Nick's
Whispers from the mean streets appear in the fortnightly Sydney
City Hub
How the Australian overseas student industry rips off the developing world
6 February 2010
Let’s face it: there’s bound to be a racist element behind many of the attacks on Indian students in Australia. I mean you can see it: Here’s some resentful half-arsed kid who had a lousy upbringing and has no prospects of a brilliant career, prosperity and the rest. He hangs out with his mates and they bitch to each other about anybody identifiably different: Lebs, abos, gays, Muslims, Asians … whatever. And then they suddenly see lots of Indians turning up in the places they hang out, and even getting jobs, and they decide they’re going to bash the diligent little wog to teach him a lesson. Nothing fundamentally to do with being Indian, as such, just to do with being different: not an Aussie, not like us.
The Blade Runner option
21 January 2010
I unkinked my tail, made myself another black coffee, and went back to my investigation of the Sydney Metro Authority.
In some ways it’s been an easy job. Most of the Metro employees are convinced it scratches with its hind leg. In decent society, “I’m still playing the piano in the brothel” are words more likely to fall from the lips than an admission that you’re drawing up plans for the Metro. It’s tough when the only bloke who’ll talk to you at parties is Russell Edwards.
The shock of the old
11 December 2009
Truly, if God does exist, she moves in mysterious ways. Who would have thought that Tony Abbott, the Mad Monk, Captain Catholic, the Budgie Smuggler, the man who dreams of an Australian theocracy would – all unexpectedly – end up as leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition?
That muffled far-away cheering you can hear is Vince Gair and a thousand old Democratic Labor Party reactionaries shrieking with delight from the grave. Years after the old DLP shuffled off this mortal coil, here was its spirit again abroad in the land.
A microcosm of madness
4 December 2009
Holy Mother of Marx, why would anybody want to lead the Liberal Party at the moment? This isn’t going to be a good period for any mainstream politician, but for the right it’s going to be a stinker. The world just isn’t facing the sort of rising economic tide that carried political conservatives ranging from Thatcher, Blair, Clinton, Keating, Bush and Rudd to the brief triumph of market fundamentalism.
True renaissance men in a modern setting
16 November 2009
Former U of S students of both sexes lined up in the media to point out that the university’s men’s colleges, and St Paul’s in particular, had had, for half a century, a shocking reputation for sexual violence and extravagant, boorish, misogynistic behaviour.
McGurk killing: how many hitmen were there?
22 October 2009
What are we looking at here – an assassination team of at least three men? It’s beginning to look like it. Three implies a serious conspiracy – something bigger and better-paid than the usual contract killing, of which there are an average of 12 a year in Australia and for which the average price is $12,700.
Visioning the change-embracing global city, going forwards
12 October 2009
Every now and then something really spiffy slips anonymously into the Werrong Investigations PO Box. Last week I opened one of those padded bags and out dropped a CD folded in a sheet of A4 paper on which was printed “Recorded this at caucus meeting yesterday. Thought you’d be amused. Thinking of jumping ship and running as independent.” I popped the CD in the Mac and turned up the sound. At first there was just a buzz of indecipherable grumbling and the sound of chairs scraping around. Then somebody cleared their throat a few times and tapped on a table with pen and a voice said “Bit of shush please!” The background noise died down.
The assassination of the S-W Rail Link
There is no suggestion that …
25 September 2009
Was it, I wondered, an omen, a portent of the demise of the Rees Government. I had had a long night of phone calls and googling, unravelling a web of dodgy political dealings about the South-West Growth Centre, followed by not much sleep and I was feeling kind of light-headed and biblical.
I had a client who wanted me to look into “certain aspects” of the slaying of Michael McGurk, the loan-shark and standover man who was – as they say in journalism – “linked to” sundry developers. It seemed whole shebang was in turn “linked to” land deals in places like Badgerys Creek.
Nathan’s Folly
The problem with the CBD Metro
11 September 2009
“... the city is the choke-point for the entire network. Sooner or later – and the way people are being forced back onto public transport by peak oil, it’s going be sooner – we’ll need a couple of additional rail tracks through the city.
“Anyway, years ago, the rail planners reserved a couple of corridors under the city, and the most important one is under Pitt Street. That’s the one they’re going to use for the CBD Metro.”
A man out of his time
The mysterious death of Antoine de Saint-Exupery
31 August 2009
Around the time you’re reading this, 65 years ago, the friends of the great French author, Antoine Jean-Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint-Exupery, were, one by one, giving him up for dead.
At 8.30am on 31 July 1944, St-Ex took off from a Corsican airfield on a dangerous photo-reconnaisance mission over occupied France. At 44, The author of The Little Prince was already an old man. Depressed, drinking heavily, and in constant pain from old injuries, he was too big for the cockpit he was shoe-horned into and officially ten years too old to be flying a P38 Lightning. Allied radar tracked his plane crossing into southern France but he never returned. Like the Little Prince, he just vanished.
Bring me the ears of Mullah Noorulla
13 August 2009
Our boys in Afghanistan killed Mullah Noorulla a few weeks back. A ‘Special Operations Task Group’ bumped him somewhere in southern Oruzgan province in what The Australian described as a “targeted assassination”. That’s as opposed to an untargeted one – whatever that is.
Of markets, dogs, and demand destruction
3 August 2009
Thanks to peak oil we’re going to need many more examples of inspired localism like the weekly markets. We’re now living in the phase of ‘demand destruction’. You won’t read much about this in the mainstream media, but if you look carefully, creeping signs of economic and social change brought on by high oil prices are everywhere.
Four years since the London bombings
What, for jihadis, is the cosmic significance of 8.50am?
10 July 2009
It’s been four years now since the 7 July London bombings and a curious thing has happened. Ever so cautiously, a major player in the UK media has voiced doubts about the official story and supported calls for a public inquiry into the atrocity.
You can fight City Hall
17 June 2009
On a recent bright sunny day with nothing particularly pressing on my desk, I felt the call of the Wolli. Joadja packed a picnic lunch and we caught the train down to Tempe Station and took a walk through the Wolli Valley along the Two Valley Trail.
Fifteen years ago, at the height of the struggle to save the valley from the M5 East motorway, the valley’s defenders produced Roads of Doom, a nifty little comic book about my investigation of the RTA and the freeway lobby. It’s now regarded as a cult classic of conservation movement literature.
Billions are the new millions
28 May 2009
The government has been living out a bizarre fantasy and it’s the faux precision that gives the game away. Nathan reckoned the City Metro would cost $5.3 billion and the Western Metro $8.1 billion. They haven’t yet decided on a route for the Western Metro and they haven’t done any detailed design work. They haven’t even settled on how many stations there will be, or where, but they do have a price – $8.1 billion. How do they know that? Where does that point one come from? Why not, “Buggered if we know. Anywhere between four and twelve billion we guess”? At least that would be honest.
The strange case of the phantom Phantom
A shadow falls on DNA evidence
20 April 2009
Let me tell you a disturbing story. Since the 2007 murder of a young German policewoman, Michèle Kiesewetter, cops all over Europe have been hunting a brutal and mysterious female serial killer ... And then, the whole case fell apart.
When the pie starts shrinking
29 March 09
Let’s face it squarely: the whole notion of the organising genius of the “invisible hand of the market” has taken a horrible beating. People are being laid off everywhere, businesses are closing down, imported cars are lying around unsold, empty shipping containers are piling up at the wharves. A weird kind of fatalism is settling over society. Things have gone so horribly wrong that long-term enthusiasts for neo-liberal free markets – people like Thomas Friedman – the batty bard of globalism – and our own Kevin Rudd are now talking like they were doughty critics of market fundamentalism all along.
Old money, new money
1 March 2009
"Before 1971 the nexus between the pile of gold bars in the treasury and the amount of paper in circulation acted as a psychological and policy barrier to the creation of endless floods of paper currency – and debt, which in invisible paper. After 1971, all barriers were down. With no independent measure of value to weigh paper against, there was no limit to the amount of new paper and debt you could create.
“And then along comes electronic accounting and transfer. Money has gone from being a physical thing, a commodity, to a paper representation of that commodity, to an electronic signal representing the paper representation. It’s gone from being a material thing, to a concept.”
Burned at the stake
How the Inquisition invented enemies where there were none
21 January 2009
So what does a marsupial private eye read over the silly season? Naturally, I’m drawn to tales of crime, punishment and intrigue and if you throw in the moral and economic decline of a civilization, you’ve got me in as surely as if you’d offered me a cold cider.
Toby Green’s Inquisition – The Reign of Fear (published last year in paperback by Pan) is dedicated to “all those who suffered at the hands of the Inquisitions of Portugal and Spain”.
This book is, by analogy, a warning against the hysteria and irrationality of the current War on Terror.
Looking backwards, progressing forwards
14 January 2009
A prolonged recession, possibly a full-blown depression, is upon us. Funds for mega projects are drying up. To make matters worse, oil supplies are in inexorable decline. What we need, in the new environment, is a modest, reliable, long-term program of investment in public transport infrastructure. The most important element here is light rail because it’s terrific value – high capacity, low cost.
An investment of, say, $400m a year is going to get us somewhere between 20 and 40 kilometres of light rail every year (depending on where you put it), plus the vehicles to operate it. That’s something the state can afford and, year, by year, the kilometres are really going to add up.
Metro madness
Nathan Rees and the Tunnels of Doom
21 November 2008
What more can you say about this mob? All the nouns and adjectives have been used up. Sydney’s public transport is bursting at the seams, but so many vital rail projects have been announced and re-announced – definitely, finally, construction-starts-tomorrow announced, and then quietly cancelled, that the punters have lost count.
A tale of two projects
How Mick Costa cost Sydney 10 lost years
1 November 2008
Construction of Parra-Chat had already started when Mick Costa was elevated to the Ministry of Transport Services. In August 2003 he “deferred” the Parramatta to Epping section - at a stroke, the vital role of Parra-Chat as a “relief line” for the overcrowded Western line disappeared, crippling the beneficial effect of the project.
The other night on the ABC, I watched the BBC’s second effort on the mysteries of 9/11 and I couldn’t help noticing the Beeb was rather more respectful towards the 9/11 truth movement than it was in its last disastrous foray into the subject. Their previous sneering effort came to grief because they showed live footage of the Beeb’s on-the-spot reporter burbling news just-to-hand that World Trade Centre 7 – the building that wasn’t hit by any aircraft – had collapsed. Alas, WTC7 could clearly be seen behind her and it was to be a further 23 minutes before it fell. The critics had a field day.
Seven years after 9/11 the questions just will not go away.
Is DNA really the gold standard of forensic evidence?
16 August 2008
When the deal finally went down, the guilty verdict in the trial of Bradley John Murdoch for the July 2001 murder of Peter Falconio was founded on just one bit of evidence, and that was a DNA match.
But is DNA really as good as it’s been cracked up to be? Research in the US has now thrown doubt on its utter reliability.
What
on earth are we doing in Afghanistan?
4 July 2008
Meanwhile, in the real Afghanistan, a huge, ruined, landlocked, mountainous,
desertified, deforested disaster zone north of Pakistan things were sliding
out of control. The vast countryside was falling under control of the
Taliban, leaving a motley foreign garrison and a puppet government isolated
in Kabul. One could almost hear the Australian media collectively thinking:
“Is this really the ‘good war’ we have made it out to be?”
Where
do we get these people?
26
June 2008
The current generation of mainstream Australian politicians have only
the barest shadow of a race-memory of crisis. The idea of the system that’s
ticked over all their lives suddenly collapsing into shortages, rationing
and social chaos, is alien to their thinking.
The
onward march of petrol poverty
12
May 2008
On the wall there were two laminated maps of Sydney, compiled by UTS researcher
Peter Rickwood. The first showed a vast outer ring of suburbs coloured
orange, where , at $1.50 a litre, the average household was shelling out
more than 6 per cent of their income on petrol. This zone was labelled
“Petrol Poverty Belt” in a bold hand, with a thick black marker.
Scary, I thought, the $1.50 line passed a few days ago and petrol’s
now heading for $1.60.
Light
rail to Dulwich Hill
Simple, cheap, efficient, so Iemma's probably against
it
8 May 2008
“Look, there’s one way of getting a lot more public transport
capacity, at least in the inner west, and that’s by extending the
Metro Light Rail from where it terminates at Lilyfield all the way to
Dulwich Hill. It’d be as cheap as chips.” He peered triumphantly
through his scratched old bifocals. I knew he was warming to one of
his favourite topics.
The
man in the glass bowl
John Howard should
be tried for war crimes
10
March 08
I thought of Kissinger’s shrinking horizons when I heard John
Winston Howard had turned up in Washington where he’d received the
2008 Irving Kristol award from the neoconservative American Enterprise
Institute.
Not a single member of the Bush administration came along to hear Howard
defend his decision to stand by Dubya in the invasion of Iraq. He ran
Australia for 11 years on behalf of the neocons and all he got was a glass
salad bowl
Can
Mick Costa pull off the big one?
Privatisation as penis art
13
February 2008
It
was mid afternoon when Joadja and I got back to the Brushtail Cafe after
the rally and march against the Iemma Government’s crazy-mad plan
to duplicate the Iron Cove Bridge and squeeze extra lanes into Victoria
Road through Drummoyne.
EcoTransit’s
Gavin Gatenby spoke at the rally, pointing out that the world reached
the maximum possible level of oil production in late 2006. Production
is already falling, he said, and petrol will probably hit $2 a litre within
twelve months, but this loony government have their hearts set on a vast
underground road system linking the Eastern Distributor with the M4 and
Port Botany, complete with subterranean interchange
After
75 years, justice for Marinus
14
January 2008
In 1967 a
West German court reduced Marinus van de Lubbe’s 1933 sentence for
arson and treason to a prison term of eight years. In 1980 the same court
lifted the sentence entirely, but the German federal court reversed this
decision. The next year another court overturned the original conviction
on the grounds that van der Lubbe was insane.
None of which mattered much to Marinus van der Lubbe himself because he
was, in fact, very dead, having been guillotined in 1934. They do things
differently in Germany.
Shooting
the village explainers
13
December 2007
“You
know when I was sure Howard was going to lose? It was when Sheehan slipped
away from Fort Howard at the end of October. I always knew that Miranda
Devine and Gerard Henderson, dog-loyal Howard soldiers, would fall at
their posts, but not Sheehan – he snuffed defeat, slipped over the
wall and vanished into the scrub in search of a new leader. Now he’s
back in the Sydney Morning Herald putting down Bob Brown and the Greens
and sucking up to the new government.”
Don’t
mention the oil
Howard
and Rudd avoid the burning issue of our time
10 November
2007
Oil
has bumped $US100 a barrel. Right. That’s $US40 more than it was
at the beginning of the year. Supplies of crude are getting tighter
and tighter and competition for them more intense. If the situation
from Pakistan to Palestine continues to deteriorate it’ll quickly
go to $120 a barrel. If Bush tries to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age
it could go anywhere.
Pretty
soon, petrol will cost as much in Sydney as it did in the middle of
the Nullabor a couple of years ago, but you won’t hear much debate
about that grim fact from Liberal or Labor.
Letting
slip the drugs of war
Is the CIA helping itself to the Afghan heroin harvest?
22
October 2007
Since the fall of the Taliban regime, which had seriously honoured an
agreement to close down the trade, heroin production in Afghanistan has
surged. In 2006 there was a 50 per cent increase in the poppy harvest
and it created a new record for world production, my contact in the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime told me. Afghanistan now accounts for 92 per
cent of the world’s illicit production. She expected it would take
another leap upwards this year.
So where is the stuff ending up? So far, not in Australia, but that’s
only a matter of time. Once again, the streets of Western Europe and Russia
are awash with the stuff and that fact got me thinking about the CIA.
Heroic
Howard stabbed in the back
A new myth is born
1
October 2007
“Yeah, he’s in trouble all right”, Old Possum remarked,
taking another sip from his cider. “But just when it’s needed,
a new social myth is being born. You see, if all goes wrong, it’s
important that Howard is preserved in the conservative pantheon as a hero
who never lost a battle … except when he was betrayed by people on
his own side.”
Next
assignment: the invasion of Indonesia
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
23
August 2007
Don’t
imagine for a second that the election of a Democrat to the US presidency
would signal a less bellicose America – advisers to presidential
candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say the difference would just
be a matter of “style” and they’re spinning the need for
more Australian “engagement” in American adventures abroad.
The
Haneef case
How the lie got halfway round the world before the truth
got its boots on
23
July 2007
In its general outline, the “official story” has held sway among
our politicians and the mainstream media for several years now: we’re
engaged in an open-ended struggle called “The Clash of Civilizations”:
Muslims (monolithic, evil, fanatical, backward, growing relentlessly in
numbers and influence) versus normal Western folk (nice, democratic, overly-trusting).
A shadowy Muslim organization called al-Qaeda spreads its organizational
tentacles throughout the world, ordering bombings . A contradictory alternative
scenario, peddled by the same official sources, holds that it doesn’t.
According to this even more scary theory, a controlling organization isn’t
necessary because anytime any two or three Muslims get together they spontaneously
form a cell devoted to jihad. Whatever, none of this has anything to do
with oil.
Broad acceptance of this narrative leads the mainstream media to pass
on, as good coin, whatever their “anonymous sources” in the
secret police tell them.
The
victory of spin
It
all depends on how you frame the thing
22 June 2007
The efficacy of the Muslim terrorist scare campaign has worn off since
the last election so the Great Illusionist needed a fresh new issue to
appeal to the redneck prejudices of the idiot ‘aspirationals’
he depends on in the critical marginal seats – the people now doing
it tough under Work Choices and interest rate rises. Taking the big stick
of ‘tough love’ and martial law to the blacks has obvious appeal
here. Howard can be seen to be taking a strong stand about a festering
problem; he can bamboozle the black leaders by saying they’ve asked
him to do something for years and now he’s doing it; and he can lay
blame at the doorstep of the Labor state governments.
The
Great Illusionist
30
May 2007
Howard conned his erstwhile supporters, got into power, and then with
a flash and a bang, he pulled a hapless Arab Muslim out of his hat and
screamed triumphantly: “I’ve gottim, I’ve gottim”.
The silly buggers loved it. They never noticed the deft switch. The East
Asian migrants kept coming, and a tiny harmless minority, something like
1.5 per cent of the population, became the focus of redneck fear and ignorance.
The point is that technology changes things: before the rapid-fire firearm, it really was hard for a lone nut to massacre lots of people; with modern firepower, it’s quick and easy. In the 18 years before the reform of Australia’s gun laws in the wake of the April 1996 Port Arthur Massacre (35 dead, 19 wounded) there were 112 Australians killed and 52 wounded in 13 mass shooting incidents. There have been no mass shootings in the decade since semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were effectively illegalised and that is what the reforms were designed to achieve.
Occupation turf war sheds new light on the Nick Berg case
US contractors ‘tortured’ for talking to the FBI
11 April 2007
The case of Donald Vance, an American citizen secretly imprisoned by the US military in Iraq after making accusations against an Iraqi-owned security company for which he worked, has revealing parallels with the 2004 disappearance of Nick Berg, a US contractor whose murder is officially attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
From
under the linoleum
Old newspapers
show Mussolini's imperialism looked a lot like today's
27 March
2007
I sat on the floor and picked through the tragedy of the country we
now call Ethiopia laid out on the yellowing pages. It was eerily reminiscent
of the current Iraq adventure.
Despite being massively outgunned by the Italians, the Abyssinians
fought heroically. Spears and old rifles were pitted against tanks,
artillery and modern bombers dropping poison gas and high explosives.
Civilians were massacred and villages laid waste.
Around the world, the public were outraged, but the anger bothered
Mussolini not at all.
Petrol
at $1.20 a litre? Say goodbye to all that
27 February
2007
It was raining when I drove through Newtown late on Sunday afternoon.
King Street was teeming with people from the Soundwaves concert in
Sydney Park and the cafes and pubs were full of laughter. Soon the
street lights would come on and the restaurants would start filling
up and the neon signs would lend a tawdry glamour to the old town.
It will look like this on the streets of Tehran just before the American
blitz starts. They say Iran is a beautiful place, but bright lights
will probably not burn there for many years, and the country, like
Iraq before it, will be poisoned by radiation from DU munitions, if
not actual nuclear bombs, for thousands of years to come.
To hell with summer soldiers and sunshine patriots
30
January 2007
I was sunning myself with a cider outside the Brushtail Café on
Australia Day when a bunch of drunken Anglo yobs spilled out of the pub
on the other side of Sydney Road. For a while they waved a big Australian
flag at the traffic chanting “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi!
Oi!” They were mostly young men but I seemed to recognise
Peter Debnam and Morris Iemma among their number. Piers Ackerman, Alan
Jones, Miranda Devine, Paul Sheehan, Janet Albrechtsen and a bunch of
other shock-jocks, right-wing columnists and howardista spin doctors lurked
in the pub doorway, urging them on.
An
ugly start to the New American Century
1
January 2007
“I
can’t see this Iraq Study Group’s report leading to any
change”, I said. “What they’re recommending is really
no different to current US policy: train a pro-US Iraqi army, and
then gradually withdraw, but that’s a nonsense. Under the tutelage
of Maliki’s government, that army will be overwhelmingly Shiite
and pro-Iranian. Unless the Sunni and Baathist resistance prevails,
all the invasion will have achieved – apart from generalised
social misery in Iraq – is Iranian hegemony over the Gulf.”
All
hat, no cattle
Why John Howard is the greatest little faker in Western
politics
19
November 2006
“Do
the maths yourself. America has a population just shy of 300 million
and it’s got about 140,000 ground troops in Iraq, plus airforce
people and several thousand mercenaries. An equivalent per capita
commitment by Australia – our population is a tad over 20 million
– would be at least 10,000, but we’ve only sent 500 soldiers
to the war.
Never
believe your own shtick
A lesson from the rise and fall of Australian “conservation icons”
1
November 2006
Young Bindi Irwin is all over the news these days and it looks like
a cruel thing to this possum. I mean, she’s just a little kid.
She still has a decade of school in front of her. And the angst of
teenhood. And maybe she’ll find, as she gets older, that wildlife
icon just ain’t her. Then what? Irwin built a business around
personal celebrity. The adulation surrounding Bindi strikes this possum
as a desperate attempt to find a commercial substitute.
Be
alert and alarmed!
Watch for this stamp on material on this site. Under the reactionary
anti-terrorism laws the author and publisher could be up for 7 years
in the slammer.
To download free copies of the sedition stamp for your web, email
or print publication CLICK
HERE.
An
elegant resolution to the law-and-order auction
1
October 2006
We’re
six months out from the next NSW state election and already there’s
frenzied bidding in the law-and-order auction. Peter what’s-his-name,
the Liberal leader, is bidding 200 Men-of-Middle-Eastern-Appearance
(MoMEA) rounded up instantly on any old charge and bugger the question
of guilt, or evidence. The Labor incumbents will top this for sure.
I can’t see Morris Iemma throwing in less than 400 MoMEA in orange
jumpsuits and leg irons.
Mother
of Suckers
The mainstream media swallow the TATP myth
21 August
2006
In which Alex the chemist explains why the idea that you can slip
into the airliner toilet and mix two harmless chemicals to make a
powerful explosive is preposterous nonsense.
“By a strange coincidence, today is the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem”, Old Possum remarked, as we waited at Town Hall Square for the march to kick off. “While their air force is unleashing hell in Lebanon, Israelis are dancing on the graves of 92 people killed by the Irgun terrorist organization on 22 July 1946”.
But is it a threesome?
3 July 2006
"Didja pick up Miranda Devine’s little slip in her Sydney Morning Herald column the other day?” Joadja asked, when she brought up another box of tissues and a four litre bottle of apple juice and slipped between the sheets to comfort me. “She wrote that Pru Goward and her husband, whathisname … John Barnett … had written an ‘autobiography’ of John Howard.”
Made in Australia
Countdown to East Timor’s subcontract coup d’etat
29 May 2006
The one thing East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri didn’t want was for his small dirt-poor nation to be caught in the vise-like grip of the World Bank and its so-called “economic reforms”. Consequently, Alkatiri declined to accept their offers of loans. That was a fundamentally smart strategic decision, but it probably doomed his leadership.
It’s the oil, stupid
24 May 2006
“The energy panic is here. The inevitable crisis that a handful of us have warned of for over a decade is upon us. Oil’s hit US$75 a barrel, driven on by Bush’s mad plan to nuke Iran. Welcome to the rest of our lives.” Old Possum said, taking another sip from his cider.
Sliding towards the vortex
27 March 2006
Every day now, the Bush regime ratchets up the rhetoric against Iran. Bush’s people are constantly threatening a military solution to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Many people assume, or hope, that the US is just posturing, but bluffing is a dangerous game. If your bluff is called, what do you do then?
Miranda Devine and the strange case of the drug raid that never was
28 February 2006
So Miranda Devine's “journalism” had come to this: it’s okay not to let the actual facts stand in the way of a good story if it highlights what you think is really going on and advances your political message. That spin came through loud and clear from her piqued defence of police “whistleblower” Tim Priest, who had belatedly been exposed by Herald journalists as, well, a fantasist.
Matrimonial on the Indian Pacific
1 February 2006
Travelling to Perth on the Indian Pacific, our hero encounters Bob Ellis. What is it about paunchy, depressive, balding, rheumy-eyed writers that women find so fatally attractive?
Welcome to the New World Disorder
26 December 2005
In which Nick chats to an old retired colonel who explains what might lie behind the great Australian Army reorganisation.
The truth hurts
Why John Howard needs the sedition laws
28 November 2005
All these new laws – IR, terrorism, sedition – are driven by an intuitive dread. Howard feels in his bones that turbulent and disastrous times are upon us and he’s arming himself with draconian laws to keep his capitalist friends rich and his party in power.
An office of profit after the Crown
1 November 2005
Nobody was happy, not the motorists, who were being slugged $3.56, each way, for a couple of kilometres, nor the public transport users who discovered that, under the contract, the consortium would have to be compensated if public transport development hit traffic flowing into the toll booths. It was a double whammy against the public interest.
Houston: “We have a problem”
What to do with Space Cadet Bush?
29 September 2005
It’s the elite Bush should be worried about – the seedy crony-capitalists who own the US of A. The Iraq imbroglio is bad enough, but after the hurricane debacle the greedheads who once put faith in this idiot-child to gull the masses will now regard him as a failure, a dud, a loser, a space cadet; a man who hasn’t measured up to the challenges; a president who isn’t fooling anybody any more.
The last Big Mac
Did Hasib Hussain suddenly fear that Allah might be a vegan?
29 August 2005
On his way to bomb the No. 30 bus at London’s Tavistock Square – and thereafter to meet Allah in Paradise – Hasib Hussain stopped off at the Scottish family restaurant to buy a Big Mac. This fascinating new revelation about the 7/7 bombings comes from yet another of those anonymous sources deep inside the police investigation, by way of The Independent (Thursday 25 August), a newspaper I once held in some regard.
Somehow Hasib’s mundane act of gustatory desperation doesn’t seem to square with the picture of a fanatical Islamic terrorist on a mission to send as many infidels as possible to their doom.
A fast-moving investigation
1 August 2005
It’s been fascinating to watch , from afar, the development of the London bombings investigation.
There are really two investigations: the official police probe and, in a parallel universe, the media investigation – which is the important one. Check the actual news releases on the London Metropolitan Police website, and you’ll find precious little: On 7 July three bombs exploded on London trains and one on a bus; something to do with four young Islamic chaps, apparently; many dead; the suspects seem to have died in the explosions; public asked to help ... That’s Scotland Yard for you: all British reserve; guarded and imprecise; cards played close to the chest.
Peak Oil
The turd on the table
1 July 2005
Tarkis plonked three ciders down on the table. “Is that the best Sydney’s ‘newspaper of record’ can do? Talk about studious avoidance of the facts! The price of crude suddenly hits $60 a barrel in the middle of the northern summer and they put it down to lingering concerns about refining capacity? What do they think will happen during the northern winter, when demand really shoots up?”
Whooping it up with the black ops boys ...
The Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Show
1
June 2005The last week of May was a nail-biting time for fans of the greatest soap opera to come out of the War on Terror.By week’s end the world’s most wanted terrorist – scourge of the occupation and Shiite Muslims, representative of Osama bin Forgotten – gravely wounded in battle, had made his way to the safety of Shiite Iran. If you believe that, I have a second-hand Nissan Bluebird to sell you.
Carr stalled in policy gridlock
1 May 2005
The controversial M4 East motorway project has been put on hold while the Carr Government tries to figure out what to do next. Could this be the end of the road for the disastrous pro-motorway policy and the beginning of a public transport renaissance?
Don't loiter near the exit:
Military debacle and economic decline haunt the Bush regime
1 April 2005
The Bushies are gambling on being able to guarantee a supply of the cheap oil on which the US depends – and on being able to sell what’s left to an oil-hungry world. It all looked so simple to the Neo-cons, but with the world looking on, it’s all gone horribly wrong, and now the US is as badly overstretched militarily as Britain was in 1940.
Fear and despair at Owl Farm
Hunter S. Thompson cashes his chips
1 March 2005
The Greatest Prose Stylist Since Jane Austen blows his brains out. Why? Nick, Joadja and Old Possum mull the possible reasons.
Too good to be true
Paul Sheehan and the magic water debacle
1 February 2005
The inventor of the magic mineral water that’s supposed to cure everything from arthritis to Alzheimers plus make you live forever and have many babies skips town causing celebrity right-wing journalist Paul Sheehan a great deal of embarrassment.
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A
timely history of the fight for civil liberties in NSW
The Liberating of Lady Chatterley and Other True Stories:
A History of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties
By Dorothy Campbell and Scott Campbell
REVIEW by GAVIN GATENBY
5 June 2008
This is a
book about a problem that is ever with us.
The balance between social order and the right of the individual to freedom
of expression, opinion, movement, and protection from arbitrary official
conduct tips all to easily in favour of the state – and the most
bullying elements within it – unless constant vigilance is maintained
by people who care.
READ
TH FULL ARTICLE >>>
"New"
Pearl Harbour photos are a cheap email propaganda fraud
By Gavin Gatenby
7 July 2007 1245 AM
A couple
of hours ago I received, by email, a Powerpoint file purporting to reveal
newly-discovered photos of the aftermath of the December 1941 Japanese
Attack on Pearl Harbour.
The photos are incredibly dramatic but they certainly didn't, as claimed,
come out of a Box Brownie that's suddenly turned up, after 66 years, in
a locker somewhere. These "new" Pearl Harbour photos are genuine
and probably all are from publicly-accessible archives. Why are they suddenly
circulating now – proliferating everywhere – with this laughable
story about having just been discovered? READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
In
the time of Sakura
The piano music of Mike Nock
By Phil Sandford
3 May 2007
In the discussion session Nock described himself as a composer driven
by emotion. But he added that the intellectual task of fully notating
his music had been a humbling experience which made him appreciate even
more the contribution made by the great classical composers.
‘In the time of Sakura’ shows that Nock has seamlessly integrated
his many musical influences and has achieved a powerful integration of
emotion and intellect. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
An
email to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly
From:
James B <lordben@tpg.com.au>
Subject: The view from the South
Date: 30 April 2007 11:48:39 PM
To: Bill O'Reilly <bill.oreilly@foxnews.com>
CC: 18 others
Hi
Bill, the news filtering through to the Land of Oz concerning your activities
continues to be less than inspiring. We hear that the delightful Rosie
O'Donnell was attacked left right and center for two weeks solid by "such
corporate media establishment hacks as Bill O'Reily, Joe Scarborough and
Danny Bonaduce who seriously called for her to be executed". Pharr
out. Things certainly seem to be degenerating fast in the Land of the
Phreeee. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Ten
days out from the NSW elections
Politicians in denial on global warming
By Matt Mushalik
15 March 2007
On Monday evening’s 7.30 Report, climatologist James Hansen
from NASA, a respected scientist, gave some clear answers to Kerry O’Brien:
“ … If we get warming of two or three degrees Celsius, then
I would expect that both West Antarctica and parts of Greenland would
end up in the ocean, and the last time we had an ice sheet disintegrate,
sea level went up at a rate of 5 metres in a century, or one metre every
20 years. That is a real disaster, and that's what we have to avoid …”
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Chain up Cheney! Bring Hicks home!
Sydney anti-war marchers defy police ban and reclaim the
streets
A Possum News Network Exclusive
Words and pictures by Gavin Gatenby
22
February 2007
This evening 1500 anti-war demonstrators overcame a strong police presence
and, after a half-hour confrontation with the NSW riot squad and mounted
police marched to the US Consulate to protest against US Vice-President
Dick Cheney's visit to Australia and the five-year imprisonment of David
Hicks in Guantanamo Bay. SEE
THE PICTURES >>>
In
the thrall of the monster drug barons
21 February 2007
Isn't it good
to see that the best politicians money can buy are so consistent in their
attitudes to public health and moral fibre. On one hand they enjoy a felch-fest
with the drug dealers and poker machine pushers of the Australian Hotel
Association (SMH 13/02/07), while on the other they sool the sniffer dogs
onto the punters going to the Big Day Out, and just about everything else,
in case they might have a reefer or eccy pill in their pocket. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
TIPS & TRICKS
How to photograph street marches
By Gavin
Gatenby, Possum News Network
29 August 2006
Over
recent months there have been large and feisty marches against the imperialist
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and most recently against Zionist aggression
in Gaza and Lebanon, but the visual record on the web was typically of
poor quality, if it existed at all. Thousands marched – sometimes
hundreds of thousands – but apart from a few thousand passers-by
and, if we’re very lucky, viewers watching a few seconds of TV coverage,
nobody much saw what happened.
I just wish more people would try their hand at this simple and inexpensive
form of journalism. To help those who want to try, I've put together a
few tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
How to organise a major terrorist scare
The Big Dummy’s guide to security booga-booga
By Gavin Gatenby, Possum News Network
15 August 2006
How easy is
it to organise a major terrorist scare like the one that’s currently
gridlocking the world’s airports? Dead easy. If you follow a few
simple points you can panic the populace and stampede the media with virtually
no risk of getting caught. All it takes is a little confidence. Here’s
a simple “how-to” for aspiring top-level spooks ... READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Sydney
rally and march, Saturday 12 August 2006
Stop
the Bombing!
No Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Palestine!
A
Possum News Network Exclusive
Words and pictures by Gavin Gatenby
This
was the third weekend in a row that big demonstrations have been held
in Sydney against Zionist aggression. I'd say this march numbered 10,000.
It stretch for two blocks and across all four lanes of George Street before
turning up King Street to Elizabeth Street and then to Hyde Park. Like
the other marches it was characterised by an extraordinary diversity of
people and organisations both religious and secular. SEE
THE PICTURES >>>
Coast
of Terror
Mel Gibson, anti-Semitism, Zionism and Mee
By Gavin Gatenby
Possum News Network
1 August 2006
When the Sydney
Morning Herald dropped on the bed on Monday morning, Mel Gibson was
spread across the top of the front page. The actor and ultra-conservative
Catholic some Australians like to call “Our Mel” had levelled
a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse at a Malibu traffic cop who'd pulled him
over for drunk-driving. The lead story immediately below covered the latest
outrages committed by the Zionist armed forces in Lebanon. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Stop
the Israeli attack on Lebanon & Gaza!
Freedom & justice for Palestine!
A
Possum News Network Exclusive
22 July 2006
Words and pictures by Gavin Gatenby
I
knew this was going to be a big demonstration when I boarded a city-bound
train at Turrella station, 10 kilometres from the city. Sydney trains
hold well over 2000 travellers and they aren't normally full on Saturday
mornings. This one was packed with people heading for the demonstration.
It was all I could do to squeeze into the foyer. The crowd was singing
Lebanese and Arab resistance songs and at one stage, the Palestinian anthem.
SEE
THE PICTURES >>>
Rally
for Palestine
A
Possum News Network Exclusive
02 July 2006
An emergency rally was called at short notice to protest against the Israeli
assault on Gaza and the West Bank. Australian Palestinians and supporters
assembled in Wiley Park in Sydney's inner south-west and marched down
Canterbury Road then Haldon Street Lakemba to a rally. SEE
THE PICTURES >>>
Breaking:
Brits, Japs and Aussies to cut and run from Iraq?
By
Gavin Gatenby
Possum News Network
16 June 2006
Today, the
Japanese agency Kyodo News reported that “British, Australian and
Japanese troops will transfer security responsibilities in southern Iraq
to Iraqi authorities next week, and withdraw from the area soon afterward”.
Citing anonymous Coalition sources the agency report indicated that, following
a meeting of the three countries in London last week, a rapid pullout
would be announced early next week. Significantly, it appears that the
US government was not consulted on the decision. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Tony
Blair’s Washington visit and the curious case of a disappearing BBC
story
By
Gavin Gatenby
Possum News Network
27 May 2006
On Friday
26 May, just hours after Tony Blair and George Bush began talks in Washington
on the “progress” of their occupation of Iraq, a curious article
appeared on the BBC’s website. Headlined “Iran FM begins first
Baghdad trip”, it was posted at 0617 GMT. Penned by one Pam O'Toole,
it painted a faux-objective, strangely upbeat, picture of the Iranian
foreign minister’s impending visit to Iraq.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Sorry
George, can’t help with the Iran business
Behind John Howard’s Timor provocation
By Gavin
Gatenby
Possum News Network
15 May 2006
On Friday 12 May, shortly before flying off to see George Bush, Australian
Prime minister John Howard did two remarkable things. Firstly, he ruled
out Australian involvement in any military action in Iran. “I’m
not in favour of other than trying to achieve a diplomatic solution”,
he told the media. Then he announced an unexpected and highly provocative
military build-up for a possible new occupation of East Timor. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
In
the house of the rising scum
By The Blue Collar Bohemian
1 May 2006
On
Friday nights on SBS TV, there’s usually a program on a topic
of "adult interest". At times it’s covered guys
obsessed with women so fat that sex with them is physically impossible,
women with big breasts they didn't want and men with small dicks
they didn't like, among other related topics. A program about
a STD clinic in London featured amongst others a South African
chap named Gary who enjoyed anonymous sex in hotel and bar toilets
with other chaps, and as a result contracted oral gonorrhea. We
got to see the nurse at the clinic examine Gary with a throat
swab that was put down his neck a good eight inches, while Gary
exhibited no sign of a gag reflex at all.
With the months to the next NSW state election drifting by I was
reminded of Gary by a recent report in the Herald titled "Dinner
with Iemma comes at a hefty price".
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Spooky
stuff
By invitation, the FBI and the NYPD set up shop in Sydney
By
Lawrence Gibbons
1 May 2006
Late
last year, with little fanfare and even less public scrutiny, the
US Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a local office here in
Sydney. Located in the US consulate way up high in the MLC in Martin
Place, an FBI agent will provide back up assistance and training
to Australia’s Federal and State police. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
On
lives squandered in war for the greed and powerlust of the worthless
few
By
The Blue Collar Bohemian
24
April 2006
Anzac
Day - the One Day of the Year, the day that "blooded"
us as a "nation". Lest We Forget. As someone who, like
many, has been touched, through the suffering of close relatives,
by the scourge of war, I have mixed feelings about this day of national
remembrance. I need to ask what exactly it is we remember, and why.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
The
rise and fall of General Motors
By The Blue Collar
Bohemian
19 April 2006
With the corporate giant
seemingly on its knees we may be seeing the demise of the company
that set the stage for the transport related social, environmental
and energy problems we have today.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
So who really killed Nick Berg?
By
Gavin Gatenby
Possum News Network
11 April 2006
For those
of us who feel a strange compulsion to analyse the seedy world of
US black operations, and who had always doubted the recent existence
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, vindication probably doesn’t come any
closer than this.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Peace & justice for the Iraqi people!
Sydney march and rally Saturday 18 March 2006
Part of the global weekend of action on the third anniversary of the invasion
Around 2000 people marched from Belmore Park, opposite Central railway station, up Elizabeth Street to Liverpool Street then down George Street through the cinema precinct and back to Belmore Park. SEE THE PICTURES >>>
Liberal
powerbroker was a harbinger of the new fascism
Lyenko Urbanchich 1923–2006
By
The Blue Collar Bohemian
2 March 2006
Lyenko
Urbanchich, who has died aged 83, was a symbol of everything that conservative
politics stands for. A self proclaimed “Slovenian Patriot”,
Urbanchich came to Australia after WWII to escape accountability for
his actions in support of Nazi Germany during that war. He then found
a comfortable place in the bosom of the Liberal Party, ever happy to
embrace, as “good anti-communists”, the slime oozing out from
the collapse of the fascist Axis. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
The
Askariya Mosque job and the coming war on Iran
By GAVIN
GATENBY
1 March 2006
So who really
did have a motive for the very professional demolition job on Samarra’s
Golden Dome Mosque?
Many analysts have pointed to the general advantages that flow to the
imperialist occupation from fostering sectarian divisions – the
traditional divide-and-rule strategy – but I think we can be a
lot more specific. I believe we can reliably point to the United States
as the real culprit and see a clear motive in the geo-strategic nightmare
created by Washington’s determination to wage war on Iran. READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
The
struggle in Swaziland
By
The Blue Collar Bohemian
27 February
2006
Swaziland
is a "faraway country of which we know little", as Neville
Chamberlain might have said. So why does it matter?
The western corporate media is constantly full of the abominable behaviour
of Robert Mugabe, a revolutionary who defeated a white racist government.
However, not far from Zimbabwe there’s small landlocked country,
with South Africa on three sides and Mozambique on the other that very
seldom rates a mention. This is the Kingdom of Swaziland, ruled by the
Dlamini family dynasty since 1750.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
Behind
every great fortune is a great theft
By
the Blue Collar Bohemian
14 February 2006
As the new
year grinds on its way Your Correspondent has been reflecting on recent
events, and has come to some pretty depressing conclusions about the
immediate future, given the Brave New World we are being blessed with,
courtesy of our Chosen Oppressors.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
The
loonies take over the asylum
Murdoch hack counsels an “unconscionable” war
on Iran
By
GAVIN GATENBY
5 February 2006
Anyone who doubts the determination of key elements of the US-led
imperialist bloc to wage a ‘preemptive’ war against Iran should
read the recent opinion piece by Gerard Baker from The Times (it was reproduced
in The Weekend Australian 28-29 Jan 2006). Not much appears in The Times
by accident, and certainly not a piece of such resounding bellicosit.
READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>
The
Uzbekistan torture documents
A PNN public service
1 January 2006
The
British Government has been quick to deny that it practices, or tolerates
the practice of, torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that it is determined
that you should not see the following documents... READ
THE FULL ARTICLE >>>