Free Republic

Billionaire Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer accused the CIA of funding environmental extremists seeking to cripple the island nation’s industry, saying during a press conference that the money was being routed through conduits such as the infamous Rockefeller Foundation. And the Australians involved in the alleged plot are essentially committing “treason,” Palmer declared. The CIA, environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace, and Australian Green Party politicians all rejected the accusations. But the high-profile remarks from Palmer, a professor who owns a massive business empire worth billions and is a significant financial contributor to the center-right Liberal National Party (LNP), caused a...

LABOR may have finally bounced off rock bottom but Australia's oldest political party and its leader are still facing a historic loss of public confidence and electoral failure. A three-point rise in the Newspoll primary vote for the ALP has avoided the unthinkable for the Gillard government of going to 25 per cent or below to have less support than the combined vote for the Greens and various odds and sods, but the broader view of this survey of public opinion about Labor - as well as the personal standing of Julia Gillard - is devastating. The electorate has not...

FEDERAL Labor MP Mike Kelly revealed yesterday how he had been forced to use a bayonet to "stick" enemy Somalis while serving with the Australian army. Defending himself against claims his 20-year career in the army was spent behind a desk, Mr Kelly said: "I actually had to use the bayonet. I did actually stick them - I don't know if it was life threatening - to ward them off." The parliamentary secretary for agriculture is in a war of words with his constituent, retired Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss, and other veterans over military pensions, The Daily Telegraph reported. Prior...

Nancy Wake, Australia's greatest World War II heroine and a prominent figure in the French Resistance known as the "The White Mouse" for her ability to evade the Germans, has died in London. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the woman who was once the Gestapo's most wanted person, was "a devastatingly effective saboteur and spy". "Nancy Wake was a woman of exceptional courage and resourcefulness whose daring exploits saved the lives of hundreds of Allied personnel and helped bring the Nazi occupation of France to an end," Gillard said. Wake, who died in a London hospital on Sunday just...

JULIA Gillard admits Australia is a long way from consensus on climate change - and says the debate may become ever tougher for Labor - as new polling reveals her behind Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister for the first time. ..... Ms Gillard said today the polling was a result of her plan to put a price on carbon, and that while it was a tough reform "it may get even tougher, before it gets easier". “I believe that once carbon pricing is in place people will see how the system works and the benefits of it,” the Prime...

Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century. The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world's largest population of wild camels _ an estimated 1.2 million _ and considers them to be a growing environmental problem. The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the...

Advertisement by group Mypeace, reading "Jesus, a Prophet of Islam," labeled by Catholic bishop "a direct assault on Christian beliefs." A billboard campaign in Australia launched by a Muslim group in the country caused outrage among some of Sydney's Christians, upset by advertisements reading "Jesus, a Prophet of Islam," the London Daily Mail reported on Saturday. One Catholic bishop said that the posters were a "direct assault on Christian beliefs." The group, called Mypeace, claims that the campaign was made to encourage awareness about Islam, and correct some misconceptions the public may have regarding the religion. The group said the...

Defence buys "value for money" ship From: AAP April 06, 2011 12:31PM Australia is to buy a near-new surplus British navy amphibious landing ship at what appears a bargain $100 million pricetag. Defence Minister Stephen Smith said Australia had been successful in its bid for RFA Largs Bay, a 16,000 tonne landing ship launched in 2003 and commissioned in 2006. The ship is set to be decommissioned as a cost saving measure under the UK government's Strategic Defence and Security Review released last October. Mr Smith said Australia would pay 65 million pounds or $A100 million at the current exchange...

Australia needs 12 large subs for security Brendan Nicholson From: The Australian AUSTRALIA will need 12 big, long-range submarines to help it shape its own strategic future. The region will be increasingly dominated by China, says Paul Dibb, author of the 1987 defence white paper. In the wake of warnings about China's growing military power at the Ausmin talks, Professor Dibb will tell a Submarine Institute conference in Perth today it is time Australians took their strategic outlook much more seriously. "We ignore our own unique strategic geography at our peril in the decades ahead," he will say. Having a...

Australia's dollar has blasted through parity against the US dollar after the country raised interest rates a quarter point to 4.75pc to fight inflation. The long-awaited moment of "triple parity" seems imminent. The Swiss franc is already worth more than a greenback, and the Canadian dollar is seemingly poised to break through as well. The surging "Aussie" - widely seen as a play on the China growth story and used by traders as a proxy for the Chinese yuan - captures the shift in the world's economic centre of gravity to the Pacific region. The currency was worth half a...

After a tense night of vote-counting yielded no clear result, Australia was heading for a hung parliament with independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, who hail from regional areas, becoming the unlikely kingmakers. Independents (L-R) Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor While they all have links to the National Party, the minor party in Tony Abbott’s conservative coalition, the independents have said that past allegiances will not influence their negotiations. The most unpredictable member of the trio is Mr Katter, the MP for the vast seat of Kennedy in northern Queensland which covers more than 340,000sq miles. A...

JULIA Gillard has arrived in Canberra and will meet Governor-General Quentin Bryce at 10.30am to set a date for a federal election. The PM's office has confirmed that the Prime Minister will hold a press conference at noon. August 21 or 28 are the anticipated dates for the election. Ms Gillard is then expected to travel to Brisbane, where Labor has to make up ground following the dumping of Kevin Rudd. Ms Gillard smiled, but said nothing to reporters outside her western Melbourne home, as she was driven away just after 7am (AEST). The media is already camped outside Government...

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is expected to call an election within 24 hours. The ABC reports that Labor sources have revealed Ms Gillard will visit Governor General Quentin Bryce in Canberra tomorrow morning to set the election for August 28. The election campaign will be six weeks long. The news comes as the Opposition accused Ms Gillard of trying "airbrush" the past by refusing to reveal whether she had reneged on a deal with Kevin Rudd. Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said today the Prime Minister should have been “honest” and “open” about what happened on the night before Mr Rudd...

PLANS are still being made for US President Barack Obama's Australian visit in a few weeks' time, despite concerns he may have to cancel again. Mr Obama is grappling with the US's worst ever environmental disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Efforts to block the spill have failed and the White House says it might leak until August. Mr Obama is due to visit Canberra and Sydney in mid-June, but there is speculation he may feel the pressure to stay at home and deal with the crisis. He had to cancel a previous Australian visit, in March, to rally...

Few are laughing in Australia following Robin Williams' joke that its people are "basically English rednecks". His remarks, made on The Late Show with David Letterman, prompted Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to respond on a Sydney radio show. "I think Robin Williams should go and spend a little time in Alabama before he frames comments about people being particularly redneck," said Mr Rudd.

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Feiz Muhammad is an Australian citizen now residing in Malaysia. He has been labeled Australia's "most dangerous sheikh" due to the number of connections he has to known and suspected terrorists. Muhammad’s target audience is young Muslims who feel disaffected and disassociated from local Muslim communities, where mosque clerics show "a lack of interest toward the youth." His lectures frame the United States as the enemy of all Muslims, including those living in the United States and Americans living in other Western countries. He emphasizes that Muslims should regard Western culture as corrupt and immoral, and...

Allies? Who needs allies? From today’s Sydney Morning Herald (emphasis added): Barack Obama’s trip to Australia is going ahead but his 24-hour visit will be contained to Canberra. The US President will address Federal Parliament on March 26 after flying from Bali the day before and dining with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the Lodge. Mr Obama’s shortened itinerary – which allows him to spend more time in Indonesia – will include a meeting with Governor-General Quentin Bryce and a range of events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Australia-US alliance. Mr Obama was forced to ditch his original...

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) – Australian underwear company AussieBum has been monkeying around and the result is a range of men's underwear made with bananas. The new eco-friendly banana range of undies incorporates 27 percent banana fiber, 64 percent cotton and 9 percent lycra, AussieBum's Lloyd Jones said on Friday.

TORONTO - There are still no leads in the case of an eastern Ontario scientist who disappeared without a trace last month, leaving his colleagues mystified. Lachlan Cranswick hasn't been seen since Jan. 18, when he left work at the National Research Council's Canadian Neutron Beam Centre in Chalk River, northwest of Ottawa. His nearby Deep River house was reportedly left unlocked and his car was in the garage. His wallet, keys and passport have all been accounted for......

Serena Williams has made it back-to-back Australian Open crowns after defeating Belgian comeback queen Justine Henin in the women’s singles final at Melbourne Park on Saturday night. Williams, the top seed, took her fifth Australian Open singles title with the 6-4 3-6 6-2 victory over former world No.1 Henin, who was playing her first major in 20 months after retiring in 2008. The victory is the 12th Grand Slam singles title of Williams’ career, and the American now equals compatriot Billie Jean King in sixth place on the all-time women’s Grand Slam singles title list.

SYDNEY (AFP) – People who spend more than four hours in front of the television each day have a far higher risk of dying early than those who limit their viewing, an Australian study said Tuesday. Watching the small screen for prolonged periods is also bad for your heart, according to the research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "Compared to people who watch less than two hours of television per day, people who watch more than four hours per day have a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes," researcher David Dunstan told AFP....

GAZING from the Great Wall of China last week, US President Barack Obama appeared to be making the most of one of the perks of White House occupancy -- a private guided tour of Asia's most spectacular tourist spot. White House aides exulted that choreographed pictures of this moment would make front pages around the world. Yet an experience Mr Obama declared to be magical turned sour as he returned home to a domestic revolt that is fanning Democratic unease. It was not just that the US media have suddenly turned a lot more sceptical about a president with...

Peter Hitchener, who was broadcasting on Channel Nine, somehow managed to keep a straight face despite the sudden appearance of the gull. It loomed large on the screen behind him after it wandered in front of a camera used to film a Melbourne backdrop for the studio. The timing could not have been worse as Hitchener was trying read a story about organised crime in the city. "I was reading away and it was a serious story, and I suddenly thought 'Oh my gosh, that seagull's back again', because we had a bit of a problem last night," Hitchener told...

An academic says public education campaigns need a rethink after two girls used Facebook to alert people that they were stuck down a stormwater drain. The 10 and 12-year-old girls updated a Facebook status to say they were lost in an Adelaide drain, and a young friend called for help on their behalf. Glenn Benham from the Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) says it is concerning the girls raised the alert on the social networking site instead of calling 000. "If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones they could have called 000, so the point being they...

AUSTRALIANS' attitudes to the ethics of war are nothing short of conflicting, a new Red Cross war survey has found. On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Convention, the Australian Red Cross interviewed more than 1000 people on what codes of conduct were acceptable in a combat situation and the results were mixed. More than a third of people surveyed said it was acceptable to torture a captured enemy soldier of war to obtain military information and 26 per cent said it was okay to attack civilians who had given food and shelter to enemies. However, 60...

Marysville is the town that disappeared. Once known as Melbourne's honeymooning centre, with its pretty guesthouses and century-old oaks, the town, about 60 miles from the Victoria state capital, is now a smouldering, post-apocalyptic wasteland.From the air, nearby St Fillans resembles a row of campfires - piles of powdery ashes with the embers trampled out. The landscape is deserted, with caravans, boats and burned-out cars abandoned in the middle of roads. Many appear to have been trapped by flying debris - huge sections of what were once walls which have blocked the road. A house under construction is untouched by...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A falling chunk of glacier crushed two brothers to death at a popular tourist spot, and one remained buried under ice blocks the size of large vehicles, police said Friday. The two Australians apparently ignored rope barriers set up to prevent hikers from wandering into dangerous areas.

Click here for video.

Looking at hugh panic in global mkts right now. This is vey series. Australian dollar off almost 8.6% on the day against the USD. One bank said they are seeing literally NO BIDS in the Australian dollar, which is huge considering that you can usually trade several million with the click of a mouse.

NEW treatments for leukemia and asthma are in development after scientists discovered a way to stop the production of malfunctioning blood cells. Researchers at the St Vincent's Institute in Melbourne and Hanson Institute in Adelaide have unravelled the structure of a protein in the blood control system that is key to some blood and inflammatory disorders. Pharmaceutical company CSL will use the breakthrough to develop new treatments which stop the protein from being activated, hindering the spread of cancer. Professor Michael Parker, of the St Vincent's Institute, said his team established the structure of a receptor that controls the actions...

SYDNEY (AFP) - A top Australian politician said on Tuesday the country should introduce "meaningless" carbon trading if big polluters in the developing world do not agree to reduce emissions. Opposition leader Brendan Nelson said he was committed to introducing emissions trading by 2012, but if big polluters like China and India do not make commitments to reduce emissions it should be deliberately toothless. "Our policy has not changed, and that policy is we would implement an emissions trading scheme, cap-and-trade, no later than 2012," he told Sky News. "And obviously what you would do, if for example we haven't...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man convicted of his seventh drink-driving charge was spending about A$1,000 (487 pounds) a week on beer -- enough to buy more than 2,500 small bottles a month, a newspaper said on Tuesday. The heartbroken construction worker began drowning his sorrows after breaking up with his partner five years ago, the Northern Territory News said, quoting his defence lawyer as telling a court in Australia's remote, tropical north. The magistrate declined to jail the father of four, Michael Leary, noting he had quit drinking since his latest arrest, but he banned Leary from buying or...

DARWIN, Australia - An Australian man has been fined after buckling in a case of beer with a seat belt but leaving a 5-year-old child to sit on the car's floor, police said Tuesday. Constable Wayne Burnett said he was "shocked and appalled" when he pulled over the unregistered car Friday in the central Australian town of Alice Springs. The 30-can beer case was strapped in between two adults sitting in the back seat of the car. The child was also in back, but on the car's floor. "The child was sitting in the lump in the center, unrestrained," Burnett...

SYDNEY (AFP) - The number of Australians who want to replace the monarchy with a republic has fallen to its lowest level in almost 15 years, according to a poll published Thursday. Only 45 percent of Australians favoured scrapping the monarchy for a republic, although the figure rose sharply when respondents considered the prospect of Prince Charles taking the throne, according to the poll from Morgan Research. Pollster Gary Morgan said support for a republic featuring a popularly-elected president was the lowest since former prime minister Paul Keating raised the issue of dumping Queen Elizabeth II in December 1993. Morgan...

Dig uncovers ancient desert dwellers Friday, 02 November 2007 University of New England New archaeological evidence, published in October in the journal Australian Aboriginal Studies, reveals that Aboriginal people visited the Watarrka Plateau, south-west of Alice Springs, 13,000 years ago. Archaeologists Dr June Ross from the University of New England and Dr Mike Smith from the National Museum of Australia were dropped by helicopter on the Watarrka Plateau as part of a survey of rock art in the Watarrka (Kings Canyon) National Park. "The new finds were unexpected," said Dr Ross (who is pictured here at the Watarrka site). "We...

The Australian War Memorial has unearthed what it believes is the only footage of Anzac Cove during the Gallipoli battle of World War One, an iconic event in Australian history which is commemorated each year on Anzac Day. The one-minute grainy black and white film, which shows the shoreline at Anzac Cove and British soldiers massing at Suvla Bay, was shot in 1915 during the pioneering era of film. The footage pans across Anzac Cove from a position on the southern headland, showing a clutter of jetties and stores being unloaded. "Because we have so little authentic footage, everything we...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Serena Williams won her eighth and most improbable Grand Slam title, overwhelming top-seeded Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-2 in the Australian Open on Saturday. Only the second unseeded woman to win the Australian title in the Open era, Williams came into the tournament ranked No. 81 after spending most of last season on the sidelines because of a knee injury. "I'm really enjoying this!" said Williams, who will jump to No. 14 next week. It was her first title in 15 tournaments since winning the 2005 Australian Open, and the most dominating win in a completed championship...

A dangerous divide is forcing Australian Muslims to abandon their homes, says Sydney cleric Feiz Mohamed in Lebanon reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov ---------- AUSTRALIA'S most influential firebrand cleric feels like an alien in his own country. And Sheik Feiz Mohamed is not alone. He believes a rising anti-Islamic tide has made Muslims wary of their countrymen, forcing at least eight families to abandon their homeland for the Middle East. From the foothills of his ancestral village in north Lebanon, the man with the most sway over the nation's Islamic youth says five years into the war on terror...

A New Zealander has been arrested in Lebanon, accused of leading a group which seized two girls at the centre of a custody battle. David Bruce Pemberton, who is a former member of the special services, is accused of kidnapping five-year-old Hannah Hawach and her three-year-old sister Cedar. The girls were taken from the custody of their father, on behalf of their mother. Pemberton and an Australian colleague were taken off a plane at Beirut's international airport and could face up to 15 years in jail. They are now in custody, but have not yet been charged. A Foreign Affairs...

A rescue effort is under way for two people trapped inside a submarine rescue vehicle off the coast of Perth. A civilian diving contractor was testing the Australian Submarine Rescue Vehicle (ASRV) in deep water last night when its winching system failed, preventing it from being able to return to the surface. The vessel was lowered to the sea bed and is currently sitting in 130 metres of water. The Defence Department says the two people trapped inside are in no immediate danger, as the vehicle remains attached to the mother ship by a secondary cable which provides power and...

SYDNEY (AFP) - A mystery over a Japanese midget submarine that went missing after attacking a ship in Sydney Harbour during World War II has been solved, an Australian television station has claimed. The submarine was one of three that slipped into the harbour on the night of May 31 1942 after being launched from a fleet of five larger Japanese submarines offshore. Two of the midget vessels were spotted and attacked, leading the two-man crews to commit suicide, Australian national archives record. The remains of those subs were recovered and a rebuilt composite is on display at the Australian...

<p>Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said that the country's worsening drought could hit economic growth. Mr Howard said the drought, which some experts have described as one of the worst on record in Australia, would "affect our GDP growth".</p>

PRIME Minister John Howard has launched a scathing attack on Australia's left-wing intelligentsia, questioning its loyalty to the nation over the past decades. In a speech delivered last night for the 50th anniversary of the conservative magazine Quadrant, Mr Howard said the left had a history of denigrating the nation and was now doing the same with the war in Iraq, describing Islamic terrorism as the new tyranny. He said Australian universities were still breeding leftists and described pro-communists of decades past as “ideological barrackers for regimes of oppression opposed to Australia and its interests”, Fairfax reports today. Mr Howard...

Report is far from damning of President's insistence on maintaining the course in Iraq TRUTH, like beauty, is apparently to be in the eye of the beholder. That's the only conclusion you can draw from the reaction to the US National Intelligence Estimate entitled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the US, with a declassified summary of its conclusions released by President George W. Bush after parts were leaked to The New York Times.

Howard call to Australian Muslims Mr Howard has been criticised for singling out Muslims Australian Prime Minister John Howard has called on moderate Muslims to be more critical of terrorism. In comments to mark the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, Mr Howard said: "No decent genuine Muslim would support terrorism." He also said Muslims must fully accept that Israel had a right to exist. Islamic leaders in Australia have reacted angrily to the comments, saying Mr Howard should not single out Muslims for criticism. "Instead of constantly singling out Muslim people, he should be trying...

Bin Laden's friend Jihad Jack freed by Australian judges By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 19/08/2006) A British-born Muslim convert jailed in Australia on charges of receiving money and an airline ticket from al-Qa'eda terrorists, was freed last night after his conviction was overturned. Joseph Terrence Thomas, 33, nicknamed Jihad Jack after claiming that he had met al-Qa'eda's leader Osama bin Laden three times, was jailed for five years in March. But in a judgment seen as a blow to the Australian government, the appeal court in Melbourne ruled that some of the evidence used against him was not admissible....

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have called on the country's farmers to report any ugly sheep found in their flocks. A campaign called "Xtreme sheep" aims to study sheep with undesirable wool features to unlock the genetic makeup of the prized merino and ensure production of its high quality fleece. The South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) said on Tuesday its search for "Australia's ugliest merino lambs" may hold the key to securing the nation's A$2.8 billion (US$2.1 billion) wool industry. The institute said ugly lambs -- with uneven wool, strange fibers, clumps of wool that fall out, bare...

The formation of Overwatch Battlegroup – West has opened a new chapter in the Australian army’s long and distinguished history of military operations in the Middle East. Formerly known as Al Muthanna Task Group 3, the 450-strong Australian unit is tasked with providing operational supervision in support of Provincial Iraqi Control in Al Muthanna province, southern Iraq. Al Muthanna on July 13 became the first province in Iraq to achieve PIC. It gives Iraqi security forces the lead role in maintaining a secure environment for their people. Following Iraqi control, Multi-National Forces in the province began handing over their bases,...

MEL Gibson once had close links to the Australian League of Rights, a Far Right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. The league claims the world is run by a secret society of Jews. The Hollywood star's foray into Far Right activist politics in Australia occurred in 1987 when he campaigned for a friend, Rob Taylor, who stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi. Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson's father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league's ideas. "They were...

USS PORT ROYAL (CG 73), North Arabian Gulf – Commander, Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 3, U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Carl Jensen, turned over command of Combined Task Force (CTF) 158 to Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter Lockwood June 23. CTF 158 is responsible for Maritime Security Operations (MSO) in the North Arabian Gulf (NAG). This coalition force works with the Iraqi navy to protect key oil producing assets. MSO help set the conditions for security and stability in the NAG and protect Iraq 's sea-based infrastructure which provides the Iraqi people the opportunity for self-determination. “These are some tough...