When do we finally admit that Israel is a rogue state?

Isn't it time the world called a spade a spade and admitted that Israel is a rogue state.

Media reports of events in a roughly chronological descending order:

• The assault began at 4.30am in international waters, about 60 miles from the coast of Gaza where the convoy was heading to deliver its cargo of aid.
• An Australian citizen was shot in the leg during a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship in the Mediterranean, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has confirmed.Mr Smith said two other Australians known to be aboard the ship - a journalist and photographer - were safe after the "terrible and shocking incident", which left nine people dead.
• At least three Palestinian journalists have been physically attacked by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank in the past 10 days while a Palestinian journalist and an Israeli journalist have been arrested."The incidents are increasing," Reporters Without Borders said. "More than 30 journalists have been physically attacked and injured by members of the Israel Defence Forces since the start of the year. We again call on the IDF to investigate these cases and punish the soldiers responsible."
• Since June 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, Israel has imposed a tight blockade on the area. According to Israeli officials, the objective of the siege is to bring down the Hamas government and lead to the release of Gilad Shalit. The siege thus constitutes collective punishment of the civilian population, and as such it is unlawful.....Under agreements between Israel and Egypt, the Gaza Strip's foreign trade must be conducted through Israel. The quantity of goods that Israel allows into the area is less than one-quarter the quantity that entered prior to the siege, and far below the amount required for the population's needs. The range of goods that Israel allows in is also much smaller: 150 types of goods compared with 4,000 before the siege. Israel refuses to publish the list of products permitted into the Gaza Strip, or the rules used in determining the list....Israel prohibits the importing of building materials, including iron and cement. The prohibition has remained in place even after Operation Cast Lead, during which 3,500 houses were completely destroyed, thousands more damaged, and extensive harm caused to infrastructures. Israel's prohibition is preventing the reconstruction of thousands of buildings destroyed during the operation.
• All 189 parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the United States, called on Friday in a declaration that singled out Israel for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East."As a non-signatory state of the NPT, Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this conference, which has no authority over Israel," the Israeli government said in an emailed statement.
• Last Monday, Mr Smith announced Australia had ordered the expulsion of an unidentified diplomat following the forging by Israel of four Australian passports allegedly used by a team that assassinated a senior Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai in January.An inquiry by Britain concluded that 12 British passports had also been misused by the Israelis.
• Israeli tank fire killed up to 40 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medical sources at two Gaza hospitals said...Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of Jabalya refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
• UN officials said that the monitors made ten phone calls to the Israeli army between 1.20pm on Tuesday — when an Israeli aircraft dropped a bomb 300 metres from the patrol base — and about 7.20pm, when the building was destroyed. The details came to light as Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, condemned what he called an "apparently deliberate targeting" of the well- documented UN position that had stood in Khiam, southern Lebanon, for 50 years. All the dead were part of the Observer Group — Lebanon, which works with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil).
• An Italian press photographer, Raffaele Ciriello, was shot and killed yesterday in Ramallah while taking pictures of Israel Defense Forces tanks positioned outside the Kedura refugee camp in the south-east of the city....An Italian colleague, Amedeo Ricucci, who was near Ciriello at the time of the shooting, said the latter had been hit by several bullets to his abdomen from an Israeli tank.
• In July 2002, Israeli forces dropped a one-tonne bomb on a building in order to kill a leading Hamas member, Sheikh Salah Shahada, killing 15 people in surrounding buildings, including nine children.
• Recently officials have indicated that the Israeli army is being given a freer hand to carry out targeted killings of Palestinian activists. The policy has come in for criticism domestically and internationally. Human rights organisation Amnesty International has called the assassinations extra judicial killings. The policy has even been challenged in the Israeli high court.
• In 2000, on the second day of the second intifada (Palestinian uprising), when Muhammad al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, was caught in Israeli fire and killed as he cowered in terror against a wall.
• In 1973, Israeli jets killed 108 people when they shot down a Libyan passenger airliner that became lost in a sandstorm and strayed over the Sinai Peninsula, which was occupied by Israel at the time.
• During the Six Day war in 1967, the Israeli air force and navy attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence ship, in international waters, killing 34 crew, wounding 171 and doing severe damage to the vessel.

Saffin goes to bat for Aunty's rural reporters

Onya, Janelle!

"FOLLOWING Senator Barnaby Joyce claiming that rural reporter positions in Mackay and Lismore are under threat, Member for Page Janelle Saffin has written a letter to ABC managing director Mark Scott, seeking clarification.

"As one of the Members of Parliament who actively lobbied, and did so without prompting, for ABC funding and did again following ... a meeting with ABC NSW director Mike McCluskey, I am very concerned at the suggestion that there could be cuts to ABC services in my electorate," she stated.

"Senator Barnaby Joyce claims that the rural reporter positions in Mackay and Lismore are under threat. While I usually take Barnaby's blurtings with a grain of salt, I note that the ABC has not ruled out these mooted cuts."

Ms Saffin said she based her concern on the high dependence the residents of Page had on the ABC rural report and other news that the rural reporter produced.

"The Australian Electoral Commission classes Page as a rural seat and our rural reporter is someone farmers and others involved in primary production rely on," she wrote. "The morning rural report is a great ABC service, and something that has kept so many rural people loyal to their local ABC.

"I would also point out that this region is quite distinct from other parts of the state because of its climate, and diversity of farming practices, from the traditional to the cutting edge of organic farming and many innovative practices. The local rural program also draws on the wealth of environmental and agricultural research from the local Southern Cross University and the Agricultural Research Station." {The Daily Examiner on 28th May 2010}

You're fired!

Found in The Daily Examiner letters to the editor on the 28th May 2010:

Fired by text message

'YOU'RE fired'- a 16-year-old received this text message on their mobile phone.

They had worked part-time for about 18 months and everything was going well, but this person decided maybe a change was due, so decided to look elsewhere.

If anything turned up they would give two weeks' notice, etc., and part on good terms.

However, the company this teenager approached about getting a job phoned the said employer and asked for a reference, which is fine, but that was when the text was sent.

Don't you think a chat would have been more appropriate to find out exactly what was going on before giving someone their marching orders?

I certainly do, and I think for this employer to act like this sets a very bad example in bad manners.

I, for one, will not be setting foot in this store again.

SUZANNE MARSHALL, Junction Hill

Nationals' candidate for Richmond bows out

Murdock quits: I've had enough
Northern Star
Murdock pulls out of election
Tweed Daily News

Tania Murdock will not be standing as a National Party candidate for Richmond in the next Federal election. Mrs Murdock accused some in her own party of ‘having their own agenda’ and also said her personal reputation had been unjustifiably attacked by Liberal candidate Joan Van Lieshout.

Mrs Murdock told The Northern Star:

"She (Ms Van Lieshout) flatly refused (to work in together) which was a bit of a surprise seeing we are both on the same side of politics.

“She then made inaccurate claims and deliberately created a negative impression about me personally.”

While conceding that she had made some novice mistakes since winning nomination in December, Mrs Murdock said many of these were blown out of proportion by her enemies within the party.

“Some internal people who have their own agendas politically have jumped on any little mistake they can,” she said.

Sources: The Northern Star and Tweed Daily News

Ask President Obama to reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling

Photographs by Byrant Austin

slideshow here and website gallery here

To get an image, Austin finds a pod of whales, and then stays at the surface of the water, waiting for one of the whales to approach him. When they do, he starts photographing them, swimming less than six feet away from them. After taking hundreds of high resolution images of a whale - all on the whale's terms - he pieces them together into one complete, life-size whole. He's the first artist to show photos of whales at life-size, and the impact is profound.

This week the Australian Government will commence legal proceedings against the Government of Japan in the International Court in The Hague, over the annual commercial slaughter of whales (including protected/ threatened species and females in calf) in the Antarctic conducted under the guise of 'scientific research'.

A petition to US President Barack Obama requesting that he reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling is now online for signing at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The International Whaling Commission meets again in June 2010 and Australia needs a strong ally in this fight - so use the NRDC link and personalise the message to Obama at the beginning of the online petition to let him know what the world thinks.

Now is the time to act!

The world according to Tony Mark I or II 0r III or IV or V...........

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Now just in case you think Oz Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has had a divine revelation on the 27th of May about global warming and climate change - remember that he tailors his opinions to his audience.

Here's Tony over the last six months:

"If you look at Roman times, grapes grew up against Hadrian's Wall - medieval times they grew crops in Greenland. In the 1700s they had ice fairs on the Thames. So the world has been significantly hotter, significantly colder than it is now. We've coped....

Well, look, if man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn't there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph."
{Tony Abbott in Lateline interview on 19th November 2009}

"I mean in the end this whole thing is a question of fact, not faith, or it should be a question of fact not faith and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement. And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped. Now admittedly we are still pretty warm by recent historical standards but there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s."

{Tony Abbott in 2GB Radio interview with Alan Jones on 9th December 2009}

"In a wide ranging speech, Mr Abbott talked about climate change, the Liberal political fortunes and Kevin Rudd. Quote - the argument on climate change is absolute crap, he said."

{Editor of Pyrenees Advocate quoting Tony Abbott in North Coast Voices post on 8th February 2010}

"OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth the climate was considerably warmer than it is now....And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history.....It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays."

{Tony Abbott to a school class quoted in The Australian on 8th May 2010}

"I am confident, based on the science we have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate."

{Tony Abbott in a speech to 11th National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald on 27th May 2010}

Australian mining industry piles on the tax distortions as it tries to win over the electorate

If one relies on media reports it would appear that the Australian mining industry might have a case against the Rudd Government's proposed Resource Super Profits Tax which is due to activate in 2012.

The RSPT will replace the crude oil excise, and operate in parallel with State and Territory royalty regimes and Under the RSPT a refundable credit for royalties paid to State and Territory Governments will be available.

However, if one cares to open the media releases put out by the Mining Council of Australia the flimsy nature of arguments used by the anti-RSPT lobby begins to emerge.

To date my favourite assertion is; The super tax is, in effect, a Government-mandated sale of 40% of Australia's resources industry at a Government mandated price.

Another favourite is the statement that; For the industry as a whole in 2007-2008, ATO statistics show mining companies paid 27.8% effective corporate tax rate, which rises to 41.3% when royalties are included.

While Mining pays a higher tax rate than any other industry stands out as a blatant attempt at misdirection.

All these quotes are found in the Mineral Council's The truth about the super tax –the myths and the facts, 25 May 2010.

So let's look at the forced sale argument.

No established mining corporation is talking of selling off the parent company or subsidiaries - in the middle of a resources boom most of these companies are very profitable and likely to continue so for many years even with mooted tax reform.

The only threats being made by some mining companies is that they will reassess their scheduled mining projects in light of the proposed tax and rebate scheme.

What about that colossal corporate tax rate quoted, I hear you ask.

Well in 2007-08 there were according to the Australian Taxation Office 2007-08 statistics; 4,290 mining companies having combined incomes which totalled $160,323,192,189, which in turn had combined taxable incomes of $29,010,243,407 and net tax actually paid was $8,068,463,15 after all allowed deductions had been made.

As for royalty payments made in Australia these added up to $3,924,902,975 in 2007-08, which was a little over half of all royalty payments across all listed industries made in that financial year. (Update: A hat tip here to Peter Martin for pointing out in a recent post that mining royalties are tax deductible)

What the Tax Office also points out is the fact that of these 4,290 mining companies there were some who paid no tax at all and, these comprised 68.3% of all mining companies.

In fact the mining sector has the second-highest percentage of 'no tax paid' than any other listed industry.

How did they do that?

Well there are at least 20 deductions, rebates, concessions, exemptions, offsets etc. available to the mining industry and their combined value is literally worth billions.

The industry total for expenses claimed under R&D concessions alone was $2,508,321,897 and immediate deduction for capital expenditure $3,785,347,506, in 2007-08.

So how does the claim that the mining industry is paying a higher tax rate than any other industry fare?

Quite frankly the mining industry tax rate does not stand alone from some other listed industries in terms of comparable tax percentages to taxable income.

It is worth noting that in 2007 the Business Council of Australia in Tax Nation calculated corporate tax (as a percentage of profit) at 20% for the mining industry.

Interestingly this same document stated; Taxes Collected are negative for the mining industry group because as major exporters survey participants reported a significant GST refund which more than offset other Taxes Collected.

It is also interesting to see that the Mining Council of Australia's advertisement presently being broadcast states that the mining industry currently pays 38% tax, which is a figure significantly lower than those quoted in other council documents which had the combined company tax and royalties running at 41.3%.

Next time you see a talking head spruiking for the mining industry or catch one of the industry's televised advertisements - remember that all is not as these miners would have you believe.

Image from Mumbrella