from the ABC …. Boosting fertility rate 'vital'
for Australia's economy Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has renewed his call
for Australians to have more children. Speaking at the launch of this
year's Census, Mr Costello says boosting the country's fertility rate was
vital for the economy. Mr Costello says an increased
fertility rate would balance the immigration program and make it easier to
maintain the defence force and living standards.
The Flea can be found in the chat room from 12-2 pm WA time on most days, at at other times as my own schedual permits. Please join me.
Despite mounting calls from world leaders for a ceasefire, the Israel
Army is adamant that it is not about to stop it's pounding of Lebanon
for at least another week, and is obviously planning a ground assault. Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said the offensive must continue until Hezbollah is pushed away from the border.
Encouraged by the support is is receiving from Washington, the army is
treating southern Lebanon as it's own private shooting gallery, hitting
cars and buses loaded with refugees heading for relative safety in Tyre
with rockets.
As Condi sets out for the Middle East, aids have made it clear that
calling for a ceasefire in not on her agenda, repeating the insistence
that any ceasefire would have to be preceded by the disarming of the
"Iranian backed Hezbullah". On Friday, Rice rejected international
calls for an immediate ceasefire, saying the world is witnessing "the
birth pangs of a new Middle East".
"A sustainable ceasefire........is sustainable only if we get to the root problem, which is Hezbullah, a terrorist organisation," according to Josh Bolten, President George W Bush's chief of staff.
Meanwhile, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, accused
Israel of gross violation international humanitarian law. As he toured
the devastated Haret Hreik distict of Lebanon, which has endured 11
days of bombardment, he described the scene as "horrific", going on to
say, "I did not know it was block after block of houses."
Senior diplomats from Britain, Germany and France arrived in Israel to
urge it towards a ceasefire or at least restraint, prompting Lt Gen Dan
Halutz, Israel's chief of staff to state, "The foreign ministers do not
determine our time limit. The Israeli government does that."
Washington, which supports Israel's declared aim of forcing the
implementation of UN resolution 1559, brushed aside a Syrian offer of
direct talks on the crisis, with senior US "Hawk" John Bolton stating, "Syria does not need dialogue to know what to do; they need to lean on Hezbullah."
With tens of thousands of foreign nationals still trying to get out,
Israel continues to blast all exits out of the country. The death toll
in Lebanon is now well over 380, including three refugees who died when
Israeli warplanes attacked their minibus, and Lebanese photographer
Layal Nejib, 23, who was killed when a missile hit near her taxi in
southern Lebanon.
The continued attacks by Israel have displaced at least 700,000 people
in Lebanon. The Lebanese town of Sidon is packed with about 35,000
refugees, with more pouring in by the hour. Essential supplies such as
food, fuel and even medicines are in seriously short supply. Mayor
Abdul-Rahman al-Bizri told the AP, "There are no supplies reaching us,
not from other nations, nor from the Lebanese government".
POPE Benedict XVI led an international day of prayers for peace in the
Middle East yesterday, calling on the international community "to look
for ways to start negotiations" between the warring parties.
Friends and Supporters,
Thanks for your support over the past months. It has been almost a year since I was detained and forcibily removed from your country without explanation. Since my return, I have moved to San Francisco, California and continued working for environmental and social justice. If anything, my experiances in Australia have firmed up my commitment to make a better world. As part of that commitment, I have campaigned to clear my name and protect others from similar treatment. My Australian supporters, Friends of Scott Parkin, and I have done this through a variety of political, legal, media and cultural channels.
Check here for details-- http://scottparkin.org/index.htm
Most importantly, I launched a court challenge to quash the security assessment that led to my detention and removal from Australia. Plus, now the court action includes Muhammad Faisal and Mohammad Sagar, 2 Iraqis that have been detained on Nauru for the past 5 years. Both have had secret security assessments made of them, are unable to leave as no country will take them and remain in detention limbo.
On July 19th, we had our first day in court.
Details here-- http://scottparkin.org/release13-12-05.htm
Recent Sydney Morning Herald column by Adele Horin on our case
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/democracy-damned-by-secret-justice/2006/07/21/1153166583062.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
message for clowner ….. ‘The British government issued a fierce
condemnation of Israel's bombing campaign in Lebanon last night as world
leaders desperately sought a last-minute deal to avert a ground war. As Israeli tanks massed on the border and troops
made sporadic raids on Lebanese villages, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells
claimed Israel was not inflicting "surgical strikes" but waging war
on "the entire Lebanese nation".
‘Citizens of the eleventh
class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class
or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden in
nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own. The
areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly, by high
walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army of the
first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any direction to
work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital without several
long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials of the right to
pass or to return. Posh residential settlements for the first class
citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built with
government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and farms and
pastures of the eleventh class citizens. The settlers are allotted
generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry weapons and
use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants, and are
connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of first-class
citizen only roads.
‘A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has
said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein.
Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work
in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told
OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting
"aggressive" wars-Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for
his 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Nuremberg declared that
aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old
Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations
charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a
provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN
Security Council.
The six o'clock news is showing cartoons of the Hezbollah missiles
flying over the border into Israel, and the planes flying back to
retaliate, Israeli troops invading Lebanese villages. Meanwhile George and Condi are pointing the finger at
Syria, even as the US donated smart-bombs are destroying underground
bunkers in Lebanon. Condi says that this is the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" but so close to 6/6/06, from a local point of
view, it must look a little like the beginings of Armageddon.
Especially if you live in Har Mageddon It must be painful for
Dubya, though, to have to work through his summer hols. The sacrifices
one must make to achieve global domination !
Isreal claims a "measued response" to Hezbullah, with no intentions of hurting the innocent people of Lebanon. Here is the results of that so called "measuered Response. http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/ Someone, anyone, please STOP THIS MADNESS!!!!!!!
From: The Sunday Telegraph
TWO Sydney schoolboys are missing, feared dead, after the south Lebanon village in which they were trapped was destroyed by Israeli missiles. The father of Ali Sayed, 11, and his brother Abbas, 8, said yesterday he held little hope the Bexley Public School students had survived Friday's attack, which destroyed 30 homes in Aitaroun.
"It is very bad news. It is with God now," Rockdale excavator Fadel Sayed said.
If his worst fears are realised, Ali and Abbas - who were born in Sydney and on their first visit to Lebanon - would be the first known Australian casualties of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
According to the New York Times, "The Bush
administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to
Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after
beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon."
The Times article states that "The decision
to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little
debate within the Bush administration."
Report raps Pentagon for equipment sales
By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press WriterFri Jul 21, 11:10 PM ET
Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus
military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles
and guided missile radar test sets from a Defense Department contractor.
Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists, according to a
draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative
arm of Congress.
In June, two GAO investigators spent $1.1 million on such equipment at
two excess property warehouses. Their purchases included several types
of body armor inserts used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, an
all-band antenna used to track aircraft, and a digital signal converter
used in naval surveillance.
"The body armor could be used by terrorists or other criminal
activity," noted the report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
"Many of the other military items have weapons applications that would
also be useful to terrorists."
Thousands of items that should have been destroyed were sold to the
public, the report said. Much of the equipment was sold for pennies on
the dollar.
The list included circuit cards used in computerized Navy systems, a
cesium technology timing unit with global positioning capabilities, and
12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.
At least 2,669 sensitive military items were sold to 79 buyers in 216 sales transactions from November 2005 to June 2006.
"DOD has not enforced security controls for preventing sensitive excess
military equipment from release to the public," the report concluded.
"GAO was able to purchase these items because controls broke down at
virtually every step in the excess property turn-in and disposal
process."
In the report, the GAO said it had briefed Pentagon officials on its
findings but that the Pentagon had no response because it had not had
time to perform a detailed review.
Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn., chairman of
the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel, will
hold a hearing on the matter Tuesday. Earlier GAO reports also had
found lax security controls over sensitive excess military equipment.
"During previous hearings we learned DOD was a bargain basement for
would-be terrorists due to lax security screening of excess military
equipment," Shays said in a statement Friday. "Based on GAO's most
recent undercover investigation it looks like the store is still open."
Shays added: "We've seen partial changes that have resulted in over $34
million savings, but they still have a long way to go to make this
system functional."
The GAO findings were first reported by CBS News and ABC News.
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