Critical Times

Next May/June will see Australia host the largest military exercises we’ve ever had in peacetime. Talisman Sabre 07.

Twelve thousand Australian soldiers and nearly l4,000 US troops and sailors will take place in bombarding our shores and fragile landscape, storming our beaches, gunning down ‘terrorists’ in the newly built urban guerrilla warfare training centre, testing their latest laser guided missiles and ‘smart’ bombs in some of the most pristine wilderness I’ve ever seen on this planet – and in 30years of making films, I’ve seen a lot of this planet.

Next May/June will see Australia host the largest military exercises we’ve ever had in peacetime. Talisman Sabre 07.

Twelve thousand Australian soldiers and nearly l4,000 US troops and sailors will take place in bombarding our shores and fragile landscape, storming our beaches, gunning down ‘terrorists’ in the newly built urban guerrilla warfare training centre, testing their latest laser guided missiles and ‘smart’ bombs in some of the most pristine wilderness I’ve ever seen on this planet – and in 30years of making films, I’ve seen a lot of this planet.

From correspondents in Alexandria

February 23, 2007 05:26am
Article from: Reuters

AN Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger overnight for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.

Abdel Karim Suleiman, 22, a former law student who has been in custody since November, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his internet writings. He was convicted in connection with eight articles he wrote since 2004.

There are trillions of tons of methane locked in the Artic permafrost, a massive bog frozen for millennia. Now buildings are falling as it melts and releases this deadly greenhouse gas.

Methane is a lethal planet-warmer, far worse than carbon dioxide.

“We are appalled by the announcement that the Federal Government has secretly agreed to set up a new USA base at Geraldton, in WA”, Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition National Coordinator Denis Doherty said.

The base, about 370km north of Perth, will control two of five geostationary satellites. It is to provide a critical link for a new network of military satellites to enhance US ability to wage wars in the Middle East and Asia.

United States Vice President Dick Cheney touches down in Australia today amid a massive security operation.

Mr Cheney flies into Sydney, where NSW police have planned one of the largest dignitary protection operations since the visit of
US President George W Bush in October 2003.

With such a significant possible terrorist target in town, hundreds of NSW police will be called into action as the vice president’s motorcade travels through Sydney.

We are currently kicking around ideas for the second issue of The Antidote. So far we’re thinking about using the theme of the media to address lots of different issues. How Muslim people are portrayed in the media.

Chris Latham, Perth

On February 15, PM John Howard’s government announced that it had agreed to the construction of a new US spy-satellite ground station at the Kojarena intelligence base 30 kilometres east of Geraldton. The new facility will transmit data to and from two US geostationary spy satellites focused on the Middle East and Asia.

Dr Michael McKinley, senior lecturer in international relations at the Australian National University, told the February 16 West Australian that as the new facility would co-ordinate US military operations in the Middle East and Asia, building it would tie Australia even closer to US foreign policy.

Protest Cheney’s visit! Join the protests against US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit. Sydney * 5.30pm, February 22, Sydney Town Hall * 8am, February 23, Shangri-la Hotel, cnr.

USS John C Stennis is being deployed to the Persian Gulf
US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack – if ordered – would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.

The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

AUSTRALIA has been planning since before Christmas to send extra non-combat troops to Iraq, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said.
Prime Minister John Howard yesterday announced that Australia would send almost 70 more trainers to Iraq to help train up the local forces.

“There will be 10 trainers that will go to the Iraqi Officer Training Academy, another 10 trainers for the basic training centre at Talill, and we’ll send about 50 trainers in logistics,” Dr Nelson told ABC radio today.

An explosion at a McDonald’s restaurant in the Russian city of St Petersburg has injured at least six people, two of them children, reports say.
The cause of the blast was unclear, but police said their initial information suggested that it was caused by “an explosive device”.

The restaurant is on Nevsky Prospect, the main street in the city centre.

THE shocking toll of six American helicopters shot down in Iraq within three weeks has sparked a Pentagon inquiry into the use of surface-to-air missiles against the aircraft.
“Is there a concern? Yes, there is definitely a concern,” said a Pentagon official about the helicopter downings. “Are we looking at it closely? You bet.

Anna Pha

The Coalition Government has gone to great lengths in its draft Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 and on its Office of Access Card website to keep the public in the dark, knowing full well that a national identity card would be totally unacceptable to the public. Instead, it has decided to phase in the card and centralised collection of data, using misleading language to disguise its real purpose. The legislation is worded extremely loosely, is even contradictory in parts and opens the way for unprecedented levels of surveillance and phasing in of an ID card through the use of ministerial powers and by omission of basic safeguards in the bill.

by Gina Doggett in Vicenza

TENS of thousands of protesters demonstrated in the Italian city of Vicenza overnight against the planned expansion of a US military base, an issue which has split Italy’s centre-left government.
The march, which drew more than 100,000 people from all over Italy, according to the organisers, and at least 40,000 according to police, passed off peacefully despite official warnings that “extremists” might foment violence.

The marchers encircled the picturesque city, swirling the red flag of the Refoundation Communist party, the rainbow flag of the pacifist movement, and the environmentalists’ green standard, as police helicopters hovered overhead.

She was a strange sight among the seamen on the deck of a Japanese whale-spotting ship in the Antarctic: a woman with a video camera. Over the hour or two that her ship was under attack from Sea Shepherd, the young woman raced around the deck recording the assault.

Thanks to her, we can see some activists hurl aboard smoke bombs, and others in dinghies carrying the nets and rope that eventually snarl the propeller of the Kaiko Maru in sea ice south-east of Australia.

The world faces a global warming disaster if the US and China do not take decisive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, leading economists have said at the UN.

Jeffrey Sachs, speaking with British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, said the commitment of the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases to make more serious efforts to cut carbon dioxide emission is “absolutely fundamental” to forging a comprehensive agreement on global warming.

“It’s a mistake to let either China or the US think they are doing a lot,” said Mr Sachs, head of the UN Millennium Project.

Climate researchers have told a major gathering of scientists in San Francisco global warming is rapidly shrinking some of the most important glaciers in tropical mountain ranges.

One glacier in Peru could lose half its mass in the next 12 months and be gone entirely in five years.

The researchers say it is the clearest evidence yet of climate change.

By Alister Doyle in Oslo

GREENHOUSE gases widely blamed for causing global warming have jumped to record highs in the atmosphere, apparently stoked by rising emissions from Asian industry, a researcher said overnight.
“Levels are at a new high,” said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute which oversees the Zeppelin measuring station on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard about 1200 km from the North Pole.

He said that concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted largely by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, had risen to 390 parts per million (ppm) from 388 a year ago.

December 3 is the anniversary of the Eureka Stockade battle of 1854, when the rebellious gold miners of Ballarat were attacked and overwhelmed in a military assault by troops and armed police.

The symbolism and magnitude of this significant event in Australia’s history has continued to influence the political consciousness of following generations, in spite of various attempts to sterilise or bury it.

Bakery Hill
The “diggers” of Ballarat had met on Bakery Hill on November 11 to demand radical but essentially bourgeois reforms from the autocratic rulers of the colony of Victoria.