Somebody named FOSP added this to my Houston Indymedia version of the Parkin story.

 

Yep, if people start getting organised in their protests, the Bush Regime in both countries might indeed have something to fear.

I've just received this from Friends Of Scott Parkin:

Dear Friends-- Very exciting news!  Yesterday, Justice Ross Sundberg granted my lawyers access to the contents of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization's security assessment  which resulted in me being removed from Melbourne in September last year.  Furthermore, it grants access to the security assessments of my 2 co-plaintiffs, Iraqi asylum seekers Mohammad Sagar and Muhammad Faisal, who have been in an Australian detention centre for the past 5 years.

The Australian  Federal Court has announcedoday that deported activist Scott Parkin does have a right to know why ASIO deported him.  The court has granted Parkin access to the ASIO documentation used in his negative security classification.

On the day before Septemberr 11 last year Parkin was arrested and placed in solitary confinement amidst claims he was a violent activist.  He was portrayed in Australian September 11 media as a threat to Australian security.  Newsweek  reported in January that the Pentagon had kept a file on Parkin handing out sandwiches as a protest for Halliburton's food charges in Iraq.  It is likely Australian intelligence agency ASIO declared that Parkin was a potentially violent activist on the  strength of this file's existence, though it's unknown if ASIO were allowed to read it.

I've got a theory as to why the inquiry findings into the death of Private Jake Kovco are not being released till next year.   In both Australia and the US sentiment against the war in Iraq has never been higher, and the control of US Congress may be decided on this issue, as it might in Australia next year.

The circumstances surrounding Kovco's death are being considered unfortunate by some and negligent by others.   Testimonies have referred to the inappropriate cleaning up of evidence and confusion in details of evidence by comrades in close proximity.  Then there's the accidental switching of bodies that led to the remains of a deceased Bosnian contractor being flown to Australia instead of the fallen soldier.

As Halliburton-KBR is accused of massive construction overcharges in Iraq I wonder how much the Adelaide office has been involved.  For around five years this building was the Halliburton/KBR's Global Headquarters for Infrastructure (sorry, I'm not a good signwriter).  As this was in the period before and after the Coalition's occupation of Iraq, you'd have to assume that a lot of the contentious paperwork would have passed through this building on its way from Iraq to Houston.

 Photo: Adelaide Indymedia

As Halliburton-KBR is accused of massive construction overcharges in Iraq I wonder how much the Adelaide office has been involved.  For around five years this building was the Halliburton/KBR's Global Headquarters for Infrastructure (sorry, I'm not a good signwriter).  As this was in the period before and after the Coalition's occupation of Iraq, you'd have to assume that a lot of the contentious paperwork would have passed through this building on its way from Iraq to Houston.

 Photo: Adelaide Indymedia

I was suprised to find out yesterday that the Halliburton engineer for a major (proposed) S.A. water reclamation project had also set up a nut farm in the Murray.  There's already one in Canberra, where KBR paves the paths on which the pollies slither, so why would Cheney's Men be setting up a foreign investment opportunity on the banks of a dying river?

[from ABC Australia]

Engineering and construction firm KBR had planned to start planting this month, until its financial partner pulled out due to 'overseas policy issues'.

Given that Dhiren Barot's incarceration commenced with 12 days of solitary confinement, it's not surprising that he's told Coalition interrogators exactly what they want to hear.  Barot along with seven others was charged by British police with possessing reconnaissance plans of the Stock Exchange in New York, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Citigroup in New York, and the Prudential Building in New Jersey, as well as having notebooks with information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters.  

It seems that as the information would be useful to a terrorist planning a terrorist attack, the possession of the knowledge is illegal under U.K. law.   This, folks, is a scary precedent to set in the war on terror.  There's no doubt that unless the Wooden Tops scored a definitive "result" then Barot's imprisonment was going to look terrible on the history books.

The U.S. Missile Shield, now controlled from Adelaide, would have looked from above like a cheap umbrella.  Still, while recycled paper and plastic were being exhumed from the South Australian outback and extruded into space-station "lifeboats" for Western Civilization, as long as it kept the Jihad at bay for a few years, the ageing Aegis system would have served its purpose.  These days people refer to it mostly as the Shield of Christ.  and the devotion with which its components are renewed at Port Adelaide is akin to religious fervour. 

The trick was going to be how to get the population off-planet and keep the allies of Allah out of Antarctica.  Bad enough if they got control of the Australian uranium reserve, but what if they got their hands on the mineral reserves beneath the ocean floor under the South polar icecap?   We'd be broke.  

Last year the freedom of speech in South Australia was challenged by the forbidding of the public to gather on the steps of  Parliament.  Fortunately the voice of democracy was heard and we were allowed to protest US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's visit.  One of the proudest moments of my life was helping to fix the rallying banner for peace  to the Paliamentary pillars.  It restored my faith in the voice of the people being allowed to be heard.

Foreign Minister Downer's words yesterday have changed my mind.  Faced with statistics suggesting that four out  of five Australians believed that our atempted mission in Iraq  was a faillure, Mr Downer turned a deaf ear to the point of view.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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