First Anniversary Reprint
Halliburton Down Under, Above and Beyond
I am writing this blog because South Australia needs help. We are an extremely strategically located city, for years headquarters of Murdoch, Halliburton and BAE, and are being systematically brainwashed into becoming defence industry drones without ever being given the choice of taking this path.
For over a year now I've been fairly certain that Adelaide has been the centre of much more international activity than we're being told about. Halliburton's ghostly co-ordination of it's Asia-Pacific activities, not to mention its global infrastructure activities, from this location seems to be at the head of this octopus, if not initiating the thought then at least co-ordinating the tentacles.
Consider these Halliburton C.V.entries The KBR director who through the friendly takeover of his company globalised his efforts into the conglomerate,Malcolm Kinnaird, is named South Australian of the Year, then proceeds to draft a report on what should happen next, and then joins the Defence Procurement Board to make sure all is happennining to schedule. The KBR director who built three Murdoch printing plants, then orchestrated the railway bidding and construction, Mr Franco Moretti,joins the board of an oil company, after which KBR get the oil survey jobs for eastern Victoria.
A well known Australian playwright in his speech at his daughter's wedding said "you might as well take her hand ... you've had the rest!". The Gippsland Basin can be considered as the hand - oil and gas pipelines are magically arriving from Papua New Guinea (no mention of how to get the resources out of Irian Jaya yet) and the Western Victorian Otway Basin, co-ordinated by KBR while they plan the future gas supply of New Zealand in its Project Aria. And let's not even talk about Timor....
In the meantime the company, already the state's major planning consultant, drafts the Environmental Impact Assesment for the Naval Precinct, entirely impartially no doubt. Given their involvement in U.K. naval activities this is more than interesting, more on that later.
In his 1947 "Prelude to Space" Arthur C. Clarke wrote of Great Britain's control of interplantetary activities due to its control of that fantastic launching pad, the Australian outback. Today British Aerospace Engineering is the major player, while Halliburton provides support- railways, resources for the uranium mines, fuel supplies for related industries, defence of the location. Watch the unvieling of the naval contracts if you don't believe me.
In the meantime our one primary newspaper, Murdoch's Advertiser, continually writes "local boy makes good" stories of suburban companies winning defence contracts. BAE is always written of in this manner, on the day of writing so was SAAB. I've had a lucky run of defence propoganda repudiations in the 'Tiser letters pages, even managed to get Halliburton GHQ in, but have yet to find a way of reporting the global nature of BAE. I've even managed one this week on long-term armoured vehicle refurbishment, but I"m not even going to try and suggest that SAAB is not a "locally-based" (standard Murdoch translation for "local international corporation office") company. Such a suggestion would be highly unlikely to be published. There was a little paragraph in our Independant Weekly saying that Hal's Asia-Pacific and Global Infrastructure Headquarters were here ... until last year. That and my letter were the only local printing of Hal operating internationally from this city.
They didn't have much to say when we were standing out the front with placards and an SBS reporter. All that Sophie Mcneill got from them was that they had a good reputation in Australia. However she found quite a lot more for her SBS Dateline piece (watch it!). Last Friday's paper had six pages of propoganda devoted to encouraging us to support the naval contract bid. The front page photo was of local journos dressed as commandos "taking the fight" to Victoria.
If anyone thinks that information that doesn't aid the military plans is going to make print in the city of Adelaide, they should think again.
The Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature on South Australian Hal activities in March. The follow-on reporting by Adelaide media? None. South Australian number plates bearing the logo "The Defence State" are becoming quite common these days. You can see what this State is up against.If anyone who has information or ideas could leave them here we may provide an important resource, or at the very least a historical trail as to where things began to go seriously wrong. I will leave information here as I find it. Links will be added as fast as I can
In parting for now,did I mention that the Bush family's pet company, Carlyle, are currently testing their new drones in the outback before they float this particular research and devolopment group (once part of the British Army) on the London Stock Exchange? They've just announce a scientific alliance with BAE, by the way (see paragrah 20 here )
In some aspects Sydney and Canberra are not necessarilly the centre of all things. Mind you, with communcations these days anything can be controlled from anywhere. I'll sign off with this thought- there is one important facility not available to the companies of Houston and Austin; a military port. A spare spaceport such as Woomera probably won't go astray, either
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19/5/2005
Here's a lively account of the recent Halliburton AGM protest in Houston, at which numerous arrests occurred. The source is an anonymous witer on Collective Bellaciao
At the Four Seasons this morning, before 8 am, barricades were erected, over 30 Houston horse police, undercover cops and heavy foot police presence (photos) was amassed. By 8:30, the march had reached the hotel, with about 140 - 300 protesters with lots of puppets, and signs such as "stop cronyism." Dick Cheney flashed people video, photo, activists held signs, played a samba and did a funky dance. A break-away march was met by Houston Police, who attempted to corral them, with one arrest occurring. By 9 am, there were 12 activists inside the hotel. Four were escorted out by hotel security and Houston police, while the rest were detained. Outside, things began heating up with pushing, cops on horses and arrests (photos: 1, 2, 3, 4). Some concerns have been raised about cruelty to the horses. The horses trampled several people (videos: 1, 2).
Police used pain compliance on occupation inside hotel. Media were not allowed inside the shareholders meeting and protest. Police Officer # 4961, S. M. Forrester, admitted to a female activist that he had lost control of himself. Andrea Buffa and Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, got inside meeting and directly questioned war-profiteer / Halliburton CEO David Lesar. Prathap Chatterjee of Corp-Watch had a private five minute meeting with him which ended in vague assurances.
Arrested: Herb Rothschild, David Graeve, Katie Heim, Ellie Shenker, Maureen Haver, Diane Wilson, Jonathan Kresha and Kendle Greenlee were arrested inside (photos, videos: 1, 2, 3). David Solnit, an anonymous male, James Foley, Baku, David Martinez, Andy Peterson, Rolando Maya, Chris McMullen were arrested outside. Baku and David Martinez, both out of town indymedia videographers, were arrested while shooting video. David was dragged by his neck by a cop while trying to go to the sidewalk as instructed (video, photos: 1, 2). There have been many class B misdemeanors, but it is possible some will be charged with assault
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I''m trying to collect information on a Homeland Securtiy Consultant named Scott Bates who was in Adelaide a year ago. Since his involvement in the political reconstruction of Kosovo, From what I can see his main work has been strengthening securtiy for ports. I had a minor encounter with him last year. The part of the conversation missing from the following transcript is where Mr Bates told me to remember that Adelaide has been regarded as strategically important since before the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Mr Bates admits here that last tiime he was in Adelaide he was advising S.A. Premier Mike Rann on election campaign tactic. Which makes me wonder what he was doing at the annual Oakbank races with the Premier and Senators Hill, Minchin and Downer (Federal Ministers for Finance, Defence and Foreign Affairs respectively. I'd make a bet that it wasn't just to watch the horsies go round and round....
Scott Bates, Senior Policy Adviser to the US House of Representatives
Homeland Security Committee (891ABC 10.36-10.54) Bates' career/Iraq
(Abraham: ... flicking through 'The 'Tiser' ... and there is an
article and a photo of Premier Mike Rann with Sasha, his partner, and this
man who's in the studio with us now, Scott Bates ... the Premier had
mentioned Scott Bates was staying with him... ) Great to be with you here
today ... I really appreciate being on what is perhaps one of the top three
morning shows in Adelaide and I'm very excited about that. (Abraham: Now the
Premier's told you to say that.) Indeed. (Bevan: Very funny.) (Abraham: Name
the other two. No ... we'll talk to you about homeland security and what
this job means but you are an interesting person. You are young ... at 26
you were the youngest Secretary of State in Virginia ... ever in America ...
) ... most of what I got to do was appoint people to boards and commissions
... that was one of the more interesting jobs I had ... (Abraham: Now I
imagine you met Mike Rann through Craig James who's a ... we would call him
a spin doctor, but a political consultant ... campaign guru.) ... I had
worked with Craig back in 1990 at a firm in Washington ... we had about a
third of the US Senate as our clients that we helped with their
communications efforts ... maybe in 1997 Craig said how about coming out and
seeing a mate of mine, Mike Rann, and I'd heard about him ... we just hit it
off right away and stayed in touch with him ... (Caller Richard: ... in your
opinion as far as terrorism targets, do you think would a city that's
advertising itself as a defence capital, a city that's got major global
infrastructure headquarters moving in here, do you think that at the moment
we might be becoming a larger potential terrorist target? ... ) ... I've met
with Susan Carman [phonetic] who's your Director of Security and Emergency
Preparedness here in South Australia ... at the beginning of the
conversation I thought ... I'll have all these things to share with her and
maybe ... teach South Australians. By the end of it ... we talked in some
detail, you are years, literally years ahead in planning ... on protection
of critical infrastructure and emergency preparedness than state governments
surely in the United States and even our Federal Government ... when it
comes to being a target I think what we have to think about is that who
would have ever imagined that four aeroplanes would be smashed into
buildings? Who would have ever imagined that 10 aeroplanes would have been
attempted to be hijacked in the Philippines? ... I don't want to say that
everywhere is a target because that's just kind of alarmist but I think it
make sense to take proper precaution, to make sure you minimise risk ... yes
these are trying times ... but really the world is a heck of a lot safer
than it was say 40 years ago ... (Abraham: Did you help ... on Mike Rann's
election campaign in 2002?) Well I guess if you could consider help being
... going out to dinner and chewing the fat and having a glass of wine, I
think that's help. (Abraham: ... I think you're mentioned in dispatches in
Bob Ellis's book.) Well as you know, Mr Ellis is a noted writer of
Australian fiction. He ... I think he referred to me as one of the most
interesting people he'd ever met and a 21st century hero. I pull that book
out at every kind of party I have and do dramatic readings from it ...
Adelaide is a very special place ... I first came here in 2000 and then back
in 2001 ... when Mike was running for office ... first and foremost I've
learned something about Australia that I hold dear is this concept of being
a mate ... being a good friend and ... that transcends politics ... I'd say
Mike is a great mate and that's why I came out. And that's why I'm here
today. I've got two weeks of vacation and I came out for one week here.
(Abraham: Scott Bates, thank you ... )
The main reason for looking is that the Australian Government has just announced its intentions to Federalise control of major ports. The reason given has been to reduce bottlenecks in trade, but it's a timely coincidence given that the winner of the Destroyer contracts will be most likely announced next week.
Making the announcements in reverse order would have given too many people "the wrong idea"
.
My guess is that Adelaide will be chosen is that with it's smaller population to Melbourne, less lives would be lost in a maritime "terrorist attack"
It's a pretty safe bet given that three of the four submissions involve major work being carried out in Port Adeliade, that this city will be signifigantly involved in the project.. As far as the systems integration work goes, BAE is probably the only company able for the the job, and as they are "Adelaide based" it would be perfect for the work to be given to "local business"
Mr Bates' involvement indicates very close ties indeed between Adelaide and the U.S. on maritime security matters. No doubt his opinion will affect the outcome
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Would the United States ever consider faking attacks on itself in order to arouse the support of its citizens? They already did... forty years ago!
Operation Northwood was a planned faked attack on U.S. soil by Cuba, and included the proposal to blame streetside sniiper shootings on "Cuban terrorists".
Substantiation for some dangerous hypotheticals arises in this scenario relating to the possible uses for the date 6/6/6
It's time for a walk in the sunshine.....
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31/5/05
ADELAIDE WINS WARSHIP CONTRACT
In what he described as a "monumental day in the State's history" , South Australian Premier Mike Rann has just announced that Adelaide's Australian Submarine Coporation has won the contract to build the three "Son of Star Wars" Air warfare destroyers.
Premier Rann said that when the news reached his office "we all shook hands and said 'mission accomplished'."
Mr Rann added that the contract had been signifigant in enticing "a whole lot" of defence-related companies to Adelaide's northern suburbs.
Companies involved in the contract include BAE, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and Halliburton/KBR.
Mr Rann also said that on the strength of the win South Australia would be bidding for the Australian arm of the Global Hawk project. The Unmanned Air Vehicle's first trans-Atlantic flight was from Edwards Air Base in the U.S. to the Edinburgh Air Base in Adelaide.
Defence Minister and Senator for South Australia Robert Hill qualified the announcement by adding that much of the construction work would be carried out in shipyards across Australia.
Mr Hill said that "...up to 70% of the module construction will be subcontracted to other shipyards around Australia, creating around 1000 additional jobs throughout the country."
"It's a very large project, very technically challenging."
South Australian Opposition Leader Mr Rob Kerrin said that the deal would "cement South Australia's defence industry for decades to come", while Australian Workers Union representative Wayne Hanson. said "We've won a generation of work for South Australian workers and their families."
.
Senator Hill said that the Federal Government would provide $455 million to fund the second phase project activites such as design work, infrastructure and facilities construction until mid-2007. Local ship construction recruitment is expected to occur at that time.,
He said it would further reduce the risks of the project in accord with recommendations of the Defence Procurement (Kinnaird) Review
Sources: ABC-891 Adelaide, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, Reuters
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15/6/05
HALLIBURTON TAKES OVER
In a response to an earlier blog TG Kerr made the suggestion that companies such as Halliburton may be creating work for themselves by creating projects and then submitting them for Public Private Partnerships with the Federal Government.
A good example would be KBR's development of the mouth of the Murray River. Plans to create a Twin Lake artifIcial evaporation containment system from S.A.'s Lake Alexandrina which Cheney's Men admit won't keep the Murray mouth open) include construction of a 100 kilometre barrage. The concept is being recommended to councils near the lake by S.A. Premier Mike Rann. The company has proposed it as a PPP... how many other projects are being tendened for by mulitnational companies' under the cloak of "Australian subsidiaries"?
Thanks, John Howard, for such a quick response. Today's announcement of the Roadmap to Water shows the Federal Government's intention to privatise Australia's waterways. Howard is acting on thinktank The Barton Group's advice. The Barton Group tendered for private consultants to facilitate the Roadmap (point #7 here). I wonder who they might be ? Three guesses...
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Second thought for the day: are Adelaide's unnecessary and too expensive new warships being "purpose built" for involvement in a pre-emptive nuclear strike on North Korea? Given Richard Perle's plans, it's a high possiblity. A Catch-22 arises, especially fpr a believer of Alexander Downer's fears of potential North Korean missile range that if the Koreans get a long enough shot fired off before we finish the ships, the docks of Adelaide will be much higher on an enemy target priority list than they would have been without the presence of "Son Of Star Wars" naval construction
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In the same town, the presence of Halliburton employees in local council offices has been creating conflicts of interest in State planning meetings- scroll down to page 11 where Halliburton is highlighted. Such conflicts are enevitable when you look at lists like this. If you've read the highlighted parts of these two links, you'll see the same name appearing for Halliburton in both local planning and nuclear waste management..."curiouser and curiouser', said Aice "
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Cheney's 2003 Christmas card quoted Benjamin Franklin at the U.S Constitutional Convention
"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it
probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"
I don't think Mr Franklin would have approved. If you can believe Gore Vidal (and I do) the convenors of U.S. Democracy were working to minimise the impact of those such as Cheney when they drafted their Constitution.. According to Vidal, the possibility of a Cheney was the main reason why Bem and friends didn't want to have an army
You know from my first blog that Cheney set up his Australian activities before he moved back into the White House. Reading Cheney's Christmas message from an Adelaide point of view doesn't exactly inspire sentiments of "Peace on earth, and goodwill to all men"
Australiaa and U.S. As One- letter reprint from Adelaide Advertiser
21/6/05
Assembled by S.A. Minister For Infrastructure, Patrick Conlon, the five member group to plot the state's infrastructure future include former KBR International Vice President for Infrastructure and head of Asia-Pacific Operations, Andrew Fletcher, as its head and the owner of a KBR acquired company, Malcolm Kinnaird, as a participant.
You can sense a possible conflict of interest here... in the same manner that U.S. Vice President Cheny needs to distance himself from his former employer, Kinnaird and Fletcher will need to publically ensure that they are fulfilling their obligations to the state and not the corporation.
At the same time, Defence Minister Robert Hill has announced the tripling of the number of troops based in Port Augusta, in a defence expansion that will allow for "full battle group" exercises and the operational shakedown of "new" M-1 Abrahams tanks.
A proposed new transport hub , and the building of 3,000 new homes, near the R.A.A.F Edinburgh base and the Mawson Lakes development, would be carried out by property development group Delfin. The last time Delfin was prominent on this side of town was in a partnership scheme chaired by the man who was CEO of Kinhill when it was acquired by Halliburton/ KBR, Mr David Klingberg, who is now the Chancellor of the University of South Australia.
Minister Hill has also just announced that he will soon be announcing "which company will work with the rest of the air warfare destroyer team to develope the evolved design of the ship" I'm assuming he means the designers but not too sure. .
This would all be less disconcerting if not for the very close relationship between the Pentagon and KBR. Even the U.S. Congress is having trouble gettiing the facts
In all of this railway-related activity, I hope people remember that the line is not a public amenity for another 48 years... in the meantime the freight charges will be paid to.... do I really have to say it ?
This is just the beginning.... to be continued
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It's the middle of July. I've just found this profile of Andrew Fletcher from when he was Halliburton/KBR Vice President for infrastructure. At this time he was hopeful that the corp would be building a new defence HQ in Canberra, adding to the list of the company's contracts in our nation's capital.
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Saturday July 23
A new Adelaide-based army battallion would utilise the railway for transport of equipment and vehicles, according to today's Advertiser, On reading this my mind went back to this article for some reason. Remember the bet I made a couple of blogs back? Still haven't changed my mind..
The same day's editorial says that defence construction should not be part of a war participation debate Mr Murdoch is always right.
Speaking of construction, KBR are about to increase their eagerness for Austalian Government awarded foreign aid contracts. Are you the person for the job? There's a week left to apply.
28/8/05
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HALLIBURTON'S ADELAIDE
-Reprinted from Margo Kingston's Webdiary, this piece serves well as an overview of the last few months of blogging
While Australians have sat in their trees like manna-gum-'stoned' koalas, the economic landscape has changed around them dramatically. The new King and Queen of the Southern Defence Colony, affectionately known as Condy and Rummy, will be crowned by Alexander Downer in Adelaide this November, with most of us none the wiser.
As I watched South Australia's Premier Mr Rann tell us that now that a U.S. company had won the design contract for Adelaide's contribution to the US Missile Shield it should set up an office here, I thought "...so that when they've finished ours we can start the work for Taiwan."
I now consider Halliburton to be more middle-men, than boogie-men. True, they've organised protection for Woomera and Pine Gap, transport of fuel and water resources and reservoirs for southern expansion, northern supply and extraplanetary migration, but you won't see their logo on everything not so much as part of what appears at times to be an almost-sinister concealment of their activities, but because they're contractors and subcontractors for other people and projects, like the water meter reading, the council park, mowing, the Warship and Joint Strike Fighter programs.
They've kept their names out of the local media much more successfully than they did in the U.S. and U.K (a pity about the Rolling Stones), but when, in that country and ours, you begin to see the likes of the favourite company of the Bushes and Bin Ladens, Carlyle, begin to show its head at the top of the pecking order, you see two paths leading to the same destination. That's when you begin to wonder how many years of preparation have taken place.
It's difficult when you live here to consider how much of a nexus to southern hemispheric activities our insignificant little city has become, and was possibly planned to be since the end of the Second World War. In 1947, in his novel following his theories of geosynchronous orbit and satellite-based communications, Arthur C. Clark presumed that Britain would be the supreme extraplanetary power because of her control of Woomera. According to U.S. Homeland Security Consultant Scott Bates, Adelaide was mooted as the centre of humanity's nuclear-winter survival outpost at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then it wasn't known that the State contained forty per cent of the world's uranium. In front bars around town anyone you have a beer with about what's happening will ask "What's so special about Adelaide?" Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice, White House Secretaries of Defence and State, seem to have a fair idea. In spite of the "humble" reasoning of the aspirant figurehead of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Rumsfeld and "Condy" (Downer's term of endearment, not mine) haven't come to a pow-wow in Adelaide just because the man lives here. They've come to 'inspect the troops'.
From here, troops will rest, train and refurbish while their weapons and supplies run across the continent. From here, liquid natural gas supplies will run north to Asia and south to New Zealand creating a possible reverse supply line when mining begins in Antarctica. Another use of the same pipes would mean that water can be coordinated and distributed to what is left of the globe, with a continually drained and refilled Great Artesian Basin acting as the supply depot... Also useful for 'water downloading' if an extraterrestrial water source is found. While we're waiting, don't forget that the icecaps contain 90 % of the world's fresh water.
From here, Jindaee's radar detection of possible enemies is already carried out. No doubt in the future satellites will feed in global strategic information, if they're not already. The arrival of a National Tsunami Centre suggests that sub-sea activities are also fairly well 'scoped'.
From here, given modern real-time communications, the world could be run quite effectively, at a pinch, with the commanders never being in danger of running out of anything. At the end of the day, with an inexhaustible supply of energy and fresh water, the US Dynasty would be able to outlast any enemy.
To the north of Adelaide, plastic and paper are being imported to landfills and recycled into composites to make lightweight armour for land and air and space vehicles.
In the meantime we can be happy little koalas munching on Manna from America to keep us obliviously content.
URGENT ADDITION Thursday August 11: Our only newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's Advertiser, has today devoted a page on downplaying a terrorist attack on Adelaide.
A good politician exposes a story by denying it. Extrapolating this concept to possible "psy op" techniques, I'm very concerned for this city.
This blog and it's continuance have received an aggregate of 9,000 hits in three months. I'm glad you are watching Adelaide, in case of what might happen next.
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September 11 2005
Scary times, in which a man is arrested in for the crime of protesting against Halliburton. I wasn't aware that legislation had been already been proclaimed
.
Six Federal police and immigration officials were needed to arrest Houston histrpry teacher Scott Parkin at a Melbourne cafe. Park was on his way to prevent a workshop about the U.S. peace movement and companies involved in the Iraq war
Australian Greens leader Senator Bob Brown has claimed that orders for Parkins arrest and presumably imminent deportation orignated from the U.S. Government. "The Howard Government will do anything the U.S. Government asks....because he's a thorn in the side of of Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and profit making deals that apply in Iraq"
PARKIN'S REVENGE- REVEALING THE CONCEALED
(Reprinted from Webdiary)
It now seems that a man is to be deported from Australia for inciting resentment of US corporate giant Halliburton's activities in Iraq.
Scott Parkin's aim is to put economic, social and political pressure on Halliburton
so that they withdraw from Iraq. His holiday in this country lead to
participation in recent street protests in Sydney. There he reiterated
his complaint from Australian soil, that Halliburton and subsidiary KBR
are the Poster children of war profiteering.
On Saturday Parkin was leaving a coffee shop, on his way to help present a workshop on nonviolent protest when he was apprehended by four Federal police, assisted by an unmentioned number of immigration officers. BBC News links his arrest to the Sydney Halliburton protest.
Parkin, according to Crikey's Guy Rundle is "not just any old anti-Halliburton activist – he knows more about the company than
pretty much anyone around, and he's been a key organiser of campaigns against their AGMs and HQ in Houston."
What message is sent to Australian activists by Parkin's
incarceration? As someone who has sensed unethicality in the company's
activities both abroad and within Australia I feel vindicated in my beliefs. To remove a person who might promote information implies a desire of the democratic
actor,
in this case Australia's Federal Government, to obscure and conceal
what this man could portray and reveal, and what he could make us think.
I am beginning to suspect that there is a large financial loophole
being hidden within the activities of the Howard Government, but
unfortunately the key, if flimsy, evidence that I had no longer exists.
It was a job ad in the online version of The Economist, in which
Halliburton KBR touted for a foreign aid specialist to handle its
projects. This ad proclaimed that KBR's clients included the World
Bank, USAid and Ausaid. The successessful applicant would be
'preferrably' based at KBR's offices Greenhill Road, Parkside, South
Australia. If anyone can help me recover a version of this ad it would
be most appreciated.
This ad was 'printed' in the week that the Australian Prime Minister
made a surprise visit to Iraq to announce his country's role as aid
distributor.
Many of us are nervous tonight, after having been told by our leaders
that they don't like what we're doing. Some of us feel a sense of
relief at the ramifications of a problem being finally revealed.
""Well the government owe Australians if not Mr Parkins an immediate
explanation," Mr Brown said, "You can't help but be worried that anti-terror laws are being abused to arrest a peace activist who has been highlighting the extraordinary profit making of Haliburton, which is making a huge amount of money out of the invasion of Iraq."
Parkin's Australian travel visa has been cancelled on the grounds that he is a threat to national security.
Could Parkin's arrest be associated with the release of a purported Al Qaeda statement that Los Angeles and Melbourne are the next targets for terrorism?
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September 14 2005
Quite a card-hand of news will greet Australia in the morning
Deputy PM tales Al Qaeda Photo-Op Where's Costello?
Ruddock's trying to say he's got no idea. Mark Vale, on the other hand, is saying that the tape is more reason to get ready for attack,
In the meantime propoganda terrorist Parkin intends to mount an appeal, which might possibly not be heard in the interests of national security.
Is protesting against Halliburton now considered "not in the national interest?"
FBI says Australian "Al Qaeda Threat" due to Iraq War
AN apparent Al-Qaeda tape threatening a
terrorist strike on Melbourne should not surprise anyone, due to
Australia's support for the US war on terror, according to an FBI
official.
"The bottom line is whether it's this tape or any other tape, we know
there's people out there who wish to strike at the US and our allies,
and that includes Australia," the spokesman said. "It's not something
that would surprise anyone – we know there's a threat out there and we
know it's real." (Brisbane Courier Mail, 13/11/05
Maybe Prime Minister Howard can change their mind.
Western Australia Jumps The Gun
New counterterrorism legislation allowing area cordons searches and property removal will be introduced into Western Austalian Parliament today.
However W.A . Premier Geoff Gallup draws the line at detaining suspects without charge
" We've yet to agree to taking on board the power to detain people" he said.
(source: Anti-terror laws "nation's toughest", Adelaide Advertiser 14/9/05
South Australia to prevent distribution of "provocative material
The Advertiser was saving its own state's proposed new terror laws for the "on-line front page"
The South Australian laws will include administering restraining orders to prevent the distribution of provocative material.
Source: "Strong arm of the law" Adelaide Advertiser
If a trend of Labor states pre-empting Liberal control by assuming new powers continues, it would be hoped that such political muscle flexing is being applied pro bono (which people assume means "for free" but is actually "for good") in both of its senses of contemporary interpretation.
at 14 September, 2005 - 1:53am
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Our Prime Minister will be making an announcement to the United Nations today:
The Australian Prime Minister Mr Howard will unveil plans to increase aid to $4 billion a year by 2012 from the current level of $2.7 billion.
The increase will take Australia close to the 0.7 per cent of GDP set at the Millennium Summit five years ago.
Source: Melbourne Herald Sun
The main Australian aid provider would possibly be the company in the
process of settling a new foreign aid administrator into its Adelaide
office.
Aid contracts have been given to Halliburton KBR in Adelaide over the last three years under the pretext that they were being given to a local company. But the way, the minister's contact in that media release is now a senior journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser. He is also a former conservative member of Parliament, and led the newspaper's campaign to invoke support for the Adelaide Warship Contract
Question Of The Day. Given that the impending visit of U.S. Cabinet membesr Rumsfeld and Rice to Adelaide in October will be an obvious "terror target", what laws will South Australians be subjected to within weeks?
By Richard Tonkin at Sep 14 2005 - 3:00am |
"I've just read that Halliburton Gives Kickbacks To The Australian Government So They Can Trade There"-Scott Parkin
Sorry about the title lenghth, but this needs to be google-screamed
You can hear the iParkin's Houston Community Radio interview here (MP3 download) I'll transcribe tomorrow. Sorry, but I need to sleep.
Labor counterterrorism spokesman Arch Bevis said in a media release
today "The detention of any citizen for an extended period of time must
be based only on sound intelligence of a credible threat and be
authorised by a judge, not a bureaucrat or politician."
Why weren't The Federal Opposition making more noise about Parkin's detention?
By Richard Tonkin at Sep 20 2005
Australian Greens and Democrats Call Parkin Senate inquiry, Scott Parkin;s Media Release
How to disassociate Parkin from Halliburton? Don't mention the comany's name any more.
As
this story continues to play throught the media, where once you'd see
at least one mention, if not several, of the company Parkin had been
protesting in Australia against. instead we see, at the end of two
weeks of print and airplay, the man but not the cause.
It will be interesting, in the new Howard Government, to see if Bob Brown's motion for a Senate inquiry over the Parkin incident results in any action.
Who will be the sympathetic Liberal who votes with Brown for an
investigation? On the other hand, will Howard use this as an
opportunity to exert control over over his own 'mavericks'?
ASIO historian David McKnight says that if the leak is true it indicates a reversion in ASIO strategy to its tactics in the '70s.
I hope that Brown gets his inquiry. We all knew that a full Liberal
majority was going to create ethical issues. Here's the litmus test on
how they will be dealt with.
In
the meantime, have a look at what Mr Parkin has to say. This release
has been circulated through the nonviolence network, and surfaced on
one of Webdiary's Parkin threads:
MEDIA RELEASE
22 September 2005
Parkin refutes ASIO smear
Houston, Texas: Scott Parkin today spoke from Texas to clear his
name and refute the media claims of an alleged ASIO leak that he was
planning to teach violence in his peace workshop in Melbourne.
Mr Parkin said, "These are false, unfounded and personally Damaging allegations.
"ASIO put me in solitary detention for 5 days and not once made
these allegations to me nor have they provided these stories to my
lawyer, Julian Burnside, QC.
"If I am such a threat why have the FBI not even phoned me since my
return from Australia, to follow up ASIO's silly allegations?
"If ASIO wants the public to trust this process is fair they should
have made these allegations in the proper way and not via some
exclusive supposed leak.
"The Government has a public responsiblity to provide facts and not make smears.
"Osama bin Laden is free, meanwhile Australia‘s peak intelligence agency is running around fretting about peace protestors.
"As I always say and sincerely believe, it is unprincipled to do anything violent at any time, including in a protest situation.
"During my time in Australia I spoke publicly against techniques to
de-arrest a person who has been lawfully detained by the Police because
it is against my principles.
"ASIO should know this if they are doing their job properly.
"Horses suffer from being used as riot control machines and I completely oppose anything that abuses them.
"The media and public are welcome to come to non violent protest
training by me or my colleages, but we can assume ASIO were there
anyway and know these claims are unbelievable," said Mr Parkin.
The Australian Democrats are also demanding action over spy agency leak to a Murdoch journalist.
The
party's Attorney General's spokesperson, Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja
said that "The whole process appears fundamentally flawed" and asked
"Surely any such leak to the media is in itself an issue to national
security?"
Given that the journalist who was supposedly
given information by ASIO is regarded by many as the most right-wing
Murdoch journalist in Australia, questions are being asked about the
leak's authenticity.
Federal Parliament resumes in a week. Life in the Senate will not be dull.
By Richard Tonkin at Sep 24 2005
Halliburton Stuffs Up
When you read this L.A. Times story, think about possible ramifications in an area near you::
[Excerpt]
QARMAT ALI, Iraq — The failure to rebuild key components of Iraq's petroleum industry has impeded oil production and may have permanently damaged the largest of the country's vast oil fields, American and Iraqi experts say.
The deficiencies have deprived Iraq of hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue needed for national rebuilding efforts and kept millions of barrels of oil off the world market at a time of growing demand.
Engineering mistakes, poor leadership and shifting
priorities have delayed or led to the cancellation of several projects critical to restoring Iraq's oil industry, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry experts.The troubles have been compounded in some cases by security issues, poor maintenance and disputes between the U.S. and its main contractor, Houston-based KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., according to the interviews and documents.
Despite the United States' spending more than $1.3 billion, oil production remains below the estimated pre-war level of 2.5 million barrels per day and well below a December
2004 goal of up to 3 million barrels per day.Interviews and documents from whistle-blowers show problems with at least three projects deemed crucial to Iraq's oil production:
• Qarmat Ali water treatment plant. This massive pumping complex is needed to inject water into Iraq's southern oil fields to aid in oil extraction. Under a no-bid contract, KBR was instructed to repair the complex at a cost of up to $225 million, but not the leaky pipelines carrying water to the fields. As a result, the water cannot be delivered reliably, raising concerns that some of Iraq's oil may not be recoverable.
• Al Fathah pipelines. As part of the same no-bid contract, the U.S. gave KBR a job worth up to $70 million to rebuild a pipeline network in northern Iraq despite concerns that the project was unsound. In the end, KBR built fewer than half the pipelines, and the project was given to another contractor. The delay has aggravated oil transport problems, which have forced Iraq to inject millions of barrels of oil back into
the ground, a harmful practice for the oil fields and the environment.
A government audit is being conducted based on a complaint by a whistle-blower.• Southern oil well repairs. A $37-million project to boost production at dozens of Iraqi oil wells was canceled after KBR refused to proceed without a U.S. guarantee to protect it from possible lawsuits.
It is striking that although thereconstruction of the northern oil infrastructure has been hampered by security issues, the southern oil fields — which account for most production — have been attacked only a few times since the conflict in Iraq began but still face serious problems.
After the 2003 invasion, U.S. officials and KBR moved swiftly, resuming oil production only a month after the war began and slowly increasing output. But after matching the prewar peak of 2.5 million barrels a day in
September 2004, production declined to about 2.2 million barrels daily
last month.
If the U.S. had successfully completed the planned
repairs, Iraq could be producing up to 500,000 additional barrels a
day, according to some estimates.
The difference would add up to more than $8 billion a year — money that the Iraqi government could use for new schools and hospitals, to supplant U.S. reconstruction spending and improve the Iraqi security forces that Washington hopes will replace American troops.
U.S. reconstruction officialsacknowledged the delays but said the efforts had turned a corner and that despite the contract disputes, they were satisfied with KBR's performance. The company avoided a possible cancellation of its contract this year after addressing problems associated with cost estimates. The U.S. also has brought in an Australian-American firm to finish several projects started by KBR that had been delayed (Full version here)
If the hearsay about the railway is "on track" we may see local versions of stories like these.
P.M. Funds National Terror Initiatives
Prime Minister John Howard today announced funding for a new counterterrorsm package.
The funding will support measures agreed upon between the Federal Government and the nations' State Premiers.
Following
today's meeting of the Council of Australian Governments’ meeting
(COAG) to discuss national counter-terrorism arrangements Mr Howard
announced $40 million in additional funding for a range of measures "to
deliver increased safety and security to all Australians."
These
measures are in addition to the Government’s recent commitment of $200
million to further tighten security at Australia’s major airports
Initiatives announced yesterdayinclude:
- $17.3 million over five years to establish an Australian Chemical,
Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Data Centre located within the
Australian Federal Police (AFP); - $2.4 million over five years
to support the establishment of a Chemical Warfare Agents Laboratory
Network, which will provide a network of laboratories across Australia
for the analysis of chemical agents; - $9.2 million over four
years for the enhancement of Australia’s national counter-terrorism
exercise regime - the enhanced programme will provide a greater focus
on exercising Australia’s ability to manage mass casualty incidents,
particularly in places such as major city precincts and transport hubs; - $1.3 million over four years to support the development of a
national strategy to explain to the public, through a set of clear,
concise messages, the arrangements set out in the National
Counter-Terrorism Plan and improved, centralised communication with the
media during a crisis; - $5.9 million in 2005-06 to support the
development of a national action plan to build on the principles agreed
at my recent meeting with Islamic community leaders and to undertake a
range of related work including Muslim community liaison, community
partnership projects, a national youth summit and leadership and media
training; - $1 million over three years for Commonwealth
aspects of the implementation of the National Counter-Terrorism
Committee’s review of urban mass passenger surface transport security
arrangements; and - $700,000 to assist Commonwealth
participation in the National Counter-Terrorism Committee review of
closed circuit television capability and development of a national code
of practice. - Further, the COAG has agreed to establish a
unified policing model at each of the 11 counter-terrorism first
response (CTFR) airports including: an Airport Police Commander, a
dedicated Joint Intelligence Group, a CTFR capability and a permanent
community policing presence, and at each of the major international
airports (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide), a Joint
Airport Investigation Team.
The Australian Government has agreed to fully fund under the unified
model a full-time community policing presence of AFP officers wearing
AFP uniforms and under AFP command at all major Australian airports,
with officers seconded or recruited from State and Territory police
forces. The funding details for this initiative will be settled and
announced shortly.
The COAG communiqué can be found at: www.coag.gov
Australian Lawyers Alliance president Richard Faulks told ABC News that the laws are totalitarian and un-Australian.
"Depending on what the final version is, I think it is a retrograde step, and one that we didn't need," Mr Faulks said.
"Australians value their freedom and even though everyone is concerned
about terrorism and rightly so, there are steps that can be taken that
are still consistent with proper safeguards which are part of our
everyday life."
The
union for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has told the ABC that it
does not have enough officers to take on the new airport security
functions approved today.
Spokesman Jim Torr
said that more than 600 employees have been redeployed to
counter-terrorism functions since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"The AFP has to grow proportionately to the scope of the increase of its role," he said.
South Australian Premier Mike Rann told the Financial Review
he was confident the leaders would convince Mr Howard to include a
sunset clause as part of the package. "I think that a sunset clause
after 10 years would be a smart thing."
He said that terrorism was just another word for mass murder, and the new laws should reflect the seriousness of the crime.
By Richard Tonkin at Sep 28 2005
SA Recruiting In Mumbai For Defence and Research Workers
The S.A. Government is attempting to recruit workers to the State from the commercial centre of India.
Addressing
a seminar on ''Living, Working and Studying in South Australia'' in
Mumbai this week, S.A. Trade and Industry Minister Paul Holloway said
bio-science, automotive, manufacturing, medical research and
hospitality were sectors where his country could employ people from the
developing countries.
Mr
Holloway said that South Australia offers varied job opportunities for
overseas workers across a range of key industries including defence,
healthcare and engineering.
''If
you have skills in these areas, South Australia invites you to be a
part of our cutting-edge defence industry,'' he enthused.
The
Trade Minister referred to S.A. as the high technology centre of
Australia's defence industry, leading the country in shipbuilding,
submarine support, aerospace and defence research and development.
In a statement released last March, S.A. Premier Mike Rann
said his Government had set a target to boost the number of people
employed in the State’s defence industry from 16 000 to 28 000.
Mr
Rann said that" Positioning ourselves to win more contracts will help
us to achieve so many of South Australia’s Strategic Plan targets on
job creation, economic growth, investment, interstate migration,
exports, strategic infrastructure and establishing co-operative
research centres and centres of excellence."
He
said that “To win more defence contracts, we have to demonstrate that
South Australia has the skills, the infrastructure, and the
full-throttle backing of the SA Government."
Mr
Holloway and the South Australian delegation will also travel to
Bangalore and Chennai, with the aim of the mission to promote the South
Australian education, wine, water, toolmaking and information
technology sectors, as well as promoting SA as a migration destination.
Premier Rann will lead a trade delegation to India next month.
The head of the state's peak information and commutications technology lobby group told The Australian the government of "not looking in its own backyard" for skills.
ICT Council for SA chairman David Raffen,
told the newspaper that the Premier was "wasting taxpayer's money" and
should be paying more attention to the state's existing capabilities.
The Council has previously expressed concern
at a suggestion by Administrative and Information Services Minister,
Jay Weatherill, that industry development will not be a dominant factor
in the Government's future ICT services procurement.
AUSTRALIAN MILITARY COMMUNICATION GLOBALISED
Defence Minister Hill today announced that global
defence giant General Dynamics will co-ordinate creation of the
Australian Defence Force's new communications system.
General Dynamics
claims it " has leading market positions in mission-critical
information systems and technologies; land and expeditionary combat
systems, armaments and munitions; shipbuilding and marine systems; and
business aviation. It is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, and
employs approximately 70,800 people worldwide
The company is to be assisted by the Adelaide-based international defence corporation Tenix (whose consultants have included former Defence Minister Peter Reith) with ADI, Tenix founders Transfield share ADI in a consortium half-owned by European communications group Thales. The two goups have previously proposed merging aspects of their businesses. Thales acts as recruitment centre for ADI.
It's possible to guess who will look after the subcontracting work, but that would be pure speculation
Here's Minister Hill's medoa release:
Preferred Tenderer FOR BATTLESPACE COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT
General
Dynamics, in partnership with ADI and Tenix, has been selected as the
Phase One Preferred Tenderer for the design, development and
implementation of Defence’s future digital communications system,
Defence Minister Robert Hill announced today.
Senator
Hill said the Battlespace Communications Systems will increase the
efficiency and capacity of the Army and land-based Air Force elements
to rapidly share information on the battlefield.
Phase
One is approved for $97 million, and will focus on the development of
the overall systems design and architecture for future procurements of
communications equipment for the Land Force. This will provide enhanced
Voice and Data communications capabilities and enhanced technology
upgrades to equip a digitised Joint Task Force.
"This project is a key component in the delivery of network centric warfare to the land environment," Senator Hill said.
"This
project will deliver state of the art digital voice and data
communication, including video and multimedia, as well as an upgrade
plan to ensure that the ADF’s equipment remains at the forefront of
technology.
"Equipment will span
the majority of field deployable units in both the Army and Air Force
and is likely to range from small hand held radios to larger vehicle
mounted communications equipment."
Estimated
at up to $800 Million, the project has been broken up into three phases
that are currently programmed over the next 10 years. Under this
project, equipment will be introduced into service from 2007/2008.
"The
preferred Prime Systems Integrator, General Dynamics, has significant
experience in the design and development of complex communications
systems through previous work on similar projects with the Canadian and
British Armies," Senator Hill said.
"General
Dynamics’ involvement in this project will enable the ADF to leverage
this experience to strengthen Australia’s systems integration and
communications expertise and further develop this critical capability."
General
Dynamics has established a new company, General Dynamics Systems
Australia (GDSA), as part of this project and will progressively
transfer management and engineering work from General Dynamics Canada
to GDSA. This will generate new jobs and further enhance the
specialised skills needed in Australia’s Electronic Systems sector.
As
the Prime Systems Integrator, General Dynamics will embed employees
from ADI and Tenix into their team to work on the project and support
system definition and design, speciality engineering, life cycle cost
modelling, and the interface of the new architecture with existing
systems.
"ADI and Tenix involvement will increase
in later stages of the project to include delivery of training and
logistics support," Senator Hill said.
"This will
result in opportunities for Australian industry including,
small-to-medium enterprises, to participate in vehicle installations,
supply of equipment and through life support activities."
ENDS
Other Australian defence companies with signifigant global activity include BAE Australia, Boeing Australia and KBR Australia.
I seem to be
looking for the end of the current globalisation of the resource
"monetisation" process we appear to be undergoing. If you include
military capablility as part of a country's natural resources, you
begin to find a monopolisation of national assets in every country.
The question is what happens when everything's 'bought up?' Is it
like the end of the Parker Bros board game, where everyone trades to
amalgamete their assets in the most effective form? Look at the defence
share trading earlier in the year - in the space of weeks BAE sold its
shares in SAAB to buy United Defense from Carlyle who , as mentioned
above, areabout to 'monetise' their investment in the UK. Defence via
revenue generated in a stock exchange float. This is what I see as the
future of Australian military assets - to be bought and sold to the
highest bidder.
Corporate takeovers and share trading have the potential to become
the new method of warfare, with national boundaries being of little
signifigance. Corporation A, with higher miliatary assets and greater
cash flow, defeats Corporation B by financial assimilation without
(unlike now) a shot being fired.
If evoking the side-effects of warfare without bloodshed is the
result, then how can we not commend this global edition of Monopoly?
Whatever happens, the selling of our military communications
networks to overseas interests is the strongest indication yet that
we're a piece on the board. However, I don't think we're truly a
player in the game. It's time to find out who's moving the pieces.
This continues as part of a piece at Margo Kingston's Webdiary
By Richard Tonkin at Sep 30 2005
Precedence In New Australian Terror Laws
First written as comment to a piece on Margo Kingston's Webdiary,
in which Kerri Browne has placed the Australian Parliamentary Library's
compendium of information regarding the proposed Australian terror
legislatiion. Click here.
When the Commonwealth Heads Of Government meeting was held in Melbourne (late 70's, I think) an Irish friend of our family operated a milk bar somewhere in Victoria, three hundred or so miles from the Big Smoke.
This man's father had affiliations with the Australian branch of Sinn Fein.
The Federal Police came down from Melbourne to conduct a weapons
search, just in case his milk bar was a weapons cache for an armed
action in Melbourne.
I raise this situation as it was not that long ago. There were, and
are, many Australians and Irish who didn't sympathise with the British.
In modern parlance supporters of Irish rebellion would be considered as
criminals, and the literature that was circulated interpretable as
inciting acts of terrorism.
What happens when somebody empowered by the impending Australian
legislation decides that those who supported Irish efforts to reclaim
Ulster may be supporting the terrorists attacking Britain? You can be
sure that the possibily of IRA backers aiding and abetting Jihadists
has been discussed once or twice in Downing Street.
On Easter Sunday last year I had the pleasure of sharing a Guinness
with SA's Atternoy General, Mr Atkinson, at Adelaide's Irish Club. The
occasion was Australian Aid For Ireland's annual commemoration of the
uprising against the British in Easter of 1916. Mick sat in room full
of predominantly middle-aged to elderly Irish, listening attentively to
this annual litany of celebrating a cultural revolution.
Crossing a fine line of definition, Attorney General Mick would be
considered a terrorist sympathiser. I hope his involvement in creating
the legislation ensures that he is not part of a future witch-hunt.
When Mr Howard says that Australia's terrorism laws are a result of the London bombings, he is using as a template a society which has had similar laws to those he would implement for the last thirty years.
posted by Adelaide NewsBlog @ 9:22 PM
See if you find any of this language familiar:
[excerpt]
This consultation paper on Legislation Against Terrorism was
prepared for the U.K. parliament in 1998, and shows great similarity to
what the Australian Government proposes, arguably to a level of
near-plagiarism.
The one crucial difference has been discussed before. The U.K. has
been an occupying force in many countries for many hundreds of years.
Shouldn't we be "writing our own book" in this situation, instead of
(as it would seem) utilising the timing of events to initiate a
pre-prepared plan?
By Richard Tonkin at Oct 19 2005
Bomb Insurance.
It happened so fast that many didn't see it arrive. As the bannor of Halliburton was raised over Australia's Parliament House, the few protesters who dared to attend were taken away for questioning.
Awaiting the arrival of the bulletproof Cadillac carrying President
Cheney stood a proud Prime Minister, eager as usual to open the door,
while a grinning Cabinet formed a line of honor to mark the
auspiciousness of the occasion.
"Thanks, John," said the President, with a courteous nod and an ill-concealed wink. "i'll take it from here."
As they stood at the hour-long ceremony marking the takeover by
Corporate Military Personel of Australian Defence activites, the small
gallery of approved journalists waited for the response to the
President's command that all non-shareholders of Halliburton resign
from Cabinet
immediately. None of the Ministers were moving, although it was
well-known that at least two rebels hadn't "exercised their stock
options."
Those of the media who were reciting Cheney's script, transmitted to
their earpieces from an implanted microphone, pondered the fact that
the joke that you could tell a politician wasn't lying when his lips
weren't moving was no longer true- Cheney's use of the throat-mike was
as skillful as any ventriloquist's. Years of practice with the former
President had served well.
Locked safely in their litigation-proof TPAs (terrorist-proof
apartments) the people-meters on widescreen TVs recorded that the
public observed the event with mild apathy, keen for normal programming
to resume, eventually switching channels in their never-ending quest to
decide which corporation's food to eat that night.
By Richard Tonkin at Oct 24 2005
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 16, 2005
RUMSFELD CREATES ADELAIDE 'HIGH TERROR' CHANCE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA REFUSED PARLIAMENT HOUSE PROTEST
A
planned Adelaide protest against U.S. Secretary of Defence has been
cancelled by South Australian Authorities, and that those gathering at
Parliament House without permission wil be "moved on" by police.
Protest
spokesman Mr Mike Khizan said in a media release tonight that " “Donald
Rumsfeld, a man whom many millions of people around the world see as an
international war criminal is coming to Adelaide, and in the name of
‘protecting’ him, free speech is being denied and the right to dissent
attacked.�?
Mr. Khizam argued that “it would be a betrayal of our
responsibility to defend civil liberties to simply swallow this
decision. If Parliament steps are barricaded off, we will rally as
close to the site as possible, on the King William Street end of the
barricades.�?
The media release by Rice Rumsfeld Reception
Committee also emphasised the fact that many people had already been
notified of the Thurday 4.30 pm protest. It also claimed that Adelaide
talkback radio participants have been warned on at least two occassions
that if they say anything that may incite protest they will be taken of
air
.Police have declared a "high" terror likelihood, following
media reports that protesters are co nverging on the South Australian
capital from all over the country.
The Adelaide trip was
announced several months ago by Australian Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexander Downer, and was planned to coincide with a visit by U.S.
Secretary of State Condileeza Rice. Downer subsequently revealed that
Dr Rice had cancelled her trip because "Leftists" were planning to
protest.
According to the Adelaide Advertiser, police are
preparing for the possibility of up to 10,000 protesters, and have
stated that they will have little tolerance for unwanted activity. A
police spokesman said today that Adelaide residents should not go near
the blockaded area unless they had specific reason to do so.
Mr
Rumseld and the U.S. Deputy Secratary of State are meeting with Mr
Downer and Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill fo an annual
bi-national meeting of minsters known as Ausmin.
Mr Downer has
previously stated that Adelaide was chosen as the location of the
meeting "because I live there," and that he thought it would be nice to
show off his home city.
Mr Rumsfeld is expected to dine on
Thursday at the Stonyfell Winery Resaurant, situated next to a quarry
at the face of the Adelaide Hills. Prostesters plan to gather at the
location, about 14 minutes from city centre, and to be located along
the roadside.
Adelaide has strong commercial and defence ties
with the U..S. It is the primary location for construction of
Australia's contribution to the U.S. Missile Shield, and is the closest
major city to an extimated 40% of the world's known uranium reserves.
The city is the global headquarters for the Infrastructure Division of
K.B.R, the subidary of Halliburton heavily involved supporting U.S.
soldiers in Iraq and in the reconstruction of that countries oilfields,
as well holding a contract for global support of U.S. military
activities.
South Australia is expected, according to its
Premier, to host Australian participation in the Global Hawk project,
in which Unmanned Air Vehicles for survellance and combat vehicles are
being created.
There is also speculation that the region will be a prime player in the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter Project
A Day In The (Adelaide) Life Of Don Rumsfeld
Interesting day at the Rumsfeld rally (nothing huge, around 600 I'd guess) particularly to watch the level of covert security.
Came into town by train at 4 o'clock... a couple of police on the
platform, fifty people with backpacks heading in different directions.
Up to the main street. Immediately to the right is the Halliburton- constructed barrier blockading the Hyatt from the world, a
few constabulary behind it- nothing major.
Strolling up past the Casino, you see a few more parked at the
outdoor cafe, a couple across the street, three or four at the front of
Parliament House.
Then the proudest moment of my life- helping duct-tape the NO WAR
banner between the pillars of Parliament House, from where it was
banned a day before!
(Note- duct-tape doesn't work very well on stone)
Standing around in the crowd, listening to a conversation a couple
down ("barmaid's ears" it used to be called) in which this bloke in
slacks and white shirt is saying " XXX is up there... where's everybody
else?" a phrase repeated later when there was obviously still not more
than one of the constabulary on the steps, and a couple hundred of
(seated) protesters.
At the mike, the S.A. Democrats Upper House Leader, Sandra Kanck MLC
is telling us how, upon walking near the Hyatt to inspect the blockade,
she was asked for her name, address and date of birth. Earlier in the
day, a man was asked to remove his shoes and socks for a police
inspection while his bag, containing a change of clothes, was also
searched.
Awaiting the 6.15. In the meantime it seemed a good idea to return to
the point of arrival. Another man in white shirt and slacks is talking
to officers and men in orange Transadelaide jackets. As they disperse
I'm watching the boys in blue behind the blockade practicing removing
one section to let the motorcad in and out when I notice the bloke
watching me. Again in a Transadelaide "waistcoat" he's perched at the
boundary between the train station and the Hyatt, and he's describing
me into his phone "He's just standing there watching...dark shoulder length hair, a bit of a beard... Stu's
probably got a picture of him" and I'm thinking it's time to leave. (A big "hello" to "Stu" and by the way, who do you work for
Back down on the platform I'm looking for more corporate logos on
the orange train jackets. So many of them only read "security
contractor". I found this interesting in its anonymity.
Apparently,
during the rally (which the Advertiser says had five hundred protesters
compared to Channel Nine's one thousand.) a single protester was
removed and arrested on a charge of disorderly behaviour after
confronting a lone U.S. protester.
Mr Rumsfeld, I know the
numbers weren't huge, but as the pictures of our protest were broadcast
around the country, many, many people were, you can be sure, quietly
cheering us on. They, like the protesters today, do not like what you
represent, and hope you take it with you when you leave.
I've
been looking along the tracks at the Hyatt and wondering which room
you're in. This is probably as close as I'll ever get to you, unless I
catch a bus to town to stand in the street and bathe in your aura.
I
wonder if the Hyatt tonight is going to be like the end of each episode
of "The Waltons" You remember..."Goodnight John-Boy, goodnight Mom,
goodnight Bobby-JO" etc etc.
As the lights go out I wish you
could hear my voice in your head saying "Good night Donald- now piss
off back to Washington, and take colonels Hill and Downer with you.
YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE !
Orstrayyan Defence Minister Hill has said tonight that the Australian and US views on Iraq were "identical"
Q.E.D.
Do you sleep at the foot of the bed, Robert, or on a rug on the floor?
PS Amid all that secrecy and securtiy, some idiot gave out Rumsfeld's itinerary to his fellow Adelaide denizens! Here's how it appeared on Michael Moore's website.
Adelaide Defence and Research Communications Commence Globalisation
Adelaide, the Australian home of Star Wars, Halliburton, Global Hawk
and the Joint Strike Fighter Project, has begun building a global-standard data transfer system that will allow local activities
to be co-ordinated internationally
.
Today's Adelaide Advertiser
announces the commencement and construction of a major fibreoptic
network, connencting defence, science and educational facilities at
speeds enabling synchronisation with global projects.
[excerpt]
SABRENet will cut the time to transfer a terabyte
of data to just 17 minutes, compared with about three months using
business broadband.
A terabyte is 1 trillion bytes.
Until now such large datasets, saved to portable hard disks, have
been transported by plane or taxi between research institutions here
and overseas.
The new network will enable supercomputer real-time simulations,
multi-screen, high-definition video conferencing, redundant storage and
disaster recovery of massive amounts of data, and will allow South
Australian researchers to participate in bandwidth-enabled experiments
around the globe.
The project is the result of almost three years of collaboration
between the University of Adelaide, the University of South Australia,
Flinders University, the State Government and the Defence, Science and
Technology Organisation.
It is not known whether the U.S. Surveillance base at Pine Gap will be connected to the network.
By Richard Tonkin at Nov 22 2005 - 1:09am
Adelaide- US Radar Base
The Federal Minister of Defence, Robert Hill announced yesterday that trials that would enable Adelaide to play a key role in the U.S. MIssile Shield were successfuMr Hill said that the trials "might" allow Adelaide to participate.
The news follows announcements earlier this year that Adelaide to
become the location of the construction of three warships equipped to
participate in the "Star Wars" shield.
The trials focused on detection of missiles at early stages of
flight, and showed the Adelaide-based JORN (Jindalee Over-horizon Radar
Network) would aid early interception of incoming missiles
By Richard Tonkinat Dec 6 2005 - 12:40am
Scott Parkin Deportation Justified- Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
Halibucks are fake money (in the style of Halliburton) used by U..S.
protesters to demonstrate the idea of dodgy transactions in street
theatre. If the idea wasn't conceived by Scott Parkin,the concept
originates from his training program..
At a recent anti-Cheney protest in Houston , a protester was ushered behind police lines by alleged Secret Service personel to be asked questions about her use of the Halibucks.
Meanwhile, back at the Southern Ranch, Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Ian Carnell,in his review of the role of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in the Parkin deportation, found it had acted within
the law.
ASIO's assessment of Parkin,Mr Carnell claims, was based on "credible and reliable information"
There are two versions of the Parkin Report, one remaining classified.
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown finds it amazing that Parkin cannot be told of the reason for his deportation. "
"The report justifies ASIO's action in instigating the deportation of
Mr Parkin but says it can't say why," he told the Senate yesterday
afternoon.
At the time of Parkin's arrest and deportation, an ASIO representative "leaked" information to The Australian's Greg
Sheridan that Parkin was planning to teach Australian protetsters how
to roll marbles under the hooves of police horse. This activity, which
Parkin claims is against his methodology, has been a known practice
since the protests against Australian participation in the Vietnam War.
Parkin
now has to pay approximately A$13,000 in transport and accommodation
costs before he will be allowed to re-enter the country.
I've just thought of a solution to the whole problem- let Parkin pay the bill in Halli-bucks! Wouldn't everyone be happy?
It's
my belief that Parkin's deportation was to avoid the possibility of a
major protest being organised as US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld visited
the Global Halli-headquarters of Infrastructure, Adelaide.
By Richard Tonkin at Dec 7 2005 - 1:0
This Is Style Of Protest Parkin's Deportation Was Intended To Suppress In Australia
Pre-planned,brilliant "photo-op" creation. I reckon that ASIO didn't think the
Australian protest movement would be able to think like Diane Wilson
unless we went to a Scott Parkin class.
From Houston Indymedia :
Katie Heim reports from inside the Westin Oaks Hotel: This evening, as Republicans gathered in the Galleria to raise money for the GOP Diane WIlson, cofounder of Code Pink and author of An Unreasonable Woman infiltrated their ranks. Photos of the banner and arrest. Wilson, who has done work around issues such as the Bhopal distaster and against the Iraq war, got on Delay's RSVP list by donating $50 to
his campaign.
After speeches by the chairman of the Republican Party and a rousing rendition of "God Bless the USA" Tom Delay himself took the stage. Delay referenced the protesters outside, citing the Socialists and the Progressive Workers parties. Then Cheney himself took the stage. WIlson was about 15 to 20 feet away from the VP when she opened up her black velvet wrap to reveal a banner which read "Corporate Greed Kills-From Bhopal to Bagdad". Conservative moralists nearby grabbed WIlson as she chanted "Corporate Greed Kills, and Iraq kills too!"
One GOP member called Wilson a bitch and a whore. Police dragged Wilson out and she's still detained as of this report.
Imagine
if something like this had happened in front of Rumsfeld in Adelaide?
Maybe such photo-tactical thinking is required for protests against our
Prime Minister?
Clipsal, Halliburton, Old Uncle John Olsen and all.
Costello:"If you have any inquiries into the proceedings of the tax office I
suggest you refer them to the tax office or to the taxation
commissioner."
Searle: " He wouldn't be able to tell you much at all because he
would be subject to the secrecy provisions of the taxation act."
A retired senior tax officer says that the matter should have been
referred to the DPP but that he can say no more as, although retired,
he's still subject to the secrecy provisions of the income tax act. This
is much of a tune as Chris Searle can whistleblow, and it's a strong
and stirring lament.
There was no lamenting on the night of John Howard's re-election at
Gerard's private function room in Bowden, as his guests, members of the
SA Liberal Party, cheered the results, and their signifigance. As a
party insider said at the time, "Every party has eliminated it's Left."
Two weeks ago, former Premier Dean Brown announced he would not
contest the seat of Finnis at the next election. The "capital" of
Finnis is the tourist town of Victor Harbour, and the region has been
booming with development ahead of a speculated new four-lane
highway to the area. Immediately after the announcement, Brown retired.
The rumour for twelve months back was that responsibility for the
road's construction is in the hands of Halliburton.
Former Premier John Olsen had a couple of quiet paragraphs in the Advertiser today, announcing his continual journey promoting South Australia in the US. He's just been appointed Consul-General to New York. Olsen, Premier when Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney visited Australia in '97, was responsible for selling SA's water to supply to SA powerbroker Malcolm Kinnaird, creator of the company that becameHalliburton/KBR Australia, and acting as its consultant when his bid, placed several hours afterclosing time, was accepted amid accusations of government andindustrial expionage. The 'Tiser today notes Olsen's significantcontribution to promoting South Australia to the US. If you're lookingfor Judas, he's out in the olive garden, puckering up.
Have you read Alan Ramsay's SMH piece yet? There's a paragraph here that's ringing my bells:
[excerpt]
The question Ramsay raises here is a biggie. Gerard, concentratingon financing the expansion of his empire, was probably beginning toshow the finiancial stretch-marks that lead to his "globalisation". Wasit Gerard's money that flowed through Catch Tim and other fronts, orwas he only pretending?
At any rate, with Kinnaird working the corporate end, and RobertGerard manipulating the Liberal Party, South Australia never stood a chance. Cheney and Rumsfeld's wishes were fulfilled.
The ironic thing about the raising of the supicious nature of
relationships between Gerard and Costello is that what the exercise has ultimately achieved is for John Howard to get into temporal firing-range of the next election. Why has this maintaining the PM's international position, over the past recent months, "suddenly" become a necessity?
The phrase, "Think Global, Act Local," has taken on a whole new meaning in the New American Century
First
Published on the last night of Margo Kingston's Webdiary. For those
who don't know, Margo is also convenor of Your Democracy
Intercepted Project for a New American Century Memo
Memo to the Downer-Under department.
A big Christmas Howdy to all of Alex's boy's! Our little buddies
have been working their butts getting the Apocalypse Headquarters
ready. Little John, with some gentle persuasion, has decided to stay
with the team... thanks, Agent Gerard! You've saved us a bundle yet
again!
Don't forget the date of our next party, on June 6th next year. The
Sexy Six will provide the music, George will be serving the pretzels,
and Osama as always will be running the chook-raffle
Halliburton
Mal has always delivered our every need, and he's lived up to his
reputation. The catering he\s provided for the bash is more than anyone
could ask for. Another fat Christmas bonus of Defence Research stocks
are coming to stuff your stocking, Pally, hand delivered by Director
Dick! Secretary Don says we won't run out of anything, and that the
playground's second to none. He was particularly impressed with the
Liquor Cabinet you supplied after tasting your samples.
The
Most-Improved Employee Award this year goes to Gunner Bob. Alill that
media training is finally paying off, and he's almost as good at Alex
at lying convincingly. Next time we have a PNAC Poker-Face Play-Off
the judges will have a difficult time of it.
Johnny O is proving
to be a pleasure to have around New York.. a man who knows how to give
service, that one! Both John and the Reefer-Man asked us to pass on
Festive greetings and by the way, yes it was worth it. John wants to
know if you've found anything in Central Australia that he maybe missed
that needs selling, but the Reefer-man thinks he's had all the bases
covered.
To close this memo a warning.. there might be a virus in the system..
Last night I had the strangest dream,
I never dreamed before.
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.
I dreamed I saw a mighty room,
The room was filled with men.
And the papers they were signing said
They'd never fight again.
And when the papers were all signed,
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads,
And grateful prayers were made.
And the people in the streets below,
They all danced round and round.
And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground.
Last night I had the strangest dream,
I never dreamed before.
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.
I dreamed I saw a mighty room,
The room was filled with men.
And the papers they were signing said
They'd never fight again
And when I woke twas but a dream
and peace a dirty word
Itried to tell them of my dream
but not a word they heard
And then I got me fighting mad
and knew just what to do.
I'd fight nonviolently for peace
until my dream came true.
.
If anyone can find the author of this virus, Ed McKurdy, can they have him jailed as a seditionist or deported or something
at Dec 12 2005
DEPORTED HALLIBURTON ACTIVIST CHALLLENGES AUSTRALIAN INTELLIGENCE
(Proudly reprinted from Halliburton Watch and Houston Indymedia )
Houston-based activist Scott Parkin, deported from Australia after
protesting the activities of global energy and war-industry giant
Halliburton, has mounted a legal challenge against his treatment by
ASIO, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation.
On
September 10 this year security and immigration officials detained
Parkin at a Melbourne coffee shop. Parkin was scheduled to co-present
a workshop on non-violent protest techniques that afternoon.
Parkin
had previously assisted co-ordinating a street-theatre protest at
Hallibuton/KBR's Sydney offices, coinciding with an international
business conference at the Sydney Opera House.
Parkin had declined a request to appear at an ASIO interview.
According
to The Australian, security officers were concerned that Parkin would
teach Australian Halliburton protesters how to roll marbles under the
hooves of police horses.. presumably the marbles that ASIO lost years
ago.
Parkin is seeking to overturn the adverse security finding that caused his deportation.
Halliburton's Australian arm is involved in foreign aid activities in
Iraq, and enjoys numerous no-bid defence contracts. It is chief owner
of the Adelaide to Darwin Railway, and calculates the probabity of
missile-strike breaches of Australian nuclear facilitiies. The
possibile sites for the new Australian nuclear dump are all situated
along the railway..
Here's the ABC News version
at Dec 132005
SON OF STAR WARS II: NEOCONS DOWN UNDER
"It’s not Star Wars. It’s basically the capability to defeat ballistic
missiles whilst they are in the air after launch, during cruise or as
they reenter the atmosphere and that defensive capability has developed
enormously in the last few years. A year or so ago it was thought to be
decades away. Now the United States will in fact deploy the first part
of its defence shield next year. So it’s a rapidly advancing technology."
"The need in a very unpredictable world is to beable to defend ourselves, whether it’s troops on the ground or whether it’s strategic assets and what we have is the opportunity to get into this massive project at an early stage, to be able to invest in it, to learn what capabilities might be suitable for us in the future and basically to have that option, the option to be able to develop that form of defence in the future."
"We think that in the science and technology area we will make a contribution from the start. The Americans have been out here looking at our capabilities. They have been most impressed with JORN, for example, and new forms of radar and sensors that are being developed here north of Adelaide. And they willhave the opportunity to promote and invest in their science through this project. This is a massive project, a huge public expenditure by the United States and it gives us the opportunity to get into the project and to play our part and to get a benefit in terms of a more secure Australia."
"We will choose the projects within the massive program that we want to invest in and obviously we will do that to the background of our successes to date, in terms of radars and sensors and the like. And we will get benefit back from that investment in terms of better capability for Australia."
"We have said the Air Warfare System will basically be a US design but the US designers are interested in Australian companies contributing complementary parts of the system. That again will be an opportunity that our companies have never had before at that level of sophistication."
Robert Hill December 5 2003
Now let's take the Tardis to December 6 2005
[extract from the Adelaide Advertiser]
Two days later Minister Hill revealed, while announcing the placement of
the AEGIS order, that unless Australia had taken this action
Lockheed-Martin would have need to shut down its AEGIS production line, telling The Advertiser that
It's good to know that, even though we don't have a final design for the ships yet, we know what we'll shoot from them.
Last Thursday the Pentagon extolled the success of it's Southern Hemispheric Missile Shield trial.
[extract from The Advertiser]
In the dramatic public competition for the winning of the AWD contract...
two state governments toe-to-toe in the media, complete with
Adelaide-base journo-terrorists invading Melbourne to present the case
for South Australia. The Advertiser journalists were lead in the charge
by Craig Bildstien, former Liberal Member for Mildura and ex
press-secretary for Chris Gallus, the Parliamentary Secretary for
Foreign Affairs.
I had the privelege of hearing South Australian Premier Mike Rann announcing the AWD cpmtract being awarded to Adelaide, telling everyone how when his office received the news "We
all shook hands and said "mission accomplished' ". The implication to
the South Australian public was that it was the State's Labour
Government that had won the deal. Hill didn't have much to say at the
time.
Nowadays the relationship is a little more tense. When Senator Hill announced on Thursday that Adelaide was to receive a new
1,200 battallion. Deputy Premier Foley was caught unawares, telling
Adelaide ABC's Matthew Abraham and David Bevin that the announcement, though known to be due sometime in the future (nice to know somebody in the Premier's Department has discoverd the internet) was not expected at that time.
As South Australia gears up for an election next March, the job creations Rann's Defence State are going to be loudly
proclaimed as a vote-getter. The question is exactly how much of the
acquisition of defence contracts is directly attributable to the
Federal Liberal Government, the State Labor Government, and the State's former Liberal Government.
It obvious looking at Hill's statements, at a time when Rann had only been in office for six months,
that planning for our involvement in the AEGIS program had been
developing for much longer than that. In fact, it's been years since
the US government requested three ships to participate in the missile
shield program.
Six months ago I wrote an open letter to Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, saying that,
Nothing that's happened since then has changed my mind. The one thing I was missing is that if i'm right,
As long as the election result doesn't affect US Foreigna key issue in the next South Australian election consists of an
untrustworthy amount of grandstanding by an actor with a very small
part.
Policy, the Bush Regime wouldn't care who won. However, it's mystifying
that the SA Liberal party, surely able to see what's going on, aren't
opposing Rann's publicity campaign
"Armygeddon" Australian Defence Recruitment Campaign
I worry for the minds who created this concept, and hope it's not a
Freudian slip. To get the kids in, or at least the ones who aren't too
fat or stoned, The ADF has prouldy launched ARMYGEDDON, a "street
machine" that that does for Land Rover what Herbie the Love Bug did for
Volksies.
"It's unique capabilities will attract the attention of
those who really know about Street Machines," the blurb proclaims.
Aha... Senator Hill's found a job for "joyriders". !
said the Chief of Army, Major General Leahy.
The young people
that the Army really seem to be after are the ones at Adelaide
University, who have just joined the US MIssile Shield program. DSTO and the University of Adelaide signed an agreement last week to
establish the centre within the University's School of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering.
DO
the Adelaide Uni kids know that their intellectual property will
eventually be sold ('monetised' or whatever) by the very same company
that runs the Adelaide University car park. Tenix aren't just keeping your Holdens dry folks., they're marketing your mindpower .
But what the hell, you might get to work on a really cool car.
Democracy and Gas - Lock, Stock and Hallibarrel
I'm beginning to understand the race to tie up Australia and the
Oceania regions Liquefied Natural Gas sources. From the looks of this
article on Energy Review Net, Unless you own the initial resource
you'll have nothing to work with. You also have a considerable
quantity of political clout, as Russia is currently demonstrating to
Europe.
The
question this piece leaves me with is: how much of a percentage of
control is retained by the suppliers of the technologies used to access
the LNG reserves? The answer to this question will be of importance in
our near future, and I believe the answer will have Halliburton written
all over it. Can anyone advise me where to begin looking?
Here's part of the ERN article
"Geopolitical Risk" shouldn't be much of an issue to investors in
Australian LNG, you'd reckon. It's far from the same case in Europe,
which gets around a quarter of its gas supplies from Russia, via
pipelines through the Ukraine. So when the neighbours get grumpy...
The Centre for Research on Globalisation's William Engdahl seems to think that control of the Ukraine s as important to US influence on Russia as it is to European Energy supply:
At the end of 2003, Papua New Guinea's Oil Search announced an
alliance with Halliburton. They also announced the construction of a
pipeline from PNG to South Australia, to provide fuel for the massively expanding Olympic Dam Mine, (containing a major chunk of the world's future uranium supply) for which Halliburton had conducted the Environmental Impact Statement, while it was laying stormwater pipes for Mawson Lakes, the forthcoming Heart of the Defence State,
If,
at some time in the future, Australia decides to use its uranium and
gas reserves as a method of flexing a political "muscle", in a similar
manner to Moscow, the message might be transmitted by "nerves"
controlled by another "brain".
It\s a small world after all....
Adelaide Defence Contractors In US "Small Business" Scam Probe
Several Adelaide-based US Defence Corporations are disguisingthemselves as small businesses to "loophole" US Legislation, according
to a US Survey.
In the chase for Australian Defence contracts, some of the same
companies have subsidiariaries mirroring the questionable US practices.
Defense Industry Daily reported yesterday that that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District
of California has ordered the U.S. Small Business Administration
(USSBA) to release to the American Small Business League (ASBL) a draft
report on the awarding of government contracts.
[extract]
The SBA report describes how large companies are
improperly winning contracts in the Federal government's $60-plus
billion small business contracting program.
The Small Business Act of 1953 directs that at least 23% of federal
government prime contracts go to small business, but a host of abuses
and loopholes have allowed large companies to pick up contracts in this
category.
The SBA released an edited version of the report on December 28,
2004, acknowledging that small business contracts had gone to such
"small businesses" as Raytheon Co., BAE Systems, Northrop Grumann
Corp., Carlyle Group, Electronic Data Systems Corp., Booz Allen
Hamilton Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Buhrmann NV.
Raytheon, BAE, Northrop Grunman and Carlyle are involved in South
Australian based Missile Shield and Unmanned Air Vehicle Projects. Both
BAE and EDS have major headquarters in Adelaide.
The situation is mirrored in Australia. Here Australian (often wholly U.S.
owned) subsidiaries masquerade as Australian contributors to the Joint
Strike Fighter program.
In 2002 Letters of Intent regarding the JSF program were sent to such small Australian companies as Boeing
Australia, Halliburton ACT, CSC Nowra, DSTO Melbourne, Raytheon
Australia Adelaide and Sydney,Tenix Adelaide and Melbourne, and Thales
Sydney and Brisbane.
Trade Minister Ian MacFarlane said at the time that
Raytheon is also serving as the system-to-system integrator in the Missile Shield warship construction
soon to commence in Adelaide, while Thales has recently earned a
guernsey in assisting General Dynamics in the Battlespace
Communications revamp.
Practices under question in the US include acquisition of small firms to use as
applicants, misrepresentation of employee figures, and large companies
passing of subsidiaries or divisions as an small business.
If such a situation is regarded as criminal activity in the US (in 1953 punishable by fines up to
US$500,000, or up to 10 years imprisonment, or both) surely the
ethicality of the "Australian" contract situation needs to be
immediately examined.
Then it will be a good time to look at "Australian small businesses" such as Halliburton participatiing in Australian international aid activities.. but that's another story.
Or is it?
By Richard Tonkinat 4 Jan 2006
Target Adelaide
When you make a conjecture you're a conspiracy theorist... until the information comes out!
Four months ago I wrote a piece for Webdiary called Halliburtton's Adelaide,
referring to the JORN missile systems possible uses. Today I read in
The Age of how integral JORN is to the Missile Shield.
[extract]
Do you think that an enemy is going to aim at the radar dishes, or
the control headquarters? As I've said before, if an enemy force
decided to take drastic measures, three unfinished Missile Shield
warships in Adelaide's harbour would be a perfectcandidate for an
attack. The Catch-22 we're in is that while JORN will see the missiles
coming, we don't have anything to stop them with until the ships are
built.!
In the meantime, the city's connections to the activities
of a militaristic superpower continue to be constructed, their
signifigance locally unreported. It's beginning to get annoying.
By Richard Tonkin at 7 Jan 2006
Halliburton- Australian tax breaks for bribes ?
In Australia, foreign bribes are tax-deductable
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) has found Australia should increase fines for companies that
bribe foreign officials
It's
also concerned that lining the pockets of foreign officials to "grease
the wheels of progress" will get you a discount at the Australian
Taxation Office. The ATO calls the bribes "facilitation payments"
The
Australian-based company that the world knows best for bribery is
Halliburton. A subsidiary company, wholly owned by its U.S. parent, Halliburton organises construction projects worldwide from its offices in Adelaide, South Australia. With many projects in many countries, many wheels could need greasing.
In
August last year the Nigerian Government voted unanimiously to summon
Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar to explain KBR's role in paying bribes to
secure a major oil contracts. Investigation is continuing in three countries.
Nearer
to home, KBR has a strong presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New
Guinea and New Zealand. It also carries out faid contracts for the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
As a example, when KBR in Adelaide organises reconstruction work in Iraq, how much does it allocate in its budget to keep local officials happy?
Extrapolate the question over half a dozen countries and it becomes a
hairy one.
Bribes
appear to be unnecessary in Australia, where local officials are afraid
to reject KBR tenders on political grounds because of possible legal ramifications.
This is probably not the case in Iraq. In budgeting the cost of
infrastructure reconstruction projects, how much KBR Adelaide allow to
keep Iraqi local government officials happy? Perhaps the payments come
from the Cayman Islands office, but where do the cheques get written?
I'm guessing Greenhill Road, Parkside, South Australia.
It may be, as Attorney General Phillip Ruddock stated yesterday, that "It's one in which we treat any offences seriously, we investigate
them." However, given that the Australian Government has not
implemented an inquiry into possible Australian involvement in KBR's
Nigerian bribery, and if such is the case for such a publicly prominent
situation, the magnitude of activity by an Australian-based company
would need to be stupendous before the Australian Government would
contemplate the possibility of raising an eyebrow, and is likely to be
giving perpetrators a discount for conducting their activities from
Australa.
at 18 Jan 2006 - 12:52am
Stranger In A Strange (Halliburton) Land
Having had local councils on my mind since learning how the Byron BayCouncil gave Halliburton a contract because they were afraid of a lawsuit, I"ve had a coincidental week.
I was just smiling over my front gate to a council inspector
while explaining my unregistered dog. As I don't drive, I have no
licence. In order to prove who I was I had to find three pieces of identification. This was in order to receive a fine.
You can appreciate my level of annoyance, having flown to Qeensland
using an album cover and a 1971 (age six) passport, played at
Edinburgh Air Force Base using a
multi-coloured Land Rover and a pub social club card and getting to Port Lincoln using letters sent to me from the State Attorney General, the former Arts Minister and a Liberal MLC. These actions, admittedly, indicate a possible phobia.
I ascribe to the late science fiction writer (and inventor of the
water-bed) Robert Heinlein's theory that when a culture demands you
continually prove who you are, it's time to move somewhere else.
The trouble is, where to go?
I've just spent a few days down at Narrung, on the side of Lake Alexandrina, near the Murray's Mouth. No telly, no net, no shops, no dogcatchers...just one of the world's most beautiful shorelines.
Every few hours the soundscape is reluctantly disturbed by a mechanical
engine, but that's okay because it reminds you that the noise that you spend your city-life blotting out is alien to the nature you're now inhabiting.
Down at the barrages which separate the Murray from the sea, the gates are open so that you can admire the Haliburton solar panel and pumping equipment. Even KBR seem to have become lackadaisical down here.
A stranger in a strange land, I attempted to grok the technology (or if you prefer Arthur C. Clarke, I was the caveman before the monolith) and failed.
Aside: We have one important piece of technology at the shack at Narrung. Dad uses the ride-on mower to mow the verges in the town. The KBR contractors, with no work to do, drive on.
Returning home, crossing the (bloody bumpy) lake, I looked out on the water where Cheney's Men plan to build a hundred-kay diameter freshwater reclamation system, complete with housing estate and marina.
In the same manner an engine noise conflicts here, the mental picture of such an unatural construct in the middle of such a naturally pristine environment seemed wrong. In the truest meaning of the word, it's "unearthly".
Back on the shores of reality, we drove back to the city on what is going to become a four-lane highway. Guess who the designers might be?
Nope, this isn't the Heinlein-esque bolt-hole that it should be- at least, it won't be in ten years time.
I doubt there are many left. If one exists, you can expect to see a corporate logo there sometime in the near future
Defence Minister to Resign, Finance and Defence to Amalgamate
In today's Advertiser, Phillip Coorey tips Finance Minister Nick
Minchin will take up the Defence portfolio, although Mr Minchin wishes
to retain Finance.
Mr HIll has been offerred the position of
Australian Ambassador to the United Nations. If he takes the position
the current Senator For South Australia will become housemate to
former SA Premier John Olsen, who presided over Halliburton's takeover
of the South Australian Water Supply.
The two portfolios seem so
inter-related these days that it would save much beaureaucratic
shuffling if the two ministres were merged.
[extract from Thursday's Advertiser]
at 19 Jan 2006 - 1:00am |
Ausaid "Unaware" Of Need To Report Bribery Allegations
Australia's provider of international aid funding, AusAid, has no
protocol regarding the reporting of allegations of foreign bribery!
AusAid is a major provider of Halliburton's international aid contracts from
the Australian Government. In Australia the corporation has been
masquerading as a "South Australian Based Company"
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) has just
announced that small bribes to foreign officials to encourage more
beaureaucratic haste, known as "facilitation payments" are illegal
under most Australian State laws
[Extract from today's Australian]
What this means is that bribes Halliburton makes in Iraq from its Adelaide office would be completely "un-noticed."
Earlier Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock yesterday downplayed the
OECD's findings, saying that the number of Australian companies
engaging in "facilitation payments" was minimal. However, the
Australian Chamber of Commerce has told OECD investigators that "Australian SMEs (small and medium enterprises) would rarely propose bribes in the context of doing business internationally; however, they would respond to solicitations for
facilitation payments,"
Also this weekThe Australian Prime, Foreign and Trade Ministers have t been implicated in revelations of Australian companies paying bribes to the Saddam Regime
Australia's Defence Minister (who, along with the Foreign Minister is a Senator for South Australia) is expected to resign within several days to take up the post of Australian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Fellow Senator for South Australia, Finance Minister Nick Minchin, is
strongly tipped to assume control of the Defence Ministry while
retaining his current portfolio.
The Foreign Minister is expected to exchange portfolios with the Treasurer in a forthcoming Federal Cabinet "reshuffle".
Halliburton.... Giving Troops The ^^^^
US television and newspapers today are dumping the story into Middle
America of how, at one particular army base, Halliburton have been
dumping sewerage into a river and then using it to serve U.S. troops.
While
on-the-ground KBR employees emailed thunderous complaints, from deep in
the bowels of Halliburton Headquarters the stamdard response was
trotted out- Halliburton stood firmly behind the statement that there
was no problem.
.
While bottled water is used for drinking, the
contaminated water, reportedly twice as dirty as the river Euphrates,
is used for everything else, including making coffee.
Notification of the problem, including the resultant stomach cramps and diahorrea, began in March 2005
In
South Australia, Halliburton and its partners are responsible for
Adelaide's water supply, including the Bolivar sewerage plant. Last
week the company was awarded the contract to operate Byron Bay's
sewerage system
Details here
Council Took Halliburton Tender To Avoid Lawsuit.
If an Australian local council has "emotional problems" using
Halliburton, it must accept them anyway. That's the message being sent
to the world this week by the Shire Council of Byron Bay, on the
Northern coast of New South Wales.
The town, once the haven of
surfers and hippies, now the "holiday home" of international stars such
as Paul Hogan and Hugh Jackman, is now home to KBR employees as they upgrade the local
sewerage plant.
Councillor Tom Tabart made the situation plain when he recently told the Northern Star newspaper that "Refusal on a political basis would have surely resulted in legal action against us,"
He went on to say that "The sad truth is that these corporations now control the world’s political systems and until we can get governments off their corrupt teat we are going to be forced to deal with them."
Halliburton Australia-Moment Of Truth Has Arrived
"Contractors with conflicts of interest would be prohibited from conducting oversight or writing contract requirements they could bid
on, as Halliburton did for its $7 billion no-bid Iraqi oil contract
awarded in 2003."
Australian aside:..... and the warship environmental measures, and the nuclear
dump safety consultancies, and South Australia's Major Works
Development
Adding to the statement in the introductory paragraph, US Democrats believe what is needed is “closing the revolving door between federal contract officials and private contractors.”
Australia, according to former Defence Minister Hill in 2004, is protected from
contract troubles from such as Halliburton. Hill told SBS Dateline's Sophie McNeill that the "safeguard is the culture of the Australian beaureaucracy." Ha Ha, Mr Hill... pull the other one!
If it's believed that such measures are necessary in the United States,
then the possibility of necessity to examine Halliburton's Australian
operations, especially its gaining of local defence contracts on a
no-bid business, should be considered by all Australian Governments.
The thing is that Halliburton's Australian defence involvement, up to the
level of appointing the company's local leader Malcom Kinnaird to
solve the DoD's problems, is no longer Senator Hill's problem... he's
just resigned the defence portfolio. The Howard Government, as
demonstrated by the change of minsterial portfolios after the "Children
Overboard" fraud, is becoming adept at avoiding the code of conduct set
down by the Westminster System, which Australia's parliament is
supposedly based on.
However it is a major responsibility of South Australian Premier Mike Rann, who last year appointed
HalliburtonKBR's former Global Vice President for Infrastructure to
head SA's Major Works Development Board, on which he also gave a seat
to Mr Kinnaird. The possibility of KBR being able to exactly meet the
project requirements set by Fletcher and Kinnaird is, even in
hypothetical form, too nepotistic to be allowe to exist. Mr
Rann should stand down Fletcher and Kinnaird from public postings
immediately, or before the State election in March, or explain why he
has given South Australia to Halliburton and let voters decide. If it is found that Mr Rann was aware of Halliburton's international levels of conduct at the time he made these appointments, he should be considered morally unfit to be Premier of South Australia.
Similarly, if Prime Minister Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer, now with full knowledge of the ethical breaches that the
company has perpetrated internationally, continue to grant the company
international aid contracts on behalf of Australia, then these two
should also be asked to depart from public life.
The granting of the construction ownership of the railway across Australia
to Halliburton by Prime Minister Howard, Finance Minister Minchin, SA
Premier Rann and Northern Territory Premier Clare Martin also needs to
be re-examined.
Now that Newsweek has revealed that Australia deported Parkin using information that the US Military never should have had (should be up in the morning somewhere) all assumptions of credibility are on stand-by
at 24 Jan 2006 - 4:55am
US Government Spied On Scott Parkin- Newsweek
If this is the information that ASIO used to deport Parkin, some questions will need to be asked.Firstly, was ASIO acting based on a current profile of Parkin, or outdated infomation it had previously received from TALON
Secondly, is the Australian Cabinet, from Prime Minister Howard downward, guilty of acting on inappropriate information simply because it existed ?
Thirdly: Have ASIO's activities in Australia mirrored the intensity of Paul
Wolfowitz' US program? If so, how many how many profiles of Australian
anti-war activists and writers now exist in ASIO's files.
Fourthly: Are Australian anti-Halliburton activists considered as being of a level of security risk that the US Army no longer considers Parkin to
be?
[ Newsweek, cover-date 30/1/2006 ]
I have no doubt that ASIO, along with Prime Minister Howard and his
Cabinet were acting on an outdated script. With this hindsight, the
ASIO "leak" to The Australian's Greg Sheridan appears farcical.
To answer a part of my questions.. it's a fair assumption that in the
On behalf of the civil liberties of the Australian public, an inquiriyhysteria immediately followng the September 11 2001, the White House
and the Pentagon implement a level of surveillance thathas not been
rescinded or reduced by the Australian Government and it's authorities.
needs to be launched on the level of accuracy and immediacy of
information be ing used by Australia in deciding its actions in the war
on terror!
at 24 Jan 2006 - 6:42am
SA Defence Land Acquisition approved- Hill Halliburtonises South Australia
As he steps down as Defence Minister, Robert Hill is completing the militarisation of South AustraliaMR Hill says that said he had written to the
leaseholders and local indigenous groups indicating his approval of the
acquisition of land near the Cultana training area, near Port Augusta.
The training centre, currently used by Army units for manoeuvre and
weapons training, will triple in size, making it one of Australia's
largest military training areas.
Mr Hill's quotes courtesy of news.com.au
The Halliburton Peanut Butter Files
Afterthis week's revelations that the Pentagon, on behalf of Halliburton, has been spying on a US protest organiser
"in the national interest" I would like to know, as an Australian
Halliburton "activist", how much the Australian Government has been
spying on me.
I would also like to know how our Government can
continue to rely upon, in matters of national security and
international invasion, an intelligence system that can make such a
stupid mistake.
Every "conspiracy theorist" looks in shadows for
faces but perhaps some have greater cause for concern than others.
Looking at what's happenned to Parkin I reckon that I qualify for an
extra dose of paranoia.
Scott Parkin has assisted orchestrating,
from public ground, events that draw media attention to the ethically
questionable and financially corrupt activities of a company installed
in its "pole position" by the Vice President of the United States.
The U.S. Army kept files on the fact that he handed out peanut butter
sandwiches in front of a Halliburton office. The Australian Government
arrested and deported Parkin because the US Army had files on him.
Does this mean that Parkin was kicked out of Australia for serving
sandwiches in Texas? Sadly the answer is most likely "yes". Our Prime Minister says he won't be allowed to return.
Parkin' legal efforts to retrieve information
pertaining to his deportation resume in a fortnight. Will the
Australian Government continue to protect the internationally sensitive
information, or confess that they accepted the word of the US Army
without opening the manilla folder for a read? Will our spy network
confess that it "leaked" false information to journalist to protect the
"Peanut Butter Files"
Aside a couple of thing not in Newsweek
On the same Houston Indymedia
that the US Army were monitoring appears the name of a certain
Australian from time to time.. he's even currently linked their from
the front page of international watchdog Halliburton Watch's website. He has been shown on Australian national television putting up placards on KBR land (while
standing on the public footpath) and his blogs and emails have been
read by state and national politicians of many political persuasions.
His postings have been creating ripples of concern in Australia for two years now, and he shows no signs of stopping.
Who is recording my activities? When I walk with my daughter to school is
there a car in the street recording the event? Are phone calls to my
friends and family monitored. When those military base files were
found in a bin very close to my house, was this to serve as possible
grounds for my arrest? Do my emails go through a computer in
Canberra? These questions may have been laughable a week ago, but
look what they've done to Scott !
If ASIO have been protecting
those files then they've surely got a good one on me. After, during
the Rumsfeld protests, helping hang the No War banner on the pillars of
Adelaide's Parliament House I'll have one in America too. However, I
can't be arrested and deported.
If somebody wanted to bring me
in for questioning it probably wouldn't be hard to find a reason. When
my family, friends and supporters ask the Government why, will the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Foreign Minister and the Defence Minster say that the fact that the Americans have a file on me was sufficient grounds to put me into a Detention Centre?
In using the files that Newsweek has uncovered, the integrity and
reliability of Australia's intelligence system, and our politicians'
unswerving response to its information, have been shattered. If ASIO
can be so wrong about something so simple, how can they be trusted in
evaluating more complex matters. such as the status quo if
international terrorism in Australia? On the merits of their conduct
in the Parkin Incident, it can be perceived that ASIO are a conduit for
the US Government to manipulate the Australian political system,
dispensing disinformation that Howard and his Henchmen can use without
need to question.
The Australian Government can, in any
situation, no longer claim innocence in their activities by claiming
belief that their information was irrefutable. In the hindsight of
this comparitively minor event, basing any judgement or activity on
faith in ASIO could only be classified as negligence, and guilt of
creating any death and/or destruction brought about in this way can now
be laid at the doorstep of Parliament House in Canberra.
Earlier statements that Australia entered into the invasion of Iraq based on
assessments of our own espionage must also now be reconsidered.
If an agency that considers a man with some sandwiches an international
terrorist threat has lead us into war, and brought about the creating
of anti-terrorist hysteria on the basis of its information, we should
withdraw from that war until we are once again certain we can rely on
our knowledge
In the meantime..to any of you ASIO twits who
might be in my neighbourhood, be warned.... I am known to be prone to
violins (and accordions) my attack cat is guarding the door, and my
dog doesn't care who feeds her.
I'm happy to give you an extra
piece of infomation that you might not have... I'm particularly fond of
peanut butter. You won't know this unless you have a camera in my
kitchen.
After the revelations this week regarding how you and
your US counterparts have been violating Parkins' civil liberties, I
wouldn't be the least bit suprised.
Halliburton Takes Port Adelaide
The former global leader of Halliburton's infrastructure activities is now in control of shipbuilding in South Australia.An expanded maritime site announce today is now owned by a corporation
controlled by ex-Halliburton/KBR chief Andrew Fletcher, who had been
recruited last November to "oversee" the warship project. Fletcher, while still in his Halliburton job, held a seat on the South Australian Economic Development Board
State Premier Mike Rann says that the newly announced shipbuilding facility,
which includes the Star Wars Ship construction, will make Adelaide a
"global hub".
A 2004 edition of Engineers Australia Magazine explains Fletcher's role two years ago:
The news of the expanded naval site has been released one day before its launching at an international expo in Sydney.
Our State premier has explained that "This new hub, into which the State Government is investing $140 million in infrastructure, will be capable of building other ships at the same time the air warfare destroyers are being built,"
He added that "There is now $55 billion worth of federal defence contracts up for grabs over the next 10 to 15 years."
State Treasurer Kevin Foley elaborated that the site would be suitable for companies involved in"in civil or military shipbuilding, ship repair and maintenance, metal fabrication and module construction, paint and blast, warehousing and component
manufacturers and suppliers".
Under its new name of Techport Australia, the maritime construction
precinct will be marketed today at the Pacific Maritime and Naval Expo
in Sydney.
Techport Australia is owned by the Port Adelaide Maritime Corporation, which the Adelaide Advertiser says is "under the control of" the ex-Halliburton Chief. Fletcher told the newspaper that one of his aims was to "deliver a sustainable long-term defence industry base here at Osborne".
Fletcher's previous company was previously spearheaded by the former US Defense
Secretary and current US Vice President, Dick Cheney. The company
constructed and has part-ownership of the Adelaide to Darwin Railway.
It also a major naval shipbuilder in the UK, and a part-owner of that
country's Road Management Group
KBR has recently completed construction of the Port River Expressway that
links the port to the Northern Suburbs. Roadwork construction
improving links from the port to the Southern Suburbs will commence
next year.
Until last year Adelaide was the official global headquarters of Halliburton/ KBR's infrastructure division.
Halliburton Australia Imports Slave Labor, Refers Inquires To Houston
Under
the trading name of KBR it is employed by the State government and
local councils. It has been involved in construction of the Port River
Expressway and has proposed a development project for Lake Alexandrina.
Halliburton is also employed by the Department Of Foreign Affairs
and Trade to carry out international aid contracts on Australia's
behalf, and has many defence industry contracts.
In South
Australia's outback, Halliburton has been flouting Australia's
Industrial Relations laws by employing foreigners at wage levels
inappropriate to Australian ethics.
By referring the Advertiser's questions to it's head office in Houston it has revealed where its South Australian activities are truly conducted from.
On evidence of such a flagrant violation of Australian trust, the
ethics involved in all the company's interaction with all levels of
government in South Australia must now be called into question. If
companies such as Halliburton want to play in Australia, they must
learn to play by Aussie rules.
Given the Australian Government's
avoidance and denial of knowledge of Australian bribes paid to the
Saddam government of Iraq, it is highly unlikely there will be an
Australian probe into Halliburton's questionable activities.
As
Halliburton Australia is a wholly owned US subsidiary its activities in
Australia could be subjected to a probe by the US Department of Justice
under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. US PLEASE ACT NOW !
Immigration Minister supports Halliburton "Australian Slave Trade" Denial
Senator Vanstone will need to look after Halliburton. They're the
quickest way to generate a globally-competitive population increase.
I'm extrapolating from the story in tomorrow's Australian:
[extract]
IMMIGRATION Minister Amanda Vanstone has rejected claims
construction company Halliburton Australia exploited Indonesian workers
hired to work in the South Australian desert.
The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper reported that the company, a
subsidiary of US giant Halliburton, had paid the Indonesians as little
as $40 a day.
The newspaper said Australian co-workers had claimed the
Indonesians, who were digging ditches in the outback, were made to work
80 days straight and were given poor accommodation.
The Muslim men were also served meals laced with pork, it was claimed.
In a statement today Senator Vanstone said four
Indonesian workers employed at the Cooper Basin gas operation were
receiving appropriate payment for their work.
"I have been advised by my department, which has checked with the
sponsor - Halliburton Australia - that the men were in fact being paid
an appropriate salary," Senator Vanstone said.
"Reports that the overseas workers were only being paid $40 and $80 per day are grossly inaccurate.
"I'm told these figures are in fact day bonuses, which were being paid in addition to the men’s' salaries."
Is Vanstone authenticating the accuracy of her information, or will
she leave it alone so that she has a loophole at the inquiry? Or did
she just follow the official response from Halliburton Houston?
It looks to me as if somebody in DIMIA read the Halliburton statement and passed it on to Amanda as "Policy".
at 13 Feb 2006 - 10:47pm
Prime Minister Should Intervene On Halliburton Visas- Unions
Reprint of Australian Council of Trade Unions Media Release, February 14
The ACTU calls on the Prime Minister to
intervene in Australia's immigration program to guarantee that
temporary work visas are not being abused amid reports that employers
are rorting the system by importing low-paid foreign workers to fill
job vacancies that should be filled by Australians.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said today:
"There is mounting evidence that the Federal Government's migrant
worker system is out of control - leading to both the abuse of foreign
workers and Australians being denied job opportunities.
There are stories of workers from Indonesia and the
Philippines being underpaid, overworked and abused while working in
Australia under these temporary work visas.
Immigration Minister Vanstone admitted yesterday that
her Department is currently investigating allegations that US Vice
President Dick Chaney's former company Halliburton imported Indonesian
workers to dig ditches for its gas extraction operations in the South
Australian desert.
Newspaper reports state the Indonesians worked 12 hour shifts for 80
days without a break and were paid little more than they would earn in
Indonesia while being housed in poor conditions at a Halliburton work
camp in the Cooper Basin late last year. (Adelaide Advertiser
13-14/2/2006)
The case of the Indonesian workers in the SA outback follows other
recent examples of abuses of the Government's migration program.
Last week it was reported in the Federal Parliament that
foreign workers were being treated like slaves in well-known Canberra
restaurants. The workers were recruited from the Philippines and 'sold'
to their employers for $6000 to $8000, it was alleged.
One of the workers said she was underpaid, worked
'dangerously excessive workloads' and her employer refused to give her
medical treatment when she suffered third-degree burns to her arm.
(Canberra Times 9/2/2006)
Also in South Australia, there is the case of 34
Croatian and Slovenian workers who have been issued with temporary
labour visas to build a paint shop at Holden's plant at Elizabeth. In a
local area that has unemployment of up to 19% in places, how could it
be that Holden needed to import these 35 workers?
These migrant worker abuses highlight the ugly side of the Howard
Government's deregulated job market. The Prime Minister needs to
intervene immediately to first make sure that employers look to fill
these jobs with Australians. He then needs to make sure any foreign
worker is paid decent wages and conditions.
What job security will anyone have under the Government's new IR
laws if people have to compete against cheap imported labour working in unacceptable conditions?" said Ms Burrow.
Jobs for Australian workers are threatened whenever employers fail
to properly test the local labour market and instead look to exploit
foreign workers. I thought we were facing a shortage of skilled workers
- not a shortage of ditch diggers and other unskilled workers," said Ms
Burrow.
at 16 Feb 2006
"International Aspects" Of Australian Bribery Inquiries
As discussed earliear, US Wheat Associates were pondering the
use of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to examine the AWB in both
the America and Australia, as the group had companies in both
countries. This has left me with a mapof money flow whose geography
has long since vanished under arrows.
I'll take my favourtie company as an easy example.Until 2003 headquarters of divisions were scattered across the globe naval in the UK, infrastructure in Australia etc. These divisions were registered companies of the nations in which they resided. In late2004 the business was reorganiesed.
Let's say that the infrastructure division was drawing up plans
for rebuildiong oil wells, roadmaking etc. As the company knew that it
had the work before the invasion, wouldn't it be clever enough to start
work early. Ar keast have equipment ready and waiting where it was
needed?
Through its subsidiaries Ingersoll Rand and Dresser Pump, it appears that Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney used the Oil-for-Food program to trade oilfield equipment. Under the RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil) contract issued by the Pentagon, Halliburton already had the reconstruction go-aheead before Australian SAS troops were violiationg George Bush's deadline. To paraphraseDonald Rumsfeld, these are "known knowns".
My question is this-
how much responsibility Halliburton Australia must assume for
"facilitation" paid by the company in Iraq to implement blueprints
created in Adelaide?
I wonder if this might be on of Commissioner Cole's 'internation aspects" ?
One more question- could parts of facilitation payments have been given
back by Saddam to their organisers as bonuses? What happenned to the
2004 claims by Iraq Governing Councillior Jalal Talabini at aUN news conference news conference that "We have a list of cash paid to journalists, personalities, groups and parties," ?
Ooops, another- has the same company now audfiing the AWB had any luck yet with the CPA? Accountancy firm KPMG was complaining two
years ago that the Bush Administration was hindering its investigation
of the implementation of OIl-For-Food money? After the courtroom
confession of the CPA infrastructure co-ordinator of receiving cash and sex in a specially prepared villa, there's yet another Pandora's Box to be opened.
When this is all over, we should be ensuring that contracts received by
the same multinationals involved in Iraq recinstruction to carry out
work in Australia are all "above board"
Treasurer bends for Multinationals' Employees
The Australian push for imported corporated labour is picking up speed.
Released on the Treasurer's website yesterday
Everyone In Cabinet Knew Saddam Was Grabbin' It !
When you finish reading this you'll wonder what other lies we're being told.
Was Terence Cole's request for those with information to step forward a plea or a threat of revelation? Caroline Overington's detailing of those who received the ominous cable suggest the latter premise is worth considering.
[extract]
Our Prime Minister and his cabinet have been
revealed as deceitful and untrustworthy. If they won't go voluntarily then perhaps we should be considering the legal means available to remove them from power.
at 22 Feb 2006 - 2:55am
Ethics of Ministerial Investment
Should senior members of any Government focused on privatisation be allowed to make signifigant fincancial gains from their involvement?
It turns out that a company Downer holds shares in made a killing on the AWB's launch. Argo investments bought the shares on their first day out (in 2001) and then sold them for a profit ten days later.
Downer says that trying to pin him this way is drawing a long bow. Maybe he's right, but there are a few particularly pointy arrows aimed at him.
What if Downer's activities, and those of the other three current and former Federal Ministers with cash in the company, create an environment of profitability for Argo to exploit. Did Argo also make a killing on the recent Qinetiq float in the UK, thus allowing the ministers to profit on the technologies propogated by the War On Terror.? Or what about a company that reaps rewards from providing support facilities for troop, such as the highly profitable Halliburton?
Could any such "ministerial financial planning " be considered as the ultimate in insider trading? Downer says he never had shares in AWB, only in the company that invested in them. However, if he was involved, in any way, in the transformation of the Australian Wheat Board into the privatised AWB, he has clearly been involved in a process from which he has benefited financially IIf detachment in investment by using a third party can be considered as exonoration, then he and his colleagues can do as they please with total confidence in the impossibility of retribution.
Face it folks, these people can, and will, do whatever they feel like, andHalliburton Overcharging for Katrina Cleanup- Pentagon Inspector-General
March 3rd. The report said KBR's subcontractors had been billing for labor at rates "significantly higher" than the prevailing market rate.
Hurricane Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on September 16, 2004 as a Category 3 storm.
"The rates paid to some KBR subcontractors for labor were significantly higher than the prevailing Bureau of Labor Statistics rates for the area impacted by the hurricane (Pensacola, Florida)," the report said,
adding that "additional review" is needed to make a final conclusion. The inspector general is conducting a follow-on audit.
The report contained language seen in previous military audits of Halliburton's contracts, including criticism of the company's notoriously-flawed cost documentation system that conceals overcharges. It states: "The underlying documentation for the invoice that KBR submitted in January 2005 for the Hurricane Ivan recovery effort causes
us concern about the ability of the Navy to obtain a fair and
reasonable price for the labor and material needed to accomplish the
tasks associated with natural disaster recovery efforts."
(A HalliburtonWatch report earlier this year showed that KBR submits labor invoices to the military in Iraq with exorbitantly higher costs added ontop of the wage costs, but it's unclear how and where these extra costs are incurred. See "Halliburton bills U.S. taxpayers $50 for $5 labor in Iraq," Feb. 6, 2006.)
The possible over-billing in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan occurred under Halliburton's Emergency Construction Capabilities III contract or CONCAP III) with the Navy, worth up to $500 million over five years.
The inspector general's report chided the Navy for failing to consider Halliburton's past delinquent performance before awarding the CONCAP contract to KBR, including bribery and overcharges under its $13 billion Iraq logistics contract (or LOGCAP).
Although a company's past performance on government contracts is supposed to be considered before handing out new contracts, both the Army and the Navy failed to do so with regards to KBR, the report concluded. So, KBR's delinquent and illegal practices in Iraq were not
entered into a military database that tracks contractor performance. The database is used by contracting officials to determine whether new contracts should be awarded.
Of the 36 task orders completed on the LOGCAP contract in Iraq, only one, worth $1 million, had made it into the database. The $209 million task order that included kickbacks worth $6 million paid to KBR employees was not entered into the database, and therefore was not
considered by the Navy in its source selection. The Army has since entered the missing information, according to the inspector general's report.
For further information on the military's preferential treatment of Halliburton, visit this link.
CONCAP was first awarded to KBR in 2001, four months after former CEO Dick Cheney became vice president. The contract allows the Navy to direct KBR to provide emergency construction services at any time and
under short notice. Under CONCAP, KBR is rebuilding areas afflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. The prison facilities at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba that hold suspected al-Qaeda terrorists were built by KBR via
CONCAP.
The Navy has paid KBR $295 million for reconstruction work since July 2004 under CONCAP, including more than $160 million for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction and mortuary services, $35 million for an additional prison and psychiatric facility at Guantanamo Bay and over
$47 million for Hurricane Ivan cleanup. See the CONCAP task orders awarded to KBR since 2004 at this link.
The inspector general's audit was requested by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
More Information:
DOD-IG's report
DOD-IG's summary of the report
Office of the Deputy Inspector General for Auditing
at 13 Mar 2006 - 3:22am
The Highwayman Went Riding
Fresh from the elections, Premier Rann is now chastising the RAA (our equivalent of NRMA and RACV) of acting like a political party during the election, and questioning the government's relationship with the peak body, in spite of their denials of heavy-handedness. Rann may well have saved the state from a major Halliburton gambit.
Given the intrinsic nature of roadway infrastructure to urban planning and
thence property development, in some cases the speed of the arrival
involves a helluva lot of money. A good example is to the south of our
town, where the previously tourist based coastline has been subjected
to a whirlwind of purchase and redevelopment ahead of one of the
state's worst-kept secrets, the proposed four-lane road (tollway?)
being re-championed by the RAA and Liberals a couple of weeks back, and planned by "guess which
company". Certainly parts of the road, on which I travel regularly, are
a death-trap, and a road built in the 50's isn't equipped to handle the
transport loads it now carries. However, the cynic in me can't help
wondering if these issues might be of secondary importance to the
profitability levels of new housing being created for the "population
influx" that the new "dormitory distance" to Adelaide that the new road
would create.
The
combination of this and another new road , from Victor Harbour, past
the area that I described (which has since sadly been slated for
housing development, 12 townhouses on the wetland) in this Webiary piece,
would create an industry-suitable transport corridor from Adelaide's
southern suburbs to the regional city of Murray Bridge, and from there
northwards to the expanded uranium mines (have a skim on Google Earth)
and eastward to Melbourne and Sydney.
There's
potentially billions of dollars riding on the laying of a couple
ofstrips of asphalt, that industry might have paid for through tolls.
Does Rann's announcement signal a delay in all this activity, or that
other means of funding, such as directly taxing the commercial
profit-makers, will now be used instead of charging the “average” motorist?
Plan
the thing, tender for the building contract, collect the "rent" for the
next fifty years or so. How can you go wrong? When the local business
community puts its money into electing a leader who plans to stop you.
Halliburton's tollway activities in other parts of the world won't be replicated here.
Newly elected Premier Rann, whose government has been endorsed by the South
Australian business community, is returning to power bearing in his
hand a signed decree of the banning of tollways!drew my eye very quickly, My nightmares of South Australia going down the path of Ireland appear to have been averted. Consider these words;
Poor old Halliburton- they'll have to be content with running the naval shipyard and the railway.
Incidentally one of the members of the above-mentioned European
Investment Bank's Financial Policies and Operations Committee at the
time was (still is?) former Australian Defence Minister Peter Reith. Is he gaining information to defend Australia? I doubt it.
at 21 Mar 2006 - 9:42pm
Halliburton South Australia- The South Coast Scenario
What follows, when you follow it to the other end, makes you wonder
how much infrastructure work is being "disguised" throught the SA
Tourism Budget, and how much of the money will end up in the hands of
Halliburton/KBR. I'm also pondering what funds the current Treasurer,
who was happy to stand on the Assembly floor and accuse the previous
Minister For Transport of using road money "to buy stained glass
windows" (I was there on the day) might be diverting across Cabinet
portfolios to achieve desired objectives.
[extract]
Keep an eye on SA Tourism tender chances
With the South Australian elections over, one of the keen points of
interest for Australia’s construction industry will be how SA joins
other State Governments in maintaining and hopefully lifting the level
of investment in State infrastructure. In the post-Olympic construction
lull, and with inner city residential activity levelling off, 2002
should be a good year for State Governments to get value for money in
providing a wide variety of needed and useful facilities.
In the SA tenders area, interested parties should be finding it
easier to get comprehensive information, following an announcement back
on May 15, 2001. The then Premier unveiled a policy development:
“A New Dimension in Contracting with the South Australian Government”.
Under this all major Government contracts, including industry
incentives, asset sales and consultancies, would be earmarked for
public release.
On the reasonable assumption the incoming Administration will maintain
this commitment to clear and open government, South Australia should be
just that bit more attractive for those interested in tenders and
government contracts.
Work on the Alice Springs to Darwin [Halliburton built and owned] railway link will be providing a lot of construction employment for some time, in SA and the NT.
Elsewhere in South Australia, tourism has so far been the best harbinger of possible future tenders.
These words were written after the second-last election
Those of you who've read my "Stranger" piece know that, in 2002 the CEO of the Goolwa-based local council was visiting the KBR's Infrastructure Division Global Headquarters to look at the plans from the local wharf (item 21 here. You'll also know that KBR have proposed as a PPP a freshwater reclaimation system in the adjoining lake, which runs near the town of Mount Barker, for which KBR laid out the housing expansion.
Now I learn that much of the money for the Goolwa wharf
redevelopment is coming not via roadworks but through tourism. Further
down the Tendersearch page you find the words "In December, 2001 the
outgoing [Liberal] Government foreshadowed work on a number of tourist
facilities to cater for an influx of visitors for South Australia’s
2002 Year of the Outback." closely followed by "Altogether, South
Australia would benefit from over $6.7 million in new Outback
infrastructure over the next few years."
I knew of course of the planned upgrade of the Adelaide-Victor
Harbour (which is a stone's throw from Goolwa) road and had been told
who its designers where, but was unaware until now of the turn-off that
would transform this road into the Southern Suburbs eastern roadlink that I was looking for earlier. 25kms before you get to Victor Harbour, you can turn eastwards at the Nangkita turn-off.
From there you could scoot, if you had a good road, eastwards to Murray
Bridge, and from there North to Roxby, North-East to Sydney or East to
Melbourne.
Let's return to the wharf of the Murray's Mouth, whose redevelopment was planned by Halliburton/KBR.
[another Tendersearch extract]
The historic Goolwa Wharf precinct, at the mouth of the
Murray River, has been earmarked for redevelopment, to help maintain
the tourist appeal of the Fleurieu peninsula, to the south of Adelaide.
The old wool and wheat paddle steamers which once plied the Murray
River, pre-railways, started up river from Goolwa. Now it is a focal
point for tourist vessels.
The project, with $1.2 million from the South Australian Tourism
Commission’s Major Infrastructure Fund plus another $1.5 million from
the local Alexandrina Council, would be implemented over a nine month
construction period.
The rejuvenation effort includes extending the wharf and jetty, new
and resurfaced road, car parking, pipes and drains, landscaping
including street furniture, lighting, signage and public art and four
new sites for commercial tourism enterprises.
Did I mention that the plans for the mid-lake water reclamation facility includes marinas and houses?
Back over at at Narrung, on the Lake's other side, the locals tell
me that there's a twelve-domicile townhouse development scheduled to go
up next to the wetlands... I don't have any paperwork yet but given
that its a resting-place for migratory birds, it won't be the brightest
place to be if Bird Flu breaks out.
Back over on the Goolwa side, there's something fishy five miles down the road from Goolwa at Port Elliot (where my parents run a pub)
involving a council-owned abandoned drive-in that has become, with all
the Halliburton-guided development, potentially very lucrative real
estate (item 30 here.)
As I've said before, development around this area has been "going
gangbusters" in what appears in hindsight to have been utilisation of
the knowledge (which many knew) of the Victor Harbor road development
that our peak automotive body RAA were championing. A drive-in lot can
hold a lot of townhouses. What was the conflict of interest here?
I spoke before the election with the local Labor candidate, Mary-Lou Corcoran (daughter of a previous Labor Premier Des, the still-undecided seat
last filled by Liberal ex-Premier Dean Brown.) Ironically she's facing
the Liberal mayor of Kangaroo Island, once abandonded as SA's capital
due to lack of water supply, now irrigated by Halliburton (Page 28)
She was very suprised to read the KBR Goolwa connections I posted on
the "Stranger" thread (partially to make them available to her) but I
bet her boss Mr Rann wasn't... he's been personally fielding enquiries from the council regarding the lake redevelopment(Items 15.1 and 15.2 ),
so I doubt he'd be unaware that Halliburton were sketching the jetty
that would launch residents and tourists out to it. It would also be
difficult for Rann to be unaware that the money wasn't coming through
Transport or Infrastructure but through Tourism.
If you look at this map
(on which Goolwa is at the lower left and realise that the southern
suburbs of Adelaide are around 50km northwest of that point, you'll get
the picture.
Another picture to think about is that if the author of the Tendersearch
piece is correct then these plans are making a successful transition
from government to government, no matter which political party is in
charge at the time.
Thick as thieves, the lot of em, and it's fairly obvious who's driving the bus down the road to prosperity.
Thinking Like Americans
One of my least favourite ex-premiers, having privatised our water
and electricity and brought the globals into Adelaide, is now telling
us that we need to change our ways. He says that Americans live to work while Australians work to live and has addressed Adelaide business (who put all their support behind Olsen's former opposition) with such choice phrases as
Olsen seem to thinks that our attitudes need changing..
Mr Olsen, in his capacity of infastructure minister, allowed a post-deadline tender for the water supply to be won by a Halliburton-led consortium, is Mr Downer's newest appointee as Consul-General to New York ,
where he'll reside in the same building as former Senator for SA and Defence Minister (now our UN ambassador) Robert Hill, who has also made signifigant contribution to SA life. It's a hard life as Liberal resigning under Howard. Admittedly Olsen resigned after being accused
of lying to an inquiry over his misappropriation of public funds to look after Motorola. Whether he would have done so if the inquiry's
results weren't handed down on the eve of a federal election (a concept that will become a political factor when Cole discusses Downer in his findings) is debatable.
Olsen's immediate (Lib) successor, and representative for the seat surrounding Victor Harbor (discussed in this post) Dean Brown has just resigned (before the election)from political life,and now Rob Kerin is on the ex-list, though still representing his constituency, for now. No crystal balls are required to forecast a rosy private business future for these two, if like Olsen, they learn
to "think like Americans".... if they haven't already.
Halliburton invites South Australia to partiipate in aid programs
The Department of Trade and Economic Development held a forum in Adelaide recentlyy to inform more than 70 SA businesses about multimillion-dollar opportunities in the Official Development Assistance market.
Department chief executive Raymond Garrand
said the global official development market was valued at $108 billion
last financial year "and still growing".
"Australia allocated $2.3 billion annually to the official
development market through AusAid, and is ranked 15th amongst the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in that market," he said.
Adelaide companies including Austraining International, Sagric
International and Halliburton/KBR spoke to businesses attending the forum about their activities overseas and potential opportunities for subcontractor companies.
In
September last year, while PM Howard told Iraq about how much increased
aid Australia would supply, KBR were advertising internationally for a
foreign aid director. At the same time Mr Howard was co-chairing a
meeting withPresident Bush and the Prime Minister of India to set up a
UN World Democracy Fund. Howard said at a September interview that I think the focus on the expansion of democracy and providing a
democratic underpinning to policy is very welcome indeed and to many of us it seems long overdue.
How much of the aid money going to Adelaide industry will be spent
according to a nation's compliance with Bush's form of Democracy .
What was the trade-off to get India to engage as a co-chair of George's
plain- sale to India of South Australia's uranium, an international
migration program to alleviate India's overcrowding and solve SA's
population shortage? Perhaps both.
Premier Rann reiterated today that he wouldn't allow uranium sales to India unless it signed
the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. How will Dubya force Rann's
compliance.?
Corporate Based Killers-Why The Adelaide Professor Died In Iraq
Foreign Affairs, after gagging his family via "security issues", said
that incident highlighted the extreme dangers Australians faced in
Baghdad.
The
fact that an Australian-based mercenary company gunned down an 72 year
old Iraqi academic as he drove home from a shopping outing, for fear he
might be a suicide bomber, doesn't seem to be a factor in the minds of
DFAT's spin-doctors.
For three months of the year Professor Kays Juma lived in the Adelaide suburb of Flagstaff HIll,
a couple of miles from a university that had never heard of him. The
bulk of his life was spent teaching animal husbandry at the University
of Baghdad.
Maybe if the mercenaries who ended his life didn't belong to a company that had lost lives in a car bomb explosion two years back, when they were protecting water and electricity engineers,
this tragedy might not have occurred.. All these armed men saw, as
they guarded a convoy of contractors, was an old Iraqi getting too
close for comfort.
Acting on the policy of "better safe than sorry" they shot him.
The mercenary managers, Unity Resource Management, have as a director the Sydney Olympic's chief of athlete security. He was also head of the SAS' Counter-Terrorism Unit until 1997. Unity Resource (whose motto is "In Strength Lies Unity" appear on the U.S Embassy in Bagdad's website under "Citizen Services" They joined the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce last
year, and this year are a major sponsor (second on the list only to
AEGIS)) at the Iraq Security, Technology and Communications Summit
being held in the UAE. No doubt part of their sponsorship will be
guarding the Ministers, Deputies and Secretary Generals of the Departments of Interior, Communications, Science and Defence.
This
company seems to have strong views on the ethics of the participation
of Australian Government representatives. Consider this article review
by one of their senior employees:
How a company with such ideals and aspirations managed to
gun down Kays Juma is an important consideration. That a "legitimate"
soldier in a declared war might perpetrate such an action in defence of
his life might, however abhorrent the notion, be halfway
understandable. That a gun-toting warrior bearing the insignia not of
a nation but of a corporation can kill an old man because it's his job
to do so is can only be labelled as the epitome of everything that is
wrong with Western society.
How many innocent Iraqis, unreported
through lack of connection to other countries, have died at the hands
of corporate employees from "democratic" nations? Do the compilers of
the Rand Corporation's Terrorism Database, who provided the Incident Report for the Unity deaths, keep statistics on civilians blown away by mercenaries?
Is this the active Democracy that Western society is so proud of? We should hang our heads in shame
at 30 Mar 2006 - 4:15am
Welcome South Australia, the Halliburton-Driven Engine Of The World
Reading the Chinese Premier's toast to Australain PM Howard today, I
felt someone walk over my grave. The knowledge that Halliburton's
railway line is suddenly going to worth a large fortune as the overland
transport system for China-bound uranium didn't come as a suprise-
there's enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in place now to see good
glimpses of the picture.
An omen of hope came through today, a
new suburb for Adelaide was announced, and for a change Halliburton
hasn't got the infrastructure job- in fact nobody has. The local
council in which this State Government driven southward expansion of
Adelaide will be located expressed suprise that the land was declared
available to the public before the infrastrujcture was plotted.
Does
this mean that in new planning deals Halliburton won't be getting the
jobs, or was this just a warning shot by a Government that is
comparatively free from corporate influence for another eight years?
Perhaps our public representatives are sick of a chess game in which
the corporate pawns are reaching the other side of the board (South
Australia) and becoming queen's bishops and castles in ttheir
power-levels of ablity to coerce the reshaping of the States' destiny
to their own desires.. With rose-colored glasses firmly in place, I
hope so.
Howvever, in this world of media-timed
announcements, perhaps the State Government doesn\t want the name of
the infrastucture designers in the press just right now, thereby
avoiding a too-obvious puzzle-piece being lplaced. A US Corporation
laying down the drone-caverns for the defence and mining requirements
would not look good in print next to the announcement of China becoming
and Australian uranium buyer, and our Labor Party's sweeping aside the
Three Mine Policy as an obsolete myth.
As I write this I begin
to wonder if the nature of the Bush Howard and Rann visits to India
were, in the hindisght of our preparedness to sell radioactivitey to
another particularly large population, a chess-move that would mean
that the only way for India to participate in half of the world's
future energy supply would be to send its population to the energy
source, and thus supply the increased population supply necessary to
get the supply-chain to peak operational capacity.
As discussed
earlier, it's not as if KBR aren't heavily involved in Adelaide's
southern and south-eastern expansion already. However in the current
media climate where the company's rip-offs in Iraq are gracing the
pages of the national print media (except in Murdoch's Adelaide) and
the company begins to make itself available to profit-taking by
investment groups
to be continued
Halliburton's Port Adelaide Role- Refuelling The Apocanauts
It's 2016, a decade after the 6/6/06 commencement of The Armageddon
Conflict. Australia is at war. Naval vessels, able to stay at sea and
away from the Antichrist's terrorists under technological stealth
cloaks are occassionally forced, while trudging between the various
global "fronts" to sail into ports for replenishments, refurbishment
of armamentaria and some time off for the sailors. The boys and girls
of Halliburton have every need in readiness to get the job done before
there's time to become a missile target.:
As the ships approach
the Port of Adelaide, the support system swings into action as
Halliburton's program co-ordinates local activity into providing the
ship with the quickest return to sea that is humanly possible to
provide. Old tanks are sent to the factory while refurbished vehicles,
comlplete with fresh crew desert-ready fguarding the uranium mines, the
Adelaide-Darwin railway and the Papua-Adelaide gas pipes are loaded on
board, and local water, stored in the specially built sub-city aquifers
(piped from the extraterrestrially-refilled Artesian Basin) and produce
are speedily transferred to naval supplies Refurbished missiles and the
extra-effective depleted uranium ammuntion are restocked, and when the
sailors have replenished themselves in the local bars and brothels
another nautical Death Star is back on the high seas, ready to fight
for God.
Unlikely, scenario? Have a read of these paragraphs from a Time article in March: This is the current operational approach of the US Navy to Middle Eastern port visits.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the Navy undertook awide-scale review of contracting procedures, including those involvingship husbanding. As a result of that review, the Navy took severalsteps to increase the security of ships in foreign ports, butmaintained its system of contracting.
Husbanding agents arrange everything from fuel to spare parts to fresh vegetables for vessels at ports of call. More critically, they often provide security, like erecting concrete barriers and what the military calls “force protection.” Husbanding agents often learn weeks in advance of a ship’s schedule so as to be prepared when the vessel
arrives, information that the Navy keeps closely guarded since it couldbe invaluable in the hands of terrorists. The suicide bombing of the Cole, for instance, occurred less than three hours after the ship had completed mooring in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. “It would have been
much more difficult for the bombers to execute the attack without some previous knowledge of the ship's schedule...".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It doesn't seem so unlikely any more, does it? Especially when you've got
a company that's turned South Australia into a One-Stop Apocalypse
Shop waiting on standby.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you given any thought to the application of the newly-tested scramjet
technology to transport troops from Woomera to any place in the world
within a couple of hours? I have.
Ministers Under Oath- Downer and Vaille Testify
For the first time an Australian minister of the Bush Administration will face a true battle- telling the public what he wants to without being forced to resign.
Trade Minister Mark Vaille will appear befor the Australian Wheat Board Inquiry on Monday, and Foreign Minister Downer on Tuesday. They will be speaking on the issue in environment in which our society considers lack of honesty to be the greatest taboo- A sworn oath.
ABC reports that the inquiry wishes to question Mr Downer on dipolotic cables sent by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the Office of the Prime Minister of Australia. The cables raised the department's concern over involvement in the Austalian Wheat Board's bribes to Saddam Hussein.
The Cole Commission last week ordered the ministers to provide statements in response to certain questions, that were duly submitted to the inquiry last Wednseday.
Earliear today Senioor Counsel to the Commission, Mr John Agius QC said that there were "one or two matters I would like to take them up on." The flippancy here is ominious... bet your last dollar that Mr Agius will querying lies that cannot be repeated under oath.
Mr Downer faces an "ethical" dilemma. He can change his story to match the fects that have appeared since the beginning of the inquiry, or he can continue to lie. If he confesses under oath he might be able to save fragments of his political and/or diplomatic career.
Given that if the Bush Administration had its way Downer would now be fronting the International Atomic Energy Agency, saving a career of such demonstrable (if yet unrealised) potential
As Bush's prime agent in provoking Korear and acting as financial intermediary between the US and China while the ideaological battle for Taiwan continues. Mr Downer might be considering confession. If you believe this I've got a bridge to sell you.
If it turns out, as today's Washington Post suggests, that Bush personally advocated the leaking of intelligence information in order tro support his political agenda in Iraq, his Little Aussie Lackey will be operating under a similar code of ethics.
This brings us to Downer's second option.
If Downer continues to conceal his personal knowledge of how, under a UN program administered by his department, Australian money was placed in an environment where it might be buying ammunition to shoot Coalition soldiers with, providing Palistinian suicide bombers with financial independace by posthumously supporting their families, or even funding the creation of Weapons Of Mass Destruction. Why include WMDs ? Surely Downer didn't know the truth about that one too?
Mr Downer, in continuing his current public stance, would also need to continue lying about the siphoning of US Aid Funds from beneath the roof of the US Deficit and refuelling the Iraq aid system through Australian-based US corporations.
at 3 Apr 2006 - 10:56pm |
South Australia- State Of Re-Colonization
Any regular reader of this blog will know that a population expansion
of South Australia is a regularly recurring theme. While the military
expansion of the State is extolled by our government as a creator of
jobs, it appears that we're looking elsewhere to find them. Meanwhile
new suburbs are created and plans are laid to house personnel required
for the defence and mining booms.
An
article in today's Advertiser suggests that we're going to be battling
to scrape together the required numbers to fill the defence jobs.
[extract]
It becomes more obvious now why Attorney
General Phillip Ruddock is introducing work-visa changes, and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone is being so protective of
Halliburton's reputation in Parliament. It also accounts for our
state Premier's counter-melody to the Howard and Bush visits to India in his drive to recruit
trained electronic technicians from Mumbai.
South Australia will
need many thousands more people to fulfill the requirements placed upon
it by the US, and the only place that these can come from is abroad
at 7 Apr 2006 - 5:52pm
Is The Australian Ambassadorship A Tobacco Kickback?.
Howard Government again, I start to wonder about him. Armitage, who has
ties to the company that provided the commercial torturers working in
Abu Graibh (including the one from Adelaide)
has attempted to draw a curtain over the Howard Government's
negligences revealed in the AWB Inquiry. Armitage says that nobody in
the USA gives a damn about Australian Government corruption.
Wow, they are just like us Aussies after all
Armitage
told reporters yesterday ""I might know something about it [the AWB
Inquiry]because I am interested in Australia, but as a general matter
this is not something that has caught the imagination of three other
Americans in the whole city."
I wonder if one of Downer's
investment companies has shares in Armitage's CACI ? Given that Alex
made a couple of fast dollars from the AWB float, a dividend from
provision of torturers wouldn't suprise me in the least. Downer, as
he's explained about his investment in Argo, uses other companies to do
his dirty work so that he doesn't need to know where the money's coming
from. Are there any clever financial trackers out there who can trace
where Downer is making his money? Carlye, Halliburton?
Armitage has also been commenting on the inappropriate amount of time
that's been taken to find a new US Ambassador to Australia, following
the departure of Tom Schaffer 15 months ago.
Perhaps there was nobody until now that needed rewarding for good
service. Department Of Justice Deputy Attorney General Robert
MacCallum is now seen as a friend of the tobacco industry, having last
year changed the US investigations into tobacco malpractice in a way
that reduced possible fines by thirty billion dollars. He's now
undergoing security clearances to qualify for the Aussie posting.
Was the possibility of the Australian ambassadorship used to influence the tobacco probe? Only time will tell. You can bet you life that Richard Armitage won't.
You Can't Have A War Without A Hero
As the Australian Prime Minister's opinion polls sag from the mud of a
bribery scandal, a flag-draped Australian hero is brought home to be
honoured on our annual day of war remembrance.....
It was bad luck that I was re-watching "Wag The Dog" while reading
He died in a US Army combat surgical hospital where he was surroundedabout the death of the Aussie sniper... maybe otherwise I wouldn't have
been feeling so cynical. For those who don't know the movie, it's about
the media staging of a war to save the US President's election
campaign. Anyway, I was listening to Dustin Hoffman uttering the words
in the title as my eyes fell on this Melbourne Herald-Sun paragraph:
by his mates, who draped his body in an Australian flag and with a
paratrooper's beret on his chest as they said The Lord's Prayer.
The
same scriptwriter who brought you The Doug Wood story is at it again.
Last time he was spinning the story of a war profiteer into US media footage to vindicate President Bush. This time he's hailing someone as a hero for having the job of shooting
Iraqis to protect Australian bigwigs in Baghdad, writing media releases
for Murdoch newsprint.
The level of pageantry already spinning
into the media to emphasis the accidental nature of Private Kovco's
death belies a fear within the Australian government.... a similar fear
to that of the Bush Administration when they forbade pictures of
flag-draped coffins of dead US soldiers returning from Iraq.
The
psychological force being applied to prove the point suggests how
afraid the Australian Government is of dead Aussie soldiers. Somewhere
in a spin-surgery there's an opinion poll that says that Australians
would want to withdraw from the War if our countrymen die fighting for
Bush. Otherwise, why bother with all this effort?
If I wasn't
suspicious enough already, the conclusion of the Herald-Sun story with
a mention of ABC cameraman Paul Moran brought a flash of deja vu.
Moran, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq three years ago, was
hailed in his hometown newspaper as local-boy-made-goood CIA
operative. According to former AP correspondent Christopher Allbritton
"Moran only filed to two stories for the ABC, both on the naval
blockade of Iraq. The rest of the time he was allegedly attempting to
generate an uprising against Saddam Hussein. From what I've seen (this blog is not to be missed)
I believe that one of Moran's last jobs was to promote the existence of
WMD's in Iraq, providing through his camera the "evidence" that Bush
needed to invade. As one of only two journalists in the world to
interview the Iraqi dissident who claimed involvment in Saddam's
construction of WMD-creation bunkers, Moran showed the "picture" that
"justified" the invasion.
Turning back to the weekend's sad news of an Aussie weapons expert
accidentally killing himself, why are my instincts screaming cover-up?
Right now I'd like to see a report of the Iraqi people who Private
Kovco, in his capacity as Guardian Angel Of Baghdad, took careful aim
at and ended their lives.
This story may not be that of an accidental death of a saint. To some
it may already appear to be one of a hired murderer encountering
karma. To others it may be reminiscent of Wag The Dog. However the
story has all the hallmarks of a propaganda invention, and therefore
needs to be looked at with suspicious eyes.
at 24 Apr 2006 - 2:28am
Australia Goes Nuclear
In today's Australian,
PROMINENT scientist Tim Flannery has called for an end to theuranium debate, saying all alternative energy sources to fossil fuels
must be considered in the fight against climate change.
The author of The Weather Makers and director of the South Australian
Museum said yesterday he had softened his view on nuclear power.
Dr Flannery said the nation could not afford to get "bogged
down in a debate about the three mines policy" or nuclear power and
instead should develop a cohesive response to global warming. "People
say we can't have uranium mining because there's a danger of
proliferation and that's true," Dr Flannery said. "But we have to weigh
all of this stuff and deal with this in the context of threat to
climate change and that's why people are getting away with rubbish
about wind and uranium.
"Having travelled around the world looking at energy options, I
am more favourably disposed towards nuclear power than I was
previously, particularly when you look at the scale of the problem in
China and the use of coal."
Dr Flannery's comments come a day after the chief executive of
the nation's second-largest environment group, WWF Australia, accepted
the Government's planned expansion of uranium mining and exports to
China.
In the Adelaide Advertiser our Federal Treasurer told us how great a nuclear industry would be for South Australa:
Mr Costello said rising fossil fuel prices
could make nuclear power an attractive option and that uranium mining
was an issue of particular significance for SA.
"South Australia has the largest uranium mine in Australia," he said.
"And just as the mining boom in gas and coaland iron ore has been lifting states like Queensland and Western
Australia, the development of the Roxby Downs mine and the exploitation
of that resource could lift South Australia."
Mr Costello said one of the key reasons he approved the sale of
the Roxby Downs mine to BHP was to allow for its further development.
"I believe BHP could bring a lot of new investment to build capacity," he said.
Mr Costello believed global demand for uranium was likely to
increase as oil and coal prices continue to climb and countries look to
less environmentally damaging energy sources.
"The price of oil is so high that people are now looking to
alternative energy sources and the nuclear option will come right back
on the table," he said.
And he predicted environmental concerns associated with nuclear energy would be addressed.
He said there was no logic in Australia mining uranium for export when it could also be used here.
at 5 May 2006
Australain Entertainment Venues Now Terror Targets, Say Attorney General And Intelligence Chief
I'm feeling vindicated in getting the "heebie jeebies" in the casino
the other night now that I know that ASIOs worried about terrorist
attacks on Australian restaurants.
Why would I think that a
casino atop a railway, adjacent to a Parliament House, might not be a
great place to hang around? Let's look at what our attorney general
and our chief of Intelligencehad to say today:
[from The Age]
ASIO has warned that terrorists could carry out attacks on
hotels and restaurants in Australia.
The agency's director-general, Paul O'Sullivan, said the latest
Bali bombing was an example of such targeting, and while security
agencies and police may have disrupted some attacks, there was no
evidence that the threat was abating.
"Explosives-based attacks against crowded venues have been
conducted overseas, including against food service venues such as
restaurants and hotels," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"Such tactics could be applied to food service venues in
Australia to significant effect," he told a conference yesterday on
the safety of the national food chain. Terrorists could also use
the contamination of food supplies as a weapon.
[From ABC]
He says such attacks would be simple to conduct yet cause considerable community anxiety.Mr O'Sullivan has called on the food sector to take precautions and work with governments to develop risk management plans.
"Taking sensible precautions against such possibilities involves
Government and business working together to factor all hazards into the
development of policy and risk management plans, particularly in
connection with protecting Australia's critical infrastructure," he
said.
"It is through this partnership that policy and practice remain
properly aligned, relevant and effective."He says that recent arrests
in connection with suspected terrorist
activity should not lead the Australian public to believe that the
terrorism threat is abating.
"The challenge for governments, agencies, businesses and communities is
to ensure our understanding of the threat remains realistic and
appropriate and that we shape our response to the threat in ways that
are in proportion to the actual risks," he said.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock concedes the sector is vulnerable but says Australia's threat level remains at medium.
"That means we have no specific intelligence of specific threats that are planned," Mr Ruddock said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TheAttorney General has produced a plan for the venue and food terrorist
problem, but won't release it. Wise, really, given how the public
might react to plans on how to deal with considerable numbers of deaths
of Australians on our own soil.
at 5 May 2006 - 2:25am
Did You Meet Scott Parkin While He Was In Australia? You Can Help Him
Parkin , to refresh your memory, was the Halliburton protester
deported because ASIO knew that the Pentagon had a file on him.
Embarrasingly for ASIO the file was of Parkin handing out peanut butter
sandwiches as a means of protest.
Parkin's Australian legal team
and his support group want to hear from those who met the man while he
was here. Your written testimony that Parkin acted non-violently
during his sojourn here wiould help to prove his innocence.
Parkin
was detained at a Melbourne coffee shop while on his way to help
present a workshop on passive non-violent resistance techniques. The
Federal Police and Immigration officers placed him in solitary
confinement, then flew him to Los Angeles in the company of two
Australian Immigration officers.
Hire of the prison cell, his
airfare and that of the two immigration officers were placed on a bill
that Parkin must pay before he could be allowed to re-enter Australia.
A
Melbourne court case is underway to prove that Parkin was not a "threat
to national security" If you spent any time with the man, take the
time to fill out a statutory declaration form and send it (by Monday
May 14) to
Friends of Scott Parkin, PO Box 2152, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Stat Dec forms can be downloaded from http://www.ag.gov.au/statdec
-Source: Sydney Indymedia
at 7 May 2006 - 12:39am
Pine Gap Guides Missiles To Osama
Australia's Pine Gap base was used to send 32 cruise missiles at Osama Bin Laden.The missiles failed to kill the Al Qaeda leader as he had left the target site approximately twenty minutes earlier.
International
affairs commentator and policy advisor Mr Keith Suiter said on
Adelaide radio this morning that the US surveillance installation at
PIne Gap assisted in monitoring Bin Laden's satellite phone call to his
mother and pinpointing his location for the missile attack.
Speaking
on ABC 891 Mr Suiter said that one of the problems with the plan was
that many of the missiles destroyed each other while attempting to
strike the same target.
A podcast of the interview will be available from the ABC Adelaide website.
at 9 May 2006 - 11:27am
Pine Gap New Pearl Harbour?
What if Al Qaeda deemed Pine Gap a threat to their operations and send a team through
the fence?
Here's a little from a piece posted on Webdiary by Brian Law last Decemberr:
[extract]
Maybe there was scanning equipment in place that would've detected
more threatening articles than crucifixes and pamphlets, maybe not.
Maybe Bryan and crew proved how easily an Australian/American
modern-day version of Pearl Harbour could come to pass? Would the US
place more troops in Australia to protect its Sentinel In The War On
Terror (or somesuch phrase) ? Would it perhaps feel obliged to use the
US/Australian Joint Facilites to demonstrate it's new planned "Lily
Pad" capability- the ability to mobilise its troops to hotspots?
The above paragraph is my own pure conjecture, as is the one below.
What if Downer's stories of Australia being within Korean missile range
actually turned out to be true? If so then the Axis of Evil's foremost
concern might be knocking out the JORN detection system. This might be
achievable by knocking out dishes, but much more effective would be
disabling its headquarters in Adelaide.
Worse,
what if the above two ideas were carried out in concert? A combined
missile/terrorist strategy would no doubt shock the world.
It doesn't matter whether or not I believe either possibility or their combination likely. I conjecture that as a set
of calculations were carried out on the proposed national nuclear dump pertaining to possible environmental damage due to a nuclear
containment breach from a missile attack(the figures were worked out for ARPANSA by Halliburton), then such hypotheses as I have raised above will have been well and truly considered by both US and Australian military, and contingency plans laid.
Its becoming like a game of potentially bloody global chess as we attempt to anticipate our leaders' next moves.
at 10 May 2006 - 10:54pm
Australia To Become International Nuclear Waste Dump...Now For India
One of the main reasons for the Halliburton-built Adelaide to Darwin
Railway now becomes apparent. If the Australian Government's mooted
plans come to fruition, trains of imported nuclear waste trundling to
repositories in the Australian outback will soon become a reality.
Halliburton have had a dual role in Australia, creating the tracks and providing
environmental impact date for nuclear waste facilities.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is expected this week to discuss "uranium leasing"
with US President Bush. Under the plan, Australia's 40% of global
uranium supplies would not be sold, but "hired out" to users, the waste
returning to the Australian point of origin.
I believe that the
plan will be used as a loophole for the problem of selling Aussie
uranium to India. As that country is not a signatory to the
international nuclear non-proliferation treaty, India cannot acquire
Australian nuclear fuel for fear that it it might be used in atomic
weaponry against Pakistan. However if India doesn't actually own the
stuff, and the militariliy-useful waste is taken out of their hands, a
fuel trade will no doubt be possible.
Any announcement will
follow the visits to India of both President Bush and PM Howard, and
discussions of the Indian dilemma between US Secretary of State
Condileeza Rice and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander
Downer.
Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaille said today that
Australia had not yet been asked to utilise the uranium leasing
concept. My bet is that Howard will receive a request from Bush later
in the week.
A good puppeteer can do anythng with the right strings in his hands.
Morning After Postscript:: The Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne has suggested today that the Government should tell the truth.
[from The Age]
Senator Milne went on to say that the Greens had campaigned for a
"cradle-to-grave" Australian responsibility for its uranium, adding
that "That is why, when there is no safe disposal for nuclear waste, it
is irresponsible to generate the product in the first place,"
"The world is already beset by terrorism. Nuclear waste on the high seas is a frightening prospect."
Senator
Milne also said that Australia should respect the existing policy of a
nuclear free Pacific adopted by countries within the region.
No Fitting Epitath- The Kovco Leaks
I've gotten into lots of trouble over the Kovco scandal. Days
before his body went missing I wrote that I beleived a cover-up was
occurring. Everything I wrote after that landed me in more trouble.
In spite of this I need to write down what follows:
Right
now I cant' believe that not one but two officials, including the
person who compiled the "accidentally leaked" the report weren't, at
the very least, carrying out their actions with subconsiously compelled
deliberateness.
Here's the timeline: Kovco is killied by a
bullet. The body is moved before an MP investigation at the order of
the commander in chief of Australian armed forces in Iraq. Kovco's
body goes missing, the wrong coffin sent to Ausralia. The official
version of his death is changed, and though we're told that he didn't
die cleaning his gun, no other explanation is offered. Then the bullet
(or maybe just its casing) goes missing and isn't provded with Kovco's
remains to be examined by the NSW coroner.
Now we learn that a
laptop containing the ADF's draft report into the farce has been left
unattended at Sydney airport , and a CD that was left at Melbourne
airport that eventually found its way to journalist Derryn Hinch.
When
an extended member of the Kovco family (Shelley Kovco"s brother-in-law
said tonight how you would not believe the situation if you saw it in
episode of Fawlty Towers, I felt the edge of bitterness in his voice.
It's been bungle after bungle after bungle.
It's not a fitting epitath to somebody who has faithfully served his country.
The
fact that the ADF were so quick to apologise today totally changes my
mind about many things. It now appears that everything that has
transpired since the discovery of Kovco's death has been a total comedy
of errors.
The ADF's speed in disclosing such self-damaging
information is to be commended. However the loss of esteem within the
Australian public that the latest revelations will create might be the
final catalyst for our society beginning to question why our soldiers
are engaged in the debacle of the invasion of Iraq
Sixteen Arrested AT U.S. Halliburton Protest
Today's Houston Chronicle says it all:
Sixteen people protesting Halliburton Co.'s environmental record and
its role as a military contractor were arrested on trespassing charges
Wednesday when they surged toward a building where company shareholders
were meeting.
Another man was arrested on a charge of destroying public property for tearing up a plastic fence holding back protesters.
A masked man beat on a large empty jug and protesters chanted, "The
whole world is watching," and "Shame on you," while police made the
arrests. A designated area had been set up for the protest, and police
had told protesters not to leave that area.
Those arrested were frisked, handcuffed and taken to the Stephens County Jail.
The
Houston-based company said it decided to meet in the southern Oklahoma
city where it was founded to highlight company operations that remain
here.
Critics accused it of seeking a friendly and remote
location in an attempt to duck protests. The company is the leading
employer in Duncan, which is about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City.
One
of those arrested was wearing a Dick Cheney mask. The vice president
formerly headed Halliburton, which has drawn criticism for its big
government contracts, some awarded without competitive bidding. Its KBR
unit provides support services for troops stationed in the Middle East.
About 100 people protested outside a meeting attended by about 200 shareholders.
Shareholders
of the world's largest provider of products and services to the
petroleum and energy industries looked back on a year of record
earnings. Halliburton, founded in 1919, earned $2.4 billion in 2005.
They
approved a company request to increase its authorized share count to 2
billion from 1 billion. Dave Lesar, the company's chairman and chief
executive officer, said a stock split was planned sometime in the next
two months.
Shareholders rejected a request by a group of
Texas and Kansas shareholders for adoption of a policy based on the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Halliburton directors, noting
that the company does business in more than 100 countries and refrains
from doing business where prohibited by the U.S. government, did not
support the proposal.
Lesar said after the meeting that the protest did not bother him.
"I cannot change the fact that my predecessor is the vice president of the United States," he said.
Protesters
carried signs such as "Bush Lied," and "Record Corrupt Blood Soaked
Profits." Oklahoma Veterans for Peace lined up 37 pairs of combat boots
to represent Oklahoma soldiers killed in Iraq.
Jan Gaddis of Duncan held up an "I Support Halliburton" sign.
"It
is not some monolithic organization that is devoid of humanity," she
said. "They are a very responsible corporate citizen and their
employees are involved in the local community and churches."
Halliburton
spokeswoman Cathy Mann has said potential protests played no role in
deciding where to hold this year's meeting. She said the company has
done a good job of supporting American troops overseas.
"Halliburton supports the rights of demonstrators, even when they have the facts wrong," she said.
Halliburton
shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange late Wednesday morning at
$74, down $1.01. The stock has traded from $39.65 to $83.97 over the
last year.
___
Associated Press writer Sean Murphy in Duncan contributed to this report.
Halliburton's Detention Centres Only Blueprints, Says CEO
Halliburton's US contract to build detention centres was part of a plan that may never be completed, it was revealed today.
The suprising admission came from the successor to US Vice President Dick Cheney, Halliburton President and CEO Mr David Lesar.
During
a question and answer session at the company's AGM a stockholder asked
for details of the US$385 million contract. The deal, said Mr Lesar,
was part of a contigency plan.
"There are no plans at this point to actually physically build
anything. We don't know when or if or where this contract will be
activated," he said.
Other details of the Homeland Security contingency plan are yet to be revealed.
Source-Houston Chronicle
Kovco- Wrong Body Was Halliburton Employee
The body sent to Australia in the place of a fallen soldier was that of a Halliburton contractor from Bosnia. The Kellogg, Brown and Root employee was finally buried last Friday, a month after he died.
Halliburton
have indicated that they will pay compensation to the family of Juso
Sunanovic, who the company claims died of a brain hemorrage while
playing table tennis in Iraq.
The revelation is the latest in a
situation filled with procedural errors. Pte Jake Kovco's body was
moved from the scene of death before MP inspection on orders from the
commander of Australian armed forces in Iraq despite an MP command that
the location remain undisturbed for investigation purposes. After
being ceremonially escorted to a waiting plaine, his body was
accidentally substituted with that of the Halliburton employee.
A
report of the incident was accidentally left by an Australian Brigadier
at Melbourne airport, from where it felll into the hands of a local
journalist.
A relative of the fallen Australian soldier, who
works in the funeral industry, took care of the contractor's body
until he was returned to his homeland.
Kovco's mother-in-law and
father-in-law and Sunanovic's daughter have shared condolences this
week on a Melbourne community radio station. Melbournes Radio for the
Print Handicapped arranged for the three to talk.
We have thought of you a lot over the time and we know you're feeling the same way we are," David Small told Jasmina Sunanovic.
"And I think your Dad would just want you to get on with it. You know, do what you have to do and the same with your mother.
"Shelley (Pte Kovco's widow) will be all right and her two kids will be
all right, but we just hope it doesn't happen to anyone again."
Adelaide Submarine Constructors Recruited From Classrooms
On May 13th 2005 I introduced my first Your Democracy Blog with
these words: I am writing this blog because South Australia needs
help. We are an
extremely strategically located city, for years headquarters of
Murdoch, Halliburton and BAE, and are being systematically brainwashed
into becoming defence industry drones without ever being given the
choice of taking this path.
Now I learn that the submarine
project, constructed at a facility controlled by Halliburton's former
Global Vice President for Infrastructure, is to begin a campaign to
entice our kids into becoming defence construction workers
{from the Adelaide Advertiser]
"One of the things we see is a need to attract
people to the industry," Mr Gallacher said. "It's not just going out
and offering people a job. We think, in schools, that teachers,
students and even the parents need to understand it's an attractive
career."
A national skills shortage meant the shipbuilders would be battling mining and resources firms for workers.
"There's definitely a shortage of skills across the country. It will have an impact on us," Mr Gallacher said.
"That's why we're keen to go out and recruit and train and upskill people."
Mr Gallacher said some overseas recruitment would be conducted
to replace staff diverted from ASC's submarine arm to the shipbuilding
project.
ASC, formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation, beat
Victorian-based shipbuilder Tenix for the contract to build three
hi-tech air warfare destroyers for the navy, the first to be delivered
in 2013.
The State Government is injecting more than $140 million into a
shipbuilding precinct, near ASC's Outer Harbor headquarters, which
include a maritime skills training centre.
Premier Mike Rann announced plans for the centre in February last year.
The construction of this new infrastructure is expected to
create contracting jobs. Mr Gallacher said ASC was meshing with State
Government efforts to boost South Australia's population, including the
Adelaide - Make The Move campaign targeting interstate migration.
at 19 May 2006 - 8:22pm
Australia-India Uranium Trade Tied To Nuclear Reactor Construction Contracts
[from the Financial Express, poste 20/5/05]
MAY 19: Seeking to meet its rising energy demands, India may
pay suppliers, including General Electric (GE) Co, Rs 1.8 trillion ($40
billion) to build nuclear reactors over the next 14 years, a government
official said.
France’s Areva SA, Electricite de France and US-based Westinghouse
Electric Co are among the possible providers of 25 to 28 reactors by
2020, chairman Nuclear Power Corporation of India, SK Jain said.
US President George Bush is seeking an end to the three-decade-old
international ban on nuclear technology sales to India, prompted by its
atomic bomb test in 1974.
India and China are leading a worldwide revival in atomic
energy after oil and coal prices rose to record levels. Russia and
Japan are among the nations that may lift sanctions on India and enter
the contest for contracts to install 40,000 megawatts (mw) of capacity.
This would be enough to supply electricity to four cities the size of
New York.
‘‘We are very confident the deal and all agreements will go
through,’’ Mr Jain said in an interview in Mumbai on Tuesday. ‘‘As an
outcome of that, India will have access to the global nuclear
technology market.’’
President Bush has asked the US Congress to end nuclear
sanctions against India. US and other members of the so-called nuclear
suppliers group, including France, Russia, Japan and Australia, are
debating whether to lift their ban on exports of equipment and
materials for atomic use to India.
India is turning to overseas nuclear-reactor builders after
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh doubled the nation’s 2020 capacity target
from an initial 20,000 mw. India’s homegrown atomic power programme
won’t cope with the stepped-up construction plan, Mr Jain said.He
addedthe programme was also limited because of a uranium shortage
caused by the international embargo on sales of the reactor fuel. Once
sanctions end, supplies of enriched uranium will be included in
contracts to install reactors.
While
at this stage having no evidence to authenticate the last claim, let's
assume for now, even though this might not be the case, that
international reactor constructors are including whole-of-life (that's
20,000-plus in uranium years) supervision and/or ownership of
fission-fuel used on Indian soil.
If such were the case,
placing of the waste in a repository would be on the agenda, which
would be more difficult for a company that didn't already have a
pre-arranged site when it made a tender to the Indian Government.
No matter which company wins I bet Halliburton will make a fortune in environmental impact assessments.
Whowere the "officials' that Downer was relying on for his information
last week? They need to be identified sooner rather than later
Cosgrove To Lead Charge For South Australian Defence Contracts
[ABC]
The former head of the Australian military, General Peter Cosgrove,
will lead South Australia's bidding for multi-million dollar defence
contracts.
Premier Mike Rann has announced General Cosgrove as the new chairman of the state's Defence Advisory Board.
General Cosgrove helped restore order in East Timor in 1999 and named Australian of the Year in 2001.
He will remain based in Sydney but will visit South Australia regularly.
Speaking this morning from England, Mr Rann says General Cosgrove is an ideal choice for the role.
"We want to grow our defence jobs in South Australia from about 16,000 jobs up to 28,000 jobs within 10 years," he said.
"I can't think of anyone better than General Cosgrove to lead the push for South Australia."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This announcement from the Premier is not available from his website. The site has been closed for reconstruction since the election.
at 21 May 2006 - 10:29pm
South Aust Premier In London To Sell Uranium?
South Australian Premier Mike Rann isn't known as "Media Mike" for
nothing. This is why it's suprising that Rann has made a trip to
England with no public fanfare. His website isn't even operative to
convey his media releases!
Mr Rann usally makes great media
mileage from his visits, proposing M-1 tank reconstruction facilities,
visiting warship contract contenders, generally publicising his
intentions from the perceived locales of "the horse's mouth" This is
why it's surprising that the best our Premier has had to offer is that
our defence contract bids are to be managed by a man who doesn't live
in South Australia. Rann's climate change consulant, by the way, is
also about to become a Sydney resident.
The editorial in today's Australian may
be right in saying that Rann's just flogging our wine and tourism. But
this doesn't explain the lack of publicity of the trip from a man who
would open a chook raffle if it provided a photo-op.
Viewed in
context with the international whirlwind of publicity surrounding
international uranium sales, and in the light of UK PM Tony Blair's
recently announced plans to revitalise the UK's nuclear power industry,
an "unannounced" visit by the head dignitary of a uranium-rich locale
could be perceived as a "shock-tactic" in nuclear salesmanship.
Think about it.. Blair says that the UK needs more uranium, and in a heartbeat Premier Rann is on his doorstep.
No doubt Mr Rann's job will be done before whatever announcement Australian PM Howard makes from Ireland.
Commander Cosgrove's New Battle Game- Board And Playing Pieces
This is all that is really relevant about Adelaide now. All the rest is superficial:
(map and links below from defence-sa.com)Follow the links for news stories and articles to
find out more about the recent successes of South Australia's
defence industry.
23 July 2005
Battalion base plan
starts to take shape
An 80-hectare army base with nearby housing for 1000
people would be built in Adelaide's northern suburbs
under the State Government's plan to lure a battalion
from interstate....
[>]
31 May 2005
ASC CHOSEN TO BUILD AIR WARFARE DESTROYERS
The Federal Government has chosen ASC Shipbuilder Pty
Ltd as the preferred shipbuilder for Navy's Air Warfare
Destroyers (AWDs) - one of Australia's largest and most
complex Defence projects worth up to $6 billion.
18 October 2004
Dubai coastline to be
surveyed using laser technology
Tenix
LADS Corporation, the South Australian-based airborne
laser survey company, is bringing its world-leading
technology to the Gulf under a contract for the Dubai
Municipality....
[>]
NEW HELICOPTERS FOR ARMY
The Australian Army
will be equipped with 12 new troop lift helicopters under a $1 billion
project approved by the Howard Government, Prime Minister John Howard
and Defence Minister Robert Hill announced today ....
[>]
National Air Support to operate Super Puma on behalf of
RAMSI in Soloman Islands
National Air Support, the current provider of fixed wing
civil maritime surveillance for the Australian
Government’s Coast watch border protection program
....
[>]
Rann sets sail with big guns blazing
South Australia's multimillion-dollar defence industry
has put it on the frontline as the defence capital of
the nation .... [>]
A "big bang" in the name of safety
National Air Support, the current provider of fixed wing
civil maritime surveillance for the Australian
Government’s
Coast-watch border protection program
.... [>]
New leading edge ASLAVs boost Army capability
A squadron of 25 new state-of-the-art Australian Light
Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV) will be formally delivered
....
[>]
DSTO and Adelaide Uni "sign up" for future research
The Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO)
and the University of Adelaide have extended their
research collaboration with
.... [>]
$10.2 Million boost for Adelaide company
Adelaide-based company NTP Forklifts Australia has won a
major $10.2 million contract to supply the Australian
Army with .... [>]
Defence invests in pilot safety
The Australian Defence Force will invest $129 million
over the next 10 years on its search and rescue
capability to protect RAAF pilots
.... [>]
State of Defence in out sights
South Australia's multimillion-dollar defence industry
has put it on the frontline as the defence capital of
the nation .... [>]
Reactor For South Australian Spaceport
Who's involved in an unexpected consortium proposal for a nuclear reactor at Woomera?
Australian
foundation member of the International Nuclear Energy Acaa demy
Professor Leslie Kememy has spearheaded a push for a reactor near South
Australia's Spaceport, and a feasibility study for a three billion
dollar reactor was being conducted.
Leslie, who told Adelaide's Advertiser that he had been hired by a consortium as a technical consultant, but declined to give their name
By any chance could this be relevant to using nuclear propulsion in extraterristrial excursions?
Acting
Premier Foley rejected the proposal last night, but as the decision
will no doubt be made at Federal level, he's piddling into the wind.
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