The Age – SCORES of starving and pain-ridden kangaroos have been culled after developing tooth and bone deformities from breathing and ingesting fluoride emissions. Many more are believed to be suffering from growths that will kill them. The affected kangaroos are living near the Alcoa aluminium smelter in Portland, in the state’s south-west, and the Austral Bricks factory at Craigieburn. Read Article
Ed. – The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) currently sees itself as a regulatory agency, so they hide behind already established levels for poisons in emissions (not the environment). It makes for a peaceful relationship with the manufacturing corporations poisoning the environment, which suits most governments. This makes the EPA pretty toothless instead of being the powerful and innovative agency that they purport themselves to be. The EPA, or the manufacturer, could have chosen to be pro-active; they might have prevented a lot of unnecessary animal-suffering, now and in the future. When environmental poisoning like this is allowed to happen government agencies have very much ‘lost the plot’ – certainly their ‘vision’. EPA ‘plans’vs. P.2 – stated objectives
The Australian – PHARMACEUTICAL giant Merck is being urged to settle with hundreds of Australian heart attack victims after a Federal Court judge found the company’s blockbuster drug Vioxx doubled the risk of cardiac arrest. In a landmark decision with international ramifications, judge Christopher Jessup ruled the anti-inflammatory drug was not “reasonably fit” to be on the market and the selling of it by Merck’s Australian subsidiary breached the Trade Practices Act. Read Article
Stop The Filter Protest: Despite excellent organisation, tireless promotion by the Stop The Filter team, and the presence of Senator Scott Ludlam of The Australian Greens party and other minor parties, only 200 or so Australians bothered to attend a protest against what is probably the most worrying civil liberties and democratic rights erosion in Australian history. Some would argue therefore that the people of Australia deserve what is about to become of their once free and liberal democracy. What do you think? Leave your comments or see the photos from the day here.
ABC – Scientists on Queensland’s Gold Coast say a traditional Indigenous treatment is as effective as aspirin for migraine relief. The remedial qualities of a type of native lemongrass found in parts of the Northern Territory have been researched by scientists at the Glycomics Institute at Griffith University. Institute spokesman Dr Darren Grice says it is one of a number of traditional treatments listed in Indigenous records passed on to early settlers. Read Article
BBC – Australians have expressed outrage that a company which uses schools for weekend war games has promoted them as being “perfect killing fields”. One parents’ association described the promotions, in the state of Queensland, as totally inappropriate. Read article
BBC – Aboriginal groups are to gather at a public meeting to debate controversial plans to build Australia’s first nuclear waste dump on tribal land. The federal government has identified a remote cattle station north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory as a likely site. The proposal has caused deep divisions within the indigenous community. Ministers have indicated that the nuclear dump would not be built if landowners opposed it. In the next six years nuclear waste that Australia sent to Europe for reprocessing will be returned. Read Article
Ed – First you steal their land; then you wipe out 90% of their population, mainly through diseases; then you steal their children; then you use their land for nuclear bomb testing; then you count them as “flora & forna” in censuses until 1967; and then you dump the world’s nuclear waste on the desert land that you recently and reluctantly gave back.
Daily Telegraph – Australian aborigines and former servicemen are to sue the British Ministry of Defence over diseases and disabilities that they claim were caused by nuclear testing in the Outback more than 50 years ago. A group of 250 people, including 150 former servicemen, say they have suffered cancer, skin disease and deformities because of the fallout from blasts. Read Article
ABC – The Federal Government claims its plan to put Australia’s first nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory has the support of the Coalition. The Government is considering a site at Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek, that was nominated by the Northern Land Council more than two years ago in a deal with the Howard government. Read Article
Ed – Pollution that will stay for the next few thousand years. Lets hope that in that time no-one forgets where it is, or forgets to maintain its integrity from leakages.
(Copy of open letter sent to the Open Your Eyes News mailing list - please feel free to copy, paste and send on yourself to all the Australian’s that you know)
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
- Article 19 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In the next few months the Internet access in Australia will be subjected to a censorship regime akin to that of China. Under the mandatory internet service provider (ISP) filter every website will be monitored by the state, and an unnamed and unelected body of bureaucrats will have the power to block any website it chooses. For websites this happens to there will be no debate, there will be no appeals process, no publicly available list of which sites are blocked and why – they will just be gone. This process will cost in excess of $200m of your taxpayers money, will slow internet speeds down, and though supposedly protecting kids from online dangers, groups such as Save The Children say it will do no such thing and the money would be far more effective invested in properly funding law enforcement agencies to protect children against online predators.
So, with virtually no mention in the mainstream media, soon an Australian Government that recently granted $250m to media moguls will have the power to block any website it chooses and you will be none the wiser to its actions. This draconian increase in the power of the state has very significant civil liberties implications for all Australians. Is this the kind of Australia that you wish to live in?
If not, at 12 noon this Saturday, the 6th March you will have a clear choice of what to do:
- either you can carry on as usual and go shopping, clean the car, watch sport, go to the beach etc
- Or you can stand up and make your voice heard saying “No!” and expressing your opposition to the introduction of the compulsory internet filter, taking a stand for freedom and democracy in this great country.
For details of your local protest visit the Stop The Filter website. These protests will only be effective if Australians turn up in numbers that cannot be ignored, and that means you are needed too.
Now, write the protest details into your diary and then forward this e-mail onto at least 10 of your Australian friends. Not for some spurious light hearted reason, but because you care about Australia and value your democracy, your freedom of speech and your civil liberties. Your country needs you.
James Fairbairn – Editor
http://www.openyoureyesnews.com/
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It is your world too. Be informed.
Sydney Morning Herald – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he would consider introducing an internet ombudsman after Facebook tributes to two dead children were defaced with pornography. Rudd said he would look into an idea put forward by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon to appoint an official who would be responsible for taking complaints and action against such material. “We actually need to do everything we can to combat cyber crime,” Rudd said. Rudd also defended the government’s proposed internet filter, which is designed to block child pornography, terrorist material and other extreme and offensive information, saying it was in line with how movies and videos were censored. The move has proved controversial among internet user groups as well as web giants Google and Yahoo!, and prompted activists to launch an attack shutting down government sites earlier this month. Read Article
The Register – If you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet, what better approach to take than to, er, censor debate about how you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet? Brilliant. That, according to one sharp-eyed Register reader, is the game being played by Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, whose ministerial website is currently set up so as not to show searches on embarrassing terms such as “ISP filtering”. Read Article
Washington Post – After a morning of rushed evacuations, the tsunami that reached Hawaii midday Saturday was smaller than officials had feared, causing no reported damage and never rising more than about three feet above sea levels, authorities said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its warning for Hawaii about two hours after the series of waves hit Hawaiian shores, and later for most of the rest of the Pacific. Read Article
Washington Post – Thousands of people are going online to share information about the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck central Chile early this morning. Note that much of it is in Spanish, but can be converted to English through Google’s translation tool. Read more
Washington Post — Wide swaths of the south Pacific, Asia and Australia braced for a tsunami after a devastating earthquake hit the coast of Chile on Saturday. Officials in Japan and Australia warned a tsunami from the earthquake was likely to hit Asian shorelines within 24 hours. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued a tsunami caution for areas across the region. Read article
Washington Post — A devastating earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, toppling homes, collapsing bridges and plunging trucks into the fractured earth. A tsunami set off by the magnitude-8.8 quake threatened every nation around the Pacific Ocean – roughly a quarter of the globe. President-elect Sebastian Pinera said more than 120 people died, but the death toll was rising quickly. Read article
CBC – Australia’s foreign minister has summoned Israel’s ambassador to investigate the use of forged Australian passports in a Dubai assassination. Stephen Smith called Yuval Rotem to his office in Canberra, the capital, on Thursday. He warned him any involvement of Israel in the use of the passports — used in the Jan. 19 killing of a senior Hamas figure — would not be seen as the “act of a friend.” “I made it crystal clear to the ambassador that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of the Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend,” Smith told reporters. Read Article
Ed – Using the principles of Problem, Reactuion, Solution, expect the Australian Government to soon announce the introduction of bio-metric data and RFID chips in all Australian passports, so to ‘prevent this kind of thing happening again’
Presstv – In an unprecedented move British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized on Wednesday for the UK’s role in sending an estimated 150,000 children to former colonies, where they were abused. Brown apologized for the treatment of children by the child migrants program — under which thousands of British children were sent to Commonwealth countries including Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Read article
BBC – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned that his country is now under a permanent and increased threat of militant attack. He also announced plans to fingerprint and face-scan visitors from 10 high-risk countries. Mr Rudd said there was a growing threat from Islamist radicals born or raised in Australia. Last week, five Australians of foreign origin received heavy sentences for conspiring to launch a jihadist attack. Read article
Ed – that sounds all too familiar – Bush? Blair? Howard? Obama? Brown? Yes – all of them! Next step; infringe on civil liberties to combat the threat. See Problem-Reaction-Solution
ABC – People arriving in Australia from high-risk countries will have to submit their fingerprints and other biometric data under a proposed $70 million anti-terrorism scheme outlined in a Government white paper.The Federal Government will today release the anti-terrorism white paper that was originally promised at the end of last year. The paper will declare terrorism a permanent feature of Australia’s security environment and say the main threat is from a global jihadist movement, including Al Qaeda. It has not yet said which nations will be chosen, but is targeting those with a higher national security risk. Read Article
Ed – If the civil liberties trend from countries like the USA & UK is any guide expect the 10 ’un-named’ countries to be expanded after a trial period to ‘all’ countries.
ABC – The Queensland Government says a high lead level reading in Mount Isa in the state’s north-west was wrong. Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability Kate Jones says a new laboratory hired by mine owner Xstrata made a mistake in interpreting the figures. She says she is now satisfied there was no breach of environmental regulations. Read Article
Ed – And therein lies the rub with self regulation on environmental issues. A quick phone call to a laboratory company that had recently won the contract from a corporation and they “discover their mistake” and the problem solved (for the corporation).
IT News – A small contingent of anti-censorship protesters descended on central Sydney today to rally against the Federal Government’s internet filter plans. The protest was off to a late start with only NSW Police officers in attendance at midday. All but one officer left after a quarter of an hour. It became apparent a group forming further up Martin Place was the Project Freeweb protest. After 45 minutes, the group – numbering approximately 20 – made their way down the Place and set up outside Channel Seven’s city studios. Read Article
Ed – A disturbingly small protest for what is the biggest threat to Australian civil liberties in a generation, and the poor attendance no doubt in part due to public apathy and general ignorance about what is occurring due to a distinct lack of reporting by the mainstream media. If you do live in Australia PLEASE make the effort to attend the Stop The Filter Protests happening nationwide on 6th March in every major Australian city, and tell everyone in your address book too. For more details CLICK HERE
The Australian – THERE are many ways to skin a camel, but none, it seems, that count towards reducing Australia’s carbon footprint. Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country’s greenhouse gases. But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Australian there was little point doing anything about Australia’s feral camels as only the CO2 of the domesticated variety is counted under the Kyoto Protocol. Read Article
Reuters – A team of scientists said in a report on Friday that they had found the strongest evidence yet linking a devastating mud volcano in Indonesia to drilling at a gas exploration well by local energy firm PT Lapindo Brantas.Lapindo has denied triggering the disaster through its drilling activities, arguing the mud volcano near Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya was triggered by an earthquake. Read Article
ABC – Xstrata Mount Isa Mines in north-west Queensland says it is investigating the possibility that one of its air monitoring sites had a higher-than-allowable lead level last year. The Queensland Government has given the company until Monday to explain what action it has taken to fix the problem. Read Article
The Australian – AUSTRALIA’S most iconic beaches, including Bondi, Bells and those on the Sunshine Coast, could erode away or recede by hundreds of metres over the coming century, according to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. But locals aren’t so sure. Bondi veteran Lee Boman has swum at the beach for more than 30 years and was adamant he had seen “no change” to the coastline over that period. “Nothing too drastic that indicates it is going to be changed in the future,” said Mr Boman, 53. Bob Carter, a geologist and environmental scientist with James Cook University in Queensland, said Senator Wong’s comments appeared to be an attempt to panic the public. Pointing to historical rates of sea level rise of an average 1.6mm per year globally over the past 100 years, Mr Carter said it was reasonable to expect a total rise of 16cm in a century. Read Article
Ed – This is coming from a Minister whose very job depends upon the theory of AGW, and who is currently trying to push a bank enriching carbon trading bill through the Parlaiment for a third time
