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Category: Accountability

25/04/2020

COVID-19 Origin of the Pandemic 19/4/20

There has been a general acceptance that the COVID19 coronavirus came from the Wuhan Seafood market from some of the wild animals there, with a pangolin, a type of scaly anteater. It was a wet market which means that species are sold there raw. This seemed more plausible than the various conspiracy theories that it […]

25/04/2020

Dealing with Centrelink 13/6/19

I am continually appalled by Centrelink’s callous incompetence. It usually does not affect me personally, but this week it did. One of my patients, who has not been able to work for over 4 years since a bad car accident and urgent neck neurosurgery came in for a SU415 certificate so that he could get […]

25/04/2020

Giving Out Money Problems

Giving Out Money is not easy. Many are worried about big charities- how much actually gets to the people who need it? The government has not managed to give out the Bushfire relief money and it seem that neither has the Red Cross. Now they are promising help for the Corona Virus epidemic- do they […]

25/04/2020

US Sanctions Will Worsen COVID-19 Effects in Venezuala

US Sanctions will worsen virus effects in South America. The US does not like the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela. The fact that it is called after Simon Bolivar, who achieved independence of many South American countries gives away the orientation of the government, and is a Socialist government, which nationalised the Oil company and has […]

25/04/2020

Secret Trial of Witness K- East Timor Whistleblower

25 March 2020 The trial of Witness K, the whistleblower who told of Australia’s bugging of the East Timorese Cabinet room during the maritime border negotiations has been going on in secret in Canberra. What has Australia come to? This is what we heard Russia did during the Cold War. The government does dirty deals […]

25/04/2020

ANZAC Day- Lest We Remember

24 April 2020 It is ANZAC Day again and we are urged as always, ‘Lest We Forget’. It is right and proper to remember the heroism and sacrifice of our troops, and to reflect that we are lucky to have lived our lives without having to risk them in battle. But the distorted perspective of […]

22/04/2020

COVID-19 crisis highlights Market Failures

22 April 2020 The COVID-19 crisis highlights the failure of market mechanisms. The lack of good health care in the USA will highlight how private medicine simply does not deliver the health care people need. The same can be said in Australia, though we still had a bit more public system to build on. But […]

29/03/2020

How the US does Spying

29 March 2020

Some years ago, I had lunch with an acquaintance of mine who was a reasonably successful manager, with a slightly less successful relationship history with men. She was keen that I meet her latest beau, so we had a small group lunch.

The man in question was a fit-looking American in his early 50s who was keen to talk about himself, so we let him. He was an ex-US Navy Seal. He would not quite admit that he was down on his luck, but he had a lot of training that the US needed to use, but they would not hire him in the Navy, though he could get ‘contract work’. He would not be quite specific about this, and he assured us that if the missions went well, no one noticed anything. That was the ideal outcome. His life was at risk and he was well paid for each mission, but there was no ongoing commitment or pension if he was injured or had other misadventure. As the dinner went on he said that he had recently been on a mission in Asia where he had done something and been caught at it. He was chased by an angry mob up to the first storey of a building. He was trapped and jumped out a window onto the canvas roof of a fruit truck. He had gone straight through the roof of the truck and landed amongst the fruit, spraining his ankle, but nothing further. He was very lucky because just as he landed the truck drove away from the angry crowd while he lay low in the fruit. When he got to the destination not far away, a number of people lined up and formed a human chain to unload the truck and he, being disguised and made up joined the line passing the fruit boxes and got a few coins for his efforts when the unloading finished, before slipping away into the crowd. All very James Bond stuff.

Asked how he knew who the goodies and baddies were in all this and he said that this was defined in his brief. In short, he was an agent acting for the US government but they were in a position to disown him if he got into trouble. He was a pleasant enough fellow, and more interesting than many dinner companions, but I have not seen him again.

So I was interested to read the article below about how ‘an ex-FBI agent had died in Iranian custody’, having ‘disappeared in murky circumstances in March 2007’, ‘during an unauthorised trip for the CIA to gather intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program’. Iran had ‘kidnapped a foreign citizen and denied him any basic human rights’. He was ‘a gentleman’ and ‘outstanding’ said President Trump. Perhaps. And I like to think of myself as a champion of human rights. But people do not go on spying missions for personal curiosity and this is a deadly game, ruthlessly played. The story in the SMH is sourced from Reuters and the Washington Post but does not quite make this clear.

www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/former-fbi-agent-s-family-believes-he-died-in-iran-custody-20200326-p54e4o.html

21/11/2019

A Coup in Bolivia- How it was Reported in Oz

21 November 2019

There was a coup in Bolivia which has had minimal coverage in Oz, but I have 3 worries:

Australian media coverage is very distorted in the interests of US foreign policy
Facebook bans sites that do not suit US interests and
The pattern of the US waging economic war on South American countries that do not allow their multinationals to plunder the resources, and arranging coups seems almost standard.

The SMH coverage was from Bloomberg and seemed unable to figure out why there were two governments in Bolivia:

For all reasonable observers Morals won the election with 47% of the vote and with more than 10% lead over his nearest rival, should not have needed a run-off election. Irregularities were alleged, (but then again they always are when foreign interests are threatened). Morales offered a re-run, but was not allowed to stand by the guy who came second and the Army!! So Morales fled, which is very odd thing for a President to do if it were not a coup.

But the SMH article is written as if the Bolivian coup is very hard to understand.

www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/bolivian-crisis-there-are-two-groups-of-people-claiming-to-be-the-government-20191115-p53b01.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

Consider the following:
The article has two journalists, Matthew Bristow and John Quigley but is attributed to Bloomberg, a US media company. Bloomberg owned by Michael Bloomberg, who is publicly contemplating standing as a Democrat presidential candidate, but is considered too right wing.
It talks about the ‘interim ‘President’ Jeanine Anez, who was an ‘Opposition Senator’. How did she get to be ‘interim President’ when the government has a majority in both houses? How is she ‘appointing her Cabinet’- with what legitimacy?
Why is the information sourced from the ‘Andean Information Network’, a ‘Think tank’? Who pays for ‘think tanks’? Are there no journalists in Bolivia?
Why were their riots just after the election, when the economy was doing quite well?
Why are the leaders of the government in power all resigning?
Why is Morales not allowed to stand for the run-off election?
Why is the army not supporting the existing elected government? Who trained them?
Why did the President Evo Morales, who just won the presidential election by more than 10% ahead of his nearest rival flee to Mexico? For no reason? He was standing for a 4th term. which had been challenged in the High Court but he had won there. Presumably the Army was against him and in favour of the opposition.

President Evo Morales had nationalised a big oil company, and wanted his people to get a larger share of the country’s big lithium deposits. He claimed that this was why he was deposed.

https://external.fsyd3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQDRtvCEvRlzzso7&w=540&h=282&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FxMXmkbTRNw4%2Fhqdefault.jpg&cfs=1&upscale=1&fallback=news_d_placeholder_publisher&_nc_hash=AQDaylo2tk_5eS_X

A Venezualan perspective is given at

https://orinocotribune.com/the-coup-in-bolivia-five-lessons

I tried to post this on my Facebook page and it was denied as offending ‘Community Standards’! I just put the name of the paper, Orinoco Tribune, not the url and it was still denied with the same- ‘Community Standards’.

So what with the major media giving very one-sided coverage and Facebook censoring material, presumably for being anti-US, how do the Australian public ever get to know what is going on.

I will attach what I attempted to post separately..

I did manage to post some material critical of the SMH article and the RT article and they have remained there.

(A more radical view is at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52534.htm)

20/10/2019

Mental Health. Small wins, more needed.

20 October 2019 When I was in Parliament, 4 things happened in quite rapid succession. I was part of an inquiry into prisons and a Dept of Corrections psychiatrist who attended court to question accused people told the committee that it was much easier to get into Prison than the mental health system and that […]