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Plant to produce 1400 litres a second: The pilot plant will not produce fresh water but once it has been completed and successfully tested it will pave the way for the construction of the biggest desalination plant in the southern hemisphere. The completed plant will provide two-thirds of its desalinated water to BHP’s Olympic Dam, while the remainder will be pumped to Upper Spencer Gulf and some Eyre Peninsula residents. It will produce more than 1400 litres of water a second once completed.

Plant to be built within two months, trialled for 13: BHP expects the plant to be built within two months. Its chief operating officer of base metals, Roger Higgins, who is accompanying Premier Mike Rann during his weeklong tour of Chile, on 2 April 2007 said the system would be trialled for about 13 months. Pre-filtration equipment – which needs to be tested as it is the only component of any desalination plant that needs to be customised – will now be built by BHP on the Santos jetty at Port Bonython.

Will ease pressure off Murray: Premier Mike Rann said the plant – three times the size of the desalination plant he toured on 2 April 2007 – would help reduce the amount of water being taken from the ailing River Murray.

The Advertiser, 3/4/2007, p.6

Muttonbirds are migratory birds, negotiating a 30,000 km round-trip every year in order to breed in the same burrow in southeast Australia.  This year’s shearwater hunting season will run from 31 March until 15 April. 

Animals Australia Executive Director, Glenys Oogjes, said, “Instead of being welcomed as an addition to Tasmanian wildlife, the chicks hatched in Tasmania will be taken from their borrows and brutally killed.  That they are killed simply for fun is appalling.”

During the recreational hunt, amateur ‘muttonbirders’ are permitted to remove and kill up to 25 chicks per day for the duration of the16-day open season; based on the 2006 figure of 1,058 hunter permits, this means that the Tasmanian government is permitting the potential annual slaughter of more than 420,000 chicks.   More than 200,000 more birds are permitted to be killed for the commercial hunt. 

Despite its status as an abundant species, the short-tailed shearwater is, like much of Australia’s wildlife, in danger from habitat loss and food shortages caused by global warming meaning that there is no guarantee of the long-term survival of the species.  In addition to the hundreds of thousands of birds killed in Tasmania, many thousands more die in fishing nets and in storms during migration.  There is also serious concern for the sustainability of the recreational hunt because of the enormous damage done to the fragile rookeries and sand dunes by muttonbirders. 

Ms Oogjes concluded, “The Tasmanian government must act to end this unjustified slaughter of these extraordinary birds. It is a dreadful blight on the image of Tasmania that birds that fly 15,000 kms to find a safe haven to hatch their chicks  in their state are rewarded with the brutal killing of their young.

“The Tasmanian government must come into line with current thinking and end this hunt. 

“Following their huge journey to Australia, these birds should be rewarded with protection, not met with a massacre”. 

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

By Terry Jones

03/31/07 "The Guardian" — — I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world – have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Of course they’d probably find it even harder to breathe – especially with a bag over their head – but at least they wouldn’t be humiliated.
And what’s all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It’s time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That’s one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn’t rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it’s just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What’s more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It’s all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer – whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python – www.terry-jones.net

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

On March 17, Uncle Joe shaved his head to help raise funds for the Leukemia foundation. Here are the before and after pictures. Sponsor Uncle Joe by clicking here

Before	After

Below is an unofficial translation of a press release issued by Homo et Natura and the Wayuu and Yukpa communities:

By Presidential Decree, the Environmental Minister Prohibits New Coal Mines in Zulia State

Caracas, March 21, 2007. By presidential decree, the Environmental Minister Yubiri Ortega de Carrizalez announced yesterday to the Yukpa and Wayuu indigenous peoples of the Sierra de Perija that opening new coal mines in the state of Zulia is prohibited, as well as the expansion of the existing Guasare and Paso Diablo mines.

Yesterday, indigenous people from Perija and the social and environmental movements that were protesting against the coal mines at the Ministry felt that we had buried in Caracas the ghost of coal and its threats against the indigenous peoples of Zulia state. However, until the mining concessions are canceled by decree, we will continue this struggle.

“We are very hopeful,” said the Environmental Minister to the Yukpa and Wayuu leaders, Homo et Natura and the alternative media, “because the president has ordered a new model of development for the region encompassing ecology, agriculture, tourism and sustainable development.”

We know that the powerful multinational mining interests in Zulia will keep trying to keep their mega-coal project alive, whatever the cost. Questions remail about the future of the Nigales Bridge, Bolivar Port and the Zulia railroads, all of which were designed to carry coal….

If coal mines — which represent the grief of thousands of families that have lost their children and husbands, suffered poverty and contamination of their soil, air and water, lost their forests, rivers, vegetation – are stopped forever,

If the Venezuelan state decrees finally that mines will be defeated and replaced by agriculture, sustainable grazing, in favor of life, we will find the eyes of the world seeing an exemplary act of social justice and the beginning of necessary change.

Coal mines already destroyed whole communities in Mara, destroyed the forests and rivers in their way, left the Bari indigenous people without lands, and brought indigenous leaders to their knees for decades, making their own people feel ashamed of them. By saying today “Not one more mine in Zulia state,” president Hugo Chavez brings back hope for the future of the indigenous peoples of the Sierra de Perija and for life itself. Now we await the decree that will defeat forever this black curse….”