Media Profits, Governmet Profits, It’s we that are the Losers it’s our money they are spending (LNP)
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said on the weekend (6-7 April) the Government had delayed its announcement on the election date hoping to get some help from the ads – running at over $200 million for just over a year, or $600,000 a day.
The commercials “authorised by the Australian Government” are hard to miss and convey much information, but they have to end once the election is called — and it’s a question of whether they change anybody’s voting plans in the meantime.
Category: ASIO/MURDOCH ADVERTISING AGENCY
Chasing Nugan Hand
Email Danny Casolaro and Michael Hand tip-offs to nuganhand@live.com
Whitlam, the CIA and Nugan Hand
Sunday, November 21, 2010
By John Jiggens
Protest in support of Gough Whitlam after the constitutional coup, Sydney. Photo: Qu1j0t3/Flickr
Rumours (which turned out to be true) that Kerr was moving to call out the army.
Former Australian prime ministers Robert Menzies, Howard Holt, John Gorton, Bob Hawke and John Howard all compliantly sent Australian troops to fight US wars. But in the early 1970s, Whitlam’s government had the courage to bring Australian soldiers home from the US war in Vietnam.
For this audacious action, Labor would never be forgiven by then-US president Richard Nixon, the CIA, Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, and corrupt conservative premiers Bob Askin (NSW) and Joe Bjelke-Petersen (Queensland) — who all hated Whitlam as though he were Che Guevara.
Whitlam’s election in 1972 began a short-lived era in which the stated aims of the new Labor government were to promote equality and involve the people in decision-making processes.
Within two weeks of Whitlam’s election, conscription was abolished and draft resisters released from jail. Voting rights were extended to all Australians over 18, and university fees abolished.
Whitlam’s youth constituency also gained community radio stations, and the Whitlam government intended to decriminalise marijuana. Aborigines were granted land rights in the Northern Territory.
Whitlam was less subservient than his Liberal predecessors to Washington’s foreign policy directions. He took a more critical line in foreign policy, condemning Nixon’s 1972 bombing offensive against North Vietnam and warned he might draw Indonesia and Japan into protests against the bombing.
The People’s Republic of China was recognised and the Whitlam government spoke up in the United Nations for Palestinian rights. The French were condemned for testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, and refugees fleeing the CIA-backed coup in Chile were welcomed.
Nixon and the CIA found such independence intolerable. After Whitlam was re-elected in 1974, and Jim Cairns became his deputy, Nixon ordered the CIA to review US policy towards Australia. Although the CIA’s response to Nixon has never been released, it seems it began a covert operation to destabilise the Whitlam government began then.
The puppet masters who led the coup were Ted Shackley and Marshal Green. Nixon appointed Green as US Ambassador to Australia in 1973. Nick-named “the coup-master”, Green had been involved in several countries where the CIA had masterminded coups, such as Indonesia (1965) and Cambodia (1970).
Green’s goals were to maintain US bases in Australia and to protect US economic interests.
Green let it be known that if the Labor government honoured one of its key election pledges to reclaiming ownership of oil refineries and mining industries, the US would respond. Green carefully cultivated the Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer dynasties that controlled the Australian media.
Ted Shackley, known as the “Blond Ghost”, joined the CIA in 1951. Over the next two decades, he emerged as the agency’s “dirty tricks” specialist, directing the CIA’s campaign against Cuba and Fidel Castro’s government in 1962.
In 1966 he became Chief of Station in Laos and directed the US secret war there — earning his other nickname, “the Butcher of Laos”.
In 1971, he became head of the CIA’s Western Division (covering North and South America) where he plotted the overthrow of Allende. In 1974, Shackley became head of the Eastern Division of the CIA, covering Asia and Australia.
Shackley’s speciality was financing black operations through the drug trade and he learned the dark art of running drug armies during the secret war in Laos. One of his foot soldiers in Laos was Michael Hand, co-founder of the Nugan Hand bank.
Michael Hand helped forge documents used by the media to discredit the Whirtlam government, while his partner Frank Nugan was the conduit for CIA money to the Liberal Party. Millions of dollars flowed to the conservative parties via Nugan Hand.
Shackley played a key role in the security crisis of November 1975, which revolved around the US military base at Pine Gap. Whitlam had threatened that if the US tried to “bounce” his government, he would look at the presence of US bases in Australia.
The lease for Pine Gap was due for renewal in December 1975. On 10 November 1975, the day before Whitlam was sacked, Shackley sent an extraordinary cable from the CIA to ASIO’s director general, threatening to remove ASIO from the British-US intelligence agreement because he considered Whitlam a security threat.
The cable was published by the Financial Review in 1977 and has been widely reprinted. It shows Shackley’s involvement in the security crisis.
Shackley was furious that Whitlam had accused the CIA of funding the opposition conservative parties and had claimed CIA money was being used to influence domestic Australian politics. In particular, Whitlam was asking questions about the close relationship between Richard Stallings, who ran the so-called joint facility at Pine Gap, and National Party leader Doug Anthony.
“The CIA has grave concerns as to where this type of public discussion may lead”, Shackley’s cable said.
In his 1977 speech calling for a royal commission into the activities of the CIA in Australia, Whitlam called Shackley’s cable “a clear example of the attempted deception of the Australian Government by the American intelligence community … The message was offensive in tone, deceitful in intent and sinister in its implications.”
For the Australian media, the message of Remembrance Day 2010 was clear: sleeping dogs must be allowed to lie. There could be nothing nobler to aspire to than the service of our imperial overlords, and to remind the Australian people that these imperial overlords had subverted a democratically elected government was well off message.
[John Jiggens has been involved in civil liberties and anti-corruption campaigning for many years. He is the author of a number of books, including the recently released The Killer Cop & the Murder of Donald Mackay, about the drug trade, Nugen Hand Bank and the overthrow of the Whitlam government.]
The Cold War, and Vietnam were ASIO’s hay day they lied and made things up then. There is no reason to believe they won’t do it again coupled with the media what chance do we have in this illusion of democracy.
It should never have come to this
As fact is sorted from fiction about recent incidents involving members of Australia’s Muslim communities. The media is not making any effort to minimise the hysteria that is developing. To constantly speculate about aspects that have no foundation will cause great harm.
Publishing the wrong photo of the man who attacked two police officers in Melbourne’s South-East by the Fairfax media this week was disgraceful. The ramifications of such an error could have been enormous if any subsequent harm came to the innocent man concerned.
Prior to the 1990s, there was no issue in our country with Muslims. There may well have been an underlying, simmering degree of discontent in certain quarters.
There are people among us who continually harbour a suspicion that those who are different and culturally unusual, are somehow a threat to our way of life. Ignorance breeds contempt. Many in the community are already spooked enough.
A man paying too much attention to his iPad causes Sydney Airport’s Terminal 3 to go into lockdown. A Virgin Airlines low level fly over at the MCG on Saturday, caused an AFP officer to reach for his gun.
What has made our country so tolerant and so successful at peaceful integration in the past has much to do with our egalitarianism, the absence of a class structure and our layback approach. Up until 1996, immigration was always managed on a bipartisan policy agreement.
It enabled a post-Vietnam War exodus of refugees to seek a safe haven here with not so much as a whimper of opposition. They came in their thousands and in a matter of a few years had established themselves as hard working, diligent members of society. It was just what we needed.Our already broad cosmopolitan make-up was richer for the experience.
Prior to the 1996 election Pauline Hanson tapped a racial intensity of feeling in the electorate and won her seat even after the Liberal party disowned her.
When her One Nation Party had won over a large chunk of Liberal voters in a Queensland State election, that was the beginning of the end of immigration bipartisanship in Australian politics.
Just 5 years later, John Howard seized an opportunity to win an election with the Tampa incident by appealing to the same racially minded mentality. From that point on, to our national shame, the issue of immigration and management of refugees has become a game of political football.
But it wasn’t Asians that bore the brunt of this new degenerate attitude. Greatly assisted by our engagement in a falsely contrived war in Iraq, the fear of Muslims became a dark, festering disease covertly encouraged by certain sections of the media. Its nakedly, aggressive manner is a blight on a once welcoming nation and is covertly urged on by vested political interests.
In 2011, Scott Morrison, as Opposition Immigration spokesman, “urged the shadow cabinet to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about “Muslim immigration”, “Muslims in Australia” and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate.”
And, we know the mindset of Scott Morrison. We also know the mindset of Cory Bernadi. Who else in government thinks this way? By their actions, or lack of them, we will know them. How can we possibly begin to reverse this attitude when government members are so vocal?
Democracy does not serve us well when elected representatives act in a manner that creates division. It is counterproductive. It may suit the interests of some but in the long term, everyone pays.
Australian women of different faiths gathered at Sydney’s Lakemba Mosque show of community solidarity
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Terrorist groups have one thing in common. They seek to shock, while simultaneously portraying themselves as victims via the “propaganda of the deed”
Public and government reprisals against any defined group is precisely what terrorists want. It legitimates their standing as victims.
This is at least one reason why launching military raids against Islamic State is so risky. It is also why large-scale invasions of homes must be managed carefully to avoid creating deeper community divisions.
1960s and 1970s, Canada faced the FLQ Britain the IRA. Crackdowns on communities rarely work without serious consequences. A good example of the failure of a heavy-handed approach can be seen in how successive British governments tried to “solve” Northern Ireland’s violent 30-year conflict with military crackdowns, without addressing underlying community concerns. Ultimately it was patient political negotiation that won the day.
Canada faced a terrorist plot similar to what has been alleged here in Australia this week in 2006.Local and federal police forces succeeded in tracking and infiltrating the group, partly thanks to cooperation from the local Islamic community. Canada has since reviewed its terrorism sentencing and brought in life sentences. In many of the recent cases of radicalized young men both in Canada and in Australia, members of the Islamic community have often helped to identify the radicals. Last year, two Canadian men were arrested for plotting to derail a passenger train travelling between Toronto and New York – and it was a tip-off from a prominent Toronto imam (Muslim community leader)
“This was a tip that came from the Muslim community because they had good relations with [the Canadian police], because they had this long-standing bridge-building long before this incident ever took place.”
It’s that close connections with any self-defined community is a key to effective policing.
At present, radical Islamic terrorists do not appear to have the capacity to develop well-organized cells in places like Australia or Canada, and will most likely dissipate as previous anarchists and ultra-Marxists did decades ago. This group if it is a group at all seem little more than disaffected with their feet in two cultures. Australians who feel included in the broader culture about them. If welcomed by both the chances of radicalization of any sort would not succeed.
The fight against Islamic State is a battle for young minds
Governments around the world are trying to come to terms with the fact that their nationals – and young people in particular – are leaving to join extremist groups such as Islamic State.
The battleground against radicalisation is waged in the mind. It is here that persuasive arguments and passionate discussion appeal to the hero inside us to rise up and do something, be someone or make history.Foreign policy often provides a fertile bed of manure in which the seeds of radicalisation can grow.
What is the Australia’s foreign policy on Iraq? Those seeking to radicalise others will be able to summarise it in a single sentence. The more negative the policy is perceived to be, the less human the government or even the Australian people are perceived to be. Abbot is insisting it’s humanitarian. 6 Hornet fighters are hardly gonig to drop aid. 600 SAS troops ,our top killers, to load these fighter planes and train locals hardly seems believeable.
Radicalisation involves getting us to focus on the negative experiences we have had and the negative experiences of those we love or feel we should love.These things happen to us because some enemy wants them to, chooses them to and allows them to.It focuses on the difference between us and them and emphasises the wrongs that they do. Australia is going to help kill Sunnis no matter who they are. They don’t care, want to distinguish or want to understand anything about the history of what’s occurred on the ground. Yesterdays raids reinforced that perception. What’s more with lazy media frenzy . Was there anyone report from the families of the raided?
Isis recruiters lay the blame for each of the killings squarely with British and American foreign policy. The more human we can make the enemy, the less we will feel separated from them to us IS is the ‘devil cult’. Only when we stop seeing the opposition as completely different to us, can we start to be reconciled with them.The British government, on behalf of the taxpayer, donated £11.4bn in aid with £600m set aside for the Syrian crisis alone. These kinds of figures provide useful ammunition in the battle of the mind. The apparent enemy becomes less hostile and more human. What has Australia done other than offer war cries and identify our selves as the enemies. Does Abbott understand over 100,000 Sunnis were killed since Bush ousted Saddam. Mothers , fathers children families he created a bitter sectarian power vacuum and gave birth to ISIS. It can’t be stopped with bombs.
Some young people see no opportunity to get involved and make a difference other than by joining the jihad. It’s positive that young people are passionate about inequality, just not that they see violence as the only way to address it. We need ways ways to counteract the messages being sent to young people by those who wish to indoctrinate them.
“If, in order to defeat the beast, we become the beast; then the beast has won”.
It’s not easy to rid people of firmly held prejudices but a consistent and reasonable argument is a better way to start than threats about removing passports or prison sentences. Todays effort just pushes young people away. 800 to lay alleged charges on one 22 year old is farcical. Why with all the media didn’t we hear the other side of the story? The families side how lazy and complicit was the media.
- Pre-dawn operation in Sydney and Brisbane involving 600 officers
- 15 people arrested, one charged
- Suspected terrorist cell was ‘close to an attack’
- Scipione: ‘intended to hurt random member of public’
- Raids follow suspension of firm suspected of funding terrorism
HUNDREDS of ASIO and heavily armed police officers swooped in anti-terrorism raids to prevent a mass casualty shooting in Sydney and possible beheadings.
Here in Australia ASIO,AFP,&Police will only apply this profile to young Muslims. On any Saturday night random acts of violence are carried out. Threats of violence against the public, against women, against children and even property are the norm. Generally done by Christians during and after the religious ceremony of getting drunk or pissed as Muslims don’t drink. Bogans run free around Australian cities and are left to sucker punch,abuse and threaten whoever they want.
Terrorist raids aren’t generally media events they are done in secret. This raid is an advertising promotion a politicized and event was and intended to be so. If not how dumb are the directors of operations? So much press and television crews were present it seemed far more like a reality show than any security operation. It’s a celebration to show well the government is spending our money on expanded policing and the show is coming to your street soon. It reminds me of the Cedar Bay raid in 1976 in Qld on some hippies in a rain forrest. Demonstrate loudly on a university campus,March against the G20 or just yell random abuse at anyone in authority and you will sitting in the back of a divvy van as a suspected terrorist. At least if you were Christian there would be some equality. Tony Abbott would dearly love to see the second coming of the Cronulla riots as it keeps all his other fuck ups off the front page. I might be charged with vilification of the government or a government officer but you can be sure Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones wont.
Australia is asking for Sunni support in Iraq if you donate any money collected for humanitarian reasons to be sent to any Sunni organization you will be deemed a terrorist even if these organizations are allies of the current Coalition of the Concerned. If you donate to the Shiite Militias who have killed 60,000 Sunnis in the past 10 years on the Iraqi governments behalf you should be ok as they are goverment supported. Any wonder the sectarian war is so vicious.
I have some faith that our justice system and that it will make a laughing-stock of todays craids and government supported actions. If they don’t then there wont be sufficient jails to hold people. Whatever this seems the most counter productive action imaginable and the most alienating approach possible targeting a minority Australian group. It’s the greatest recruitment drive for ISIL we have seen to date.
Not Sunny if your Sunni it would seem. Indonesia is Sunni. This will rebound Mr Abbott. No finesse whatsoever just jackboots and a big show. Why are all the cameras there? Why are all the major Print Media there? ASIO/Murdoch Advertising Agency for Tony Abbott.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/terrorism-raids-carried-out-across-sydney-brisbane-20140918-10igft.html
Police are carrying out counter-terrorism raids across Sydney and Brisbane.
More than 10 arrests have been made, police said.
Police have taken part in terror raids across western Sydney.
Police have taken part in terror raids across western Sydney. Photo: NSW Police Media Unit
NSW Police said the operation on Thursday morning also involved the Australian Federal Police.
In Sydney, officers have raided properties in Beecroft, Bellavista, Guildford, Merrylands, Northmead, Wentworthville, Marsfield, Westmead, Castle Hill, Revesby, Bass Hill and Regents Park.
Three search warrants were also carried out in Brisbane’s south – in Upper Mount Gravatt East, Logan, and Underwood.
Do you know more? Email us, message us on Twitter @smh.
Police at the scene of one of the raids in Guildford.
Police at the scene of one of the raids in Guildford. Photo: Nick Moir
Underwood is the same suburb in which police raided an Islamic bookstore last week.
Hundreds of police officers are believed to be involved in the operation.
Guildford resident Mark Anderson had just got up for work at 4.30am when he saw a helicopter circling the area and shining a light on Bursill Street.
A number of houses across Sydney have been raided.
A number of houses across Sydney have been raided. Photo: Nick Moir
He also heard police on a loudspeaker yelling at someone to come outside a home on Bursill Street.
“I heard them calling out to him to ‘Come out!’ for about 10 to 15 minutes. I don’t know if he was too agreeable. I didn’t really understand a name. It was pretty intense,” Mr Anderson said.
“It was a pretty big deal at our place. Early last night a helicopter hovered over here for a bit as well, then this morning it all kicked off.”
A woman talks to police at a house in Guildford.
A woman talks to police at a house in Guildford. Photo: Nick Moir
Mr Anderson said he attempted to drive to work just before 5am but found himself in the middle of the police cordon.
“I pulled out of my driveway and turned to go to the bowling club, and a black armoured truck was there,” he said.
“I realised I was a bit inside the cordon. A cop car was blocking Railway Terrace into Bursill Street, they had blocked off right to the roundabout. The helicopter was shining a light on a house near the bowling club.”
Ten people have been arrested after raids across western Sydney.
Ten people have been arrested after raids across western Sydney. Photo: Nick Moir
Despite the terror raids so close to his home, Mr Anderson said he was not concerned for his safety.
“I’m confident the cops know what they’re doing. I’d be surprised if I knew something before they did,” he said.
Bass Hill resident Chris said he was woken by a helicopter hovering over his home at 4am. He went outside to find up to 40 police officers swarming his street.
“I went out to be a stickybeak, as you do, and I was told quite promptly: ‘Go, go back inside, do not come out’,” he told Triple M.
“Looking around, they had blocked off the road. It was only six doors down. It was pretty surreal.”
Last week, Australia’s terror threat level was raised from medium to high, meaning a terror attack on home soil was now officially considered “likely”.
The nation’s outgoing spy chief ASIO Director General David Irvine said an attack could manifest itself in a “Bali-style attack, although Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Friday that the agencies had not detected any “particular plots”.
Uthman Badar of Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, which describes itself as a political party whose ideology is Islam, said in a statement: “The AFP and NSW Police this morning conducted heavy-handed dawn raids involving hundreds of police in Sydney’s north-west suburbs as well as in Brisbane.
“As late as last week both the Prime Minister and outgoing ASIO boss David Irvine confirmed that there was no intelligence of any plans to carry out attacks in Australia. A few days later and we wake up to heavy-handed raids and talk of a ‘terrorist network’ planning attacks.
“The timing of these raids is suspect indeed. With the ‘anti-terror’ laws, which hit a wall in the community, to be tabled to Parliament next week and with ‘military intervention’ imminent in Iraq, these raids are very timely for the government and its propaganda campaign for the same.”
Further updates were expected later on Thursday morning.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/terrorism-raids-carried-out-across-sydney-brisbane-20140918-10igft.html#ixzz3DcHH9O41
olddogthoughts 