clubs claim.
Danny Robinson
Danny Robinson is the Chief Executive of St George Leagues Club in New South Wales and says the cost of implementing mandatory pre-commitment technology could force his club to shut its doors. The club has 416 poker machines which it relies on for about 80 per cent of the club’s total revenue.
Sue Pinkerton
At one stage in her life, Sue Pinkerton spent up to six hours a day, five days a week gambling on poker machines, spending about $65,000 on them. Sue gave evidence to the Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform. She believes if mandatory pre-commitment had been around when she was addicted it probably would have helped limit her spending on the pokies.

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Lake Macquarie oil spill, Eraring power station failure

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:37:00 +0000

BY DAMON CRONSHAW

Eraring power station’s oil-containment system failed when an explosion caused an oil spill into Lake Macquarie, industry and political insiders say.

The power plant conceded that oil spilled into the lake after an explosion breached barriers meant to contain oil.

But numerous firefighting and industry sources said the problem was worsened because oil leaked into the lake through a drain that should have been sandbagged after the explosion.

Lake Macquarie MP and mayor Greg Piper said the explosion and oil spill exposed ‘‘some flaws’’ in Eraring’s containment system, but the incident ‘‘could have been a lot worse’’.

‘‘I’m told there was a drain that allowed oil to escape,’’ Cr Piper said. ‘‘But you can’t model for every contingency.’’

Eraring managing director Peter Jackson said some oil had leaked into stormwater drains and the lake after the explosion and subsequent use of millions of litres of water to fight the fire.

He was not aware a drain had been missed, as firefighters sought to contain the spill.

Mr Jackson said the utility would examine the design of its oil-containment system and look to improve it.

‘‘The transformer-generator was built close and adjacent to our outlet canal, that’s the way it was done 30 years ago,’’ Mr Jackson said.

An oil slick covered areas of the shore at Myuna Bay, Whiteheads Lagoon and Rocky Point.

Wind and the tide pushed oil across the lake at the weekend to Silverwater and Sunshine on the Morisset Peninsula, where residents reported brown oily sludge in the water.

Fire and Rescue NSW and the Office of Environment and Heritage said it was a thin variety of oil, too fine to clean up.

They said the pollution would dissipate and evaporate, despite concerns about it entering the food chain.

The environment office will investigate the incident, which began after an explosion inside a transformer-generator at 2.30am last Friday.

Mr Jackson said the fire was extinguished yesterday, despite concerns it could smoulder for a week.

He said the progress could mean firefighters that vacate the site today

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Fukushima nuclear disaster released twice higher than estimated radiation

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:52:00 +0000

October 28, 2011 - 3:36PM

The Fukushima nuclear disaster released twice as much of a radioactive substance into the atmosphere as Japanese authorities estimated, reaching 40 per cent of the total from Chernobyl, a preliminary report says.

The estimate of much higher levels of radioactive cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Study author Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research says the Japanese government estimate came only from data in Japan, and that would have missed emissions blown out to sea.

The study did not consider health implications of the radiation. Cesium-137 is dangerous because it can last for decades in the environment, releasing cancer-causing radiation.
Advertisement: Story continues below

The long-term effects of the nuclear accident are unclear because of the difficulty of measuring radiation amounts people received.

In a telephone interview, Stohl said emission estimates are so imprecise that finding twice the amount of cesium isn't considered a major difference. He said some previous estimates had been higher than his.

The journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics posted the report online yesterday for comment, but the study has not yet completed a formal review by experts in the field or been accepted for publication.

Last summer, the Japanese government estimated that the March 11 Fukushima accident released 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium. Terabecquerels are a radiation measurement. The new report from Stohl and co-authors estimates about 36,000 terabecquerels through April 20. That's about 42 per cent of the estimated release from Chernobyl, the report says.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the Japanese government branch overseeing such findings, was not immediately available for comment.

It also says about a fifth of the cesium fell on land in Japan, while most of the rest fell into the Pacific Ocean. Only about 2 per cent of the fallout came down on land outside Japan, the report concluded.

Experts have no firm projections about how many cancers could result because they are still trying to find out what doses people received. Some radiation from the accident has also been detected in Tokyo and in the United States, but experts say they expect no significant health consequences there.

Still, concern about radiation is strong in Japan. Many parents of small children in Tokyo worry about the discovery of radiation hotspots even though government officials say they do not pose a health risk.

And former prime minister Naoto Kan has said the most contaminated areas inside the evacuation zone could be uninhabitable for decades.

Stohl also noted that his study found cesium-137 emissions dropped suddenly at the time workers started spraying water on the spent fuel pool from one of the reactors. That challenges previous thinking that the pool wasn't emitting cesium, he said.

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Australian Media inquiry submissions

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Is the Australian media industry perfect? Is it pretty good, but there are a few ways it could be improved? Are there sweeping reforms crying out for attention? Is it so rotten that it needs a complete overhaul?

Most of us are probably in the middle of that spectrum - but unless you're Rupert Murdoch, you'd agree there are definitely some changes that need to be made to the way news is made and delivered in Australia.

Well, now is the time to have those opinions heard. Earlier this year you joined the call for an inquiry into our media; now the inquiry has been delivered and wants to hear from you. Click here to make your submission:

http://www.newsstand.org.au/make-your-submission

If you get your information from the media, then you're qualified to submit. You don't have to be an expert; if you're someone who cares about having access to quality information that is free of bias and misinformation, then the inquiry needs to hear from you.

It doesn't have to be a post-doctoral thesis either. A couple of paragraphs - about your experiences, your opinions, or the value to you of a free and fair press - will let the Inquiry know the overwhelming support for a better media industry.

There's a real chance this Inquiry just becomes a platform for major media outlets to say 'all is well', and there is no need for reform. Unless we are there in numbers to suggest things can be improved, nothing will change. Click here to add your voice to the call for reform, by making your own submission today:

http://www.newsstand.org.au/make-your-submission

We joined together to call for this Inquiry because we agree our media should be better: more diverse, more accurate, less biased, less sensational. This is our opportunity to help make that vision a reality, by voicing our opinions in the Inquiry we've been calling for.

Thanks for making it happen,
Ed, for the NewsStand team

PS - The deadline for submissions is October 31 - if you care about the state of the Australian media industry, make sure you
make your submission saying so before the Inquiry deadline passes!

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The Bolt Factor: Andrew Bolt and the Making of an Opportunist @themonthly

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Rudder) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:11:00 +0000

Anne Summers

On the morning of Sunday, 11 October 2009 the guests appearing on that day’s Insiders program gathered in the green room at the ABC TV’s Southbank headquarters in Melbourne before the show. Annabel Crabb was there, as were David Marr and Andrew Bolt. Marr, who had just returned from Bayreuth, Germany, chatted amicably with Bolt, who is a huge Wagner fan. “He is very intelligent about opera,” Marr told me. Soon they were in the studio, ready for the live broadcast.

Host Barrie Cassidy introduced the first segment, ‘The Sunday Papers’, in which guests comment on a story from that day’s newspaper given to them by the producers. Bolt ignored his item and instead started talking about a report on the BBC that, Bolt claimed, demonstrated the Earth was not warming. Marr remonstrated with him, both for deviating from the script and for the absurdity of his claims. When Bolt persisted, Marr picked up a newspaper and in a show of mock exasperation turned his back on Bolt.

A couple of hours later, Bolt posted on his blog an image of Marr with pursed lips, seemingly in mid-sentence, with the invitation to his many followers to click on it and watch the segment. Over the next few hours 133 comments were posted, some remarking on Marr’s apparent rudeness, others commenting on the picture itself.

“I saw an expression like that on an egg-bound chook once,” said ‘Jackie of Gaia!’.
“Poor fellow is chronically constipated,” responded Fay of Charlestown.

“I doubt that, Fay,” chimed in Alan Jansen. “Given what Marr proudly admits to, constipation is unlikely to be a problem.”

Marr was outraged when he was alerted to these remarks two days later. “We’d been talking about opera and then you go on and get this blinding thing,” he told me. He immediately rang Bolt, who had the offending comment ‘snipped’, formally apologised to Marr and posted the following statement on the blog: “David has alerted me to a comment which snuck through our moderation and which abuses him in homophobic terms. I am mortified it got through, and have instantly removed it. I apologise to David and have banned the person who put it up.”

Marr accepted Bolt’s apology and his assurance he had not seen the posts. What Bolt did not disclose was that the person who was moderating the blog and past whom these comments had “snuck” was his wife, Sally Morrell. “It was an official arrangement, for his wife to moderate his blog,” Phil Gardner, editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times, told me. That arrangement ended about a year ago, he said, and Bolt’s blog is now moderated in house at the Herald Sun.

[ED: Sally Morrell has assured the Monthly that she had no part in moderating the blog posts that referred to David Marr and Annabel Crabb. The Monthly accepts that assurance and apologises to her for any embarrassment in saying that she did. The author has also received a communication from Andrew Bolt which includes the following: “I did much of the moderating myself on those days and through sheer carelessness through pressure of work, I almost certainly let those through myself. Sally helped on the blog for just a couple of hours a day and did not work the particular shift on which those mistakes were made. I deeply regret my error.”]

A few months earlier, on 5 July, a similar thing had happened to Annabel Crabb after she, too, had had an argument with Bolt on air during Insiders. Some of the comments were “grotty, sexist stuff”, Crabb told me, “about my appearance, or what my sexual performance would be like after a few drinks”. The episode in which the fight occurred marked the eighth anniversary of Insiders, and the ABC took the guests to lunch at a restaurant in Carlton afterwards: “The unnerving thing was that [the comments were] all going up while Andrew and I were having lunch together,” said Crabb. “I found it confronting because we’d always got on well together.”

Such attacks became so common, Michael Bodey reported in the Australian in April this year, that some people were unwilling to appear on Insiders with him, “because Bolt’s minions harass them afterwards”. Jason Wilson, a lecturer in digital communications at the University of Wollongong, described being “Bolted” in early August 2009 after he criticised Bolt’s performance on Insiders. Bolt’s post the next day featured a photograph of Wilson and an inaccurate description of him as working for GetUp!, and it accused him of using the Pravda model of journalism. For the next week Wilson was subject to abusive emails, many of which contained Bolt’s post cut-and-pasted into the message. One was even c.c.’d to Bolt, like a dog bringing a stick back to its master. Some of the emails threatened violence although most simply offered abuse, calling Wilson “a prick”, “an insignificant, parasitic socialist wally”, “a smug little shit” and a “leftoid, as in haemorrhoid, as in a continual pain in the arse …”

These incidents illustrate how readily readers of the blog can be revved up without Bolt explicitly directing them. “He was influenced by Howard’s nod and a wink,” says Jonathan Green, editor of the ABC online journal The Drum and a colleague of Bolt’s at the Herald in the late 1980s. “That’s why the blogosphere works so well. You don’t have to say much; you keep your hands clean but it comes out in the comments. You are setting up the discussion.” By claiming not to read the comments, Bolt was able to absolve himself of responsibility for what was said, apologise and remove posts if a complaint was made. But always after the event.

Although Bolt has been writing two or more provocative columns per week for the Herald Sun since the late 1990s, it has only been in the past five or so years that he has expanded his reach – and his influence – to the huge national audience he has today. He is now syndicated in Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and Adelaide. Almost 12 million people around Australia pick up the newspapers that carry Bolt’s columns, and 3.5 million actually read those columns. His blog, which he only started in 2006 and which he updates as often as 12 times per day, received just over 3 million page views from 272,000 unique visitors in August this year. But Bolt’s ambition is not confined to print. He seems to understand the greater influence that comes from radio and television and, at the same time as he started to harness the power of the internet to promote his conservative views, he began his quest to become the Bill O’Reilly of Australia.

Bill O’Reilly is the combative and inflammatory ‘conservative with a capital-C’ star performer on the Murdoch-owned Fox News network in the US. The O’Reilly Factor is the most watched cable news program on American television. O’Reilly is also a syndicated columnist, author and commentator, who until 2009 also had a high-rating syndicated radio program. O’Reilly was hired by Roger Ailes in 1996, when Fox News was starting up, and the two men are synonymous with the stunning success of the network.

In 2006, through a third party, Andrew Bolt sought guidance from Roger Ailes on how he could replicate the Fox News model Down Under. “He saw the political power that comes from right-wing ranting,” says a colleague of Bolt’s, “and he appointed himself to do it.” Roger Ailes, formerly “one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party”, according to a 2011 Rolling Stone profile, is the chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group. He is responsible for the network outstripping CNN and all other rivals to become the number one cable network in the US and, to quote theNew York Times, for making Fox News “the profit engine of the News Corporation”. Although Murdoch publicly defends Ailes, his family begs to differ: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,” Matthew Freud, who is married to Elisabeth Murdoch, said last year.
Bolt had been introduced to Ailes earlier in 2006 at a three-day, high-level gathering of News Corporation editors, managers, columnists and their spouses hosted by Rupert Murdoch at the legendary Pebble Beach Resorts, on the Monterey Peninsula in California. ‘Imagining the Future’ enabled key News staff to hear world leaders address the big issues: the invited speakers included Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, Bono and former US Vice President Al Gore, who showed his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Afterwards, Bolt and fellow conservative columnist Piers Akerman asked Gore some confronting questions, disputing the information contained in the film. Maybe Bolt saw himself as auditioning for bigger things because the exchange deteriorated into “a full-on barney”, according to someone present, with Gore shouting at Bolt.

Roger Ailes rebuffed the approach from Bolt, who had to wait until May this year to get his start on television. Some have been surprised that Sky News (part owned by News Corporation) had not picked him up. It was Network Ten that started The Bolt Report, a half-hour political show airing at 10 am on Sundays – just after Insiders, Bolt’s television launching pad. In November last year Bolt had written a column referring to “my strong and not entirely uninformed hunch” about mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s reasons for buying a sufficient stake in the Ten Network to get herself a seat on the board. “Rinehart is on a mission,” he wrote. “Channel 10 is just the vehicle.” One of Bolt’s former colleagues thought it read like a job application. This impression was reinforced by a reader comment on Bolt’s blog. “If Ms Gina Rinehart is reading this column, or someone in her office is, then I’d like to pass on this piece of advice,” posted Rosemary of Queensland. “Australia desperately needs Conservative voices in the media – especially in free-to-air media. In America they have Fox News …” Whether or not there was a connection, five months later Andrew Bolt had his own show on Ten.
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