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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS THE PORT ARTHUR MASSACRE: SIGNS OF A CONSPIRACY? The debate over whether the tragic Port Arthur Massacre was part of a conspiracy to usher-in Federal gun laws in Australia has taken a dramatic turn. Prior to going to print with this issue in early March, we made contact with Andrew MacGregor, researcher and collator of information scheduled for public release in late March. It is important to note that this entire information release effort has been instigated by several survivors—in particular, Wendy Scurr, who was working at the Information Centre that day. It was Wendy Scurr who phoned the police and ambulance emergency numbers and held the phone out the door so that the disbelieving police officer could hear for himself the gunfire and chaos. It is clear from examining MacGregor's research (a sampling of which follows) that many unanswered questions remain regarding the actual events at Port Arthur, Tasmania, on Sunday 28 April 1996. Ed. ost Australians are only vaguely aware of the events that occurred at Port Arthur that fateful Sunday. We have been told that a gunman armed with a Colt ARIS semi-automatic rifle fired 29 rounds inside the Broad Arrow Café at Port Arthur, killing 20 and wounding another 12 of the approximately 60 people inside the café. It is also stated that the killer fired 17 shots, killing 12 and wounding another five victims in the first 15 seconds. The gunman then changed magazines and left the café, still firing the Colt AR15 until he changed firearms to a Belgian FN assault rifle and continued his assault, killing four and wounding five at the Port Arthur Historic Site carpark area. The gunman then drove towards the tollbooth, where he murdered Mrs Mikac and her two children, and then, at the tollbooth, stole a BMW after murdering the four occupants and shooting at other cars and their occupants who came upon the scene. The gunman then drove a short distance to the Port Arthur Service Station/General Store and kidnapped Glen Pears and murdered his companion, Zoe Hall. The gunman then drove north along the Arthur Highway and parked the BMW just off the highway, outside the entrance to Seascape Cottage. The BMW was next reportedly seen by John Rooke, who saw the vehicle diverge across the Arthur Highway and park outside the Seascape Cottage, and then saw the gunman start shooting at passing traffic. The gunman shot at six different vehicles as they passed the Seascape driveway, seriously wounding two persons, Linda White and Carol Williams (the wife of a Canadian Embassy official), with others receiving lesser injuries, mainly from broken glass, before withdrawing to the Seascape Cottage to pre- pare for the coming police siege. The following morning, Martin Bryant was arrested naked, after he had fled from a fiery Seascape Cottage unarmed, dressed in black and with his clothes alight. After he had fled the burning building, he vanished from view for a time while he removed his burning clothing. This supposed gunman had left his armoury behind. A total of 35 died and 22 were injured during the entire incident, including at Seascape Cottage. However, Wendy Scurr and some of the survivors tell a very differ- ent story and raise other questions: * Who lured the only two local policemen on duty to a remote location on the pretext of finding a heroin cache? It was not Martin Bryant. ¢ Why was the shootout considered a terrorist attack? It was at 1715 hours that the Tasmania Police phoned the Victoria Police, requesting immediate assistance for a ter- rorist attack. On the basis that the Tasmania Police had established that there was more than one shooter, the National Crisis Centre was notified at 1719 hours. * Why was ASIO present in a State jurisdiction for a "crazed gunman"? ASIO showed no presence at the Hoddle Street and Queen Street massacres in Melbourne. * Why was the Tasmania Police held back from attending the site for six hours? All this, while local volunteers there were assisting the wounded and stricken. * Above all, why does the official version continually differ significantly from the statements, the video evidence and eyewitness testimony? (Source: Extracted/edited from Andrew MacGregor's CD-ROM research compilation, Deceit and Terrorism: The Massacre at Port Arthur. Andrew MacGregor served in the Victoria Police for 17 years and was awarded the National Service Medal in 1985. He has no involvement with firearms or firearms organisations. The CD-ROM is available from 2012 Unlimited, PO Box 157, North Hobart, Tasmania 7002, Australia, telephone 041 988 2012 [Aust. only], website www.2012.com.au.) conditions of world trade now, it is a decision almost impossible to reverse." (Source: The Times, London, I March 2001. The author, Abigail Woods, is currently a Wellcome Trust-funded MSc student at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Manchester University, UK. She qualified as a vet in 1996.) SPIDER SILK FROM GOAT MILK: A GENETIC NIGHTMARE na concrete bunker on a mothballed Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York, two Nigerian dwarf goats named Mille and Muscade joyfully munch grass and slurp water. Oddly, they are protected from intruders by security guards and razor wire. Only 20 weeks old, these sister beasts warrant tight security because their milk is highly prized by the US military. Their 70,000-gene chromosomes have been manipulated to include a gene from the orb weaver, a small spider that spins the world's toughest natural material. Researchers are "growing" the spider's silk inside Mille and Muscade's mammary glands. These strands of silk, just three microns thick, are three times as tough as DuPont's bulletproof Kevlar. A woven cable as thick as your thumb can bear the weight of a jumbo jet. Once perfected, the silk will be used for featherweight ballistic vests, med- ical sutures and artificial ligaments. The goats represent a new avenue in the controversial field of transgenics, the sci- ence of splicing one species’ genes onto the genome of another. By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia Biotechnologies bred she- goats whose mammary glands are able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk. Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are fil- tered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread. Jeffrey Turner, the molecular geneticist behind the goat gambit and CEO of the publicly held Nexia Biotechnologies, got the idea while teaching at McGill University in Montreal in 1992, after learn- ing that scientists had isolated three spider genes that code for silk proteins. "It was a purely serendipitous find. The silk gland of spiders and the milk gland of goats are almost identical. Teats equal spinnerets." (Source: Forbes Global, 19 February 2001, www.forbes.com/global/2001/0219/061.html) APRIL — MAY 2001 NEXUS +9 www.nexusmagazine.com