*********************Anzac Day 2014*********************

1st Battalion troops at Lone Pine, Gelibolu,
8 August 1915

Lone Pine Cemetery,

Gelibolu, Turkey, 1920

Horace Thomas Dalton, 
of Cleveland, Queensland,

Father Thomas Dalton and mother Elizabeth Dalton nee Parker,

Trooper 11th Light Horse Regiment,
Volunteered during the last year of The Great War as an 19 year-old 
and saw service in Egypt
Died 1956 and buried in Ipswich, Queensland

William Reginald Rawlings,
of Purnim, Victoria, 
Father William Rawlings and mother Bessie Rawlings,
Private 8 Rifles 29th Battalion,
Enlisted in March 1916, Killed in action, France August 1918,
Posthumously awarded the Military Medal

*Images found at Australian Government websites and www.abc.net.au 

Parr Family of Wise County Texas win $2.9 million in case against Aruba Petroleum for adverse effects of mining & gas production activities

The Parr Family
Photograph found at The Harbinger blog

In 2011 Aruba Petroleum was taken to court by Robert and Lisa Parr of Wise County, Texas and on 22 April 2014 this family was awarded $2.9 million based in part on this claim:

……….

[Parr – 11th Amended Petition in Parr et al. v. Aruba Petroleum Inc., case number CC-11-01650-E, in the County Court at Law No. 5 of Dallas County, Texas] Click on images to enlarge

The 5 to 1 verdict included $275,000 for the Parr’s property loss of market value and $2 million for past physical pain and suffering by Bob and Lisa Parr and their daughter, $250,000 for future physical pain and suffering, $400,000 for past mental anguish.

The Dallas County jury did not find Aruba’s conduct was abnormal and out of place for its surroundings but said it did take intentional steps to cause substantial interference with the Parr family’s use of its 40-acre homestead.

On its website today Aruba was still making many of the same exaggerated claims that the Australian gas industry makes:

Clarence Valley Council trialling live streaming of meetings

Clarence Valley Council has made a positive move going some way towards addressing transparency, access and equity issues by committing itself to a 12 month trial, live streaming its committee and ordinary monthly meetings via http://mixlr.com/clarence-valley-council.

Council is intending to use the free basic version of the Mixlr live audio platform. There is an iPhone app available for Apple and Android devices.

Live streaming will commence in May 2014.

In 2011 57.8% of Clarence Valley households had a broadband Internet connection according to profile.id.com.

Council will be able to see the number of online “guest” listeners at each live streamed meeting, so residents and ratepayers need to patronise this service regularly to ensure it continues.

For the estimated 44.2% of households without broadband connection, the issues remain of access to alternate monthly council meetings held approximately 46 kms apart and the distances some residents have to travel in a 10,441 km² local government to attend these meetings.

NSW North Coast Nationals: one meme says it all

Friends of coal seam & tight gas miner Metagasco Limited from left to right: Chris Gulaptis MP for Page, Don Page MP for Ballina, Thomas George MP for Lismore, Geoff Provest MP for Tweed

Only an estimated 10 per cent of all marine life caught ends up on dinner plates

Click on chart to enlarge

Ensia.com:

April 2, 2014 — What percentage of all the marine life caught by industrial fishing operations ends up on our plate? Ninety percent? Seventy-five? Fifty? Not even close. Try just 10 percent. The rest is simply discarded as bycatch — the unwanted fish and other marine creatures caught during commercial fishing operations. And we’re not just talking fish. The “other marine creatures” includes everything from whales and porpoises to turtles and albatrosses.

Fascist Echoes: when are the Abbott Government's foreign relations blunders going to finally cease?

Tony Abbott čestitao svim Hrvatima 10. travanj!

U ime australskog premijera Tony Abotta koji se danas nalazi u Japanu prenosim vam njegove čestitke i dobre želje povodom slavlja 10. Travnja, vama, i svim Hrvatima Australije a i onima u Hrvatskoj. - rekao je Mr Craig Kelly Federal Member for Hughes

Tony Abbott congratulated all Croats April 10!

On behalf of the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott who is now in the Japan I am imparting to you his greetings and good wishes on the occasion of the celebration of April 10, you, and all Croatians in Australia and those in Croatia. - said Mr Craig Kelly's Federal Member for Hughes [Google translation of the publication Boka Cro Press]

The Guardian 22 April 2014:

The Australian ambassador to Croatia has been summoned after a Coalition MP was reported as passing on the best wishes of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, to a group celebrating a fascist period in the country's history.

Hughes MP, Craig Kelly, said he was "mortified" at reports he attended the Croatian Club in Sydney last week for an event marking the anniversary of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941.

The NDH wanted to rid the country of Jews, Roma and Serbs and was established after the invasion of Yugoslavia overseen by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini….

Facebook page of the Australian Croatian Club O'Connor (Social Club): 

April 16

Australski premijer Tony Abbot Hrvatima čestitao 10. travnja - Bravo Tony. Great to see only a month after Milanovic described Australian Croatian's as "living in isolation" and Pusic described us as "extremists" the Australian Croatian community still has a friend in the highest office in this great land.

Federal Liberal MP for Hughes Craig Kelly delivering his speech at a lectern draped with the fascist Ustasha flag:

BACKGROUND

A brief history of the event being celebrated, taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica online:

In April 1941 Germans and Italians set up the Independent State of Croatia, which also embraced Bosnia and Herzegovina and those parts of Dalmatia that had not been ceded to Italy. Though in fact this state was under occupation by the German and Italian armies, Pavelić’s Ustaša was put into power—a takeover facilitated by the refusal of Maček to take part in a puppet government and by the passivity of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac. Initially there was enthusiasm for the independent state, but once in power the Ustaša ruthlessly persecuted Serbs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and antifascist Croats. The Ustaša planned to eliminate Croatia’s Serb minority partly by conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, partly by expulsion, and partly by extermination. As many as 350,000 to 450,000 victims were killed in Ustaša massacres and in the notorious concentration camp at Jasenovac.

Taken from Arutz Sheva 7 Israeli news online 8 February 2007:

 a video broadcast 9 December 2006 on Croatian TV, which shows Mesic in 1992 telling Australian-Croatians:

You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologize to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time, "Go kneel in Jasenovac. Kneel here..." We don't have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state ... and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table. -- BBC Monitoring; December 10, 2006

The Sydney Morning Herald 8 September 2005:

But on April 10 this year, Mr Clarke attended and was snapped at a similar event - which the author and historian Mark Aarons wrote amounted to a "glorification of April 10, 1941, the day Hitler installed Ante Pavelic and the Ustashi into power as Nazi puppets".
The function was held at the Croatian Club in Punchbowl - the same place where a meeting of the Liberal Party's newest branch erupted into an all-out brawl last year, prompting the arrival of eight police officers, three patrol cars and even a sniffer dog. Mr Clarke - who says politicians from both sides of politics are seen at such ethnic functions every year - has been forced to defend himself amid further allegations of his political involvement with far right-wing groups. Last night, the Liberal MP John Ryan confirmed he was one of several MPs at the Punchbowl function....
The Herald published a photograph on Monday that showed Mr Clarke in 1978 alongside Ljenko Urbancic, later exposed as a Nazi propagandist. Since then a number of individuals, including the former Liberal candidate for Auburn, Irfan Yusef, have publicly accused Mr Clarke of using religious wedge politics to recruit new members to the party....

The new NSW Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government ministerial line up

If everyone listed below survives the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption Operation Spicer hearings, this is the ministerial line up which will face the state electorate at the March 2015 election.

Don Page the MP for Ballina is missing from this list, having been demoted to the backbench in the Baird reshuffle and he has announced he will not be standing for re-election next March.

Mike Baird
Premier, Minister for Infrastructure and Western Sydney

Andrew Stoner
Deputy Premier, Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Regional Infrastructure and Services, Minister for Tourism and Major Events, Minister for Small Business and Minister for the North Coast

Gladys Berejiklian
Minister for Transport and Minister for the Hunter

Adrian Piccoli
Minister for Education

Mike Gallacher
Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for the Central Coast, and vice-president of the executive council

Duncan Gay
Minister for Roads and Freight

Anthony Roberts
Minister for Resources and Energy

Jillian Skinner
Minister for Health and Minister for Medical Research

Andrew Constance
Treasurer

Pru Goward
Minister for Planning and Minister for Women

Brad Hazzard
Attorney-General and Minister for Justice

Gabrielle Upton
Minister for Family and Community Services

Katrina Hodgkinson
Minister for Primary Industries, Assistant Minister for Tourism and Major Events

Kevin Humphries
Minister for Natural Resources, Lands and Water, and Minister for Western NSW

John Ajaka
Minister for Ageing, Minister for Disability Services, and Minister for the Illawarra

Stuart Ayres
Minister for Fair Trading, Sport and Recreation, Minister Assisting the Premier on Western Sydney

Victor Dominello
Minister for Citizenship and Communities, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister for Veterans Affairs, Assistant Minister for Education

Rob Stokes
Minister for the Environment, Minister for Heritage and Assistant Minister for Planning

Troy Grant
Minister for Hospitality, Gaming and Racing, and Minister for the Arts

Dominic Perrottet
Minister for Finance and Services

Paul Toole
Minister for Local Government

Jai Rowell
Minister for Mental Health and Assistant Minister for Health