Well it MUST be three more boats actually…

It’s tough to argue for border security these days because you get accursed of being an uncaring drunkard if you do, However I suspect that the ranting from my latte sipping friends is because now that they have a regime in the lodge that has done as they have for so long demanded that they are dumbstruck by their own failure to understand the inevitable result to their policy of choice.

A boat is intercepted by border patrol boats off Australia's northern coas

TWO boats carrying almost 80 suspected asylum seekers have been intercepted by Border Protection Command, bringing to 17 the number of vessels detected since August.

The interceptions occurred less than 24 hours after the mysterious discovery by Customs of four suspected asylum seekers on Deliverance Island, 30 nautical miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

As more of the injured from the fatal boat explosion of two weeks ago left hospital – for immigration detention – Afghanistan’s ambassador to Australia backed the Rudd Government’s argument that global instability was behind the surge in arrivals.

But what can we expect from our government and their cheer squad?

Certainly not a reteurn o a border protection regime that actually worked it seems…

Cheers Comrades

Pandemic

Who could have failed to be aware of the outbreak of swine flu?

Divers Matthew Mitcham and Alex Croak with coach Chava Sobrino in Mexico

AUSTRALIA could turn away all planes and ships, shut schools and childcare centres, and ban sports events and church services under flu lockdown plans approved by the federal Government just months before the global outbreak of deadly swine influenza.

Emergency plans have been drawn up by the federal, state and territory governments to set up flu clinics – some to be staffed by volunteer GPs – to prevent flu patients overwhelming the GP and hospital emergency systems. Seventy Australians are being tested for the dangerous new strain of flu, which yesterday was confirmed had spread to New Zealand after killing 152 Mexicans and infecting dozens of people in the US, Canada, Scotland, Israel and Spain.

Now it would be inconsistent of me to not mention the pertinent fact that the ready availability of cheap air travel has actually made this potential pandemic considerably more difficult to contain by making its spread far swifter than in previous pandemics. In fact given the usual incubation periods for the influenza virus had all of the travellers been travelling at a more sedate pace by rail or by sea quarantine would have been easier and more effective.
But all of that is by the by and I actually hope that this does not turn out to be as bad as some fear but it is times like this that I am thankful that I do not live in a big city and that my children go to a small school.
Cheers Comrades

Old dogs and new tricks

Being a parent later in life has its advantages. For a start you are far more settled in yourself and you do not resent the way that the new child will change your life . Also as we get older we become very much more aware of our own mortality and having children allows us to have the best shot there is at any kind of continence after the death of our bodies . So it is with some bemusement that I take note of the situation of Terry Jones (he of Monty Python fame ) who is about to become a father with his new and very much younger paramour (41 years younger in fact).

New love: Monty Python star Terry Jones with his pregnant 26-year-old lover Anna Soderstrom spotted out in Essex last week (click to read source)

Well I say good luck to them both and may their impending parenthood bring them much Joy and happiness but what do my readers think about parenthood when there is such a disparity in age in  the couple?
Cheers Comrades

“Another asylum boat stopped by navy” becoming a far too regular headline

OK
Top marks to the navy for apprehending this boat, But the question of how to stem the flow remains unanswered.

No way in . . . HMAS Albany shadows the fishing boat containing 54 Afghan asylum seekers near Ashmore Island off Australia's north-west coast yesterday. Photo: Chantal Parslow

THE eighth boatload of asylum seekers to arrive in Australian waters this year was intercepted near Ashmore Reef, off the West Australian coast, late yesterday.

The vessel, which had sailed from Indonesia, had 54 Afghan asylum seekers on board, including women and children.

An oil rig tender vessel alerted the Customs and Border Protection hotline, whose vessel confirmed the sighting. Within an hour a Royal Australian Navy patrol boat, HMAS Albany, had intercepted the vessel.

The group voluntarily transferred from their boat to the Albany, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said late yesterday.

Mr Debus said the successful interception demonstrated the effectiveness of the surveillance by border protection commands.

Of course my friends from the left are in denial that the change of policy by Brother Number One has anything to do with the upsurge in numbers and they have instead taken to vilifying any one who dares suggest that we should sent these people back to where they came from. Because it seems to me that the prompt and well publicised repatriation of those who arrive illegally would do more to stem the flow than any number of high level discussions with our neighbours to the north.
Ah but I am just a simple bloke who sees the obvious…
Cheers Comrades

Dawn, on Anzac day

Lest we forget Comrades

nuff said

Using “The Force” on the the force

Rather jokingly I added “Jedi” to the choice of religions in my reader survey right here in the left hand sidebar of my blog and even more surprising is the fact that at least a few of my readers have chosen that option. So it is with some mirth that I note this report:

Strathclyde Police

A POLICE officer in Scotland has confessed to following the Jedi faith beloved of Star Wars film fans, respected policing analysis group Jane’s reports.

Pam Fleming, a 45-year-old beat officer in Glasgow for Strathclyde Police, said that she thought all police officers “should be Jedis,” when interviewed by Jane’s Police Review.

“For me, it is not a joke,” she said. “Being a Jedi is a way of life.

“I love the Star Wars films and the concept of being a Jedi, that the faith is not divisive.”

Ms Fleming said she knew of other Jedis in Strathclyde Police – the force apparently has eight in total.

According to Britain’s Office for National Statistics, a total of 390,000 people in England and Wales listed their religion as Jedi in the most recent census in 2001. Scotland has a reported 14,000 followers.

There certainly are nuttier religions out there (the Warministas  springs to mind) but at the very least the Jedis have their hearts in the right place but I can’t get a recruiting slogan out of my head:

Use The Force on the force and together we can defeat the dark side…

Until next time Comrades

And another one

New refugee boat intercepted

Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent

April 23, 2009

THE Federal Government is again having to defend its border protection measures after a boat carrying 32 Sri Lankan men was intercepted off West Australia yesterday.

The boat, the second to arrive in Australian waters in less than a week and the fifth in just over a fortnight, was intercepted off Barrow Island by HMAS Wollongong about 12.30pm.

The Home Affairs Minister, Bob Debus, said the boat people would be put on board the Wollongong and taken 2000 kilometres to Christmas Island for processing.

Really this is becoming more than tiresome this lot are apparently from Sri Lanka so once the government there finishes of the rebels (any day now) they will have absolutely no excuse for not returning won’t they?

What is the bet that they will still want to stay here even after the Tamil Tigers are wiped out?

Cheers Comrades

Justifible homicide?

Assuming that the killer was not acting from a personal motive…

radar enforcement

Police officers were called to the radar enforcement vehicle after reports of gunfire late on Sunday, and they found the employee shot several times, the said.

The victim, 51, was taken to a local hospital, where he died from his gunshot wounds, the department said.

He worked for RedFlex Traffic Systems, which has a contract with DPS to operate speed camera vehicles on the state’s highways.

Police said they were treating the shooting as a homicide and were searching for a man driving a white Chevrolet Suburban, a popular SUV.

Arizona is the first US state to implement a state-wide speed camera system.

There is no one among us who has not thought, maybe only for the briefest time, that rule 303 should be used against that that instrument of taxation, the speed camera, or one of its operators, who must rate lower than parking inspectors. Come on admit it, you have thought of it and maybe even the notion that such a killing could possibly be justified…
Until next time Comrades

Colin was right.

Brother Number One

The debacle and disaster that is our response to illegal boat arrivals just gets worse For Brother Number one. his government is just floundering like a freshly caught mullet. and the video that has been released does not enlighten the public as to the events leading up to the explosion either .  All it does is show that there were people in the water after the blast.  Probably what is  more concerning for the spinmiester himself is that the Australian people are in no doubt that the governments change in policy is very much to blame as a Poll in the Oz reveals more than two thirds of the people think Brother Number One is responsible.

SIEV 37 ablaze and "asylum seekers" in the water

WEST Australian Premier Colin Barnett says the time has come for the Rudd Government to clarify why there was an explosion on the asylum-seeker boat near Ashmore Reef.

Mr Barnett said there were two navy ships on the scene and many witnesses when the fire broke out on the boat at about 6.15am on Thursday.

“It was daylight hours,” he said yesterday. “I would think a great deal is known about what happened, and I would hope the federal Government does make a more detailed statement to the Australian people. Surely there does need to be, and there will be, a detailed investigation that will bring out the fine detail.

“But I believe there should be some clarification made. After all, we are now three days on.”

The Premier stood by his claim the asylum seekers poured petrol on their boat, and that it had then ignited, killing three and leaving two missing and 31 injured.

The question I want answered is just what was this boat carrying petrol in the first place? To my understanding the majority of boats use diesel engines because there is a much lower chance of explosion , with that fuel and almost no chance of fire.

I am watching this story with a sort of bemused horror, almost as if it is some very bad film and while Brother Number one can talk with Indonesia’s President about “push factors” but no one is going to buy that when the “pull factor”  of the governments policy softening is so bloody obvious and clear.

Maybe we will learn the truth about this indecent but it won’t be soon and we can expect a great deal of spin from party members in the mean time.

Until next time Comrades

This is for Shawn and JM

Reading through the “friend surfer” I came across this post that shows record levels of sea ice for this time of the year and I could not pass it by without noting it here for the benefit of two of my commentators who were getting rather heated about the dire predictions of an ice free Arctic this year (or the near future)….

Arctic Springtime Ice On The Mend

Guest post by Steven Goddard

http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/

Two of the Arctic ice sites show April 16 ice at recent record levels.  The Japanese site IJIS has a seven year April record going back to 2003, and reports 2009 levels at the highest extent on record for the date: 13,649,219 km2.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

The Danish Meteorological Institute has a five year database, and also shows April 16 ice extent as the highest in their short record.
source

Cheers Comrades

Update

It seeems that the Antarctic is not playing to the doom merchants script either:

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

Petrol powered visas

I’ll put my hands up for cynicism on this one but I find the suggestion by Colin Barnett that the so called asylum seekers may have caused the explosion on the boat that has seen so may Australian authorities to go into disaster mode to be entirely credible.

An injured asylum seeker arrives at Darwin airport. Picture: Clive Hyde

THE toll from yesterday’s explosion aboard a boat carrying 47 asylum seekers was considered certain to rise past the three confirmed dead last night as a political row raged over whether the blast was triggered by passengers dousing petrol on to the deck of the small wooden vessel.

As rescue workers began distributing the wounded to hospitals in Darwin, Broome and Perth, the tragedy sparked a political conflict, with West Australian Premier Colin Barnett claiming the incident was an act of sabotage.

But last night, Defence officials and Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus refused to go into detail amid concerns the Government could embroil itself in a children-overboard-style scandal by releasing unconfirmed information.

The first of the injured Afghan men touched down in Darwin last night for treatment, after one of the most complex rescue operations undertaken in Australia.

The drama began at 6.15am local time yesterday when the boat, intercepted by the navy off Ashmore Reef a day earlier, erupted into flames, leaving three dead, two missing and dozens injured.

Now if this suggestion proves to be correct then as I see it there should be tickets back to Kabul for the complement of this boat as soon as their burns have healed, after all why should we give in to such obvious emotional blackmail?

Cheers Comrades

Undeniable

While all of the lilly livered latte sippers seem to buy, without question, the claims that all of these people arriving on boats are “refugees” I, and many other Aussies, are more inclined to think that these people are nothing more than individuals who are trying to get around Australian immigration rules and to enter this country ahead of those who meet our rather generous criteria for migrants.

A group of asylum seekers with an official on Christmas Island. Picture: Colin Murty

YET another group of asylum seekers has reached Australian waters – the fourth in a fortnight – as Indonesian police yesterday admitted they were powerless to stop a rising tide of boatpeople heading for our shores.

Navy patrol boat HMAS Albany intercepted 49 suspected asylum seekers – thought to be mostly Afghan men – two nautical miles off Ashmore Reef, 610km north of Broome at about midday yesterday.

It was the sixth boat to arrive this year, and the 13th since September, when the Rudd Government announced measures aimed at softening Australia’s treatment of refugees from the hardline approach adopted by the Howard government.

This year’s boats have ferried 264 passengers to Australia and 12 crew members – a total of 276 unauthorised arrivals compared with seven boats last year carrying a total of 179 people, including crew.

There have now been 455 unauthorised arrivals since the Rudd Government announced the changes last year.

As I suggested the other day this refugee convention has become a joke, an excuse that provides a loop hole through which so many people most willingly jump and to be entirely honest I just do not buy the claim that as a nation we have any responsibility to provide a place for every person who claims to be “persecuted” in their homeland.The fact that Indonesia has done squat to stem the flow means that this country has to toughen up (once again) its rules so that coming here does not remain such an attractive option for both the people smugglers or their clients.
Cheers Comrades

Indocriniation with the party prrinciples is to start early

Indoctrination is to start from the very earliest education under the rule of Brother Number One.  His government is to ensure that every child will become the perfect model of political correctness…

BABIES, toddlers and preschoolers across the country are set to become political activists under controversial new Federal Government guidelines.

The April 2009 draft Early Years Learning Framework wants teachers to make under-fives:

* Contribute in a meaningful way to reconciliation, including flying the Aboriginal flag and inviting elders to give talks.

* Use “social inclusion puppets” and “persona dolls” to explore exclusion and ethical issues.

* Challenge and resist bias and discrimination.

* Take action in unfair situations and learn to act when injustice occurs.

* Assess and act on power dynamics as they get older.

The political emphasis of the guidelines has divided early learning experts.

The question is how long will it be before our own children are programmed to denounce their parents for thought crimes?

Hmm, Mr Blair was right about everything, except the date should have been 2009…

Until next time Comrades…

Days of renewal, rain and chocolate

I have been spending a great deal of time in my workshop of late being most dedicated to my current project, and there is nothing better than to be working on the construction of a complex machine for keeping one’s brain in full working order. Progress has been made, big progress in fact I am now at the stage of setting up the front suspension mounts which will require me to make a jig from the existing car to ensure that everything fits and works as it should. This is of course not as simple to do as it is to describe because the jig has to be made in several pieces that go around the panels and structure of the car… Now if only the rain would let up long enough for me to get the tarp off the car and to get the nose into the workshop far enough so that I can get the welder in to play.
Anyway after while I have been working I have been listening to the radio and there seems to be lots of “confusion and delay” happening out there in the world there are the massive protests in Thailand that have put paid to yet another talkfest  which still managed to admonish  to those naughty boys in North Korea for playing with big rockets,  which will do squat to stop them. Our Beloved Brother Number One is of course very cross and  disappointed that his flight to the world stage had to turn around and come home without him being able to do one of great party pieces.  More worrying to me is the fact of a military dictatorship in Fiji and the total abrogation of their constitution what this demonstrates to me is a  failure of multiculturalism I was sadly not suprised when Mr Bainimarama reacted by removing all pretence of democracy when judges in the Fiji court of appeal ruled that the 2006 coup was actually illegal. Duh! as if we did not already know this. 

One story that has brightened my day is this one :

RICHARD Phillips, the US merchant captain seized by Somali pirates and held hostage for five days on a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, has been freed.

Capt Phillips was freed unharmed and three of the pirates who held him for days in a lifeboat off the Somali coast were killed in a operation by US Navy Seals that was approved by President Barack Obama, officials said.

Captain Phillips’ crew, who said they had escaped after he offered himself as a hostage, erupted in cheers aboard their ship docked in Mombasa, Kenya. Some waved an American flag and fired a flare in celebration.

I was very pleased indeed that Navy seals were able to rescue Capitan Philips and that the three pirates were sent to meet their makers I wonder just how my latte sipping friends will react to the fact that their hero in the White house authorised the use of lethal force rather than endless negotiation. which brings me to the first person reading that they have been been listening to on Radio National by Barrack Obama. I hate to admit it but the man comes across very well as a reader and as a man.

Well enough of my rambling, the rain is easing off and I can hear the call of the Mig and the angle grinder so I’ll end this little cavort here…
Until next time Comrades

As for choclate, well that just goes with the holiday …

The Greens get it wrong on agriculture

I have met quite a few farmers in my time and all of them have been very aware of the need to care for their land and the good sense to ensure that what they do will not cause a problem in the long term. So It gladdens my heart to read that a boffin has finally recognised that our farmers on the whole do a damn fine job of improving our agricultural practice in a truly sustainable way.

“The true story of Australian agriculture is generally one of aware people farming sensibly, problems being identified and researched (largely with their own funds) and amelioration carried out and adaptations devised. This is the basis of sustainability,” Dr Smith says.

It’s a view with which third-generation farmer Jeff Murray wholeheartedly agrees. He works the land on the salt-prone edges of Western Australia’s wheatbelt, and the 58-year-old says he believes it is his job to improve the land as well as take from it.

Mr Murray was a 14-year-old student at Narrogin Agricultural College in 1965 when his teacher Kingsley Waterhouse taught him how rotation-cropping improved yields, made fertiliser more effective and reduced the need for pesticides.

“He told me ‘what we do is farming, not mining’ and you want to finish up with your farm better than it was when you started it,” he said yesterday.

Rachel Siewert (click to enlarge)

But, according to leading environmentalist, and Greens senator, Rachel Siewert, an agricultural science graduate and former salinity research officer, Australia’s prosperity has come at enormous expense to the environment. “There is no denying agriculture has had a massive impact,” she said yesterday.

But Dr Smith questions the evidence, suggesting the green views are little more than “loose talk” and “myth”.

“Some statements are made, and repeated, when a little deeper thought shows them as meaningless. Some are valid in a limited context but are given status far beyond this. Some are true, but immaterial.”

The true story of the nation’s agricultural industry is largely one of innovation, responsibility and sustainability.

The majority of Greens are city based dilettantes who hardly know one end of a garden implement from another but sadly they have the sort of rumour mill that feeds upon itself so the more often that a myth about our rural activities is repeated the more sure they become of its veracity fortunately for the nation more people are finally recognising that so much of what the Greens say is  indistinguishable from that which  is produced , in quantity, from the bottoms of our nations cattle.
Cheers Comrades