Thursday 28th of March 2024

Richard Tonkin's blog

Australia's Future Civil Liberty.....How We Wll Live

The  line on  the paper shouted from the shelf... "The most important civil liberty I have, and you have, is to stay alive and to be free from violence and death," said Australia's Prime Minister.
   It would be wise to look at these words from all angles..  Fair enough to suggest that society may need to make cultural compromises,   But to infer that we need to accept what happens without question in the faith that we are thereby being kept alive suggests that we are not going to like what we are going to be told by our would-be cultural messiahs

A Parable of Activism- Remember On Hiroshima Day

A couple of years ago I was told that Prime Minister Howard was making an unprogrammed visit to Adelaide's Aboriginal Culture Centre, Tandanya.  

My idea was to gather some musos and provide some background music for the news footage- fiddles, didgeridoos, Give Peace a Chance.. that sort of thing.

NOWAR-SA put up a call on their websites, and one commercial radio station did a live-to air on the morning.

After the "al fresco protest" photo was taken for the Advertiser, we all went out the front to wait for the PM.

As Howard's car pulled up, somebody across the road threw eggs, which struck the vehicle.  Security suddenly became much tighter.

White House Coming To Adelaide In November- Bush Sends Rumsfeld and Condaleeza

Under the "direction" of U.S. President Bush, Australia, South Korea, China, Japan and India will sign their own energy agreement in Adelaide with the U.S. ministers at the end of this year.

Interviewd from Laos on Adelaide ABC Radio this morning, Mr Downer, said that the meeting was intended to coincide with a meeting between Rumsfeld, Rice, Hill and himself.

On the Alternative-To-Kyoto energy meeting, Mr Downer said that "the focus of it will be on technology, and how we are going to collaborate with it."

"Of course, they will need access to energy resources" he said. 

Australia And US As One- letter reprint from Adelaide Advertiser Thursday 21/7/ 05, Corp Defamation Laws 28/7/05

Rupert Murdoch is right.  Australia is as one with America.  We act on
U.S. advice in our forieign policy, our international trade schemes, our control of our natural resources, and the co-ordination of our
infrastructure.

Misery loves Companies..Are The London Bombings An Elaborate Hoax? Please Tell Me Otherwise!

"We've planned, we've prepared, but sadly reality has come to London today" said the U.K. Police Commissioner.

Somebody has to ask the question, in the hope that it is misguided- are we participating in a plan?

The War On Terror has just entered a new phase, one that will create domestic paranioa in every Western society. In the aftermath of such an attack, it will become necessary for populations to surrender
certain civil liberities in order to capture the perpetrators.

Given the way that society is about to change, I hope in my heart that the motivation hasn't been neo-con fundamentalist propoganda bullshit.  I refuse to believe that the would-be leaders of the western world would stoop so low.

I don't like to write these ideas... but all possibilities should be considered now, especially what might happen in the aftermath of the Attack of the Streets of London.

Boys and Girls, say hello to the New American Century.

Were the reasons we are where we are now real or written?
As President Bush said today, "We will spread an ideaology of hope and compassion, which willl hopefully overwhelm an ideaology of hate."

I think I'm convinced.

Happiness does not create profit.. that, as usual, is the bottom line. Unity in misery allows a populace to be united in raising corporate profit margins.

The War on Terror has become equally more global and personal tonight, in the same way as the attack on a ship called Lusitania did many years ago.

Watch out for the new share market boom in defence research and development. Given the current international political climate it will be perceived in hindsight as fortuitious.

The moral of the story? As the world turns, the bottom line falls, and misery loves companies

The Big Script... Adelaide and the White House 2008?

It's clear now that the Doug Wood story, which was being manipulated to portray U.S. / Australian co-operation, has been kidnapped by George Bush to improve his approval ratings   Months, if not years, of hard work by Australian spin-doctors has become a couple of paragraphs in U.S. media to prove that Americans are successfully "teaching Iraqis to fight their own war", and the story has already disappeared from the international media "radar".  At the the same time, in spite of his portrayal as a hero by the media men of Defence and Foreign affairs,  Wood's opportunism led him to be treated with cynicism and and suspicion by  the Australian  public.... we won't be seeing him on TV    selling  beer and lamb  roast,  and  a handshake with the Prime  Minister  is looking  less likely.

Halliburton Takes Over

Assembled by S.A. Minister For Infrastructure, Patrick Conlon, the five member group to plot the state's infrastructure future include former KBR International Vice President for Infrastructure and head of Asia-Pacific Operations, Andrew Fletcher, as its head and the owner of a KBR acquired company, Malcolm Kinnaird, as a participant. 

You can sense a possible conflict of interest here... in the same manner that U.S. Vice President Cheny needs to distance himself from his former employer, Kinnaird and Fletcher will need to publically ensure that they are fulfilling their obligations to the state and not the corporation.

WAG THE DOUG- An Eyewitness Bloug

In the tradition of "French Lieutenant's Woman, a story within a story, by the time the movie comes out.

The scenes have unfurled in such a manner that they could almost be stuck to the silver screen unedited, except for Downer being one script draft behind. 

An Adelaide Financial Food Chain Puzzle

A little puzzle that shouldn't take more than half an hour. You nay find yourself suprised at the answer you find.

The result can be considered as a useful template to extrapolate missing parts of other  incomplete pictures

This is as close to making a Rosetta Stone as I'll ever get.

Halliburton in Adelaide - The Plot Thickens

I'm going to put these links up and try to make sense of them later, and any help would be appreciated.

In a response to an earlier blog TG Kerr made the suggestion that companies such as Halliburton may be creating work for themselves by creating projects and then submitting them for Public Private Partnerships with the Federal Government.

A good example would be KBR's development of the mouth of the Murray River.  Plans to create a Twin Lake artifIcial evaporation containment system from S.A.'s Lake Alexandrina which Cheney's Men admit won't keep the Murray mouth open) include construction of a 100 kilometre barrage. The concept is being recommended to councils near the lake by S.A. Premier Mike Rann.  The company has proposed it as a PPP... how many other projects are being tendened for by mulitnational companies' under the cloak of "Australian subsidiaries"?

Tanks- For the Memory

Watching the unrolling of these announcements and announcements of announcements evokes similar emotions as watching a dog eating its own vomit

Infrastructure will soon be in place that wouldl allow  Adelaide to become a "one-stop shop" for armoured vehicle renovation.

Also a U.K. precedent implying more jobs for Halliburton in Australian military accomodation 

Open Letter to Steve Bracks, Premier Of Victoria

I share your sense of having participated in a foregone conclusion. Victoria tried hard to win the warships, but as long as the plans created by the Bush Administration and relayed by multinational defence and energy corporations to and through the Australian Federal Government continue on a predetermined implementation schedule, the whims of any State's comparitively tiny political muscle will only be considered in the form of providing crumbs and scraps left over from the main meal.

When your analysts review the paperwork regarding the contract procurement, if they place faces on the company names they will be suprised how few people are responsible for so much activity.

Welcome To Adelaide: Defense Colony of America

Will defence dollars turn Adelaide into Heaven On Earth?

Adelaide Wins Warship Contract

In what he described as a "monumental day in the State's history" , South Australian Premier Mike Rann has just announced that Adelaide's Australian Submarine Coporation has won the contract to build the three "Son of Star Wars" Air warfare destroyers.

Premier Rann said that when the news reached his office "we all shook hands and said 'mission accomplished'."

Mr Rann added that the contract had been signifigant in enticing "a whole lot" of defence-related companies to Adelaide's northern suburbs.

Companies involved in the contract include BAE, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and Halliburton/KBR.

Adelaide sexed-up for war

Reprinted from The Age, Letters Saturday 28/8/05

....After Dick Cheney set up Halliburton's Global Infrastructure Headquarters out in the suburbs and started to co-ordinate "services" at all levels of government, everybody very quickly learned to enjoy what they were meant to be doing.....

(Note to self: Before writing letters, have my first coffee).

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