ALP spin then and now

Robert Menzies according to ALP spin "Pig Iron Bob"
Robert Menzies according to ALP spin Brisbane Line
John Howard according to ALP spin Children Overboard Affair
Now Rudd/Swan according to ALP spin

Used car salesman supports Rudd

MTAA chief backs govt's car dealer story
How convenient.

PM’s office censor shut up message held

PM’s office censor shut up message held

A few days before the declaration of war, but when it was imminent, the Postal Department held up a cablegram, in cipher, from the Imperial German Government to the chief officer in German New Guinea. Should the message be transmitted? Had the Commonwealth Government a right to stop a communication from a power, with which Great Britain was not at war, to its agent? But the transmission of the message might, in the existing circumstances, be embarrassing to the British Government. It might contain directions affecting the movement of German ships of war, or orders concerning the defence of New Guinea or Samoa. The Minister for Defence conferred with the Governor- General and the Attorney-General, and it was determined to send a cablegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, stating the facts, and to close the direct cable line from all other communications till a reply was received. This was immediately done, and within a few hours the reply came, consisting of one word: " Hold." The message was held.

Later:

One day I was rung up by the Prime Minister’s office and asked to call there. His secretary put in my hands a letter which Graebner had been fool enough to post to a friend in Germany. and whlch had been opened by the censor. I read only the first page, and handed it back disgusted; for it was a tissue of lies about his treatment here and about Australia generally. I said, “Shut him up,” and they did, as doubtless they would have done without a word from me. The worst of it was that poor Pringsheim had to share his fate.

Murdoch changes sides?

As the Whitlam government began to lose public support following its re-election in 1974, Murdoch turned against Whitlam and supported the Governor-General's dismissal of the Prime Minister.

Rupert Murdoch has endorsed Labor leader Kevin Rudd, saying he would make a good Australian prime minister.

Now Murdoch press reports Car Grant.

Kev Car Grant

Kevin Rudd to launch investigation into OzCar affair
ETS now Kev Car Grant, True believers accept, sceptics not allowed to question.
Who judges who?

crotch soreness cyclists' genitals ouch

Doctor warns of possible damage to cyclists' genitals
A lot of people think crotch soreness is part of the sport - it really shouldn't be.

Austrians struck at Italians

First, just when General Diaz, after delay, and under pressure from Foch and Clemenceau, was about to attack the Austrians, the latter, on June 14th, struck at him, attacking both from the mountain front, where they were faced partly by the British and French contingents, and on a wide sector near the Adriatic.

All this while, through all the German strokes, Foch had never ceased to plan his Allied counter-stroke. He had hoped that the Allied armies in Salonica and Italy would strike in co-operation with him. But when he and Clemenceau had succeeded in inducing the Italian commander, Diaz, to agree to attack the Austrians, the Austrians on June 14th struck first, across the Piave River; and though they were quickly defeated - the Piave descending in flood behind them - all chance of effective Italian co-operation vanished.

Japan's 1944 Naval Battle Strategy

The "Z Plan" Story
Japan's 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part 2

Australia invades Syria

Chapter 17
THE FIRST DAY
8 June THE OPPOSING FORCES 359
At the end of the first day, however, it seemed evident that Syria would have to be won by military not political operations . The French had shown that they would resist. Consequently, since the French deployed 18 good battalions of regulars against 9 good Australian, Indian an d British battalions, and 6 Free French battalions of doubtful quality, the "armed political inroad" which Churchill had advocated was likely to develop into a hard-fought campaign.

bombardments of Sydney and Newcastle.

On Monday, 8th June, the Japanese submarines varied their attacks on the east coast of Australia by carrying out brief bombardments of Sydney and Newcastle. At 12.15 a.m. the Sydney examination vessel, H.M.A.S. Adele, sighted flashes of gunfire about nine miles S.E. by S. of Macquarie
78 AUSTRALIA'S COASTS RAIDED 8-12 Jun
Light, and approximately four miles east of Cape Banks. Between then and 12.20 a.m., ten shells, only four of which exploded, one harmlessly, fell in the Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill areas.

Both beaches on D plus 1 were still under enemy artillery fire.

Securing the Beachheads
Supreme in the air, the Allies began on D Day to build up a similarly crushing superiority on the ground. By the end of 6 June 1944 First Army had succeeded in landing most of eight and a third infantry regiments-only a little less than planned. For operations on 7 June five divisions were ashore and operational (although one, the 29th, lacked one of its regiments until later in the day). All of these divisions were seriously deficient in transport, tank support, artillery, and above all supplies. The worst situation was in the V Corps zone where, of 2,400 tons of supplies planned to be unloaded during D Day, only about 100 tons actually came in. Ammunition shortage was grave. Both beaches on D plus 1 were still under enemy artillery fire. On OMAHA pockets of enemy riflemen still held out at various points along the coast; beach obstacles, even after work by the engineers during low tide of the afternoon of D Day, were still only about a third cleared; beach exits had not been opened as scheduled nor vehicle parks established inland on the scale contemplated.

Rudd boats keep coming so Debus thrown overboard

Debus thrown overboard
But Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus and Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Jan McLucas are not in the new look front bench, under the changes announced in Brisbane today.

Mr Rudd said Mr Debus would not re-contest his NSW-based seat of Macquarie at the next election and would retire after nearly 28 years in NSW and federal politics.

The Invasion Is Launched

The Sixth of June
Cross-Channel Attack
The Airborne Assault
The time and place at least of the "large-scale landing" caught the Germans wholly by surprise.
Hitting the Beaches
While U.S. airborne troops dropped on the Cotentin and British paratroopers landed near Caen, the invasion fleet was bringing the main body of the Allied armies to the shores of Normandy.
In these first few hours on OMAHA Beach, the OVERLORD operation faced its gravest crisis.

D-Day 5 June 1944

On 8 May General Eisenhower set D Day for Y plus 4, or 5 June.
General Eisenhower cabled General Marshall on Saturday, 3 June: "We have almost an even chance of having pretty fair conditions . . . only marked deterioration . . . would discourage our plans." But marked deterioration was already in the cards. That Saturday evening Group Captain Stagg again came before the Supreme Commander and his commanders in chief who were meeting at Southwick House north of Portsmouth, the headquarters of Admiral Ramsay. Group Captain Stagg had bad news.
Not only would the weather on 5 June be overcast and stormy with high winds and a cloud base of 500 feet to zero, but the weather was of such a nature that forecasting more than twenty-four hours in advance was highly undependable. The long period of settled conditions was breaking up. It was decided, after discussion, to postpone decision for seven hours and in the meantime let Force U and part of Force O sail on schedule for their rendezvous for the June D Day.
At 0430 Sunday morning a second meeting was held at which it was predicted that the sea conditions would be slightly better than anticipated but that overcast would still not permit use of the air force. Although General Montgomery then expressed his willingness to go ahead with the operation as scheduled, General Eisenhower decided to postpone it for twenty-four hours. He felt that OVERLORD was going in with a very slim margin of ground superiority and that only the Allied supremacy in the air made it a sound operation of war. If the air could not operate, the landings should not be risked. A prearranged signal was sent out to the invasion fleet, many of whose convoys were already at sea. The ships turned back and prepared to rendezvous twenty-four hours later.
On Sunday night, 4 June, at 2130 the high command met again in the library of Southwick House. Group Captain Stag reported a marked change in the weather. A rain front over the assault area was expected to clear in two or three hours and the clearing would last until Tuesday morning.

Battle of Midway: 4-7 June 1942

The Battle of Midway, fought near the Central Pacific island of Midway, is considered the decisive battle of the war in the Pacific.

Sun is at a fifty year low.

Why has the Sun been so quiet recently?
No one is sure. Our Sun has shown few active regions -- that house even fewer associated sunspots -- for over a year now, and such a period of relative calm is quite unusual. What is well known is that our Sun is in a transitional period between solar cycles called a Solar Minimum, where solar activity has historically been reduced. The stark lack of surface tumult is unusual even during a Solar Minimum, however, and activity this low has not been seen for many decades. A few days ago, however, a bona-fide active region -- complete with sunspots --appeared and continues to rotate across the Sun's face. Visible above, this region, dubbed Active Region 1002 (AR 1002), was imaged in ultraviolet light yesterday by the SOHO spacecraft, which co-orbits the Sun near the Earth. Besides the tranquility on the Sun's surface, recent data from the Ulysses spacecraft, across the Solar System, indicate that the intensity of the solar wind blowing out from the Sun is at a fifty year low. Predictions hold, however, that our Sun will show more and more active regions containing more and more sunspots and flares until Solar Maximum occurs in about four years.

GM financially overextended again.

General Motors
In 1910, Durant became financially overextended and banking interests assumed control, forcing him from management of GM.