The water wars between the states are about to begin. So far the need for water has been totally underestimated by city people but they will feel the lack of it when water is rationed. This may be as early as the approaching summer.
Queensland farmers have stolen 1.6 million megalitres this year. This is the highest level of theft since reporting under the Murray Darling Water audit began in 1994-95. The Murray-Darling basin states signed a cap on such activity (water diversions) in 1995. The previous biggest theft was 910,000 megalitres in 2003-4.
How has it happened? Simple. There is no monitoring process built into the reporting system. Governments are so out of touch with water shortages that they didn't conceive that monitoring and water theft would be a problem
For an illustration of exactly how much 1.6 megalitres represents it should be understood that it is the equivalent of the water entitlement held in the Victorian Goulburn Murray Irrigation District. However Victoria has also been accused of water theft (diversion) of a similar amount, which will mean South Australia will be somewhat bereft of water - for saving their lake system and even for drinking. It already has the vilest tasting water in the nation.
Our PM is concerned, and his response to save the South Australian problem, reflects his abysmal understanding of the water problem. He advised last week that he will buy out not only irrigation properties but whole irrigation communities in the Murray darling Basin. It sounds fine but the success of such a scheme depends on rain in considerably larger quantities than has been falling over past years. The grimness of the situation is shown by this one fact: the irrigation season began last week with another zero opening allocation for farmers in the Goulburn and Murray systems.
This lack is caused by the continuing climate change that decison makers imagine will be solved somehow by rain. Rain is not forecast for this spring. If there is not large amounts Melbourne and Adelaid will be without water this summer. This is not news, as it has been reported for the past six months. However what people will do to survive is an other thing altogether. We should recognise that the first water war was between Israel and Syria and was called the six day war. Syria had planned to take the water flowing into Israel.
The bottom line is what would we do for a glass of water? Maybe go to war? Not necessarily officially but irrigation banks have been altered to change the flows of ones neighbors.
East Timor observers must follow the money to discover who's behind the attempt to kill East Timor's president, Jose Ramos Horta. That is always the first move by investigative reporters beginning an investigation.
Horta has testified that it was not Reinaldo or any of his men who shot him. But if the President had died, rather than Alfredo Reinaldo, Alfredo would have been prosecuted for the murder - he had mistakenly believed he had been summoned to the President's residence at the time of the shooting.
Reinaldo and several of his men were shot dead at close range inside the president's house compound. This led to an educated guess that they were executed by others.
The head of the Social Democrat Party said, "We can't put aside the possibility that Alfredo was set up."
Timorese were led to believe that a follower of Reinaldo was the man who shot Horta. The president realised it was not Marcelo Caetano, a Reinaldo follower at Horta's house, when he met him in Dili months after the attack. Marcelo would have made a great scapegoat.
Who would have benefited from the President's death? Would it be those who have historically attempted to deprive East Timor of its vast oil stocks (there is a temporary deal in place but deals can always be renegotiated, especially if the chief financial strategist is dead)? So, who wanted the oil? Who went along with the invasion of East Timor, over the oil? Who allowed the Indonesians to get away with over 200,000 murders in East Timor? Who kept silent about the murders for over twenty years? Who signed oil deals prematurely? It was Indonesia, Australia and America.
Remember it was Australia (Downer) who delayed the UN backed saving of East Timor by Australian troops, and in that short time hundreds of dissidents were murdered and all the infrastructure destroyed. That was a move that was essential, we thought, to have East Timor to quickly sign an oil deal.
Why do we have silence from prime minister, Xanana Gusmao? Well, he's taking time off to bask in his hero status. Hubris has descended on him? Afterall he was a true hero.
How do we work out where we stand on Aafia Saddiqui's imprisonment? We have to work out if a woman, allegedly only recently arrested, and, knowing her children to be ok, would attempt to break free of the FBI, grab a gun, and risk death? She was, after all ,shot and wounded. Personally I would be skeptical if she would be that desperate after only a few days detention, for this was the first time she was to be interrogated by the FBI. I dismiss the FBI claims she had been arrested the day before and go for the five years incarceration, she claims.
Admittedly she was behind a yellow plastic curtain in the room, allegedly unbeknownst to the FBI agents, so they may have been discussing a torture plan for her. That may have prompted such a spontaneous and horrendously inadequate plan of escape.
She had been, according to her family, raped many times during her five years of incarceration in Bagram, the US base in Afghanistan. Again I go with family knowledge, as every English speaking person would if following a western story. Although many people don't believe foreigners tell the truth, I've found in decades of journalism that they do
The Guardian reports that last week Afghan police in Ghazani offered another competing version of her detention, telling Reuters that the US troops had demanded she be handed over, imagining she was a suicide bomber.
But she is to stand trial in the US where many understand she will get a fair trial. I wonder where her three children are?
The Olympic athletes should have the power, not the talentless members of the IOC. The IOC spokesperson went with the Chinese media censorship on the journalists being arrested. Who the hell do the IOC think they are? They totally screwed up on giving China the Games, screwed up on letting them getting away with profound censorship, and continue screwing up with every word they utter in favor of murderous China.
The athletes are the marvelous ones, the super stars, and they let themselves be ruled by a bunch of incompetent power freaks. Even super models have taken power from the designer power freaks who give them work.
Bill Green
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