No it is not April Fool’s Day. 

This is a true news story, this time from the Land Down Under.  By the way, I am terrified of salt water crocodiles, no other animal scares me like a “salty.”  Luckily I live in Victoria and we don’t generally have them wandering around in our school yards down our way.

Croc in custody after schoolyard visit

ABC News

04/04/08

A large saltwater crocodile has spent five days in police custody after being caught lurking around a schoolyard on Queensland's Cape York.

The reptile was apprehended in a trap by wildlife officers, but the problem was the animal was too big too airlift and police had to provide some local, secure accommodation.

Police have also confirmed they are looking for a second offender - another crocodile was also seen in the vicinity of the school.

One of the arresting officers, Sergeant Glenn Smith, says Parks and Wildlife were responding to a complaint about the crocodiles at the school at Injinoo.

"They've come down and set a trap for it. They've actually caught this croc the same night and brought it out, and they needed to make arrangements for its transportation down to Cairns," he said.

"So of course they had to stay somewhere and we just volunteered our services, and what was available was underneath one of the residences here at the police station, and we just put it in there under lock and key."

Sgt Smith says the crocodile was relatively well-behaved.

"I don't think he liked me. It was pretty quiet in there, he moved around a little bit as they do because they get a bit lively during the night," he said.

"We thought about putting him in the watch-house, but we had a look at that and then we had a look and thought, 'Okay, well there was only one door in and one door out, so if we get him in, we've got to get past him', so that wasn't a good idea.

"So we just left him in the cage and underneath the house, and he was catered for there. We just kept him hosed down.

"It was a good spot actually, because it was flat and we had the hose there... we could lock [the croc] up, and really keep an eye on him as well.

"You have to keep them a little bit moist from time to time, and they spend most of their nights in the water searching for food, so you just keep them wet."

Sgt Smith says the crocodile did not cause too much trouble at the school.

"[It was] just a bit worrying. The bigger one is still out there, and they've reset a trap for him, but he's a little bit more cunning, this fellow," he said.

"I was at the school this morning when the school opens, he seems to pop his head up and have a look.

"As I said, we've had reports when the school bell goes, he sticks his head up and has a little bit of a look. So obviously, he's a little bit more aware and a bit more cunning, and we're not too sure how long it'll take to catch this one."

Radio Audio Interview

Don't you just love a true news story that seems so bizarre that it couldn't possibly be true, well this is just one of those stories.  This is taken from our reliable news source, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, so it should be a ridgy didge story.

Bear convicted of stealing honey

A Macedonian court convicted a bear of theft and damage for stealing honey from a beekeeper who fought off the attacks with thumping "turbo-folk" music.

"I tried to distract the bear with lights and music because I heard bears are afraid of that," Zoran Kiseloski told top-selling daily Dnevnik after the year-long case of the bear vs the beekeeper ended in the beekeeper's favour.

"So I bought a generator, lit up the area and put on songs of (Serbian 'turbo-folk' star) Ceca."

The bear stayed away for a few weeks, but came back when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, Mr Kiseloski said, adding, "it attacked the beehives again."

A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars ($3,550) damage it caused to the hives.

There was no information on the whereabouts of the bear.

Pooh found guilty

When Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds whose birth parents are West Indian (Afro-Caribbean decent) batted in India recently, he was racially abused by some of the Indian spectators with taunts calling him a monkey and had "ape like" gestures directed at him.   Initially the Board of Control for Cricket in India and local media dismissed the allegations and only acknowledged the racist vitriol directed at Symonds following the worldwide publication of damning photographs. Board officials initially even suggested that the Australians misunderstood the crowd’s gestures.  Members of the crowd were captured imitating monkeys on Wednesday night at Wankhede Stadium when Symonds went out to bat, leaving the BCCI little choice but to act and crack down on the racially abusive behaviour.

To Symonds’s credit he remained unflappable in the face of the provocative crowd behaviour and let the team management handle it without lodging an official complaint.

I find the whole racist thing based on skin colour just so absurd.  The whole hierarchy of skin colour is ridiculous. Lighter skinned races or even lighter skinned people of the same race feel it is okay to be racist to people of darker colour, but they hate white folk being racist towards them based on skin colour - they can't have it both ways, it is so absolutely hypocritical.  Of course in predominantly darker skinned nations there can be just as much prejudice against people of lighter skin colour.

What a load of complete rubbish.

It is the person inside that matters not their skin.

That is my rant for the day.

If the following comments were said in Australia’s Parliament House while parliament was in session would they be deemed to be anti-Semitic?

There are “too many Jewish temples in this country. MP. …………..

A Jewish member of parliament was not what was imagined when Australia became a federation.” MP. …………; he also objected to opening Parliament with a Buddhist prayer.

If Australians don’t wake up, there will likely be many more Jews elected to parliament and demanding the use of the Torah. MP ………..

They sound anti-Semitic to me, but what do you think?

I also find the following bits of news over the past week to be anti – Semitic.

Anti-Semitic remarks rankle Jews in probe of Australian Jewish mogul

SYDNEY (JTA) – Australian Jews are up in arms after an investigation into a major price-fixing scandal involving a Jewish mogul exposed a blatantly anti-Semitic exchange between two high-ranking business executives.

The transcript of remarks by two former executives of Amcor, one of the world’s biggest packaging companies, is among the evidence collected by a corporate watchdog group against the cardboard-recycling company of Jewish billionaire Richard Pratt, Visy Industries. Pratt has admitted that Visy illegally colluded with its main rival, Amcor, in a price-fixing scheme between 2000 and 2004.

According to the transcript, recorded in 2002 and published Tuesday by The Age newspaper, Amcor’s former managing director of Australasia operations, Peter Brown, was discussing Pratt’s company with his colleague, senior executive Jim Hodgson, when Brown allegedly said: “You know what the Jews are like. No wonder they own half the world.”

Hodgson apparently replied: “And you wonder why, ah, Hitler wanted to stitch them up, too.”

Hodgson then said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “That whole thing is about oil, isn't it? And the New York Jewish lobby.”

(Source and full article)

Then of course Ann Coulter the satirical comedian who loves to make an absolute mockery of the right winged conservatives, got herself in a bit of trouble when she went a bit to far in her use of satire on "The Big Idea," a talk show aired on CNBC. At one point, Deutsch (the interviewer) asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everyone was "a Christian." Deutsch, who happens to be Jewish, protested that Coulter was advocating his people's elimination. She responded that she simply hoped to see Jews "perfected" through conversion to Christianity.

This televised conversation has rightly caused a stir and as displayed below, so it should have.

Coulter's anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore

LA Times

Perhaps the best response came from the Anti-Defamation League, which called Coulter's comments "outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. The notion that Jews are religiously inferior or imperfect because they do not accept Christian beliefs was the basis for 2,000 years of church-based anti-Semitism. While she is entitled to her beliefs, using mainstream media to espouse the idea that Judaism needs to be replaced with Christianity and that each individual Jew is somehow deficient and needs to be "perfected" is rank Christian supersessionism and has been rejected by the Catholic Church and the vast majority of mainstream Christian denominations. Clearly, Ann Coulter needs a wake-up call about the power of words to injure others and fuel hatred. She needs an education, too, about the roots of anti-Semitism."

That she does. As the league points out, "supersessionism," the theological notion that Christianity "completes" or "perfects" Judaism is, along with the deicide libel, anti-Semitism's major theological underpinning. Indeed, in Central and Western Europe between the world wars, there was a substantial body of purportedly "respectable" intellectual opinion that held "supersessionism" made possible a "reasonable" theological anti-Semitism that was entirely licit, as opposed to the Nazis' and fascists' illicit, "racially based" anti-Semitism. It is fair to say that the rails leading to Auschwitz were greased by precisely the opinion Coulter expressed on American television this week.

(Source and full article)

Oh excuse my Aussie ignorance, apparently Ann Coulter is not a satirical comedian after all, that is her being normal.

Really?????

You're joking?????

Gee I thought she was hysterically funny.  I mean she did quote Seinfeld as a reliable source.

You mean I am supposed to take her seriously??????

I think I prefer her as a comedian!.

Five Generals and soldiers jailed for refusing to shoot monks

Burma's ruling junta have detained five generals and more than 400 soldiers for disobeying orders to shoot and beat monks and other activists who took part in recent protests in Rangoon, an official said Monday.

The official, who asked for anonymity out of fear he would be punished by the junta, said it was the first sign of divisions in the country's secretive establishment.

"The five generals expressed their refusal to deploy their troops against the monks openly. They were then quickly put into detention by the junta.

"Some 400 soldiers of the Saigaing Division near Mandalay also put down their guns in front of the monks, and asked for their forgiveness as they fully realized they had committed the biggest sin," he told The Jakarta Post.

The official refused to disclose the names of the generals or give further details on where the generals and the soldiers were detained.

Following Burma's recent wave of anti-government demonstrations, which drew more than 100,000 protesters at its peak last week and saw the military shooting at civilians and monks, the Burmese administration announced that 10 people, including a Japanese photographer, had been killed during the protests.

Foreign diplomats and Burmese dissidents said the true death toll was much higher.

The official said that most civil servants like himself did not like what the junta had done to the monks but were too afraid too show their feelings.

"Monks are a symbol of our religion and our life. People are very angry that the military dared to shoot them. It is considered the biggest sin to kill monks," the official said.

He said that many civil servants and other workers were beginning to quietly express their dissatisfaction by staying at home and not working.

Shwe Myo Thant, secretary-general of the Chiang Mae-based Nationalities Youth Program, an organization of 12 ethnic groups working to empower Burmese people, agreed that many workers were boycotting the junta by staying home.

"They want to show the military that they disagree with the violent crackdown. By not working, we hope that they can put more pressure on the junta to open dialog. Beside the civil servants and the workers, the monks are also continuing their protest inside their monasteries by staying silent and refusing to pray for the government," he told the Post on Sunday at his office in Chiang Mae.

Analysts have speculated that the disobedience of some military generals could be the beginning of cracks inside the military establishment, leading to civilians taking power in a manner similar to the events in Indonesia during the May 1998 riots, which led to the fall of Soeharto.

Below are some excellent links for news regarding Burma:

Burma Project
A huge resource on Burma, funded by the Soros foundation. Hosts Burma News Update, an alternative news source, as well as reports, links and more on opposition groups and other current affairs.

Burma News Update

Democratic Voice of Burma
Norway-based radio station, broadcasting in Burmese. Has news updates in English.

Mizzima
Independent agency.

National coalition government of the union of Burma
Parliament in exile.

Free Burma image 4

What Burma wants from the world

Tuesday 9^th October 2007

BBC News

The BBC News website's Kate McGeown has just returned from visiting Burma. Here she assesses what the Burmese people want from the international community.

In the wake of the military crackdown on unarmed monks in Burma, the world's leaders are once again discussing how to deal with the country's repressive regime.

After meeting the senior generals in their new capital, Naypyidaw, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari warned that there could be "serious international repercussions" as a result of the recent bloodshed.

The US has already toughened its sanctions against Burma, and the EU is set to follow suit.

But far away from the world's debating chambers and boardrooms where their future is being discussed, the people of Burma have slightly different priorities.

"We would like to have democracy, but the most important thing for us is to have peace, and enough food on our plates," one woman said.

Sanction drawbacks

Burma is a country that is desperately poor. According to recent international estimates, 32% of the population live below the poverty line and, excluding a small rich elite, the rest are only just above it.

I saw signs of poverty everywhere in Rangoon - children with distended stomachs, people scavenging through rubbish and families buying coal to cook on open fires, owing to the intermittent and expensive electricity supply.

Signs of poverty on the streets of Rangoon AP

Outside the major cities, the situation is far worse.

Foreigners are rarely allowed into the northern and eastern states, but reports from refugees who have left these areas suggest conditions are on a par with the worst parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Unsurprisingly, the main thing most Burmese people want is an improvement in their standard of living.

As a result, many Burmese are sceptical of sanctions, saying they have already made the country poor and will only make the situation worse if they are tightened further.

"Sanctions don't work - they're not the solution," one elderly man said to me in a Rangoon teashop, as we discussed Burma's future.

Walking around the city, watching the Japanese and Chinese cars go by, and looking at the plethora of Chinese and Indian goods on sale, it is easy to see how he has drawn this conclusion.

The US and EU sanctions that are already in place have undoubtedly affected Burma's overall economy, but they do not seem to have done much harm to the rich military generals, who are busy making deals with the rest of Asia.

Let down?

While they might not favour sanctions, the people of Burma definitely want the international community's help in other ways.

Many of those who telephoned the UN during the crackdown asked why no-one was sending a peacekeeping force.

I was faced with a similar question when I was in Burma last year. "Why have the US and the UK invaded Iraq, and not done the same here?" one man asked me at the time.

After the events of recent weeks, some Burmese people feel let down by the outside world.

"The international community did nothing to stop a three-day killing spree," one woman said. "That was when I realised we were on our own."

Click here for more

Free Burma image 3

2007-10-03

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the BBC. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

A 3-minute slideshow of ordinary arabs over a soundtrack of media branding them as terrorists.