husmusen

1) Ritalin gets traded in school grounds alot. 2) We know that long term use of ritalin and other amphetamines in truck drivers(for wakefulness) leads to hardened arteries. 3) The widespread long-term use of a drug on children whose mechanism of action is only guessed at for a problem(behavioiur management) which has other solutions is IMHO unethical. Oh and this factor Harvard medical school study on Ritalin brain changes This topic can get me fired up a bit so I'll leave it at that. But the above study is very interesting and worth reading if you're into this area. Cheers.

I'd agree that it's mainly cultural, In China at one time I believe it was tiny feet. How many times do you think the avg 15 year old boy in an anglo country has seen big breasts associated with high sexual status? On ads, on magazine covers, overheard in conversation etc... I also feel the selection advantage argument is a little circular and somewhat false logic. If it's an advantage, that's why it's favoured. If it's not an advantage, that means it is an advatage because it proves fitness.(male Peacock argument, or female hyena). other examples: Men are atracted to hairy females with beards. Scientist: This is because these women would be more likely to survive harsh winters. Men are attracted to women with large upper body strength. Scientist: Large upper body strength is beneficial in many ways. These are two rediculous examples but they demonstrate the point. You also have disability fetishes, anyone care to provide a selection fitness argument for that? Cheers.

Dave: Err, I'm pretty sure there have been multi villiage outbreaks, and Africa is getting more urbanised because that's where the jobs are. Ebola will still be here 20 years from now. Dave: In the open sun sure, but it's also really good at infecting people. People with ebola bleed everywhere, this blood teams with live infectious virus, they cough, also teeming with virus, I'm no sure about the 1-2 mins, but even given that that's plenty if you happen to be around. They also have liquid bowels, mixed with blood, again all loaded. And even a small exposure is infectious, they are a nursing nightmare. Also it's possible to put it into a more harmonious enviroment, which is how bio-weapons experts harvested it. Dave: It would be very useful in stopping an odd accidentaly infected person, from entering the USA or Australia, yes. But if a Bio-terrorist released some on the New york subway, airport quarantine aint stopping squat, because multiple tens of thousands of people all potential carriers would be through the net before symptoms started showing and could be all over the USA and other parts of the world, including many ME countries. Dave: Are you sure? Because Flu can't reinfect a person until it's had time to mutate, flu lasts about as long as ebola, and flu sems to spread quite fine and infects a lot of people before dying out, now I grant normal Ebola would burn itself out, but depending on how much the society paniced, the burn out toll in say New York could be 1-5 Million+. Dave: I recall about this time last year, the soviets found a guy dead on a train, he was carrying unshielded C60 pellets under his jacket. Aparently he was supposed to deliver them to someone, oops. Unshielded Nuclear materials can kill you just as much as unshielded bio or chem weapons. Cheers.

posted by aswokie I never sad women wouldn't do *better* in an ultra endurance event. What I said was I thought the men would still beat them. (Male lungs can exchange more O2, so combust more sugar yeilding 18X the energy of anaerobic metabolism) Which means they can run harder and faster for longer before having to employ the less efficient anearobic system. And your link supports that. I realise employing BIG-O notation on metbolism is a little perverse but that 18X multiplier is the Big-O in this comparisom. Cheers.

Well given it's the brain, it's not going to be quite as clear cut, there will be debating room due to complexity alone, and the fact that individual variance makes such findings near useless. But I can't see how it's all that different from saying men as a whole are faster and stronger, and women are better at breastfeeding. I'll also hazard a guess that men are better at producing sperm than women are , so where on campus do I report for my lynching. Over in .au's Deaking university, the law faculty head just published a paper defending the practice of torturing innocent people if the goal was 'worth it'. Now that deserves a little flak. But this, to put it bluntly I think these paricular feminists are having an attack of the vapours poor dears. Cheers.

Opheiolite: Be nice wouldn't it, my understanding however was that it was the infectiousness of smallpox, with lethality of ebola++. Very nasty. Stupid weapon to invent as once released it would be, almost, if not completely impossible to contain, and it has no IFF. The probability of mutation to defeat any vaccine is very high once it's infected say, 3 billion people. Dak: Agreed, I used them as they are ones that have actually been field deployed, (even if it was rumored to be by an American scientist against his own people in order to get more funding.) The Aum supreme nutters, also tried blowing anthrax of a tokyo skyscraper and to the best of my knowledge noone died because they screwed up the milling(Phew). Versus their first attempt with chemical weapons(Subway gas attack). Also there are vaccines against anthrax and and a dual Anti-biotic regime that is quite effective at infection prevention, but not so good if it gets a hold. Soldiers who had both a current vaccine, and were taking their AB's would be fairly hard targets for an anthrax bomb. They'd still die from primary exposure, secondary spore residue would be pretty harmless to them though. SARS is the current frenzy, but that can be defeated by handwashing, which is how I understand it was eventually stopped. Ophiolite: LOL. Calbiterol: Yeah, I'm sure they keep it right next to the device that protects their citizens from nuclear weapons and radiation. You give them too much credit I fear. To protect a populace would require a huge drug/vaccine stockpile, these stockpiles are not like tinned food, they have use by dates, they need production facilities, they cost money, storage space, a distribution means/network that would work when half the country is sick and dying, and every 1 to 20 years the drug would need to be remanufactured in quantaties sufficient to protect the populace. For the U.S. with pop 300M that would be between 20M and 80M units depending on how much risk they want to take. And you would need a drug for each bioweapon. In short, no they don't, they may have 20K units for protection of elite soldiers (and generals and congressmen) and that's assuming there exists a cure which is a big if. Cheers, sort of

I don't recall where I heard this so consider it apocryphal. I do however recall that a team of three people associated with militant groups in Japan or ME tried to collect some ebola from a live victim, sadly for them and fortunately for us, they died on the journey back, I'll give you one guess what of. Ebola is a nurses nightmare because in order to be safe, you practically have to wear a spacesuit. As far as I know the U.S. and Russia and probably the PRC have quite advanced ebola proghrams, and have upped it's lethality beyond that of the natural version(quite a feat). I also heard from my cousin, whose into all this stuff, that there is a smallpox-ebola hybrid that was produced by the US and Russia (independantly) that is worse. Having said that, I don't think terrorists are a huge worry. 1)Thinks like the ebolapox hybrid are kept under fairly good lock and key. 2)The Antrax letter and the efforts of the Um supreme fruitcakes, seem to indicate that in practice bioweapons are harder to deliver than the general populace thinks. Cheers.

Be careful what you wish for I'll third Salmonella as the most probable but not definative cause. And you sound like you had it moderately bad, you came off okay this time, but if it gets that bad again, you should call an ambulance, salmonella can kill you. Oh and don't ever, ever eat at that place again. Cheers.

Wendy: You know that bit where it says "rich in fruits and vegetables, all year round", in other words a diet high in anti-oxidants and low in free radical sources. This is almost certainly one reason for their strength and longevity. Of course we had this where I lived too althoughnot to the same Extent. In our case, it was game, berries, nuts, mushrooms, fish(5 sorts), vegetables and potatoes. Low meat, medium vegetables and enough potatoes to make an Irishman puke Yum. Cheers.

Oh boy, We just did this, one of the students raised it in our oncology nursing section. According to the lecturer Vitamin B17 is a myth. There is no such thing, I have also seen this marketed as vitamin B31 and Vitamin B36. He raised it the next day in our research class as an example of "the incredible kind of rubbish you find on the internet" the moral being be very careful about the sources youuse on the Net. The lect also pointed out the Hydrogen cyanide is an highly cytotoxic drug and that while it does kill cancer cells it's no good as a cancer drug because it kills everything(including all those nice healthy non-cancerous cells that keep alive and functional). Final note, there have been for the last decade at least, although sadly not much longer, indepentant phara companies in India that manufactured clone drugs by using different processes to the west, and avoiding patent law. (The actual molecule isn't copyrightable in India). If this drug cured cancer, these companies (which don't exploit copyright) would have been all over it, they would have been building a factory a minute and preparing to reap the biggest untapped market you've ever seen. The Chinese government as well is not highly suspicious of 'natural' remedies, yet as far as I know the PRC are not exploitiing any cancer cure-all. Alltogether this makes me think it's bull. Cheers.

I'll second Chess I'm using Fritz at the moment, good program. In a long long time ago on a platform noone has probably ever heard of ("naval rank" + 2^6) I used to spend far too much time shoting ships madel of coathangers, in a universe spanning eight galaxies and being sold a tribble by the merchant prince of thrun. But damn it was fun. ? Has anyone played Sid Meiers refurbished version of Pirates! Is it any good, or more specifically as good as the old one? Wolfenstien was good in it's day, so was the first decent. Deus Ex. Moo2 Syndicate rocked. First game(I encountered) to make serious use of 640x480 There are a couple more that I know I liked I'll post them later some time. Cheers.

Reply to: Ultra marathons? Are we like talking days or just a 24 hour one? I'm not familiar with this sport. I was thinking more of 5-20 Km runs. Now I've heard this before but noone has ever provided me with a source study or paper or anything else. And the more I think about it the less the claim makes sense. Maybe it would if you were talking about exposure without food, but not exertion. I mean fat people have a greater % of their body weight, as fat, but if you were to ask me between Carl Lewis(sprinter) and Mandy vandstone, who'd win at endurance, I'd have to still go with Carl Lewis. I curious now, I'll have to go check my text, but I'm pretty sure muscles run on glucose. There are too main pathways, one where glucose is combined with oxygen, which yields 36 units of ATP. And the other where it's cleaved for IIRC only 2 units of ATP and some nasty by-products. (Hence the body only does this when it has no other choice.) Therefore it seems that the primary medium term endurance factor would be aerobic caacity, but I'm not a sports medicine expert, so I'm interested in hearng all arguments about it. Cheers.

Some interesting additions ot the saga. This has now reached parliament and they finally got the hansard up online. Some valid points were raised and some vulgar avoiding of questions practiced. From the 12th of May online hansard. (page 46-57) From the 12th of May online hansard. (page 46-57) Senator CONROY (Victoria) (3.11 pm) I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked today. I rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Vanstone in relation to this shameful and humiliating case involving the deportation of Ms Vivian Young. This Australian government has kidnapped one of its own citizens and deported her overseas. Days, if not weeks, later, when the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs is aware of it, she will not come into this chamber, face the Australian public and give a detailed explanation of the facts. She does not mind going on radio and TV, where she can dodge and weave and not give the answers. She will drip a little bit out here and a little bit out there, but she will not come into this chamber and do her job, which is to face up to the fact that this is her department and her responsibility is to tell the truth to the Australian public in here. You might have thought it was not so bad, except that this is not the first time Australian citizens or permanent residents have been detained by this government illegally. This latest disgraceful episode follows on from the distressing Cornelia Rau case and the government’s admission that it has wrongfully detained at least 33 people. That is right 33 people have been wrongfully detained, one kidnapped and deported, under this government. Enough is enough. It is time for this minister to stand up and accept responsibility, deal with her department and make the changes that are necessary in this shocking state of affairs. Ms Young, an Australian citizen born in the Philippines, was deported by the department in 2001, leaving behind a five-year-old son. On top of the 33 people being wrongfully detained and the case of Ms Young, a five-year-old was abandoned because the Australian government had kidnapped the mother and the child has been in foster care ever since. He has spent four years in foster care because this government is so incompetent it does not know what its own department is doing. Following a car accident, Ms Young gave officials her maiden name of Alvarez. Without making satisfactory inquiries, the department concluded that she was an illegal immigrant and pushed her onto a plane. It has been reported that, at the time of deportation, Australian immigration officials had to light her cigarettes for her as she could not use her hands because of the car accident. The deportation of an Australian citizen with a mental illness is bad enough, but this case gets worse. What steps did they take to find her? That is what we want to know. According to the Australian today which broke the story, and it does deserve congratulations this is what happened: Due to the differing surnames, it was not until an immigration official saw the name Vivian Alvarez-Solon flash on the Nine Network’s Without A Trace two years later that the alarm was raised. ( Ed: ) An Australian government department noticed the mistake because an official happened to be watching Without a Trace. This department is without a clue, and this minister is without shame. Yesterday, following the public outcry over this case, it was revealed that Ms Young had been found living in a Philippines hospice for the destitute and dying. This appalling episode exposes a number of issues. What happened when Ms Young was approached and had it explained to her that she was the subject of an international search? What was her reaction? When Father Duffin the priest looking after her informed Ms Young on Sunday that Australian authorities were looking for her, she reacted by asking, ‘Will I go to prison?’ What have we reached when an Australian citizen is so terrified of government officials that she asks, ‘Will I go to prison?’, when we are trying to bring her back to the country if she wants to come? Why is it apparently so easy for an Australian citizen to be detained and then deported by the department of immigration? In this case there was clearly a failure by the department to properly identify a missing person. The Rau case and all of these other cases being investigated by a secret inquiry (Time expired) Senator SANTORO (Queensland) (3.16 pm) What we are hearing and seeing here today is a repeat of yesterday’s disgraceful behaviour by senators opposite with another diversionary tactic. This is another example of cheap politicking and political point scoring by senators opposite. It is the sort of disgraceful politicking and posturing that is occurring day after day in this place, in the other place across the way and in other, more open, public forums. There is a reason for this. The major reason is that senators opposite are trying to camouflage an abysmal lack of policy and an abysmal lack of any major contribution to public debate in the area of economic policy. In particular, they are trying to camouflage a lack of any reasonable response to the 2005-06 federal budget. More importantly, they are trying to take attention away from the decision announced by their leader, Kim Beazley, that they will not be supporting the tax cuts for low-income earners which are contained in the Howard-Costello 10th budget. That is what this sort of cheap politicking, day after day, is about. Yesterday it was Anzac Cove, today it is this case and I predict that when we debate the tax cuts in this place after they are introduced in the lower house today it will be the tax cuts. We will see just how relevant they are prepared to be in terms of what they are really trying to camouflage. Let us get to the nub of this particular point. The contribution of Senator Conroy who has now left the chamber was forceful, but it was not valid. He kept talking not about the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs but about the department that the department had slipped up. He kept talking about Ms Alvarez being worried about what departmental people would do. So it is not the minister that we are talking about here; we are talking about the department. A tragic mistake has been made in this case, and the minister said today I heard her my-self ‘ It was a tragic mistake. We are sorry that it hap-pened. ’ It happened 21 months ago. It was a departmental lapse, and she acknowledges that. The opposition are demanding answers, so what do we do? As Senator Eggleston asked: ‘What do we do? Do we come in here and just give an answer without knowing the facts?’ What did the minister do? She referred the matter to the Palmer inquiry, and that is proper. What is wrong with referring the matter to the Palmer inquiry? It is an inquiry that is already established, so there is no expense or administration to go through. The inquiry is there; it is a timely referral. It is an expert inquiry. Nobody could doubt the integrity and the expertise that Mr Palmer brings to the table as the chair of that inquiry. Despite what members opposite say, it is an independent inquiry, and public pressure will make sure that the independence of that inquiry is sustained through the actions of Mr Palmer. So the matter has been referred to an expert committee. We on this side of the House are saying, ‘Let’s take the politics out of this issue. Let’s establish the facts. Let’s stop the point scoring and let the facts be established.’ At that point in time, the minister will come into the House and give the answers assisted by the findings of the inquiry. We have been hearing today another personal attack on one of this government’s most effective ministers. This minister is picked on in this place day after day, month after month and year after year. One of the reasons she is picked on is that she does have the answers. How often do members complain about her directness? How often do they complain about how explicit she is? How often do they complain about how up front and totally frank she is? Yet Senator Conroy comes in to-day and says that this is all about the department. Everything that Senator Conroy and other senators opposite have said about this issue clearly indicates some failure in terms of process at a departmental level. It is not Senator Vanstone who wanted to see the person in question deported to the Philippines and ending up in a hospice. We all thank God that she has been found alive and, hopefully, capable of recuperating totally and being resettled with her children. It is not Senator Vanstone’s fault that the children have been separated from their parents specifically from the father, in this case. We have here another example of cheap point scoring. This side of the house have tried to depoliticise the issue. We have done the right thing by referring the issue to an expert, independent inquiry, and we are going to stick to that particular course of action. When we come into this place, we want to give proper, informed and truthful answers, and that is how it is going to stand until the Palmer inquiry concludes its business. Senator ROBERT RAY (Victoria) (3.21 pm) As a former immigration minister, if I had deported an Australian citizen when I was minister, does anyone in this chamber believe that Senator Santoro would have remained silent? Absolutely not. His contribution today reminds me that he is almost a reincarnated Senator David Vigor. This particular individual was deported on Mr Ruddock’s watch he was minister at the time. One of the things I want is to hear an explanation from Mr Ruddock as to why this happened on his watch. He was not too busy to do press on children overboard. He was not too busy to engage in dog-whistle politics. If he had been concentrating on the administration of his department rather than appealing to the lowest nature in the electorate during 2001, this event may never have happened. The fact is we had 21 months of silence on this issue. The message comes in about kids overboard and you have a press conference within 44 minutes, and press statements. Within two days you have fake photos pulled out. There was big action then, but it takes 21 months for this news to get out that an Australian citizen has been deported. And within a couple of weeks of that occurring, guess what? She gets found not by the Federal Police, not by the immigration department and not by consular officials but by the very publicity. Thank heavens the Catholic priest was watching the television at that time or she still may not have been found. And if that publicity had occurred 21 months ago, that would have been 21 months less that she would have had to spend in a hospice for the dying, an Australian citizen! Thirty-three people have been illegally detained! I lived months of my life over the ASIO legislation that allows ASIO to detain people for 168 hours. We put all those safeguards in, and in fact no-one has been detained yet. Yet we and this government ignore the fact that 33 people have been illegally detained. Why would we do that? Senator Santoro says: ‘We’ll leave it all to the Palmer inquiry.’ I am glad there is an inquiry going into all this, but we do not just leave it to an in- quiry. We are elected to pursue these things. Scrutiny of government is an integral part of the Senate, which is not understood by the blowhards opposite. It is our duty as an opposition to pursue these matters. I heard all the explanation on AM this morning; I do not hear it in here. I hear of the fake attack on the ABC this morning; I do not hear the facts being put down here. Why not? Because they are too unpalatable. I raised the question today: one of the real problems is the developing culture in the Department of Immigra-tion and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. I do concede extenuating circumstances. They do have to put up with a lot of false information and false claims. But it is their duty to be able to discern the truth from the false claims do not just dismiss every lawyer that contacts them as sleazy; do not just dismiss every so-cial worker as marshmallow hearted. Senator Santoro: [ But they don’t do that. Senator ROBERT RAY They do indeed, Senator Santoro. Of course they do! They were told about Ms Rau well before they acted upon it. They were told about these people and failed to act. And guess what? It does not matter what the result of the Palmer inquiry is; all of them will get their performance pay. That is the history of this government, every time in the past. Senator Santoro How do you know? Senator ROBERT RAY Because the major architect of children overboard in the Public Service got a Public Service Medal and then got promoted to department secretary the great Anastasia of the Public Service, who, in giving evidence in the ‘children overboard’ inquiry, on 57 occasions had to answer: ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I don’t recall,’ et cetera. And what happens? You get promoted by being loyal to the government and covering up. Senator Santoro does not care about the deportation of an Australian citizen. The rest of us do. We do care, and we demand answers to it. We are not coming in here to cover it up. We are not coming in here because we have verbal diarrhoea like the senator opposite he is known as ‘Santo the silent’ in this place and putting outrageous claims in. The fact is the minister has to take responsibility and has never taken responsibility in the whole time she has been the minister. =================================== Well that was that, as you may have noticed no questions go answered, and the poor minister her department just does things and whats the poor helpless little dear to do. This is the state the parliament has come to, outrage at the suggestion a minister may somehow bear responsible for the actions of the department she heads. Cheers.

If we are talking physical endurance, then (just as a thought experiment). Men in general have more strength, they have bigger muscles, with the correlating increases in stored calcium ions, stored glycogen, they have a more efficient circulatory system, and more square inches of lung surface so they can exchange more oxygen. They have biggr livers with bigger reservoirs of muscle food. Greater body mass also means they can produce more pyruvic acid(I think), so physically men should have more indurance than women. As for mentally, which man? Which woman? I've seen children with more mental stamina than many adults of both sexes. Cheers.

Agreed. A closed doors inquiry where IIRC all the depertment heads refused to give evidence on the grounds that it would incriminate them or "render them liable to prosecution" was closer to the precise words I think. Relax, you only have to be a decent person to be unhappy about this, Oh I noticed you're in Queensland, by 'liberal voter' you mean national party, right? Yes but why don't we know? Because the process is run more like police state organ, than an open democratic public service, if liberals(the public) are happy about this kind of Big Government secrecy then liberal doesn't mean what it used to. So enraged, no that's not helpful ofcourse, but angry, oh yes. There's nothing wrong with being angry about injustice One reason the Labour party has flopped is because they forgot who they represent, they have become a power factory like the liberal party. Much and all as I don't like Malcom Frazer, like Hawke, he still had the odd principle. And Menzies although I disagree with his politics, would have slit his wrists before he imprisoned a little girl and he demanded some accountability of his minsters, he was IIRC big on personal responsibility. He actually had some dignity and self respect. But like the Labour party, the Liberal party no longer stands for anything other than it's own corrupt self interest. Most liberal voters haven't seen that yet, and when they do, Howard will generously hand over the wreck(party and nation) to Costello. Yes that was unclear in the original reports, and (reading back) I see I also failed to clarify it, thanks for picking it up, as it's yet another big black hole that needs some light shone into it. When I said that I was thinking 'the people', not 'government of', but I agree the distinction is valid. And good on them, MT's-SoM do a lot of very good work they also operate in .au I think. Three cheers for bipartisanship! I agree, something's badly broken and needs fixing, and it's it's hard to fix something, if you've no light to examine it with. I think the citizens rights with respect to government power are very important, (people call me a doo-gooder because I am always on the civil liberty side and they do not realise that that is only for the pragmatic reason that it is always easier to cede power to a government than to get it back if you cede too much) I am aware that there are many parties on the books, but I was speaking in terms of 'In practice', in various communist countries there were many parties on the books as well, but it was still a one party state. I would have to disagree with that false dichotomy of left and right. That is in my experience mainly an anglo phenomenon. It's like saying, "It's the bosses again the workers, and always will be", perhaps it will, but it doesn't need to be. I am aware of the drop in numbers, I am far more cautious about ascribing a single cause, no doubt Howards "Hardline" has had some effect, as it no doubt would have, had he sent graphic footage of arriving refugees being massacred on the shorelines, beaming around Asia. In neither case would success in aim mean the means were good. I am also aware that New Zealand opened it's doors and took in many and that according ot Howards hardline theory they would have been swamped, but the drop off seems to have happened for them as well. This strongly suggests other factors are also at play, and I think it would be wise to fund some non-political research into what causes migration waves, and means of predicting them so we can fix the problem at the source, rather than once it's already well started. I also think that people smugglers themselves should have been the primary target and not the people being smuggled. O.K. but you live in QLD, that's a whole different ballgame, I stated that it was my personal experience, as such by implication I am not making any statements about signs in Brisbane, as I wasn't there then, I was however on various days of the week travelling between the northern and far southern outer suburbs (This is in Melbourne). During my train journeys I couldn't help but notice that in marginal areas there seemed to be a much greater prevalance of these signs. In the safe areas there might have been one but in marginal areas there might be 3 just at the railway station. Now if I was shown a graph of seats and number of of signs, Indeed I might be able to say, well how about that I was wrong. Or I might be able to say "well, well what have we here". I have no exhaustive list however so I will fall back on my personal impression, and other peoples after I mentioned it to them and they also began to notice it. But if the signs were evenly distributed in QLD, good. I don't see how that conflicts with my statement that in Melbourne they seemed IME less so. But regarding false beliefs, indeed if it's not the case, that the signs were unevenly distributed, I would want to know. I have however seen too much of politics to not be aware of such political opportunism and the effects such signs can have. Cheers.

Reading around I found some additional linkage. http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/margo_kingston/001001.html An excerpt: Why can't we see all the paperwork regarding this deportation, after all it's a beurocracy right? They must surely have paperwork? Or is the decision just made by some neurotic paranoid immigration official, "Zass ist ein illegal immigrant! Aus! Aus!" Heh heh, I wonder if claimed to be an illegal immigrant, do you think they would take my word for it and give me a free holdiay to Sweden. Cheers.

. The efficiency of the public bradcaster . Well good, I'm really glad that's about the best outcome I could have hoped for, better than I dared hope for . I can't help but notice the difference between, the Phillipines and the Australian Government. The .au .gov kicked out an Australian citizen because they weren't fast enough to prove they were a citizen, there seems to have been about zero due process. The Philipines, took in, what in effect was, a non citizen, and cared for her, gave her food, and a roof over her head, company, and a smiling face each morning. Therefore this Australian citizen only survived because they Phillipines were kinder to the Australian, than the Australians would have been to a Phillipino. (Or for that matter to one of their own they mistook for a Phillipino.) A question remains, how did they get her to the Philipines, did they bribe someonme? There aren't too many functions of the Phillipine government that aren't negotiable if the price is right. Did they provide her with incorrect documents? They couldn't have used her real documents because she was not a Phillipine citizen, or did they sneak her in on a tourist visa?

After pointing someone else here I suppose it's only fair I post myself. I'm a nursing student in Australia which I came to from Sweden. Before nursing, I was into physics and computers(hw+soft). I also have a great interest in Chess and I am very fond of Russian lit. I speak English, Swedish, German O.K. and Japanese v. poorly but still learning. In short a jack of all trades and master of some. Cheers.

Yes but how does this come to be, I'm sure George Bush could probably (if he focussed his resources on it) have the scalp of (just about)any individual congressman. Yet they cross the floor, several hundred British MP's recently crossed the floor, yet you have to go back to Malcom Frazer to find an Aussie MP crossing the floor, Colston excepted as that had more to do with a liberal offer than principle I fear. And surely there must be a few people in the entire Liberal Party who feel just a tad squeamish about locking up little children behind razor wire in desert camps? Not even one? Or labour for that matter. If you're not going to have principles about that, then what's the point of having principles at all? I'm just curious how it came about that everythings so locked down in the .au political system? Cheers. Oh heres a thought, if power is weilded by cabinet, how are we different from a dictatorship, (except for a brief moment every three years) as in a dictatorship the leader is also supported by a small oligharchy, without whom they could not govern?

Hej Tetra, I agree with much that you say, but you seem to have forgotten that it was the Labour party introduced this moster and the Liberal party that fed it. Last I checked the Labour party has not greatly repented of this, they simply wish to find a 'kinder' way of being cruel. As such they are equally to blame. Most suffering stems from false belief. Whether it's, 'poor people cannot be trusted.' "There's so much work out there ayone can get a job.(all unemployed are bludgers)" Or the belief that it's possible for us to have sustainable human rights without everyone else hving human rights as well. Or the belief that any form of cruelty is okay, 'because it wasn't our decision we are just doing our job'. The question is given there are many people who feel as you or I do, what can be done? Because this will happen again, as long as this system is inplace. In part I feel that we are crippled by the two party system, in Sweden I would have 4 to 5 real alternatives to choose from. Instead of Fatty and Ratty the LibLab men. Also I'm curious to anyones opinions on why in the U.S. and Britain, pliticians can cross the floor but in Australia they seem to be pilotless drones all obeying the whim of the P.M. and Cabinet? Cheers.

FWIW, I don't think you're being cynical, or at least not overly so. Thanks. I've thought about some of the questions and I've found a nice list. Some of which I feel are pertinent. Why do the public servants in DIMIA have such unfettered power? To get Ms X out of the country were false documents used? If so, who made them? Who made the decision and why? Why has there been no effort since Mastipour in 2003 to make regulations for detention centres? Was this woman taken out of the country during the 'Operation Long Haul'? How was she allowed to enter the Philipines? Were bribes paid, as with many others outlined in the "Deported to danger" report? How many more people has this happened to? I also wondered about whether she was alive or dead. But from the interpol report it now appears she is either Dead A sex slave in Asia somewhere Itinerant with no formal identity

Oh since we are no doubt aware that the CIA shipped drugs in several wars previously, such that this is a repeated behaviour, can anyone demonstrate anything that has changed in the organisation that would prevent this from happeneing again? Especially with all that temptation lying around in Afghanistan? Cheers.

But what do you suppose the odds are that all the Americans who will die from overdoses as a direct consequence of this wont be counted as casualties of the war? Not to mention those of other nationalities. The 'rehabilitation' of the N.A. would be funny if it wasm't for real. While I hold no cards for the Taliban, the N.A. are a bunch of thugs and IIRC were such a pain, that several villages welcomed the taliban because they were sick of all their women and girls getting raped all the time. Welcoming the Taliban, that speaks volumes. I actually heard the N.A. refered to as "Noble freedom fighters fighting for their countries future." on the commercial news once, nearly made me puke.

It would be the symbol for 'sho' with an accent marker to turn it into 'Jo', and then the japanese symbol for 'n'. Which would make it JoN. 2 syllables. Also since it's a name it would be in Katakana, not Hiragana I suspect. Cheers.

Hmm, I personally, think that China moving on Taiwan is about a million times more likely than China attacking Japan. I've also seen some of the Japanese warships, it may be a "Self Defense Force" but the Japanese seem to have chosen the most flexible interpretations of that when they've been able to. Japan may not be a miltary superpower, but it has a formidable miltary capability and is by no means a 'soft target'. Their lack of force projection capability wouldn't be a huge problem if their opponents were coming to them. Cheers.