A word of caution for newspaper letters editors

The letters column of today's Northern Star features a letter that appears over the name Todd Lasance.

Has the Star unearthed the current location of the Aussie actor who appeared in the soapie Home and Away series or has the Star failed to do its homework and suss out the bona fides of the 'contributor'.

The letter (copy below) was supposedly written by Todd Lasance of Maclean. However, there's an individual from that area who has more aliases than most people have had hot dinners. Although the individual has a bit of a hankering for colourful surnames, especially those extracted from cemeteries and obituaries, he/she often resorts to colours (black and white are favourites). Military and law enforcement are other areas of interest for the 'contributor', so surnames associated with those activities deserve closer scrutiny.

If the Star has been conned it can take comfort from the fact that it's in good company. Newspapers known to have fallen for the 'contributor' include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Age, The Courier Mail, The Newcastle Herald, The Coffs Coast Advocate, The Daily Examiner, ...

No oil resource

NO help, of course, for the slowly starving millions in Dafur being slaughtered, attacked and raped by their own national government for a decade, plus.

The problem is these peasants have no oil resources. No Arab League action for the people of Bahrain/Manama. Just violent incursions across national borders with rapid gunfire.

Not so Libya, floating on a lake of 42 years' worth of oil, and this fact brought out the naked blood lust in USA via Hillary Clinton, the UK Prime Minister and the oh so trustworthy French President.

Their mouths dripped with bloody malice as they spoke of "the need to protect a UN Resolution". Yeah, only when it suits them and a big natural source of energy is involved.

No wonder Germany had the good sense to abstain from the vote in the UN Security Council.

This one action killed off any slim chance that President Obama had of a second term. Even Australia could not resist this wanton blood lust. As my son, 17, said to his mother: "It's all about oil, nothing to do with peoples' lives".

TODD LASANCE, Maclean.

Confusion tweets on the road to democratic disaster

Saw these odd tweets on polling day and we had to share what has to have been an alternate twitterverse at #auspol where voting was something of a mystery to a few.

^ mfarnsworth: "Who gets my vote if I leave it blank?" asks a website visitor just now. #nswvotes #auspol

^ LittleWombat666: @RonnyB_621 He’s called me a slut etc for hours at a time in here and posted porn saying it was me, maybe he likes you more?? #auspol #qt

^ aj2: @GreenScareBot I drive real slow in the ultra fast lane too #auspol

^ GavAtkins: Sick and tired of waiting for Keneally to concede. #nswvotes #auspol (posted over 3 hours before the polls closed)

Anony-mice

Yamba

* GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak AT gmail.com.au for consideration.

Coffs Harbour City Council's latest climate change impact assessment for coastal zone

Snapshot of report cover page

In September 2010 BMT WBM Pty Ltd completed what appears to be a final revision of its Coffs Harbour Coastal Processes and Hazards Definition Study commissioned by Coffs Harbour City Council and this final draft has now entered the public domain courtesy of the Northern Beaches Alliance and the Environmental Defender's Office.

In The Coffs Coast Advocate on March 18, 2011:

Commissioned by Coffs Harbour City Council, the Coastal Processes and Hazard Definition Study was completed by world-renowned engineering and environmental consultants BMT WBM.

The water levels illustrated on the maps assume beaches will recede, creeks and lakes will swell and tides, storm surges and waves heights will rise – all of which are predicted by the best available environmental science on offer in NSW.

The most prominent examples of predicted inundation under a one-in-100-year storm event include the Jetty Foreshores, Hogbin Dr, parts of Boambee East and properties near the Woolgoolga and Hearnes lakes, Arrawarra Creek and Corindi River at Red Rock.

The floodplains of Darkum, Fiddaman's, Moonee, Coffs, Boambee, Bonville, Pine and Bundageree creeks would also expand vastly.

Quotes from the Coffs Harbour Coastal Processes and Hazards Definition Study Final Draft Report :

This Coffs Coastal Processes and Hazards Definition Study Report presents a summary of coastal processes (from the Coffs Coastal Processes Draft Progress Report), and then provides the methodology and outcomes for the definition of the eight coastal hazards on the Coffs regional coastline. The likelihood ('almost certain', 'unlikely' and 'rare') of beach erosion and shoreline recession, and separately, coastal inundation have been mapped for the immediate, 2050 and 2100 horizons. Detailed hazard maps are contained in the Figures section at the end of this report.

The Coffs regional geomorphology is therefore summarised:
a multiple sand barrier and estuary type coastline with extensive outcrops of rock reef offshore from the headlands between Bundagen Headland and Coffs Harbour;
smaller pocket or embayed beaches, with an increase in offshore rock reefs north from Coffs Harbour to Arrawarra Headland; and
between Arrawarra Headland and Station Creek, the longer sand barrier and estuary type coastline is again dominant.

It is widely acknowledged that sea level rise will result in the recession (or transgression) of sandy shorelines, such as described by the Bruun Rule (1962). This assessment utilises world's best practice Shoreline Evolution Modelling to determine the extent of recession due to sea level rise in the Coffs region,……

Oceanic inundation of low lying and back beach areas may also increase in frequency with sea level rise.

This report supports the general scientific consensus on global warming and previous state and federal reports concerning future beach recession and land loss on the Australian east coast.

The full 204 page report can be downloaded as a PDF file here. Predicted water level mapping is here and here.

That Bazza is q-u-i-c-k!

I know NSW Premier-Elect Bazza O'Farrell thinks of hizself as a busy new broom, but these MSM snapshots taken late at night on the 26th March suggest that he's going a mite too fast and far! {wink, wink}

When the bells tolled at midnight.......

…..the NSW Electoral Commission Virtual Tally Room ballot count in the NSW state election stood at:

Legislative Assembly (Lower House)

Labor 19

Liberal/Nationals 59

Other 2

Undecided 13

Legislative Council (Upper House)

First Preference Group Votes
Group	Group/Party Name	Election Night	Declaration	Total	%	Quota Ratio
A	LIBERAL/NATIONALS	1,360,217		1,360,217	48.09	9.69
B	NO PARKING METERS PARTY	32,311		32,311	1.14	0.23
C		32,554		32,554	1.15	0.23
D	OUTDOOR RECREATION PARTY	20,346		20,346	0.72	0.14
E	SAVE OUR STATE	9,173		9,173	0.32	0.07
F	CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY (FRED NILE GROUP)	88,423		88,423	3.13	0.63
G	FAMILY FIRST	39,722		39,722	1.40	0.28
H	LABOR/COUNTRY LABOR	691,062		691,062	24.43	4.92
I	THE GREENS	315,112		315,112	11.14	2.24
J		51,515		51,515	1.82	0.37
K	SOCIALIST ALLIANCE	7,026		7,026	0.25	0.05
L	AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRATS	22,347		22,347	0.79	0.16
M	BUILDING AUSTRALIA	6,183		6,183	0.22	0.04
N	RESTORE THE WORKERS' RIGHTS PARTY	11,623		11,623	0.41	0.08
O	THE FISHING PARTY	36,632		36,632	1.29	0.26
P	SHOOTERS AND FISHERS	104,499		104,499	3.69	0.74
	Total Formal Votes	2,828,745	0	2,828,745
	Other (including informal)	137,850		137,850
	Blank Votes	127,105		127,105
	Total Votes	3,093,700	0	3,093,700

On the NSW North Coast the National Party of Australia retains all five electorates – Ballina, Lismore, Tweed, Clarence, and Coffs Harbour.

Antony Green at ABC Online NSW Votes 2011 has this graphic:

Click on image to enlarge

So you think your personal and financial information is safe?

With governments at state and federal level still intent on gathering as much personal, medical and financial information concerning Australian citizens for the fledgling national data base and to facilitate inter-agency data sharing agreements, it was interesting to note yet another security breach.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 2011:

Hundreds of thousands of cryptographic tokens used by Australians who bank online, the Defence Force and other large corporations are vulnerable to a potential hack attack after a supplier revealed secret data it held had been stolen.
Customers of RSA, a security division of the data storage giant EMC, were on Friday told that the company had been the victim of "an extremely sophisticated cyber attack".
Federal government customers of RSA's affected SecurID service include the Department of Defence, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Electoral Commission, Family Court of Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services, Department of Veterans' Affairs, Geoscience Australia, AusAid, Department of the Treasury and Crimtrac, according to closed tender documents listed on the AusTender website.

Open letter to RSA customers excerpt:

Our investigation has led us to believe that the attack is in the category of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). Our investigation also revealed that the attack resulted in certain information being extracted from RSA's systems. Some of that information is specifically related to RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication products. While at this time we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers, this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack. We are very actively communicating this situation to RSA customers and providing immediate steps for them to take to strengthen their SecurID implementations.

RSA Online Fraud Centre report February 2011:

The Trojan arms race continues in 2011. It appears that the more security features put in place to protect the online channel, the farther Trojan developers will go in their attempts to infiltrate the systems, compromise security, and better hide their activities within infected computers.

Some background on Australia's attempt to create a national database:

• So you want to look through my medical records?
• Federal Labor and Health Minister Roxon crossing a bridge too far
• And these are the people Rudd & Co intend to trust with access to a national database containing all your sensitive personal information?
• e-Health: something's rotten in the State of Kevin
• Who's guarding the guards guarding your personal information?

Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan

Sometimes it seems that our imperialist overlords never learn.

Der Speigel Online 21^st March 2011:
“The suspected perpetrators are part of a group of US soldiers accused of several killings. Their court martials are expected to start soon. The photos, the army statement said, stand "in stark contrast to the discipline, professionalism and respect that have characterized our soldiers' performance during nearly 10 years of sustained operations."

Wall Street Journal 22nd March 2011:
“A soldier being court-martialed on a U.S. Army base near Seattle for the murder of three Afghan civilians has agreed to plead guilty Wednesday in hopes of earning a reduced sentence, according to one of the attorneys handling his case. "My client is admitting on the record to three counts of murder, plus one count of conspiracy to commit assault and battery and one count of illegal drug use," said Geoffrey Nathan, a lawyer….
12 soldiers charged with an array of offenses stemming from an incident last year when the Army says three Afghan civilians were murdered by members of the 5th Stryker Brigade operating in the Maiwand district of Kandahar Province.

And sometimes grandsons of Anzacs thinks it's macho to ape the attitude of these racist brutal overloads.

Canberra Times 25th March 2011:

"Controversial Facebook posts which label Afghans as ''sand niggaz'' and ''dune coons'' have prompted an urgent ADF investigation that could result in some soldiers being sacked."

Daily Telegraph 25th March 2011:

"I'm in Afghan ... now. running over c---- yeeha." "dune coons, sand niggaz. f--- em all".

This is the true face of the Coalition of the Willing. Is there no end to our national shame?

NSW Votes 2011 - links to live election news, polling updates, analysis*

A few links for those political tragics roaming cyberspace today:

• NSW State Election 2011 home page
• NSW Electoral Commission Virtual Tally Room - online from 6.30pm
• ABC Online NSW Votes 2011 - live coverage
• The Australian Online - live coverage including video
• ABC TV News 24 - will simulcast the ABC1 election coverage from 6.30pm (AEDT)
• Channel 7 NSW Election 2011 - coverage features commentary by Premier Kristina Keneally & Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell from 6.30pm to 8.30pm
• Twitter #nswvotes & #auspol

702 ABC Sydney and ABC NewsRadio will combine for a live radio simulcast from 6pm (AEDT) - coverage until 10pm.
702 ABC Sydney will also have audio streaming via abc.net.au/sydney and will broadcast live to ABC Local Radio across regional NSW and to 1233 ABC Newcastle.
2UE Radio Online NSW Election 2011 – coverage from 6pm