Wednesday, March 7, 2012

157 Aboriginal Witchdoctor/Tracker enlisted to help search for missing policeman

Aboriginal Witchdoctor/Tracker enlisted to help search for missing policeman

Re item 2: Paul Howes, a former Trotskyist, abandoned Communism when he visited Cuba, and presumably saw poverty.

Before the Soviet Union fell in 1991, both Cuba and North Korea had mechanized economies; they received their oil from the USSR. After the Soviet Union fell, oil supplies were cut off and both faced Trade Sanctions. As a result both economies shrank, and had to resort to less modern methods - black nights in North Korea's case, ox-power in Cuba's case. This information supplied to me by Gavan McCormack.

In Papua New Guinea, there's no welfare. Australia's Aborigines, in contrast, are mired in Welfare, and much of the money allocated to them goes to Bureaucrats. In remote communities, drunkenness and its resultant violence are a terrible problem. One of the consequences is smashed doors and broken windows - of Government-owned houses.

Australia's Public Service from the 1950s to the 1980s DID THINGS - made dams, ran airlines & banks etc. Now they just contract everything out to private Consultants etc. The bureaucracy has shrunk to a bunch of pen-pushers, university-educated but totally impractical.

Houses they're building for Aborigines (architect-designed, with white contractors to do the building) cost $450,000 on average, . But Jack Thompson, a former actor, has started a self-help program teaching Aborigines to mill their own timber and build their own houses. Not only is the cost much lower - $160,000 on average - but the skills gained are being perpetuated in remote communities, unemployment is reduced, and morale is higher. These houses are owned by Aboriginal Communities themselves - and thus much more likely to be looked-after.

(1) October Revolution - the Movie
(2) Union boss interviewed on his Trotskyist past
(3) Australia must go Nuclear - union boss (former Trot; still advocates Open Borders)
(4) Aboriginal housing program 'behind schedule and over budget'
(5) Aboriginal Housing - $160,000 cf $450,000 (SBS Insight, October 27, 2009)
(6) Witchdoctor starts search for missing cop
(7) Witchdoctor says he spoke with dead policeman's Spirit
(8) Massive croc caught near swimming hole
(9) Sabi the army dog stuck in Afghanistan quarantine
(10) Australia farmer hands over 'Ned Kelly's skull'

(1) October Revolution - the Movie

From: Joe Fallisi <flespa@tiscali.it>  Date:  12.11.2009 07:22 AM Subject:  putch as a movie

Hi Peter. I was looking for some passages I'm sure to have read -  probably, but I'm not sure, on your website - about the fact that  bolsheviks and especially Trotsky as "director" made a kind of  artificial "movie" in the day of October putch to showing the audience  (the people of the town) a strong, hard battle against the  "conterrevolutionaries". Do you know this thing? Could yo help me in  case to find the right quote about that? It would help a friend of  mine, Paolo Sensini, writng a long and very good introduction to the  first Italian translation of Melgounov's book.

(2) Union boss interviewed on his Trotskyist past

http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=1017

Would the real anarchists / Trotskyists… (Et cetera)

 Published by @ndy February 1st, 2008 in Anarchism, Art, History, Student movement, Trot Guide.

From the Department of Where Are They Now?

‘K so, a few days ago the newly-appointed boss of Australia’s Worst Union (AWU) was profiled in the local rag. And according to it, Paul Howes is a former Trotskyist. Actually, the story is a gold mine for leftist trainspotters…

In the mid-90s, Paul was indeed busy organising fellow high school students at Blaxland High, and talking up Resistance’s efforts to recruit them, first via the ‘Students Against the Cuts’, then the ‘United Secondary Students Union’ (1996–1997). At the time, Paul and a comrade wrote an enthusiastic assessment of the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, concluding that “The closing session was an electric event, with chants and songs culminating in a spontaneous march by some delegates around the track of the Pan-American Stadium. It was a fitting finale to an event that proved that international solidarity is alive and well, and that reaffirmed that imperialism and neo-liberalism require coordinated action by anti-imperialist movements around the world.” In other words, not only has Paul come full circle on the issue of nuclear power, he’s also had a profound change of ‘heart’ on the role of the US in world affairs. The AALD, it will be remembered, sponsored the tour last year of Dick Cheney.

At this time, Paul was also the subject of an interview concerning the DSP’s 1996 Federal election campaign:

Politicians and parliament: young people want change (GLW, #220, February 21, 1996)

Resistance is campaigning for the Democratic Socialists in the federal elections. NATASHA SIMONS interviewed three Resistance members about the campaign. Paul Howes is a 14-year-old student at Blaxland High in Sydney’s West. He joined Resistance last July through the campaign against nuclear testing.

Why did you join Resistance?

I joined because I wanted to make a difference in society, not just sit around and complain about social injustice, but actually get out there and campaign. I was also involved in the campaign against nuclear testing. I thought capitalism really stuffed up people’s minds and I wanted to tell other kids about that and about socialism. When I joined, I was still a member of the Labor Party, but I was really disillusioned with them.

Why did you leave the Labor Party?

I joined the ALP because I thought I could change Labor and make it a real workers’ party. But after a while I realised that Labor had gone so far right it was too late to change it. Even the left faction of Labor thought I was too radical. Another reason I left was the hierarchy and the lack of grassroots input.

Ho ho ho.

Since then, Howes has of course rejoined the ALP, and at some point in the probably not-too-distant future, is likely to rejoin his former boss Bill Shorten in Federal Parliament (should he so choose). The Democratic Socialists, on the other hand, has now become the Socialist Alliance. One thing that hasn’t changed is the unpopularity of its candidates.

In his capacity as a teenage Trotskyist, Howes also had occasion to interact with the “Left” on University campuses. Thus:

SYDNEY — The National Union of Students NSW state conference at the University of Sydney on November 23 heard reports from the outgoing elected office bearers, elect[ed] new officers for 1997 and amended the NUS State Policy and Regulations document… Paul Howes from USSU addressed the conference and was heckled and jeered by Unity. The motion ["for financial and joint political support from NUS for USSU" -- that is, $ for Resistance/DSP] was vehemently opposed by Van Badham, a member of NAL from Wollongong, who dismissed USSU because it didn’t have a constitution. Marcus Greville from Resistance commented, “The argument used against the motion to support USSU was grasping at straws. How can you be seriously interested in fighting for the rights of students against the Liberal government’s attacks, and in the same breath deny high school students the support they need to campaign?”

Whatever. Of the other figures mentioned, Marcus G later achieved a small degree of notoriety for blaming the Arterial Bloc and Mutiny for the carnage which erupted on the streets of Melbourne as part of the bloody, ultra-violent struggles surrounding the G20 meeting in November 2006 (JOSIE TAYLOR: Who were the people responsible for that violence? // MARCUS GREVILLE: The names of the groups are Arterial Bloc and a group called Mutiny. Above and beyond that, we don’t have any information, because they organised externally to us”.) Van Badham, on the other hand, now scribbles for the theatre. Further, according to Wikipedia anyways, “By 1998, Badham was an avowed anarchist and President of the New South Wales branch of the National Union of Students, caucusing with the radical group known as the Non Aligned Left”.

Two things. One, I can remember reading about the, ah, anarchist coup in NSW student politics at the time. And thinking “Who the fcuk?”, “What the fcuk?”, and “The fucking Irish know more about anarchist politics in Australia than I do?”

‘Anarchist Students Win in Australian NUS Election’, Workers’ Solidarity Movement, No.47, Spring 1996:

Reports from Australia indicate that an anarchist-influenced student initiative, called the Non-Aligned Left (NAL), has been elected to almost all the regional National Union of Students (NUS) officerships and is the largest faction on the national officerships. The NUS represents some 450,000 students. It is the first time the Australian Labour Party has lost control of any state NUS branch and the first time non-Labour [Party] factions have had a majority of the national executive. According to NAL activist, Marcus Westbury, the NAL has existed only for two years. They have grown from a handful of delegates to the second largest NUS faction primarily because of their commitment to participatory decision making, a non-hierarchical structure, and their non-binding nature.

Surprisingly — and this is thing number two — the ‘anarchist’ intervention in NUS didn’t last. Nor did NAL, for that matter, which later morphed into the NBL (which has since been supplanted by the Grassroots Left). Note that such shenanigans took place just as a new Federal, Tory Government was ushered in. Further, that with its dispatch late last year, the low-wattage light bulb on the shared student household on the hill has been re-lit (Students in shift on union funding, Sarah Elks, The Australian, January 14, 2008: “THE nation’s peak student body will urge the Rudd Government to scrap controversial voluntary student unionism laws…”).

Other former NAL *s include Kerry Nettle and Jamie Parker. Both Nettle and Parker found a place in the Greens; Nettle in the Australian Senate, Parker on Leichhardt Council. Marcus Westbury, on the other hand, now opines on The Yartz for the ABC.

Finally, Howes is hardly the first former revolutionary to become a trade union bureaucrat or a politician. The Right Honourable Michael ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ Costa is another former Trotskyist and member of both the Socialist Workers’ Party (now the DSP) and Australia’s Worst Union. Oh, and like Howes, a very keen supporter of capitalist development: Nuclear power? Good! Environmentalist? Bad! (Note further that John Laws has never seen a prostitute and that neither Bob Carr nor Paul Keating are queer.) Costa is also a trainspotter, and revealed as much when he addressed fellow Senator Lee Rhiannon (May 12, 2004):

The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: I am very happy to elucidate my answer. My first experience with the notion of quelling was, I think, at Kronstadt during the Russian Revolution when Trotsky took a brigade of the Red Army and crushed the anarchists. In my previous manifestation as a young Trotskyite I supported his decision in an historical sense. I have had time to reflect on the mistake of supporting that decision, but every time Ms Lee Rhiannon speaks I tend to think that Trotsky may have been right about suppressing anarchists because they do not add to the parliamentary process or the complexities of managing government. I certainly would advocate it for the Greens. Ms Lee Rhiannon can take some comfort in the fact that she had the ultimate victory when Stalin managed to get a pickaxe in the back of Trotsky’s head.

Well, the front of his head, apparently, but you get the point. (Ho ho ho.)

“But Andy”, you might say, “Who are YOU to criticise?”. To which I can only reply:

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

(3) Australia must go Nuclear - union boss (former Trot; still advocates Open Borders)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/nuclear-no-nightmare-says-unionisms-new-face/2008/01/29/1201369136003.html

Nuclear no nightmare, says unionism's new face

January 30, 2008

At 26, former Trotskyist Paul Howes is now a leading figure in Australia's labour movement, writes Tony Wright.

PAUL Howes was barely into his teens when France's insistence on testing nuclear devices in the Pacific propelled him into the world of far-left demonstrators. He joined Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party, which meant, effectively, that he was a Trotskyist.

A bit over a decade later, he represents 130,000 mainly blue-collar Australian workers, and he has journeyed a long way from the left and from any ideological objection to the nuclear industry.

These days he insists Australia has to have cheap energy to ensure it maintains a manufacturing industry and advocates a bipartisan debate on whether Australia should embrace nuclear power. "No one with any credibility disputes climate change," he says.

"If we are going to be a country that makes things — and we have to be — then we need power, we need power that doesn't produce excessive greenhouse gases, and so we have to look at nuclear power.

"I don't know if nuclear is the answer, but we have to talk about it sensibly."

Mr Howes, at age 26, is the new national secretary of the Australian Workers Union.

In a few short months, he has replaced Bill Shorten as the chief of the nation's biggest and most powerful blue-collar union, moved the union's headquarters from Melbourne to Sydney and has hardly paused for breath in his passion to persuade anyone who will listen that Australia has to continue to manufacture goods from the minerals it hauls out of the earth.

A strong and innovative manufacturing sector, he says, is the key to Australia's continuing prosperity.

Many in the industrial movement were sceptical about the idea of a baby-faced member of generation Y taking over the nation's oldest union, established in Ballarat in 1886.

But Mr Howes had already packed a lot into his young life. He left an unhappy home in the Blue Mountains for no fixed address in Sydney three months before he turned 15, bought a couple of copies of Green Left Weekly and began mixing with the radical fringes of the left while working as an insurance clerk.

At 16, he found himself at the World Festival for Youth and Students in Cuba, where he fell out of love with the communist ideal.

"I decided that if I wanted to change the world, I didn't want it to be like Cuba," he says. He suddenly discovered he wasn't a socialist after all, but a believer in a capitalist democratic system with a bent towards social justice.

Soon he was a researcher at the NSW Labor Council, then transferred to the AWU as an organiser. It wasn't long before Bill Shorten recognised the young man's talents, and over the past couple of years he has been on the fast track.

Yet Mr Howes never managed to finish high school.

"My single greatest regret of my life is I never finished my education," he says. "I still plan to do so. It's so important that we foster a culture that recognises that education is important to every single individual and to the nation's wellbeing."

Education or not, he was recently invited to the University of California, San Diego, and Stanford University to take part in the Australia-America Leadership Dialogue, where he took time out to support striking Hollywood writers.

Mr Howes will speak at the National Press Club in Canberra today.

(4) Aboriginal housing program 'behind schedule and over budget'

August 31, 2009
Article from:  Australian Associated Press (AAP)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26006208-5019180,00.html

A REPORT into a remote Aboriginal housing scheme in the Northern Territory has found it was behind schedule and over budget.

Outrage over the lack of progress of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) prompted the NT and federal governments to review the scheme.

Rebel MP Alison Anderson walked out on the NT Labor government last month after she was told only 30 per cent of the money would actually go towards new homes.

She was also told less than half of the 750 homes promised almost 18 months ago would be delivered by the scheme, which is yet to produce a single new home.

The report, released in both Darwin and Melbourne on Monday, has found the program is not on track to meet its targets.

But federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said changes were being made to ensure 750 new houses, 230 rebuilds and 2,500 refurbishments by the end of 2013. ...

The report has also revised the cost of providing a unit, or house, down to $450,000.

Mr Henderson denied this meant the houses would be smaller but said there would be “more standardised designs”.

“It's about having less individually designed homes, more consistency in terms of designs and therefore reducing those design costs over the life of the program,” he said.

(5) Aboriginal Housing - $160,000 cf $450,000 (SBS Insight, October 27, 2009)

Jack Thompson Foundation
http://www.jackthompsonfoundation.org/

Comment on SBS Insight documentary, October 27, 2009 (Peter M.):

Jack Thompson has the right idea.

Low cost, simple, housing not bound to city fashions. Communal ablutions & cooking blocks - just what's needed for a communal-oriented people. Whites who go camping in remote regions often do it that way too.

Teaching aborigines to do it themselves reminds me of the way I learned to build - from hippies in the late 1970s.

Hippies learned to build by helping one another. Plus from magazines that spread the word. They didn't do courses, get accreditation, or go by rule-books. All their houses were different. Yet they built to last.

Once Aborigines are building and maintaining their own houses, skills will be passed on, morale will rise, and unemployment will be reduced.

(6) Witchdoctor starts search for missing cop

AAP   November 02, 2009 12:20PM 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/witchdoctor-starts-search-for-missing-cop/story-e6freuzr-1225793508990

AN Aboriginal witchdoctor and his son have begun their search for missing north Queensland police officer Mick Isles.

Arnhem Land-based tracker and witchdoctor Victor Huddleston and his son Victor Nathaniel Huddleston this morning began searching bushland around Ravenswood, where Sen Sgt Isles' abandoned car was found in late September.

An exhaustive search involving police, army and SES personnel was launched shortly after Sen Sgt Isles' disappearance on September 23 but failed to find any trace of the missing officer.

However, Mr Huddleston believed he would find him within two or three days even though any footprints left by Sen Sgt Isles a month ago would have disappeared.

"I will know where he is because I will see his spirit," he said.

Mr Huddleston has been involved in a number of searches in the Northern Territory and said he had never failed to find the person he was looking for.

"When I get close to the place I will see the clear picture," he said.

Sen Sgt Isles' son Steven travelled to Mr Huddleston's community last week to seek his help after learning of his reputation through a police contact in the Northern Territory.

He said having spent time with Mr Huddleston in his community at Ngukurr in Arnhem Land, he was confident in the witchdoctor's abilities.

(7) Witchdoctor says he spoke with dead policeman's Spirit

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/missing-policeman-no-longer-alive-20091106-i1iq.html

Missing policeman 'no longer alive'

CHRISTINE KELLETT

November 6, 2009

The son of missing north Queensland policeman Mick Isles says he has accepted the verdict of an Aboriginal tracker and witchdoctor who says the 58-year-old will not be found alive.

Steven Isles accompanied bushman Victor Huddleston from central Arnhem Land on a three-day search mission through the Leichardt Ranges, six weeks after his father vanished into remote country outside Townsville.

Mr Huddleston, of the Ngukurr people in the Northern Territory, claims to have spoken to Senior Sergeant Isles' spirit during the trek - a feat only possible in indigenous custom if the other person is dead.

"A normal person doesn't have the wisdom, but I hear a voice in English and the voice will follow me and the voice tells me to help him and to send a message back to his family," Mr Huddleston told the Townsville Bulletin.

"If a human being is still alive the spirit won't show. He [Senior Sergeant Isles] is not with us any more. A living person, his spirit doesn't talk to me."

Steven Isles had to travel to central Australia to seek permission from a council of female tribal elders before Mr Huddleston and his son Nathaniel could come to Queensland to assist in the search.

He told brisbanetimes.com.au today the experience had been "surreal" and said Mr Huddleston knew his father was suffering from depression, despite never having been told.

The Isles family believes a Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation into false allegations of corruption against Senior Sergeant Isles was the trigger for his disappearance on September 23, two days after he returned to the police force following a long period of stress leave.

"He [Mr Huddleston] was probably the most sheltered person from this story...he didn't know about what went on [with the CMC investigation]" Mr Isles said.

"For him to come forward with the information he has using black magic has helped us enormously."

He said he had accepted Mr Huddleston's finding that his father was "gone", but vowed to continue to search for him.

"Six weeks has passed so we would have been naive not to have considered the very worst case scenario," he said.

"As a family, we will do everything in our power to find our father and bring him home.

"He [Mr Huddleston] guided us in a direction that - through lack of water and thick lantana - we have not previously been able to get to and we will now use those GPS coordinates to continue."

Mr Huddletson said Senior Sergeant Isles had been looking for peace.

"He tells that there are things in his head. They been there for a  while, bad things. He said that is the reason he left things behind. He wants peace and quiet. He wants a quiet place, to stay away from people who were pressuring him."

Senior Sergeant Isles' disappearance has prompted an outpouring of anger at the internal culture of the Queensland Police Service, with nearly 7000  people joining a Facebook group set up in the policeman's name to speak out.

The Huddlestons will spend time in Cairns before returning to Arnhem Land.

Mr Isles said it had been a privilege to have been offered their traditional expertise.

"It's not scientifically proven, but once upon a time there were Aboriginal trackers in every police station in the Northern Territory. They were also used widely in Queensland.

"They know things and see things we never will."

(8) Massive croc caught near swimming hole

TARA RAVENS

Sydney Morning Herald October 23, 2009 - 12:59PM

AAP

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/massive-croc-caught-near-swimming-hole-20091023-hcjm.html

A massive crocodile has been caught near a popular Darwin swimming hole.

The 4.7 metre beast was one of the biggest seen in the area for several years and five men were needed to haul it from a trap on Thursday, about 1km from Berry Springs in rural Darwin.

Parks and Wildlife senior ranger Tom Nichols said he was shocked at the size of the male saltie, believed to be aged in its 50s.

"This is the largest crocodile we've removed from the area in the last four years," he said in a statement.

"It is also the largest crocodile we've removed from any of our traps in 2009."

Salties are not often found so far inland, but Mr Nichols said it was always possible they would venture away from the coast.

He said the monster croc needed to be drugged before rangers could remove him, which took over an hour.

He was then taken on the back of a trailer to the Darwin crocodile farm.

"It is unusual but every now and again we get one up (at Berry Springs)," Mr Nichols said, adding that he believed the croc had come from Darwin harbour.

"This one was in a good condition, he told NT News.

"He had all his limbs. He had barnacles growing on him, which suggests he's been in saltwater for quite some time."

A fellow ranger reported the find about 10am (CST) on Thursday during a routine daily check of the traps.

Earlier this year, 11-year-old Briony Goodsell was killed by a saltie in rural Darwin.

She was swimming with her sister and two friends when she was dragged under the water at Black Jungle Swamp.

There were no swimmers at Berry Springs at the time of the latest croc's discovery, - the tourist attraction was closed at the end of September due to high levels of E.coli and enterococci.

© 2009 AAP

(9) Sabi the army dog stuck in Afghanistan quarantine

Peter Michael, Robyn Ironside and Emma Chalmers

November 13, 2009 12:00am

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26342664-953,00.html

SABI, the war wonderdog, survived 14 months in the Afghan wilderness but faces a further six-month stint in quarantine before any homecoming parade.

The black labrador, an explosives detection dog, has made world headlines after emerging unscathed from the desert of war-torn Afghanistan.

She was officially declared missing-in-action more than a year ago in the same bloody battle that won SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson his Victoria Cross medal.

 In pictures: MIA army dog found alive

Nine soldiers, including Sabi's handler were wounded, with no sign of the four-year-old pooch after the intense firefight with the Taliban and months of searching failed to find any sign of the her.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who met Sabi during his visit to Afghanistan this week, said it could be a challenge to get her home.

"Sabi is back home in one piece and (is) a genuinely nice pooch as well," Mr Rudd said.

But he warned she may be left stranded overseas by Australia's strict quarantine laws.

"We are working with AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service) and others to ensure Sabi's eventual return. I fear AQIS might be the greatest challenge," Mr Rudd said.

The Defence force yesterday said Sabi would be checked for disease and spend time in quarantine before a decision was made about the timing of her return to Australia.

Normally, dogs cannot be imported directly from Afghanistan as it is not a country approved by AQIS, and a pooch would have to spend six months in a country already approved by quarantine authorities before making the journey to Australia.

Trooper Donaldson, who is in London after meeting the Queen, greeted Sabi's return with relief.

"She's the last piece of the puzzle," Mr Donaldson said.

"Having Sabi back gives some closure for the handler and the rest of us that served with her in 2008. It's a fantastic morale-booster for the guys."

Sabi had vanished when a rocket exploded near her during the infamous September ambush, said Defence spokesman Brigadier Brian Dawson.

Sabi was given up for dead – but she was not forgotten.

When an American soldier spotted her at an isolated patrol base, he suspected she was the dog his Aussie friends had lost.

Sabi was then flown to Tarin Kowt and reunited with a trainer.

(10) Australia farmer hands over 'Ned Kelly's skull'

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/Australia-farmer-hands-over-Ned-Kellys-skull-69880617.html

Refuses to say how he came by it

By ANTOINETTE KELLY , Irish Central.com

Updated Thursday, November 12, 2009, 2:30 PM

An Australian farmer has handed over a skull which he says belongs to the legendary Irish bushranger Ned Kelly (no relation!)

The farmer, Tom Baxter, says the skull is the one stolen in 1978 from a display case at the Old Melbourne Gaol where Kelly was hanged in 1880.

However, Baxter is refusing to say how it came into his hands.

An official inquiry has now been opened some 129 years after the bushranger was hanged.

Australian Attorney-General Rob Hulls said the state of Victoria now had access to more methods to see if the skull was genuinely that of Ned Kelly.

"We now have a unique opportunity, using a combination of historical research and modern technology, to test whether the remains ... are actually those of Ned Kelly," he said.

A descendant of the Kelly family has also offered their DNA for testing.

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