It's taken me a day to realise how bogus the "Filipino Monkey" saga truly is.  I now believe that using the story has been a "safety hatch," an trustworthy escape from a failed attempt at starting a new war. 

Vainly, I'd arrived at the connection due to my  name (the story only really came to Australia yesterday), but was far from disappointed to find that many bloggers have made the connection between Monkey and the Tonkin incident.  For those who don't know, the Gulf Of Tonkin was the location of a confrontation that was used as vindication for starting the Vietnam war, and it's now widely believed that the event was faked.

We'd better start at the battlefront.  Here's a taste from Fox News:

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Some nights I wonder how much of his visions Dick Cheney revealed to Howand and his cabinet. I'm still impressed how quickly after assuming power in '97, the year of Cheney's secondmost recent vist here (and the formative year of Halliburton Australia), the Australian space legislation was altered to fast-track plans for Woomera, and still wonder if the intended purpose was to use Kistler rockets to send troops into the middle east?

The event staged in Adelaide was a quiet one.  Very quiet. 20-odd protesters, a dozen-odd journos, and I doubt many of them would've been there if not for the presence of Terry Hicks.  There was a heckler, a large bikie with an axe to grind about his previous "wrongful arrest" who started shouting and interjecting as soon as Terry took the mike.  Terry handled him well, coming down from the Parliament House steps to talk with him, for a good twenty minutes, the cameras clicking away while the other orators addressed empty air.  This, of course, was the only thing the local paper got around to reporting.

 

In Washington on Friday protesters will be marching to the Supreme Court to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay.  Capital cities across the world will be hosting similar events as orange clad protesters show their disapproval.  The day is the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first of theUS' War On Terror prisoners at Guantanamo.

In Australia it's a bit more personal.  We've been imprisoning the only convict of this combination of concentration camp and kangaroo court.

In Hicks home town of Adelaide the gathering will occur at 3pm on the steps of Parliament House.  I'll see you there.

Isn't it lucky that Hicks is being released during the slowest news period of the year? Last Christmas season they hung Saddam, no doubt propping up othewise sagging newspaper sales. This year it appears that a media scrum following a man who is legally prevented from speaking to them, vieing for shots of a pissed-off terrorist, that are going to help sell the discount laptops at department store sales.

The Adelaide Advertiser has just posted a story explaining how some of David's schoolmates have told how the ex-Guantanemo inmate "dabbled in Satanism" during his formative years. The only corroboration to the story I can find is a similar phrase in a piece from a few months back. The only reason I can think of for publishing such a piece of information is to incite suspicion of an "Agent Of Satan" being released into the community.. Maybe we can be inflamed into a lynch mob?

The whole bloody thing is turning into a fiasco. I'm still amazed that the Australian media haven't arced up more on the obvious double-violation by ASIO in that they undoubtedly used improperly held US intel to make their adverse security classification. Quick refresher time: A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA [US Army's Counterintelligence Field Activity]] 's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention--although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations.

I've been waiting for something like this. An addition to the problems that Israel faces from Iran, it seems, is that by next year it will be capable of making dirty bombs. That's the message that's apparantly been given to the Israeli cabinet today.

Debkafile reports that a briefing is being given that Iran will now be capable of creating plutonium from 2008. They no doubt are aware of this from the receipts Dick Cheney kept from his Halliburton rector part sales in the late 90s.

The dirty bomb thing is, as I've been yapping all year, a pill coating to sell the Iran attack to the great unwashed. Mushroom clouds are too much to contemplate, but little radioactive bangs striking fear into a city are another thing altogher.. much more user-friendly in the fear factor department.

What happens now? Try this from RoD Greher of the Dallas Morning News:

Did you hear the one about the AFP counterterrorism strategy founder who became the manager of a homeland security company that made a killing in the Australian share market? Sorry, it's not a joke. It happened years ago.

Let's set the scene...

"Planners hope that, the more they do it, the more the agencies and personnel will learn to work together, forming some semblance of organization before any occurrence of the real thing." Don't you find this to be bizarre language to hear on a nightly TV bulletin? Esoecially in a city about to host a fake terror attack? The way KOIN TV (love the name) would have it, it's gonna happen sometime or another.

Debkafile is the website that posted the Al Qaeda warning that triggered the New York radiological deployment in August.

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[extract 8/10]

On Aug. 9, DEBKAfile revealed an al Qaeda Web site warning mentioning New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets of attacks “by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material.” A second warning added Washington, Seattle and Texas to those targets.

Our counter-terror sources note that the very fact that the United States is conducting exercises this month to test its homeland readiness for a “dirty bomb” threat shows that US security planners have taken the al Qaeda threat to heart.

Having just returned from Sydney and literally stood in front of the imposition of martial law in Sydney, and witnessed the spin both governments have used to vindicate police tactics in Sydney, I'm not surprised how Howard's Henchmen are attemting to influence by propaganda the Australian public's interpretation of the forthcoming Petraus report.

It looks like our foreign minister is using the "information" gathered by these journos as "evidence" of coalition success in Iraq.

[SMH extract]

Australia has expressed hope that the United States will soon be able to start reducing troop numbers in Iraq as the result of what the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, yesterday described as the success of the so-called surge in American personnel during the past eight months.

Last night I attended a training session for Human Rights Monitors volunteers. Dale was brilliant, coaching us on how to observe an event as a team, telling us what kind of questions we could hope to get from police, reinforcing our neutral standpoint. Through his efforts much harm might be averted.

The volunteers came from all walks of life; a fair few lawyers, students, nurses, ages ranging from eighteen to forty;

We'll be the ones wearing bright orange vests, videoing and writing down what we see happening around us.

Here's what the NSW Police expect us to see.:

[AGE extract]

I once had the pleasure of being the sole occupier of the Presidential Suite at the Sebel Town House. (don't ask...it was a private joke..bloody nice, though very brown( and so was wondering today what that level of motel room was like these days.

The Tele's Gemma Jones (wasn't she the one covering the break-in of Haneef's unit? Yep) went to what will be Bush's room for a test drive.. it sounds like the same sort of digs as I had.

I was struck, reading this piece, by the line:

The first thing the President will see when he steps inside the luxury suite is a stunning postcard view of Sydney Harbour and the Opera House.

Of course Bush won't see any nasty views of protestors. They're banned from his line of sight. That's what it's all about.. well, mostly.

DSTO Media Release 21/8/07

The Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO is researching the use of a novel technique to deal with the after-effects of incidents involving a dirty bomb

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, Mr Peter Lindsay, said the technique known as ‘luminescence’ would measure levels of radiation resulting from an explosion, so that appropriate treatment could be rendered to people affected by the incident. 

A dirty bomb is an explosive device containing radioactive material which disperses radiation on detonation. Its primary aim is to deliberately spread radioactive contamination unlike an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) which is designed to cause damage through a blast effect.  

This could be entirely coincidental, but worth noting nonetheless.

The Age is reporting today that where once you could see the details of the clothing of people walking around the Opera House, now such detailed close observation is imposssible. The maps for areas of Sydney outside of Sydney's CBD are as sharp as ever.

Google denies they've been censored, claiming that the maps were changed due to problem with a supplier.

An SMH piece in January (which uses the same phot of the Opera House as the new Age one) explained how a three-seater plane had been given permission to fly low over Sydney on Australia Day to take high-resolution photos.

[extract]

Andrews was looking peeved but tolerant tonight on Lateline as he spelt out how it had been his job to have a suspicion of an association. He didn't mention any process involved in what might happen if that association was proven irrelevant.

He believes Haneef to be guilty, it would seem, saying that Haneef had left Australia "on a false pretext."

Andrews had a new angle, and as he delivered it light glinted in his eyes and his lips twisted in the failed suppression of a smirk as he said:

"Why didn't he have a press conference before he left Australia?. He did a paid exclusive interview for 60 Minutes... he could have fronted up and answered all these questions... now, he didn't do it."