Quote Of The Day

Lord Nicholas Stern:

"It's really nice to be outside of politics so you can refer to people like John Howard as appalling."

Back On TV: Howard's Old Ethanol Mate

Remember Dick Honan, the Manildra CEO who in 2003 secured government subsidies for ethanol production after donating more than $300,000 to the Liberal Party? Alan Ramsey called it "the ultimate in old-fashioned driveway service: $30.86 million of public money in 16 months".

Although Howard initially denied meeting Honan, it was later revealed that the pair had at least seven face-to-face meetings.

Despite the scandal, however, the ethanol subsidies remained in place. Cars started sporting ETH-NOL bumper stickers and the stigma attached to the word disappeared as the need for alternative fuel sources became clearer. There was limited opposition to mandatory ethanol blending, and even many die-hard Greens were on board for the ride.

In 2006, Howard government introduced legislation that compensated producers for a 38.14c-a-litre excise on ethanol. Now the whole program is under review. But don't expect a big slap-down for Dick Honan:

In recent years, Manildra has been far more even-handed, and in 2006-07 Mr Honan gave $347,000 to Labor and $244,000 to the Coalition.

There are many problems associated with Ethanol as an alternative fuel source, but the major one today is that when farmers stop growing food to produce ethanol, it drives up the cost of food. But the CEO of the Dalby Bio Refinery, a man with the unfortunate name of Kevin Andrews, is having none of that:

"The price of rice has doubled in recent weeks and not one drop of alcohol for biofuels has come from rice."

Of course, the price of rice has doubled because land is being farmed for other purposes, and because the price of other staple foods has doubled, sparking riots in many parts of the world. So why are these big Aussie refiners still being disingenuous?

The push for agrofuels is driven by the same vested interests that have pushed fossil fuel addiction — and now seek to increasingly replace fossil fuels with biofuels without altering the highly unjust and unsustainable global system that got us into this mess in the first place.

The solution to this mess is second generation biofuels, biofuels produced from non-arable land, and other alternative energy sources. If we approach this problem energetically, scientifically and morally, we can simultaneously help solve our global warming predicament. The moment is now!

Faith, Money, Greed, Bubbles, Karma and Despair

The Reuters headline says it all: "Fed tone may send food and gasoline prices higher". See? It's not the economic realities that drive the interest rate cut, it's the tone of those who deliver it that's the problem. Talk about shooting the messenger.

The increases in food and fuel costs have triggered protests around the globe.

"There had been so much hope that they would say something that would give us some sort of indication that they were done with this insanity," said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover.

So what do US fund managers like Peter Beutel do in this climate of fear and uncertainty? Do they tuck their heads in and promise to take a more responsible stance in future deals? No, they look for a new opportunity to exploit. And the new buzzwords are "Emerging Markets" even though analysts admit such investments are already over-priced:

"This bubble, like all bubbles, will not be justified by long-term value but at least will be one of the least flaky bubble cases ever," Grantham, chairman of fund manager GMO, wrote in a note to clients.

"Perhaps once in a career any self respecting strategist, even a one trick "mean reversion" one like GMO, should have a go at predicting a major divergence, a true bubble. And this is ours."

And when that bubble pops, it will be all the Fed's fault too.

Wanker Of The Day

Former Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Dibb is obviously worried about cuts to his old Department's budget. He says Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith is being "complacent" about national security in "our part of the world":

Some of the world's major concentrations of military power and potential hot spots are in Asia: for example on the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Straits and between India and Pakistan.

But are Korea, Taiwan, India and Pakistan really "our" part of the world? Does Australia really need to get involved in these countries' problems, assuming they ever do flare up into war?

The region now spends more than $285 billion a year on defence (more than NATO, excluding the US) with China alone accounting for $128 billion of this amount (next come Japan with $43 billion, South Korea with $26 billion and India with $24 billion).

Yes but US military spending dwarfs all that, and Australia is right up there (particularly on a per capita basis).

At least one former defence minister, Kim Beazley, thinks a regional arms race is taking place.

Well, he would, wouldn't he? Beazley is just another of the military spending racketeer mobsters in Canberra. And these guys are terrified that Australians might start to realise that the biggest threat to our national security is actually our own aggression towards others.

In the forthcoming Defence white paper it is important that we do not allow our advanced conventional war-fighting capabilities to be sacrificed on the altar of the trendy, so-called new security agenda.

In other words, we need to keep pretending that Indonesia might invade us any day, that China might nuke Darwin next Friday, and that tanks, aircraft, ships and guns are the way to defeat the threat of terrorism. What a load of bollocks.

Pack it in, Paul, and get a real job.

My Life As A "23 Year Old Student Activist"

I mean what sort of loser even reads Mike Whitney:

Yesterday, when Wright took the podium at the National Press Club, he knew he'd be taken to task no matter what he said. He knew that every word he uttered would be twisted by the media to make him look like a hate-monger, or worse, a racist. But Wright faced his critics with dignity and delivered another barnburner. By the end of the speech, everyone in attendance was on their feet applauding wildly for the man the corporate media has chosen to destroy.

You can watch the full video of Wright's speech here (not the edited FOX version) and make up your own mind about whether the man is insane, or just speaking the truth that people in power (and others) don't want to hear.

It's a pity Obama didn't stick with Wright: he would have lost the Dem nomination, of course, but he could have taken a big slice of the Party out the door with him, maybe joined up with Al Gore, and launched a successful White House bid as an independent.

But like Atrios says today:

This election is going to be much much stupider than the last time. Last time much of the stupid was at least nominally about serious issues, this time it's just all about the stupid.

Sometimes life's like that, isn't it?

Who Are We? Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?

Elizabeth Farrelly asks the question:

If you were writing the screenplay Australia, we'd be just at the point, about one-third the way in, where the desire line splits. Where Luke Skywalker must decide whether to stay with his childless rels or follow his dream. Where Simba must choose between running away and confronting his destiny. Where the main character - Australia - must face its defining dilemma. What dilemma, where? What's to decide when it seems we might be the only country unaffected by the coming recession? Where's the problem in that?

She could be talking about War Crimes, our continued support of the criminals in Washington, or a host of other important issues. But she's talking specifically about fossil fuels:

Our future wealth, so gleefully proclaimed, depends on selling fossil fuels - oil, gas, coal - to as many people as possible as hard and as long as possible. But our future survival depends on reducing global use of these same fuels, as much as possible, immediately.

... [W]e - on this vast sunny, wind-washed island, abounding with next-century's energy sources, with the necessary space, stability and nous - we also have a responsibility to make it happen. This is our destiny path, as inconvenient as destiny generally is. More exciting than the other but also more testing, it may be our last chance to really stand for something, and it leads - if we have the bottle for it - to the light on the hill.

I have often thought that Australia is in a unique position to take the lead on a host of big 21st Century issues, given our wealth, geography and ethnic mix. Think immigration, defence, education, health, research... In the end, it's our own human greed, fear and other failings that hold us back.

Farrelly mentions the thorny issue of a Bill Of Rights, which would certainly complicate further immoral government decision-making on our behalf. Jack Waterford at The Canberra Times today also considers the issue:

I have myself been sceptical of the need. But I am changing my mind again, because our politicians are not showing themselves great instinctive protectors of rights, just when they are needed. Certainly not Carr or Hatzistergos. Or previously John Howard and Philip Ruddock, in actions scarcely criticised by those who have now succeeded them. And not only over terrorism and refugee issues but also in developing or exploiting moral panic about the state of crime or vice.

The risks are being aggravated by the ever-outreaching power of executive government, by the supine position into which legislatures have been put by modern executives, and by the coordination of incumbency and spin to overwhelm popular criticism. It's not parliamentary rule we ought to fear, but increasingly arbitrary and unaccountable rule by executive government...

The fiction ought to be that power comes from the people, and that the powers of government, at whatever level, or in whatever branch, are only those they have been given... It is a fiction, because in history, particularly British history, the rights of which we boast were ones seized from kings, occasionally by beheading them.

Yes, but that's because the kings seized them from US in the first place! Our human power as individuals, or united as a group, is a God-given right. As Nelson Mandela once said:

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, fabulous, gorgeous, talented? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that's within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we automatically give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others."

Dilbert For President

Tony Abbott reckons Rudd "runs a serious risk of becoming Barack Obama without the cadences". Does Rupert hand out brownie points every time someone bitch-slaps Obama these days?

And why is the Mad Monk getting air-time in the Orifice today, rather than his usual Fairfax press hole? Is it because he is now an irrelevant has-been?

Anyway, Tony's still angry about lots of things. He obviously didn't enjoy Rudd's "bland" address to the Sydney Institute:

John Howard would never have served up such flapdoodle and rightly would have been crucified if he had.

Jesus Christ, Tony! Get a grip, mate. You're the only one who ever got a hard-on watching Howard.

Here's the Mad Monk's stunning conclusion:

If the Government wins a second term, expect a 2012 handover to Julia Gillard, who will then have to decide which inquiry recommendations to implement.

Anybody wanna put money on that one? Anyone...? How about all you Liberals who lost money Costello? Nah...?

What a wanker. But Abbott is outdone in the Murdoch meejah today by the WSJ's Brett Stephens (reprinted in the OO), who insists that Afghanistan is going great guns, despite all the death, poverty, drugs and violence:

Afghanistan has 34 provinces. Twenty-nine of them are more or less at peace, more or less better off than they were six years ago, and more or less governed by someone their own people can live with.

Talk about yer "measurable goals"! Stephens' clear message is that you just cannot trust the media: "things really are getting better in Afghanistan, even if the headlines suggest otherwise". You just gotta have faith, bro'!

Stephens evidently has lots of faith. He also insists that the USA is not in decline. Not financially, not militarily in Iraq, and not even as a global "brand":

[E]ach of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection.

Yep, "a moment's inspection" is all you need, as Stephens throws around some big "back-of-the-envelope" numbers (from Josef Joffe's 2006 book "Überpower") and concludes the US economy is really going great guns (anyone wanna put money on that?). The same goes for US Defence Department spending, which implicitly means that the War In Iraq is going great too. Whoo hoo! I can feel the power!

Finally there is the issue of our allegedly squandered prestige in the world. There is no doubt America's "popularity," as measured by various global opinion surveys, has fallen in recent years. What's striking, however, is how little of this has mattered in terms of the domestic political choices of other countries or the consequences for the U.S.

So, OK, yes, US global prestige IS on the decline - it just doesn't matter. Because US billionaires like Rupert Murdoch still have lots and lots of money to pay wankers and fools like this.

Insiders

Thanks to an anonymous reader for the following email:

Gandhi,

Your repeated demands for accountability are not likely to see much response until the next election comes into play. Across government departments, new Rudd appointees are warehousing evidence that may incriminate former Howard ministers (or themselves?) but nothing is going to be announced in a hurry.

DFAT staffers assume there is an office in Canberra where party apparatchiks are trawling the details, looking for ammunition they can use without burning their fingers. As you noted on Iraq, Rudd is walking a thin line: he doesn't want full-scale investigations on multiple fronts in the public eye, where who knows what might come out. Besides, as Tony Kevin recently noted in newmatilda.com, there is a lot of bureaucratic push-back going on.

Expect to see limited inquiries launched prior to the next election, with limited news leaks (just enough to damage the Coalition and win another three years. Don't expect significant change of government direction: inquiries will wind up without major charges, just some serious embarrassment to the old guard.

Don't expect significant shift on the US alliance either: a change in Washington will not change much of substance here. Budget and trade are the big priorities. Plus ca change...

Regards etc.

Here's a link to the article by Tony Kevin in New Matilda which my source references:

To be a good international citizen and actively committed UN member has returned as a major aim of Australian foreign policy.

But are sections of the Australian foreign policy and national security bureaucracies still living, by force of habit, in a world mainly defined by fear?...

Does Prime Minister Rudd want to turn the new orthodoxy around, to restore the kind of capable and often inspired professional foreign policy style that Australia enjoyed before 1996? Or have he and his ministers become so used to national security agencies' dominance of Australia's foreign policy, that they can't see how stultifying narrow and vision-limiting it is?

These questions are still unanswered. On border security, the war in Afghanistan, Defence strategic doctrine, regional and domestic counter-terrorism, South Pacific pol-mil interventionism, we still inhabit the politics of fear. It seems odd that while we are still in so many ways living in that world, Rudd seriously thinks we could be elected to a seat in the UN Security Council in 2012. He will be pushing uphill, I fear, unless he can bring about real cultural change at home.

World Government, Anyone?

You too can become a World Citizen.

As founder Garry Davis says (click the audio):

"We are not FOR World Peace - we are already AT World Peace."

Davis is a former WWII bomber who renounced his American citizenship in Paris in 1948 to become a "citizen of the world." He founded the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris in January, 1949, with support from writers Albert Camus and André Gide and the Abbé Pierre.

For an 87-year-old, Davis also has a pretty witty blog:

Hello. (Yawning) What's up Garry? This is a helluva time to call.
But Madame, you practically ran on the 3 am call.
All right, all right! So what's so important it disturbs my sleep?
Well, Madame President, I thought you should be the first to know.
Know what? This better be good.
The World Parliament in Tasmania just passed a resolution outlawing war ten minutes ago.

The Zionist Love-Fest Continues

Australia's out-going governor-general Michael Jefferey attended the opening of a war monument in Israel yesterday. The Park of the Australian Soldier in Beersheba is a gift from the Pratt Foundation:

Asked at the end of the military ceremony how he felt, Richard Pratt - who had been thanked many times over by many people - told The Jerusalem Post that he was flattered.

"Why do you feel flattered? You paid for it," he was asked.

"Yes," replied Pratt, "but you pay for a lot of things, and people don't always remember to say thank you."

Ungrateful bastards! Not like Israeli president Shimon Peres, who praised Australia, "which despite not having fought a war on its own territory, had taken on the responsibility of caring for other people's security and independence without asking for anything in return". Oi! Oi! Oi Vay!

Jefferey also appreciated that four Jewish National Fund forests bear the names of Australian leaders. Three are named for former prime ministers Robert Menzies, Bob Hawke and John Howard, and one for former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowan.

Let's not forget that Hawkey was just one of many politicians on Richard Pratt's payroll. And now Pratt, who forfeited less than one percent of his $5.3 billion fortune when convicted of price-fixing, is paying John Howard for speeches:

Markson, the author of Show Me the Money, would not divulge how much money the Pratts had to show Howard for his speaking fee. "That's all confidential. Sorry," he said.

It is NOT anti-Semitic to note that Richard Pratt (born Przecicki) is Jewish. It is NOT anti-Semitic to note that militant Zionists like Rupert Murdoch and Sam Lipski, the CEO of the Pratt Foundation, have a strangle-hold on the Australian media.

But maybe all that helps explain why the Australian media don't want to talk about War Crimes, and why critics like me get "we know where you live" home visits from Israeli agents.

UPDATE: Of course it's not all one-way traffic in the Australian media. Via outstanding Aussie journo-blogger Antony Loewenstein, this SMH story by Peter Manning is a welcome departure from the norm:

... And in Pappe's latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2006), he draws from the archives of David Ben-Gurion, Haganah and Irgun papers and other sources to reveal how deliberate and articulated was the famous Plan Dalet of March 10, 1948 - the plan by Jewish leaders to ethnically cleanse Arab cities (like Haifa and Jaffa) and villages getting in the way of the creation of the Jewish state.

The result was a series of massacres during April and May 1948, the most important in Deir Yassin on April 9. Jewish soldiers burst into the village and sprayed it with gunfire. Those not dead were gathered together and shot. A number of the women were allegedly raped and then shot. Ninety-three villagers were reported to have died.

The Herald of April 10, 12, and 13, 1948, reported the horror as "Jewish terrorism"...

Jewish Australians were made to feel, once again, acknowledged and proud by their federal Christian leaders on March 12. Arab and Palestinian Australians, also damaged by their history, were left feeling outsiders, abandoned, in exile, just as a new government arrived so full of hope and promise.

It would be good if Rudd in May could redress the balance.

A National Hero

China Daily covers the torch relay in Japan:

I could spot no Tibetan on the pro-separatist side, which comprised a purely Japanese-speaking community. Aside from the "snow-lion" flags, there were a lot of Japanese right-wing flags and anti-China slogans.

When a Chinese youth with a five-star red flag mark painted on his cheek passed by the anti-Chinese protestors, several of them screamed and pounced on the lad, covering him with fists and kicks.

My first reaction was a shout of "Tamu!" (No!) And I tried to stop them. But they continued kicking the young man before the police came.

The Chinese young man never hit back. "Be restrained", I heard him shouting to his friends. "We must be civilized!"

He kept standing despite the beating, and was never subdued...

I unbuttoned my overcoat and bore the slogan printed on my T-shirt, which says: "Defend the Olympic Torch!" I strolled in front of the pro-secessionists, and the police quickly drew me away.

Amid the applause of my own people, I returned to the Chinese arrays. Tears rolled down as I saw the five-star red flags in our ranks.

Going through all this, I am convinced that I am on the side of justice.

Tom the Dancing Bug

Just remember: we're still (always) the good guys.

Time To Get Out Of Afghanistan

It appears [ now confirmed: see below] another Australian soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, where things have long been going from bad to worse.

The Reuters photo above shows Afghan troops racing from a Kabul parade ground yesterday when the Taliban launched a brazen attack: bullets struck the back of a stage where Karzai was standing with the British and US envoys.

Juan Cole has video and reminds us that the Central Asia gas fields explain Bushco's interest in Afghanistan.

Ironically, Karzai just called on Coalition troops to stop arresting Taliban insurgents:

'We have to make sure that when a Talib comes to Afghanistan ... he is safe from arrest by the coalition.'

Karzai is facing re-election and this time he cannot win by pushing the Western propaganda line. Like Iraq, this war is over: our governments and media elites just haven't admitted it yet.

UPDATE: Yer military language:

"He died during the conduct of a patrol which was engaged by Taliban extremists in Oruzgan province approximately 25km to the south-east of Tarin Kowt. The engagement in which he died was characterised by a heavy exchange of small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. Four other soldiers were wounded by small arms fire in the same action."

Jason Marks, aged 27, from Broken Hill and Yeppoon, leaves behind a grieving wife and two small children.

From Wikipedia:

Tarin Kowt is the capital of Oruzgan (also written "Uruzgan") province in southern Afghanistan. It is a small and dusty town of about 10,000 people, with some 200 small shops in the city's bazaar. There are no medium- or large-scale economic enterprises in the city. The provincial governor, currently Asadullah Hamdam, lives and works in a compound adjacent to the bazaar. There is also a population of about 2000 Arabs mainly of Iraqi origin in the town.

Just a little visual reminder of why Aussie troops are (still) over there:



LATER: Kevin Rudd explains why we still in Afghanistan:

" We are there because a failed state was giving open succour and support to a global terrorist organisation - al-Qaeda - which then attacked our ally the United States on September 11, 2001, and in the process murdered 3,000 people. Nothing has changed since then."

We have been there for six years. If it's true that "nothing has changed" then we should be asking "Why not?". But things actually have changed: the Taliban has been routed from government, the US has installed a former Unocal oil executive as a puppet president, the people of Afghanistan have realised that Western governments are totally indifferent to their poverty-stricken plight, and now we come full circle: the Taliban are resurgent, and what has all our blood and money brought us? Nothing.

Rudd says Australian commitment "is not a blank cheque and it will be subject to rolling review." Roll on the reviews, please.

Murdoch Supports Israeli Genocide

Another utterly disgraceful editorial in the Opposition Orifice today. It takes a cold, cruel heart to blame Hamas for fuel and food shortages in the Gaza Strip. 650,000 people are going hungry. Israel has ignored a Hamas ceasefire offer. This is part of an international media blitz by the Israeli government.

Meanwhile the OO's Greg Sheridan quotes a warmongering fool from yet another US right-wing think-tank with warm approval.

And Fairfax keeps tabs on Murdoch's empire building.

Meanwhile In BushWorld

Former President Jimmy Carter says Condi Rice is lying, as Walmart starts rationing food.

But for the inside story, go to antiwar.com's blog:

Israeli sources have indicated to him that the recent leak to the FBI about the new-old Israeli spy case came from inside the Israeli government toward the end of thwarting Ehud Olmert, Dick Cheney and the War Party’s plans to expand the Middle Eastern slaughter to Iran – and that there are more spies to be revealed...

The leak of the information at the present time is believed to be linked to proposed closed congressional hearings at the end of this month in which the White House had planned to use several Israeli intelligence officers to provide evidence on the alleged Syrian nuclear program that was bombed on September 6, 2007. It is now unlikely that Israeli intelligence officers will allow themselves to be questioned because they would almost certainly be asked about Israeli spying on the US. Vice President Dick Cheney and Olmert had apparently planned on using the congressional briefings as a launch pad to intensify diplomatic and military pressure against both Syria and Iran. It is believed that the “doves” in the Olmert administration who leaked the information are seeking to make a military confrontation more difficult and are hoping that negotiations, particularly with Syria, will instead take place.

Democracy Torched In Canberra

So now we know who really runs this country. Beijing has wiped its arse with the thin fabric of Australian democracy. Kevin Rudd promised that Chinese security officials would not run with the Olympic torch in Canberra, but they ran anyway.

The Chinese government and the International Olympic Organisation simply ignored our Prime Minister, and the Australian people, and did what they wanted. They used our nation's capital - including Parliament House, a symbol of our free democracy, which went into lock-down - as a scenic backdrop for their global propaganda exercise.

Now the Chinese state media has the story and pictures they craved:

THE 15th leg of the global Olympic flame journey was completed in Canberra this noon as scheduled without major disruptions...

During the torch relay, tens of thousands of spectators, many of them enthusiastic Chinese expatriates and students, had lined both sides of the streets, waited hours and followed the torch bearers along the route, chanting support for the Beijing Olympics.

Before the cauldron was extinguished, local and international dignitaries had praised the relay as successful and wonderful.

High security profile was in place to prevent major disruptions, with some 1,000 security personnel deployed to safeguard the historical event for Australia.

That's it. Mission accomplished.

Kevin Rudd is supposedly big on symbolism. So take a good look at this, Kev: enraged protestors clashing along Anzac Parade; Chinese government supporters jumping the Australian War Memorial's barricades to intimidate Tibetan demonstrators; hate-filled rival groups screaming at each other in Reconciliation Square; and the words 'Free Tibet' written across the sky, by a pilot whose plane was hired by the Greens' Senator Bob Brown.

And then the coup de grace:

Final relay runner retired Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, flanked by dozens of police, took the torch to the finish line in Commonwealth Park and lit the community cauldron, which quickly went out.

The Chinese government shipped over 100 bus loads of "One China" supporters into Canberra, taking organisers by surprise with over 15,000 Beijing activists. One bemused resident said it was a case of "spot the Aussie." The pro-China demonstrators assaulted people and tore down pro-Tibet banners.

In one incident, an Australian couple waving a Tibetan flag were mobbed by dozens of Chinese activists on Commonwealth Avenue Bridge.

The Chinese grabbed the flag, threw it off the bridge and began punching the man and woman, aged in their 20s. No police were around.

Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred said it was just like "taunting ... at a friendly football game". Sure, except the relatives and friends of one side lie dead or in prison.

As I predicted exactly one month ago, the torch relay has now become a Human Rights relay. But let's not forget who is behind all this:

Each of the 12 partners paid more than $US60 million ($63 million) in a four-year deal. From 2001 to 2004, sponsors contributed 39 per cent of the IOC's revenue, $US1.5 billion. Activists believe their protests are having an effect. The torch relay's angry reception has discomforted sponsors Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung.

Remember that nobody even wanted to host the Olympic Games until a few years ago, when governments suddenly realised you could make a buck out of it. The IOC’s decision to give the games to Beijing, and Beijing’s desire for them, is a sad reflection of how much globalised Big Business now controls our governments, or works with them for mutual profit at the people's expense, even in Communist China.

And the genuine zeal with which many decent Chinese people support their government's lies should be a major warning to us all about the dangers of monopolised media.

Not to mention yer culture wars:

Pro-China demonstrator Jeff Li yelled at the pro-Tibetan supporters: "The Dalai Lama is a hypocrite, a liar, an ugly man... These people are idiots, they know nothing about China's history."

ELSEWHERE:

The Australian Tibet Council was heavily involved in protests and should have more news on their website soon.

FreeTibet.org has lots of information and links, including video of torch relay protests around the globe.

John Quiggan on nationalism.

Jeremy Searslinks to the official Chinese government site: lots of happy faces.

In case you missed it: Bush Versus Confucius.

LATER:

ACT government spokesman Jeremy Lasek in The Age: "The most important thing is the flame was never in danger, from start to finish."

Ted Quinlan, the chief organizer of the Australia relay leg, in a weak AP story:

"We didn't expect this reaction from the Chinese community which is obviously a well-coordinated plan to take the day by weight of numbers."

From the same story:

Security had been boosted — officials say the expense doubled in recent weeks to $1.9 million — along a route that had been shortened. But it still threaded along a 10-mile path past Parliament House and within 200 yards of the Chinese Embassy.

"We are determined that this torch will run its full route," Police Chief Mike Phelan told reporters Wednesday.

He said three Chinese torch officials allowed near the flame have no security role.

So what were they doing? Just showing their enthusiastic support, like all the other Chinese government stooges?

Another AFP story:

Australian police and the blue-and-white tracksuit-clad Chinese escorts physically played out a long running dispute over who was in charge of security.

On several occasions, Australian police pulled one of the Chinese escorts back from alongside the runner carrying the torch, until they appeared to reach a compromise as the relay continued on its 16-kilometre (10-mile) route, television footage showed.

Crikey! reports "rows and rows of empty seats":

"Crowds were kept fifty-odd metres away behind barricades... The occasional individual who advanced into the students clutching a Free Tibet placard was met with what appeared to be a prepared tactic of being surrounded by large Chinese flags... You don’t have to go to China to see Chinese nationalism at work. Our capital city will do just fine.

Murdoch media update, with number of buses revised down from "over 100" to "up to 80":

Television footage showed an AFP officer shunting a Chinese flame attendant off to the side after the official intervened to relight the Olympic flame. The incident was the first evidence that the Chinese may have exceeded their relay role...

The incident between the AFP officer and the attendant occurred after the flame had crossed Lake Burley Griffin, where it was greeted by former Olympic rower Megan Marcks.

But when the torch went out, Chinese flame attendants intervened as expected to relight the flame.

SMH on "torch thugs". There are plenty of reports about incidents like this in the above links:

Alistair Paterson, 52, from Lake George outside Canberra, said he was standing with his seven-year-old daughter on Limestone Avenue with an older couple, their teenage son and two other young women when they were attacked by a group of about 50 people draped in Chinese flags.

Mr Paterson said he was holding a "Free Tibet" banner and the older couple also had a pro-Tibet placard, which angered the group as it ran along the crowd side of the barrier.

"I got a flying kick in the leg, another bloke was hit in the head with a stick with a Chinese flag attached to it and our banners were torn down," Mr Paterson said.

"When I looked around there were three or four guys who I can only assume were Chinese who wanted to fight me.

"This gang of thugs rolled right through us and we had kids with us. My daughter was still shaking an hour later and is very quiet even now.

"I don't normally get angry but I am so angry right now."

Mr Paterson said he had wanted to show his daughter the meaning of peaceful demonstration.

Dare we hope that the AFP will be using closed circuit video tape evidence to round up those responsible, and revoke Chinese student visas where necessary? Will Mr Rudd ask the Chinese Embassy for a full explanation of these events? Will he explain to ordinary Australians why Chinese officials ignored his decision?

LATE UPDATE: The official narrative:

Mr Phelan has rejected claims there was tension between AFP officers and the Chinese flame attendants.

"In the beginning there was a slight communication misunderstanding but as you saw it was quickly sorted out," he said.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along quietly now...

NEXT DAY (ANZAC DAY):

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says any Australian ambassador would probably do the same if the shoe was on the other foot.

Mr Stanhope says he is aware of contact between the embassy and Chinese organisations but does not know the degree of resourcing or support provided by the embassy...

"Just imagine if this had been the Australian torch relay in some other foreign capital," he said.

"I'm sure the Australian residents in that particular country at the time would have flocked and would have perhaps expected or anticipated some support from their embassy, so I think it's a quite reasonable thing to do."

More here.

Really? So we would all be OK with Aussie citizens beating up (for example) pro-Aboriginal demonstrators, destroying their flags, intimidating them into silence, spitting on them...? Really???

We Aussies would all be OK with our government co-ordinating a mass rally of intimidation in support of business and government propaganda objectives, which can best be described, under the circumstances, as "fascist"?

Now Stanthorpe is asking who is going to pay for the added security. Maybe he should sent the police overtime bill to the Chinese Embassy, or to the IOC?

EVEN LATER:

The story nobody wants to touch:

A final press conference descended into farce when Australian and Chinese officials argued over exactly what the Chinese guards would do.

Beijing spokesman Qu Yingpu said the attendants - branded thugs for their heavy-handed tactics - would take matters into their own hands if a torchbearer was threatened. He said the guards would "use their bodies to form a kind of defence for the torch bearer".

They were "trained security personnel with the ability to cover and evacuate the torch bearer in the case of an emergency", Mr Qu said as he read from the BOCOG relay manual.

"Flame attendants are deployed alongside and behind the torchbearer to respond to any immediate threat against the flame or the torchbearer."

The threat raises the prospect of Australian police arresting and imprisoning the Chinese guards in what would be a diplomatic flashpoint.

The remarks derailed attempts by ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and his police chief to persuade the public local authorities were in control of the event.

They were seen by Australian relay organisers as a deliberate act of provocation by the Chinese, who have been told for months that they would not be allowed to have a security role.

It is believed the BOCOG document also contains clauses, not read out by Mr Qu, stating that any security activity by the flame attendants would have to be at the behest of local authorities.

A clearly furious Mr Stanhope, sitting metres from Mr Qu, said there were "communication issues" about the Chinese guards' role.

"The written remarks that were just referred to come from an earlier document in relation to the torch relay, which has not been accepted by the ACT Government," he said.

"They are not enforced by the Commonwealth or ACT Policing.

"We do have some issues around communications issues but the point that has been made on a number of occasions . . . is that all security will be handled by ACT Policing.

"That remains the case."

Mr Stanhope confirmed police had instructions to arrest Chinese attendants if they tried to take a policing role.

The fresh row came after Mr Stanhope wrote a letter to Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai on Monday, in which he reiterated the guards had to butt out of relay security.

He phoned him again yesterday with the same message, after Mr Zhang said on Tuesday that the guards could "use their bodies" to protect the flame.

And after yesterday's disastrous press conference, government insiders said Mr Stanhope ordered police to "read the riot act" in a personal briefing to the flame attendants last night.

In other words, the Chinese officials and their ambassador simply ignored our government. Not good enough, Kev. What are you going to do about it?

Friends Like These

From Jacob Hornberger:

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa may not be long for this world, both in a political sense and in genuine life-or-death sense. He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and joint chiefs.

Why might those firings cost Correa his job or even his life? Because the reason he fired them was that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.” As other rulers around the world, including democratically elected ones, have learned the hard way, bucking the CIA is a real no-no that sometimes leads to coups and assassinations.

What’s the CIA doing infiltrating Ecuador’s military intelligence systems? Good question! Maybe it’s because the CIA still fears the threat of communism. Don’t forget that that was the apparent rationale for the U.S. government’s support of Operation Condor, the campaign of assassination and torture co-sponsored by the brutal regimes in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru during the 1970s. Don’t forget also that many of the brutal military personnel in those regimes received their training at the U.S. Army’s infamous School of the Americas, famous for, among other things, its torture manuals.

To make matters worse for Correa, he promises to throw the U.S. military out of his country when the U.S. government’s lease at its base in Manta expires in 2009. The U.S. government spent $60 million to build the base in 1999, securing a 10-year lease that provided no rent to be paid to Ecuador.

So, why does the U.S. military have a $60 million military base in Ecuador? The base is part of the U.S. government’s much-vaunted 30-year-old war on drugs, one of the U.S. Empire’s never-ending wars around the world. The base houses Awacs surveillance planes whose purported mission is to search for international drug smugglers.

What irked President Correa is that apparently his CIA-infested intelligence services fed classified information to Colombian officials that led to a Colombian military attack on a Colombian rebel camp that was located inside Ecuador. One big problem was that when Correa’s intelligence services leaked the information to Colombia, they left Correa (their boss) out of the loop.

The final nail in Correa’s coffin might be the fact that he is an ally of Venezuela’s Marxist president Hugo Chavez, who himself is a likely target of CIA ouster or assassination.

The good news for Americans in all this is that the Ecuadorian people are doing their best to rid their country of the CIA and the U.S. military. Maybe the Ecuadorans will start a trend in which all other countries will do the same. While it would obviously be best if the American people were to dismantle their government’s overseas empire themselves, having foreigners do it instead by throwing the CIA and the Pentagon out of their countries would be just as effective and beneficial — to both the United States and the people of the world.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

More from the Guardian:

Just a few days before, it was reported that Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, who as the foreign minister of Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s was one of the era's most virulently anti-American figures, will be the next president of the United Nations General Assembly. Under other circumstances, Washington might well have launched a full-scale campaign to block his candidacy.
...

This is a radical departure from more than a century of US policy toward Latin America. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that policy in 1904, in his succinct "corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. Its essence was an assertion that the US had assumed "an international police power" and would intervene in any Latin American country that engaged in "chronic wrongdoing" or failed to meet its "obligations".

In the decades that followed, the United States sponsored dictatorships from Cuba to Brazil, deposed governments from Chile to Guatemala, landed Marines on shores from Panama to Haiti, and thwarted the election of independent-minded leaders from Guyana to the Dominican Republic. Generations of Latin Americans grew up understanding that any challenge to US hegemony in the hemisphere would be crushed swiftly and with all necessary violence.

Visitors

I got a visit from an Israeli government agent last night. The bastard ignored the intercom, slipped through the security gate, and came right up to my front door while my wife and kids were eating dinner. He was just a scrawny, drug-addled messenger. I told him to piss off.

Sure it sounds ridiculous, but that's how these things go sometimes, isn't it?

Odd that Tim Blair was taking a shot at me on the same day. Has my little blog created another disturbance in The Force or something?

Was it my talk of Rupert's Zionist Crusade? The repeated calls for a Royal Commission into our role in the illegal invasion of Iraq (I note Blair's minions have been desperately clicking the "traiter" option on my blog poll, which was previously running at about 70% in favour)? Or maybe it was that Op-Ed I submitted to a major national newspaper?

Or maybe it was my oft-repeated suggestion that Mossad knew about the 9-11 attacks. Hey, I'm only repeating what FOX NEWS said!

It's ironic that even Al Quaeda today is desperately trying to argue against that same "Conspiracy Theory":

One questioner asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. "The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

"Iran's aim here is also clear — to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq," he added. Iran cooperated with the United States in the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan that toppled al-Qaida's allies, the Taliban.

If the enemy of my enemy is really my friend, then things are a lot more complicated than they seem.

(Of course Juan Cole pointed out this Bush-Iran convergence last week, US intelligence agents have already admitted that secret talks with Iran have been going on for 5 years, and now even the New York Times is writing stories about it. So what was all that talk about bombing Iran? Just another Cheney ruse to drive up the cost of oil? Is Hillary in on the game?)

Stay tuned. And don't believe the hype.

This Is Excellent News

... for John McCain:

Mrs. Clinton faces major challenges going forward: her campaign is essentially out of money, with unpaid bills piling up...

But she quickly put out a call for supporters to donate to her campaign, noting that “we can only keep winning if we can keep competing with an opponent who outspends us so massively.” She urged viewers to visit her Web site and “show your support.”

Within a few hours she raised over $2.5 million. The nightmare continues.

UPDATE: A good response:

Senator Obama said November's election was about not just defeating the Republicans, but about what kind of Democratic Party might win power...

"We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic, and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes," he said...

Still attacking Senator Clinton, Senator Obama said "you can't be the champion of working Americans if you're funded by the lobbyists who drown out their voices".

"We can be a party that says and does whatever it takes to win the next election. We can calculate and poll-test our positions and tell everyone exactly what they want to hear. Or we can be the party that doesn't just focus on how to win but why we should."

In Case You Missed It

Why I (Still) Hate John Howard.

Selling Out Australia

Rudd is making it easier for big foreign corporations like Wal-Mart to buy Australian land. This is supposedly going to "increase competition and drive down food prices". Oh really?

Now, I'll be the first to admit that local giants Woolworths and Coles desperately need some competition: they don't even bother slapping discount stickers on their filthy, out-of-date fruit and veges any more. But this is definitely not the answer.

When the time comes for a referendum on ending our ties to the British monarchy, will one of the alternatives on offer be "Join The United States Of America"?

Who Is Accountable?

Mike Whitney:

When George W. Bush took office in 2000, oil was $28 per barrel, the euro was $.87 on the dollar, gold was $274 per ounce, and the national debt was $5.9 trillion. Today, oil is a record $114 per barrel, the euro is nudging $1.60 on the dollar, gold is $945 per ounce, and the National Debt is $9 trillion. The country is presently engaged in a $2 trillion war in Iraq with no end in sight. The federal government has expanded over 30% under Bush. Wages for working people have stagnated, unemployment has risen, 47 million Americans are without health care, and the economy is slipping into recession. By every objective standard, the country is worse off today than when Bush first took office.

Just don't tell the kids. They wouldn't understand:

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900... Eleven percent thought that Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal. Another 11 percent thought it was Harry Truman.

Who's George Bush anyway?

First We Take Manhattan...

News Corp closes in on another NYC asset:

For Murdoch, gaining Newsday would allow News Corp to greatly pare down persistent losses at the New York Post, partly by combining back-office and production operations...

Any deal for Newsday would be sure to face close regulatory scrutiny since Murdoch's News Corp already owns the New York Post, the [Wall Street] Journal and two New York-area television stations.

Don't worry, I'm sure the Bush administration would never let him get away with it. Right?

UPDATE: So much for all that talk about the new Murdoch WSJ maintaining it's independence:

"It was reassuring that he was there because he was not a News Corp. guy," Yount said Tuesday... Yount did not place much faith in its having an impact on Brauchli's replacement. He said no one should expect anything other than a Rupert Murdoch selection: "I don't think anyone seriously believes that Rupert was not going to run Dow Jones and run the Wall Street Journal. Anyone who thinks there was any chance that this would not happen is mistaken."

Surprise.

Vote Mickey Mouse Or Die!

In Zimbabwe, voters face a clear choice: Mugabe or Death! Now Hillary Clinton is offering voters the same choice, with adverts featuring Osama Bin Laden. Seriously.

Even hard-core Democrats are sick of Clinton's damaging campaign, and any talk of a Dream Team ticket is long gone. Josh Marshall says it's sad too see how low the Clintons have sunk. Michael Moore says the latest debate was the final straw. He is now endorsing Obama:

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting...

I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.

Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It's foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country.

So what will Mike Moore and other caring Dems do if Hillary's fear machine works (again)? Coincidentally, I just posted this comment over at WP's blog:

From an international p.o.v., if the Dems cannot beat McCain they should all just disband the party and walk away from politics for good. OTOH we foreigners thought the same thing about Dubya... especially the second time... and his "unelectable" former CIA Dad... and Ronnie Hollywood Raygun... (sigh) ...

It might be best if the USA just elected Mickey Mouse as President For Life, and we all just pretend he is real, and Dick Cheney's friends in the Military-Industrial Complex work with the neo-Fascists at Disney Studios to make Mickey say whatever they want said.

Anyone who says "Mickey is not real" will be imprisoned. But when Mickey declares war on Iran, Syria and Jordon simultaneously, nobody will be able to criticize the wisdom of his decision (after all, he is not real - d'uh).

All press conference questions will need to be scripted, so the animators have time to create a response. The State of the Union address will become an animation tour de force, featuring Donald Duck (Rumsfeld's voice), Goofy (GWB), Uncle Scrooge (Cheney), and other loveable characters like Shrek (Powell) and Cinderella (Condi).

VOTE #1 Mickey Mouse GOP 08!

And '12, '16, '20, .... Yay! MICKEY GOP CLUB FOREVER!

NB: US soldiers abroad will wear Mickey Mouse ears on their helmets to make them easily distinguishable from the Bad Guys. It will look great on TV, trust me!

UPDATE: Now Clinton says she would bring Republicans into her cabinet. This looks to me like a desperate, all-out attempt to:

(a) win the nomination, or
(b) permanently fracture the Dems, or
(c) both the above.

You can begin to imagine Hillary losing to Obama then calling for her supporters to get behind McCain.

If Hillary wins, a lot of Obama supporters will quit the party. If she loses, and then Obama loses, she will blame Obama's supporters for the loss (and claim she would have won). I know this is desperation stuff but what Hillary is doing is not easily repairable: she is damaging the Party for her own purposes.

"So what?" you say. The problem I have with that scenario is that Obama doesn't even represent the leftwing grassroots activists in a way that (say) Howard "Yeearrgghh!" Dean once did. If Hillary splits the Dems like this, she is really only taking a big slice out of the Dem's left wing and dumping it on the roadside. Maybe those bitter losers might end up (ruefully) supporting outcasts like Kucinich, Gravel, and Ron Paul. But as a serious political force, in the short term, they would become irrelevant. That ensures that Big Business regains control of the White House, which seems to be all that really matters to Clinton right now.

Vivan Las Americas!

People have been literally dancing in the streets to celebrate the defeat of the Colorado Party, a "bureaucratic apparatus" which allowed the US-backed military to rule Paraguay for over 60 years. Here's how a US State Department official describes the result:

"We have dropped the ball yet again in Latin America, and Chavez, flush with oil money, has picked it up," said the official.

No, you idiot, Chavez hasn't picked it up - the people of Paraguay have. And it's not your ball to hold, it's theirs!

I remember walking the streets of Asuncion one night back in the 1980s. It seemed like there was a beautiful young prostitute standing in nearly every doorway. It was sad. That was towards the end of General Stroessner's 35-year dictatorship. In neighboring Chile, a young girl said she wanted to marry me because I bought her friends a hamburger - they were all just desperate to escape from Pinochet. In Argentina, I was arrested by a policeman at three in the morning. Luckily, he was just fishing for a bribe: the world was just beginning to ask what happened to the thousands who simply "disappeared" from that country's streets.

This is why they hate you, America. And until you change the way you think and act on the world stage, they will continue to hate you. And all your Hollywood movies will not stop it.

PS: I wonder if Bush will now think of selling his 99,000 acres of Paraguayan land?

Nobody Likes A Loser

Good call:

As a liberal voter in QLD i can see the similaraities between nelson and flegg. He does nothing but bore me and bring down the dwindling reputation of the coalition.

Ah! I love the smell of defeat in the evening...

The AngloSphere: Parallel Political Universes

I'm always amazed at how often a Big New Idea in politics just happens to be simultaneously canvassed in Washington, London and Canberra.

Today Kevin Rudd is reviewing the Australian tax system and contemplating raising the GST from 10% in the next budget. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is facing another revolt over his government's plans to abolish the 10% lower tax bracket in the coming budget:

The 22% tax rate is coming down to 20%, and the 10% tax rate for lower earners is being abolished altogether - forcing more than five million workers up into the 20% tax bracket.

And look what's suddenly being discussed on FOX News and the Wall Street Journal:

Gigot: But on that point, the optional flat tax does seam to be at least a big step in the direction of tax reform - fundamental tax reform, which is a big idea. And of course would be something he [McCain] could run on as a reformer and not just somebody representing the status quo.

How would that work, John, the optional flat tax?

Fund: Well, it's been done in various other places, including Hong Kong, which as you know is economically booming. What it basically says is, you agree to give up all deductions, and you get a flat rate, 15%.

Gigot: Presumably lower rate.

Fund: Right, much lower rate. And you basically solve the paperwork problems. You don't spend time worrying about keeping records on every little bit...

Is this just a frenzied, borg-like, panic response to the latest global financial problems? Or do the backroom guys in the USA, UK and Australia actively collaborate on co-ordinating their governments' Budget strategies every year?

What about other issues like foreign policy? How much is being decided in secret by unelected global elites?

Prison State

Who knew?

The US has the world's largest penal population with some 10 per cent of the adult population behind bars.

Can you believe that? One in ten US adults is in jail! That's just absurd. No, it's worse that absurd - it's criminal! How do you boast of having a functioning Democracy when one in ten adults is in jail?

UPDATE: Proving that even anal-retentive pond scum have their uses, Tim Blair picks up the AFP error:

The actual figure is closer to one per cent.

The USA does still have by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, of course, and it has been growing rapidly, particularly for blacks:

Nearly 4.7 per cent of African-American men are behind bars in the United States. That percentage grows to nearly 12 per cent for black men aged 25 to 29-years-old.

That is still an absolute disgrace. The latest US figures are over one percent, with around one in 30 either in jail, on parole or on bail. The cost to government is over $55 billion per year.

NB: I assume it was my criticisms over at BlairBolt Watch that got Timmeh keeping an eye on me. Is he scared?

UPDATE 2: This story has been picked up at BlairBoltWatch and I have posted two opening comments:

Look on the bright side - Timmeh linked to a story about prison guards opening fire on a race riot which erupted after neo-Nazis celebrated Hitler’s birthday, and he never even mentioned any of those pet topics. That must have taken a lot of self-restraint.

Maybe he is learning?

Or maybe I just don’t hear dog whistles when they are pitched that high.

And still in moderation:

Actually, I am rather curious about how Timmeh came upon this little story...

He links to the AFP story, exposes their error, and then writes: "UPDATE. A lefty fell for it."

The link goes to my blog. Now, let's ignore for a moment how you can "fall for" an error which was neither a trick nor a joke. I read this AFP story earlier today and wrote a quick, outraged blog post about it. If I'd had more time I might have realized the journalistic error, but I didn't - my bad, I readily admit.

But there's Timmeh waiting to pounce on my mistake. I challenge his minions to look through my blog and find any other such glaring factual (factual!) errors. I'll wager they are few and far between.

So here's what I'm thinking: Timmeh noticed my criticisms of him and Big Rupe here, at blairboltwatch, and elsewhere, and has been keeping an eye on my blog, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. But he does it in his own clever, snarky way, pretending that he found the story himself, and THEN noticed my link. Vengeance accomplished?

Alternatively, it's possible that Tim's real target was YOUR ABC, which carried the story which I originally linked to (now updated to fix the error, I notice). Maybe Blair is monitoring ABC News to gather more "evidence" of perceived leftwing anti-US bias? That would explain why his post links to the original AFP story, which he would have had to track down to check that it was an AFP error, not an ABC one.

Hmmn?

Hey BTW, anyone wanna buy a painting?

Military Madness

How's this for an offer you can't refuse:

Last year the US Army granted waivers to allow 511 convicted criminals to join up, almost double the number from the year before.

Almost 250 Army and Marine recruits had convictions for burglary while 130 had been charged with drug offences, excluding marijuana.

There were also a handful of waivers given for those convicted of rape and sexual assault, along with terrorist threats, including bomb threats.

More here:

The felons accepted into the army and marines included ... two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child [and] 19 arsonists.

So we have known terrorists fighting the (ahem) "war" on terror, convicted rapists, paedophiles and arsonists roaming the streets of Falluja, and drug addicts in control of Afghanistan's poppy fields. Lovely stuff.

How did it come to this? Just ask the criminals in charge, and the fools who elected them.

As Juan Cole said:

It is an index of the despotism to which the United States has fallen victim that we must hope for other, more civilized countries, to try our war criminals. Why can't public officials be prosecuted for violating the Bill of Rights' guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment? Why can't an International Military Tribunal be set up as at Nuremberg?

But it's not just Uncle Sam, is it?

Aussie SAS troops drew first blood in Iraq, Aussie officials were present in torture sessions, Aussie lawyers, politicians, media and military voices loudly supported the US re-interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, the Howard government silenced dissenting opinions in the intelligence community, we have backed US War Crimes to the hilt (including the claimed right to further “pre-emptive” wars and the habitual targeting of civilian areas)…

And to all intents and purposes, given the continuing official silence on these issues, we remain beholden to the US neocon vision. We still pretend the invasion was legal!

How do we "move on" with these horrendously important issues unresolved?

Barry O'Bomber

When I saw this BBC story about how Obama's old classmates used to call him "Barry", I thought that might be a nice antidote to the poisonous US media attacks on his name.

"At that time, here in Indonesia, all the parents pushed their kids: 'You have to become a doctor' or 'You have to become an engineer'," she told me. "But he wrote that he'd like to be a president. So we thought, 'Oh in your dreams!'"

Well, a lot has changed since those days. Barry, as he was known then, is now campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for exactly that job.

During high school the name further evolved into Barry O'Bomber - because he had a great jump shot:

Back then, Obama never went anywhere without his basketball, a ball given to him by his absent father...

His old coach remembers the last time he saw Obama in person a few years ago. He says he didn't want to bother the newly famous politician so he stayed off to the side.

"Part way through his speech," McLachlin said, "he kind of caught my eye in the back of the chapel and said, 'Coach Mac, how you doing? You know I used to play basketball here you guys and I really wasn't as good as I thought I was. Was I coach?' and we sort of laughed about it."

The "bomber" nickname might actually help him win votes off McCain. Let's just hope Obama doesn't live up to the moniker if and when he gets the keys to the White House.

Tired Of Life

It's hard to take the official military figures on suicide seriously, but there are evidently a lot of them.

Sergeant Lianne Ingle met a young soldier in a Townsville club early last year. He told her he wanted to kill himself:

She said she remembered striking up a conversation by telling the man he reminded her of singer Nick Cave, but that she had never been a fan of Cave's because his morose music made her feel like "topping herself."

About eight months later - three days after his 19th birthday - Ashley Baker locked himself inside a toilet cubicle at a defence base in Dili and apparently shot himself three times.

You have to wonder what drives these kids into the Army in the first place, don't you?

I asked my 11-year-old boy about anti-Emo graffiti the other day:

"What are Emos?" I asked him.
"Slash-your-wrists," he replied with evident contempt.

In the Welsh town of Bridgend, Sean Rees, a "happy-go-lucky" 19-year-old, killed himself yesterday after a night out with friends.

He is believed to be the 19th person under the age of 27 to have reportedly killed themselves in the Bridgend area since the start of last year.

A local councillor complained:

"We keep on asking why these young people are dying but we are not getting any answers."

Is this the temper of the times? Or have things ever been thus?

In ancient Egypt, somebody once wrote a text which has survived till this day:

I opened my mouth to my soul, that I might answer what it had said: "This is too much for me today..."

My soul opened its mouth to me that it might answer what I had said: "If you think of burial, it is a sad matter... Listen to me; behold, it is good for men to hear. Follow the happy day and forget care..."

I opened my mouth to my soul that I might answer what it had said: ... "To whom can I speak today? Hearts are rapacious and everyone takes his neighbour's goods. Gentleness has perished and the violent man has come down on everyone.

To whom can I speak today? Men are contented with evil and goodness is neglected everywhere.

To whom can I speak today? He who should enrage a man by his ill deeds, he makes everyone laugh by his wicked wrongdoing.

To whom can I speak today? Men plunder and every man robs his neighbour.

To whom can I speak today? The wrongdoer is an intimate friend and the brother with whom one used to act is become an enemy.

To whom can I speak today? None remember the past...

Death is in my sight today
Like the smell of myrrh,
Like sitting under an awning on a windy day.

Death is in my sight today
Like the perfume of lotuses,
Like sitting on the shore of the Land of Drunkenness..."

What my soul said to me: "Cast complaint upon the peg, my comrade and brother; make offering on the brazier and cleave to life, according as I have said. Desire me here, thrust the West aside, but desire that you may attain the West when your body goes to earth, that I may alight after you are weary; then will we make an abode together."

NB: As the sun sets in the West, so the ancient Egyptians believed that their souls too would migrate to The West after death.

Murdoch's Next War Looms

Rupert's Zionist Crusade continues apace. Newsweek has a 5-page story on Murdoch's looming "war" with the New York Times (which they suggest New York billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg will soon buy, now that he's given up on the GOP nomination).

Along with much of the rest of old media, the Times has been losing advertising dollars to the Internet hand over fist, though its Web site is a big hit with readers.

Of course it didn't help that NYT put all their best columnists behind a propaganda firewall for a few years. It didn't help that they never really opoligized for Judith WMD Miller. It doesn't help that they continue to operate as GOP shills, promoting an economic agenda that is hastening their own collapse...

Late last week its parent company reported a first-quarter loss of $335,000; the Times's own business section said it was "one of the worst periods the company and the newspaper industry have seen." Advertising, its lifeblood, fell almost 11 percent, "the sharpest drop in memory," the Times wrote.

Murdoch buying the WSJ and then delivering the killer blow to the Old Gray Lady - who could have imagined it eh? And of course the editorial influence at the WSJ is already well underway:

Rather than entrust the job of all this to subordinates, Murdoch has been devoting half his time since acquiring Dow Jones to reshaping the paper. He has become a regular and jarring presence in the Journal newsroom: ever since he appeared unannounced on Easter — to, as he puts it, "set an example" — top editors have been dragging themselves into the Journal's headquarters across from Ground Zero on Sundays. "What sets Rupert apart is that after he's made a major acquisition, he goes in and works it and gets it running the way he wants it to, and then leaves managers in place," says Arthur Siskind, senior adviser to Murdoch.

For example, here's how Murdoch handled the recent sex scandal involving Eliot Spitzer:

As the story was breaking online at NewYorkTimes.com, Murdoch was stuck on his crippled jet in a hangar at a private airport in Palm Beach, Fla. With his wife, Wendi, looking on, Murdoch frantically worked the phones, bombarding New York Post editor Col Allan and Fox News chief Roger Ailes. "I couldn't believe it," Murdoch said later of Spitzer's scandalous predicament. "Naturally, I was on the phone: 'What do you know, and how are you going to treat the story?' " Murdoch was so caught up in the moment that he even sketched a mock layout of how the story might appear in The Wall Street Journal.

But of course his editors are like, totally independent:

The Times, like numerous other media outlets, has been critical of Murdoch for allegedly using his media properties to pursue personal business and political ends—a contention that Murdoch vehemently rejects. "I've never, ever done that," he says angrily. "I challenge anyone to show that I did."

Murdoch insists he only pulled the BBC World News out of his Star TV coverage in China for "purely financial reasons" and not to curry favour with Beijing's mandarins. But like one exec says:

"It's never a good time to have to confront someone like Murdoch, who doesn't care about making money on a particular product."

It's not about the money. It's about the massive doses of endless self-adulation that go with such sheer, unrestrained power.

Um... What About Iraq, Kevin?

Surprise? No mention of the Iraq War in any of the 2020 Summit news items, and the initial report (pdf) only talks of our need to succeed in a global ‘war for talent’. It would appear that this critically important issue was not even discussed, despite the fact that the Security discussions included people like Peter Cosgrove.

Instead, our "best and brightest" just skirted the issue. The group discussing AUSTRALIA’S FUTURE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING REGION AND WORLD made three top recommendations including this:

"To foster a reputation as an effective global citizen, including through making an active and innovative contribution to the resolution of global challenges."

That sort of language is obviously open to any kind of interpretation you want to imagine, particularly in the current Orwellian climate. The devil, of course, is in the details, which include a desire to:

"Reaffirm our commitment to working in international institutions and to the international rule of law."

Well, that sounds good. So will we now confirm our commitment to the Geneva Convention by admitting our culpability in War Crimes, handing those responsible over to the International Criminal Court, and holding a Royal Commission to uncover any relevant evidence?

How do we build a bright future for our children when we are still militarily and politically bogged down in this tragic foreign policy debacle? How do we move on as a country when we refuse to even acknowledge our lingering present, let alone our recent past?

Half the planet now view us as US lackeys and war criminals. A million Iraqis are dead.

We cannot ignore this - we need a Royal Commission into our country's role.

Boats Against The Current

Australians are already being swamped with a media storm of opinions and ideas relating to this weekend's 2020 summit. But how do we move on as a nation when we still have not dealt with our recent past? Will anyone in Canberra be discussing John Howard's War Crimes, for example?

So we battle on... borne back ceaselessly into the past:

SIX former top executives of wheat exporter AWB will face court in July over their alleged roles in the $126 million Iraqi kickback scandal.

The Victorian Supreme Court today set down three days from July 28 for the case to be heard.

In November last year, Commissioner Terence Cole recommended 11 former AWB executives face possible criminal charges.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has launched civil proceedings against six of the executives who face a fine of up to $200,000 for each breach and a possible ban from running any corporation.

AWB former chairman Trevor Flugge, and former managing director Andrew Lindberg - against whom Mr Cole made no adverse finding - are among the executives charged with breaching the Corporations Act.

Sex, Power, Greed And Mortality

So now Putin is dumping his wife and shacking up with a 24-year-old.

Alina Kabaeva joins the new breed of underage political concubines-cum-cohorts Carla Bruni and Wendi Deng.

Kabaeva was last year voted the most popular athlete in Russia. You can see why...

The woman in second place was called Irina Slutskaya. Lucky Vlad didn't pick her, eh?

I guess this crap all makes sense when you consider what sort of moral vision drives men like Putin, Sarkozy and Murdoch. Any concept of an afterlife based on karmic payback must be anathema to them, if not a recurring nightmare. So why not grab all the money, power and pussy you can, while you are here on earth? Why not have six-in-a-bed romps on Murdoch's massive yacht, while you all snort cocaine and laugh about the dead in Iraq and Chechnya?

But why do we, the people let assholes like these run our world? No wonder we cannot get broad agreement on long-term issues like disarmament, climate change, and global poverty. For shame. Our grandchildren will pay the price for our celebrity-obsessed apathy.

UPDATE: Lynne Cheney says she likes it when people call her husband "Darth Cheney" because it humanizes him.

Next day:

Moscow Korrespondent admitted that the story had “no factual basis” after Aleksandr Lebedev, the billionaire owner of the newspaper, challenged staff to back up the claims or apologise.

It would be interesting to see whether anyone gets sacked for this - otherwise is could be Lebedev making a point, or Putin flying a kite. But I don't have time to follow Russian politics as well as everything else... My comments on morality remain valid, I think, for many other reasons. So I won't delete this post.

Another day later, the editor is forced to resign and the paper is closed down:

The paper admitted there was no factual basis for its claim that Putin had already divorced Ludmilla, 50, his wife of 24 years, and would marry Kabaeva in June, shortly after standing down as president and becoming prime minister. It cited information from a party planner who claimed to be bidding to organise the lavish reception.

Both Putin and Kabaeva denied the report, which was followed up by European newspapers but ignored by Russia’s media, which do not delve into the private lives of politicians.

“I thought we should run the story to help break the taboo,” said Nekhoroshev. He paid a swift penalty for his daring: the paper, owned by Alexander Lebedev, the billionaire tycoon, ceased publication immediately.

Its parent firm blamed “costs” and “conceptual disagreements with the newsroom” but insisted in a statement that “this has nothing to do with politics and is solely a business decision”.

Few in Russia will believe that. The closure came a few hours after Putin had said during a visit to Sardinia that there was not a word of truth in the story and derided the “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” of the journalists concerned. So protective is the president of his private life that the Russian public has not seen his daughters since he came to power eight years ago.

“Our director came to the newsroom and told us we were being shut down,” said Nekhoroshev, who sounded shaken. “As far as the story is concerned I’ve full faith in my correspondents.”

Kabaeva, who is famed for her “extreme natural flexibility”, had threatened to sue. Her high profile as a sporting pin-up has been enhanced by photographs showing her wearing nothing but furs, but she has spoken of her strong political ambitions.

During Putin’s presidency, the Kremlin has brought all the television channels under its control and become highly sensitive to criticism in the press.

Lebedev, who had ordered his editors to stand up the story with some facts or apologise – they apologised – may now come under further pressure. He also owns Novaya Gazeta, a paper fiercely critical of the Kremlin.

“It just goes to show what a terrible state the Russian media is in after eight years of Putin’s regime,” said Oleg Panfilov, an analyst. “It is so cowed that one just needs to bark at it to see it hide under a table.”

Dinner With Dickheads Redux

Peter Hartcher has more details on Rudd's dinner at the Sydney Institute the other night. Apparently the MC, Nick Johnson, chief executive of Barclay's Capital Australia, also mis-introduced Rudd as "Mr Ludd", Was it a play on Luddite? Or was he just pissed?

Yesterday, Nick Johnson said he might have been misunderstood.

"It wasn't a right-wing pushback from the Sydney Institute," he said. "It was meant to be an adulatory comment. It's a real challenge these days, defining areas of social change. How does a reforming government describe itself, set itself apart?"

Maybe he's just a compleat wanker? Hartcher reckons Rudd has not set himself apart for Howard at all:

Communism is dead, Rudd seemed to say, yet market fundamentalism is not the alternative. Having described what the reforming centre is not, Rudd then sought to explain what it is: ... a place where the market is balanced judiciously against the society, the private sector against the state, individual initiative against social responsibility.

The tagline is new, but the political space it seeks to describe is not. Indeed, this explanation does nothing to set Rudd apart from his predecessor.

What does set Rudd apart from Howard, according to Hartcher, is his consultative and open style of government, compared with Howard's strident "right-wing identity politics". Of course, we'll see plenty of that consultative style over the coming week, with the fallout from the 2020 summit likely to dominate media commentary. Who's "listening" now, eh?

Rupert & Co: Rudd Is A Communist

Are Murdoch media cartoons with Rudd dressed as a Chinese Communist really funny per se? I think not.

In fact, the cartoon doesn't even make much sense until you realise that it's tied to a shill story from "social researchers" at the rightwing Centre for Independent Studies. Here's the story blurb on the main Opinion page:

THE PM's child centres smell of command economies.

Here's a pic, in case they change it:

In fact, the story itself doesn't seriously explore this political angle. It's just an underlying theme:

Let's call them PC centres, for with universal child care at its core, this is a very PC idea...

These centres will weaken the third sector [charities] and strengthen the power of government... Open, democratic societies rely on a strong and vibrant third sector as a check and buffer against government power. In Australia, this is fast disappearing.

These centres will further erode the autonomy of the states within our federal system... Canberra is shifting more power to itself in the name of efficiency.

The stupidity of the authors is fully revealed in the final para:

Before it commits to a huge expenditure such as this, the Government should take a deep breath and tell us the ultimate objective of its family strategy. Is it to get more mums back into work to ease the labour shortage? If so, government-run baby farms may be a good plan.

Disgraceful journalism (yet again) from the Murdoch stable and their corporate sponsors. Bill Leak should know better than to promote such blatantly biased bullshit.

UPDATE: Good to see Tim Dunlop has also picked up on this shilling.

But What About The War Crimes?

Stephen Smith says our bid for a non-permanent UN seat is at the heart of Australian foreign policy:

"The United Nations is not a perfect institution, but the United Nations and the Security Council remain the premier international institutions so far as international security and peacekeeping are concerned."

Also as far as international law is concerned.

Political Insanity

Honestly, what is it with US politicians and the public who let them get away with this shit? TPM has a great video compilation of Doug Feith's ridiculous media appearances. The sheer stupidity of his illogical, self-contradictory arguments is enough to make you gag.

Then Salon has this quote from Joe Lieberman:

"To show you how much things have changed for me, one of my greatest missions this year is to convince Rush [Limbaugh] to support the Republican candidate for President."

Yeah, and Lieberman is (still) a Democrat. You wonder why they can't get troops out of Iraq? Here's John McCain saying we will all look back on Iraq as an "academic argument". And here's how the President congratulates the Pope after a speech on human rights and morality:

"Thank you, your holiness. Awesome speech."

HuffPo has the video. What's really "awesome" is that the Pope didn't verbally tear shreds off Bush, and personally scold him for all his administration's self-evident sins!

Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama gear up for yet another debate, where Hillary's only remaining option is to tear shreds off her opponent. As I emailed Josh Marshall yesterday:

Surely the most important point about any comparisons with previous nomination fights is that this year, sitting on the other side of the equation, you have Bush, Cheney and McCain.

This year, while Clinton and Obama keep landing blows on each other, you have Iraq, Gitmo, gulags and (coming soon) Iran.

This year, while Clinton and Obama argue about meaningless little phrases, you have GOP wiretapping, DoJ corruption, unchecked "executive privilege", and all the rest of it.

This year, while Clinton and Obama suck the oxygen out of the political media, you a global financial crisis, a global fuel crisis, and an emerging global food crisis.

It is most certainly the worst Dems nomination fight ever, simply because of the price being paid to wage it.

It's criminal insanity, isn't it? The stupidity is not just maddeningly frustrating, it's dangerous.

Dinner With Dickheads

That's Rudd with Gerard Henderson at the Sydney Institute's annual dinner in Sydney last night.

A reminder of the institute's dry reputation was provided by Barclays Capital chief executive Nicholas Johnson, who in moving a vote of thanks said: "I thought he was meant to be an economic conservative, sounded like an old-fashion socialist to me".

So glad I don't bank with Barclays any more. But the old fart could yet be pleasantly surprised.

Photo courtesy Ruprecht's mob.

Big League Heroes

I grew up around Bondi Junction, Sydney. One day I was walking home from school when I saw Arthur Beetson stagger out of the Junction Hotel and throw up in the gutter. It was 3:30 in the afternoon.

My kids play soccer. Just saying.

Comments Closed

You can email me at gazo at dodo dotcomdotau if you have anything worth saying.

Real Real Gone

You know Nelson's f***ed when even Greg Sheridan starts pissing on him. What a bloody hypocrite that man is:

"Generations of conservative activists came to political activism because of their belief in human rights and democracy. A conservative insight will always balance human rights with other national interests, but if they are not fundamental to an Opposition's rhetoric and disposition, there is something profoundly wrong.

Frankly, the Howard government was not very good at human rights..."

Meanwhile the Murdochian editorialises in favour of Big Oil. You will note that no Murdoch hacks are criticizing Nelson for taking the same line.

Mossad Knew

From TPM:

In a speech yesterday, leader of the Israeli opposition, Binyamin Netanyahu, said that Israel faces many problems but that not everything is bleak.

"We are benefiting from one thing that happened, which is the terror attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the Americans' battle in Iraq. This changed US public opinion significantly in our favor."

Netanyahu's remarks echoed those he made on September 11, 2001 when he said about the day's attacks: "It's very good. Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.''

He predicted that the attacks would ''strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

Pretty amazing talk for a leader of an allied country although happily not representative of Israelis at large. Still, Netanyahu may become Prime Minister again so this is worth noting. Also, Netanyahu is every neoconservatives favorite Israeli, probably John McCain's too. Feith, Perle, Krauthammer, Bolton, Kristol, Wurmser, Podhoretz (ad nauseam) consider Netanyahu a hero and a mentor.

Money Before Morality: Business As Usual In Canberra

So much for all that feel-good pro-UN talk and Kyoto back-slapping. Sixty countries just signed a UN document calling for more eco-friendly agricultural production techniques. Australia was one of just four countries which refused to sign, "citing concerns over trade". (Looks like the others were Canada, USA and Britain).

In other news, Australia's agriculture sector remains immune to share market volatility, and is tipped as "the most attractive sector on a risk-return basis for 2008". Whoo hoo. At least we'll all have a nice portfolio in our hands as our planet hurtles into oblivion.

Must. Bomb. Grand. Final....

Another over-hyped media case headed for the dustbin of history:

A former associate of the men, Izzydeen Atik, began giving evidence for the prosecution yesterday.

He testified that the alleged leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika said the 2005 AFL Grand Final was the original target for a terrorist attack.

Questioned by Benbrika's defence lawyer, Atik has said he does not remember telling his treating psychologist about hallucinations and hearing voices that told him to do bad things.

Maybe it's the MK-Ultra drugs wearing off.

Eat Fish Or Die

What a party pooper. First George Monbiot said we should forget about biofuels (even though Green activists were screaming for them at the time) and now he says we should stop eating so much meat:

There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1-billion tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year -- it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs.

Why should we listen to Monbiot, just because he's been consistently right on all the big issues?

I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. This is a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency -- about 1,6kg of feed for 1kg of meat -- of any farmed animal. Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating.

Interestingly, Tilapia are currently listed as a noxious pest in Queensland. Could we kill two environmental birds (or fish, even) with one stone here? Maybe not:

Although they can be successfully farmed as a food fish, in the wild they tend to breed in large numbers and not grow large enough to be of commercial size.

We Could Be Heroes... Next Thursday

Just for one day, of course:

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said the AFP had asked for the increased powers.

"The police powers provide, just for this day, enhanced powers of search and they do prohibit the taking into a designated area certain offensive weapons and certain materials," Mr Stanhope told ABC radio.

Interestingly, Australian police are threatening to arrest Chinese officials if they lay a hand on protestors. But bus-loads of pro-China "supporters" are being shipped in to Canberra, so there will certainly be plenty of PLA security officers on hand.

If you are thinking of going to Canberra next Thursday, the official government site still has no information about the planned route, but The Canberra Times has a leaked an early scoop:

The Olympic torch relay will weave its way past prominent Canberra landmarks, including Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial, and through Civic on its only Australian appearance next week.

One option may also see a rowing eight take the flame across Lake Burley Griffin before runners parade it before thousands of people expected from the ACT and around the country.

HINT: Expect this route to change!

Crashing the US Media

John McCain quotes Atrios on Chris Matthews' MSNBC Hardball program:

"Maybe I am digging for the pony here."

Atrios today also links to a NYT Magazine profile of Chris Matthews, "a man trapped in a tired caricature". As Atrios notes, "it's rare for members of the media attack their own like this". I particularly liked this little exchange:

“This strikes me as artifice,” Stewart said. “If you live by this book, your life will be strategy, and if your life is strategy, you will be unhappy.”

Matthews accused Stewart of “trashing my book.”

“I’m not trashing your book,” Stewart protested. “I’m trashing your philosophy of life.”

It's a long and rambling article, and nowhere near as critical as an Aussie reader might expect. The underlying attitude to "news" is revealing of the US media generally:

Matthews says he wants to be synonymous with this campaign, like Howard Cosell was with Muhammad Ali.

“Imagine bullfighting without Hemingway,” he says. “I can’t.”

Is Matthews comparing himself to Hemingway?

“No way,” he says. “Don’t you, don’t you [expletive] do that.”

...

“It’s a show,” Chris said again, interrupting. “It’s a show. That’s my basic response.”

...

Staring at the screen, Matthews squinted, cocked his head and leaned forward. “Have you noticed,” he said to no one in particular, “that my head looks about four times as big as Obama’s?”

Rupert Exposes Chinese Invasion Plans

East Timor buys boats from China, sparking growing "alarm" in the Murdoch media:

A DFAT spokesman said it had no public comment to make about the deal. But respected defence strategist Paul Dibb said if the patrol boats came armed, it would be a concern for Canberra, which is expected to provide more than $72 million in foreign aid to East Timor this year.

"It's a matter of how much further it goes, and what sort of footprint China sees it has the right to have in our immediate neighbourhood where clearly we (Australia) see ourselves as the leading power with the most influence," Professor Dibb said.

"If they are basically civilian-type Customs patrol boats, then that's one thing. But if they are built by the PLA (People's Liberation Army) and were armed, then that might start to raise a deal more interest (in Canberra)," he added.

Defence expert Alan Behm said East Timor would learn quickly that patrol boats were expensive to operate and maintain. He said a better investment would have been for the Gusmao-led Government in Dili to improve social infrastructure.

Got that, Mr Gusmao? Do as we say, not what we do.

We'll steal your oil fields and only give you a pittance in foreign aid, ensuring that Timor L'Este remains the poorest country in the Asia-Pacific region, but we still expect you to rely on our brave military forever.

Elsewhere, Dr Gideon Polya sees an anti-China geo-political agenda behind the hypocritical US-, UK-, EU- and Australian criticisms of China over Tibet. For example:

The annual infant death rate in Occupied Afghanistan (6.2%) is 51 times that in Occupier Australia.

It's only our responsibility when things go right.

Aussie Oilers Get Lubed Up For Iraq Insertion

The al-Maliki government in Baghdad recently released a shortlist of 35 companies "pre-qualified" to bid for oil and gas contracts. BHP Billiton, Oil Search and Woodside Petroleum are on the list:

Last week BHP petroleum's chief executive, Mike Yeager, said his company was looking to provide technical services at Halfayah for the next few years while Iraq worked on its domestic oil legislation...

Woodside has also tried to gain access to Iraqi oilfields since the US invasion in 2003. It had a memorandum of co-operation with the Ministry of Oil, covering the evaluation of oil and gas projects in Kurdistan, which expired last year...

Oil Search's managing director, Peter Botten, said his company was close to picking up some more exploration ground in Kurdistan. The group's business development head, Keiran Wulff, last month said his company was comfortable operating in Kurdistan due to its experience with security and government relations in a similarly risky environment in Papua New Guinea.

There is of course an expectation that these companies will be invited to exploit Iraq's national resource because (after all) we helped "liberate" the country from Saddam. To the victors the spoils, as they say. I am just so proud.

I hope Kev doesn't hold up these potentially lucrative business deals with any annoying Royal Commissions or anything like that. We all know business and politics don't mix.

But What Will Tim Blair Say?

OMFG is Bush going GREEN? Potus is about to "spell out a strategy for long-term goals for curbing emissions". But don't worry, Timmeh - he's not serious. It's just a tepid response to the threat of legal action against the thoroughly politicised US Environmental Protection agency.

Sleepless In A Land Of Sleepwalkers

I am not mentally healthy. My vision of reality is fragmented. I do not understand how others go about their lives as if everything is normal. Fortunately I am not alone:

There has never been a condition of such deep, virtually catatonic civic paralysis in American history -- and few such instances in world history. There will be no good issue from all of this. No saving grace in the last act, no life-enhancing "lessons learned," no character growth in the story arc, no deus ex machina, no redemption. There will only be -- at best, in the very best-case scenario imaginable -- a long, slow agonizing slog through the ruins, a hard, interminable labor of waste disposal and reclamation, in a much-diminished world.

And yet the sleepwalking goes on...

Those who remain silent are not sleepwalking, but only pretending to sleep. Their silence has become complicity: how can they now condemn Bush (or Howard) when they themselves voted for him, and voted for him again? To condemn these War Criminals is to condemn themselves, so they keep their eyes shut and their mouths shut. All we can do is keep shouting in their ears...

On the eve of war, Tony Blair told parliament that, while there would be civilian casualties, Saddam Hussein would be "responsible for many more deaths even in one year than we will be in any conflict". Amnesty International estimated annual deaths linked to political repression in Iraq at that time to be in the low hundreds - many more were dying from the impact of western-sponsored sanctions. In the five years since, civilian deaths are estimated at anywhere between 150,000 (the figure accepted by the Iraqi government) and a million-plus, with the Lancet's estimate of 600,000 violent deaths in the first three years alone having held up as the most rigorous. After five years of occupation, Iraq is ranked as the most violent and dangerous place in the world by an Economist Intelligence Unit index. Two million refugees have fled the country as a result, while a further 2 million have been driven from their homes inside Iraq. This has become the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet.

In the western world, far from the scene of the unfolding catastrophe, such suffering has been somehow normalised as a kind of background noise...

Given that the invasion of Iraq was regarded as illegal by the majority of the UN security council, its secretary general, and the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion, it must by the same token be seen as a war crime: what the Nuremberg tribunal deemed the "supreme international crime" of aggression. If it weren't for the fact that there is not the remotest prospect of any mechanism to apply international law to powerful states, Bush and Blair would be in the dock at the Hague.

Quote Of The Day

“Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy."
- Osama Bin Laden, 2002

War Crimes

The Right Honourable Tony Benn, British Labour's longest serving member of parliament:

"President Bush decided to invade Iraq when he became president in the year 2000, long before 9/11. He wanted the oil, he wanted the bases in the middle east to strengthen American power.

"That invasion was a war crime in international law. It breached the charter of the UN and Mr Blair went along with it."

And let's not forget the torture of prisoners:

Despite the administration lawyers’ efforts to circumvent or abandon Geneva, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are entitled Article 3 protections.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, of the majority opinion, observed that “violations of Common Article 3 are considered ‘war crimes,’” Sands wrote.

Less than 4 months later, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) was rushed through Congress before the Democrats took control the next year. A little known provision slipped into the MCA retroactively granted immunity to perpetrators of war crimes back to 1997, Jeff Stein said in Congressional Quarterly.

In effect, the administration’s lawyers had immunized themselves — but only within the borders of the U.S.

Sands described the real possibility of future war crime indictments because of the immunity granted by the MCA and the legal precedent of United States v. Altstoetter, which holds torture lawyers liable.

The MCA’s immunity clause was “very stupid,” a European prosecutor told Sands — it’s “much easier” for foreign investigators to intervene knowing that possible war crimes would never be addressed in the home country.

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan said that “the memo from John Yoo — as well as revelations from Philippe Sands’ book — mean that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be at some point indicted for war crimes. They deserve to be.”

What's our excuse, Australia?

Racist, Fear-Mongering Crap

Brought to you by Quadrant and the Murdoch media:

Yes, indigenous Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, make more babies and again cherish their heritage. Yes, they could encourage non-Muslim immigration and acculturate Muslims already living in Europe. Yes, Muslim could accept historic Europe. But not only are such developments not under way, their prospects are dim. In particular, young Muslims are cultivating grievances and nursing ambitions at odds with their neighbours.

One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it...

For more serious Murdoch journalism, how about a car navigation system as a sex toy?

If a former lover was an Irish heartbreaker, you can program TomTom to speak with an Irish accent. It's such a turn-on... If TomTom could find my G-spot, I'd marry him.

Suck On This, Rupert

The Huffington Post reports on a Wall Street Journal parody that has Murdoch incensed:

Highlights of the My Wall Street Journal parody — brought to you by the same team that created the 1982 Off The Wall Street Journal, led by editor-in-chief Tony Hendra — a full-page spread of a topless Ann Coulter (in WSJ stipple-style), a gossip section called "Page Sex," headlines like "Cleaning Lady Sees Virgin In Merrill Lynch Q4 Loss," and "Obitcharies," wishful-thinking obituaries for people vilified by the far right, including Susan Sarandon and Paul Krugman.

This is no fly-by-night operation either. They have printed 250,000 copies for the first run:

Available at all Hudson News stores, Universal Newsstands, Duane Reades and many other newstands in NYC as well as major airports in NY, Chicago, Boston and LA. Also at select Borders and Manhattan Barnes & Noble locations...

Also on sale at Amazon.com! Meanwhile, the Daily Show takes the piss out of FOX News.

Credibility's a bitch, innit? And the News Corpse stock price is also going down.

OTOH it's not all bad news for Murdoch: he just got appointed to the board of Associated Press, on the same day that the AP chairman asked Barack Obama a question about "Obama Bin Laden". His friend Silvio is back in power in Rome. And John W. Howard is promising to do whatever he can to help Murdoch's beloved Liberal Party in Australia:

"I will do everything I can, in a quiet way, to help you," he said, in an apparent dig at the former prime minister Paul Keating.

"I think former prime ministers should give quiet assistance. People were very fair to me when I was there; well, most of them."

Actually, I think he is talking about Malcolm Fraser, who has become one of his biggest critics.

Who's Responsible For This Mess?

Wouldn't it be nice if the NYT front page was written by Mike Whitney:

The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.

The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for at least a generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the war (preemption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification for unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There will have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible in the deaths of over one million Iraqis.

I urge readers to pay attention to that final para: we affluent Westerners will never know true peace until we bring those responsible for this tragedy to account.

We need War Crime tribunals, however much the complicit media and political parties might scoff at the idea. The general public may also scoff at the idea today, but we just have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until the truth is heard.

What's the alternative? Our silence is complicity, and the dead deserve more than that. The living thirst for justice. If we do not want the righteous hatred of generations whose lives and countries we have destroyed, we need to show that these atrocities, though done in our name, were not sanctioned with our blessing.

Giving Me Money Is Foolish! I Cannot Be Bought!

Tonight's Four Corners story about corrupt developers bribing corrupt NSW politicians has echoes of what happened here on the Gold Coast. Local councilors set up a bank account and property developers just put money into it because they wanted to.

And surely all this has major repercussions at the Federal level too:

Professor Botman says corporate fundraising is also the most powerful thing an ALP member can do.

In the late 1990s, a new class of political deal-makers perfected a system of fundraising that made NSW Labor rich.

A few years ago, property developers overtook the unions as the biggest donors to the state party, giving almost $15 million in nine years.

But NSW ALP assistant general secretary Luke Foley has told Four Corners the party's emphasis on fundraising is dangerous.

"If we're simply a brand with a good advertising campaign when an election comes round and nothing else, we only engage in the empty pursuit of power," he said.

"There's a risk that some people may think they can earn brownie points by bringing in the dollars...

"We ought not tolerate a culture where there's even a perception that bringing in the dollars for the party will get you ahead within the ranks of your political party."

Don't expect too hear too much noise from Nelson, Turnbull et al.

Out With The Old Spies...

ASIO is advertising again. The latest advert in the SMH asks "How do you define achievement?" - is that part of the test? The next screen (after a warning not to discuss your application with anyone) asks "How do you define reward?" - which probably means the pay sucks.

I guess you could define "achievement" as making sure the Australian public never finds out why we really went to war in Iraq, or who planted that bomb outside the Hilton hotel back in the early 1980's? "Reward" is presumably further up the pay chain: starting as an analyst on $56-$78K (yep, the pay sucks), you can move into fields like Policy Development or Counter Espionage, where you help identify "attempts to interfere in... the political process". [Hey, isn't that what I do here every day? Where's MY reward? Oh, yeah, my loyal readers! Love to you both! LOL]

I gotta admit, this job sounds tempting:

The person you are is more important than what you've studied or where you're currently working.

But aside from the salary, I have two major problems:

1. Relocation to cold, cold, cold Canberra. I was born there, and the only thing I can really remember is how cold it was.
2. Not telling family and friends what I do for a living. Doesn't that almost guarantee ASIO is going to get untrustworthy, socially dysfunctional liars in the job?

HINT TO ASIO: I'd rather be "tapped" if you don't mind. Let me stay here on the Gold Coast, and keep the kids in school. Give me a $50K wad of loose change cash as "incentive". I'll tell my wife that if she really wants to know where it came from, I'll have to give it back. That might work (but probably not: she's just too bloody honest). We'll talk salary later, m'kay?

Murdoch Flips Out

Funny.

US and Iran In Secret Talks For Last 5 Years

But Bush doesn't want to know about any potential diplomatic breakthroughs.

Torturing The Language

Robert Fisk says Bush is marching backwards:

Bush also told us that “we actually re-liberated certain communities”. This, folks, goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around “re-liberating” anything? And what does that credibility-sapping “actually” mean? I suspect it was an attempt by the White House speech writer to suggest - by sleight of hand, of course - that Bush was really - really - telling the truth this time. But by putting “actually” in front of “re-liberate” - as opposed to just “liberate” - the whole grammatical construction falls apart. Rather like Iraq.

For by my reckoning, we have now “re-liberated” Fallujah twice. We have “re-liberated” Mosul three times and “re-liberated” Ramadi four times. The scorecard goes on. My files show that Sadr City may have been “re-liberated” five times, while Baghdad is “re-liberated” on an almost daily basis.

Tom Switzer Land

Part 1 in a series: "How The US Neocons Invaded Australia"

Thanks to a reader for reminding me that Tom Switzer, former Opinion pages editor of The Murdochian, left his job at the end of February 2008 to take up work with Brendan Nelson's office. So how's that going, Tom?

Some say Switzer resigned rather than face the humiliation of editing the post-election tsunami of pro-Rudd pieces we've seen from Murdoch's mob. Others say that despite begging for his job he was dumped for taking the opinion pages too far into La La Land.

Switzer's role in Australian political journalism deserves a bit more scrutiny than it has received to date. Consider this meteoric career path for starters:

1990-94: studied history and economics at Sydney University.
1995-98: assistant editor at the American Enterprise Institute (spiritual home of the US neo-conservatives) in Washington.
1998-2001: editorial writer at The Australian Financial Review.
2001-08: opinion pages editor, The Australian.

Switzer joined Murdoch's flagship paper just a month after 9/11. As he tells it, Rupert's hacks were all calling each other "comrade" when he arrived, but he soon put a stop to that nonsense. Janet Albrechtsen became his most ardent devotee:

IT is only a slight exaggeration to say opinion writing in the Australian press has two eras: BT and AT. Before Tom. And after Tom...

The period AT sees this page, and the public conversation, transformed. I would say that, of course. Switzer brought me on board soon after his arrival.

John Howard praised Switzer for giving "an authentic voice to the Right in the culture debates". But don't get the idea that he was another unbalanced neocon! Howard insists Switzer's promotion of voices like Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens was "not to the detriment of others". As Janet explains it:

Switzer strove for balance. As he wrote in The Australian back in 2005, between July 2002 and March 2003, while debate about Iraq raged, this page reflected the controversy by publishing 45 dovish pieces and 47 hawkish pieces. After Saddam Hussein’s downfall, 107 columns were critical of the US-led occupation while 114 were supportive. You don’t get more balanced than that.

In other words, there were more hawkish pieces than dovish ones, and more pro-occupation articles than critical ones. And that's despite the fact that the Iraq quagmire has been, as Switzer himself once conceded, a "misbegotten venture" championed by "misguided idealists".

I'd like to know a bit more about Tom Switzer and his links with the US neo-conservatives. I'd like to know who gave him a job at the Fin Review, why Rupert put him in charge of the editorials just after 9/11, and whether his work with former Defence Minister Brendan Nelson includes contacts with US military-industrial supporters.

It's interesting, for example, that Switzer was still listed as a contact for the American Foreign Service Association in 2005:

Please keep in mind that we continue at your service to arrange speakers for your organization on foreign affairs issues. As before, if your organization is interested in a retired diplomat speaker on such issues, contact Tom Switzer, AFSA Communications Director, at: 800-704-2372, ext. 501; e-mail: switzer@afsa.org.

A Different Tom Switzer?

I'd also like to know who organised for John Howard to be in the USA visiting Murdoch and Bush just hours before 9/11. But that's another story...

NOTES: Switzer is an old boy of Sydney's Saint Aloysius college.

Here's an old 1997 AEI interview with Caspar Weinberger, co-authored with Bill Kauffman.

Andrew West in New Matilda, July 2006:

The Australian's op-ed page, run by former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) staffer Tom Switzer, offers a frequent pulpit to former Howard Government staffer Kevin Donnelly to promote free market policies in education. Switzer himself wrote glowingly in the AEI journal last year about Howard, calling him the 'antipodal offspring of his hero Ronald Reagan.'

But, of course, all this is on the record. What is less well known are the extensive social networks connecting the Right-wing activists and columnists. Akerman attends the PM's invitation-only Christmas cocktail party at Kirribilli House. Malcolm Farr, the Daily Telegraph's Canberra political correspondent (and a supposedly neutral member of the ABC's Insiders panel) was one of only three media people invited to a 2003 barbecue at The Lodge for visiting US President George W Bush. The other two were Melbourne broadcaster Neil Mitchell and Sydney broadcaster (and former Liberal Party candidate) Alan Belford Jones.

I once found myself the distinctly odd man out in a gathering that included Akerman, the SMH's Paul Sheehan, the revisionist historian and new ABC Director Keith Windschuttle, The Bulletin's Tim Blair, The Australian columnist Frank Devine and Quadrant editor Paddy McGuinness. There is also a regular dinner party salon of activists that, for a while last year, included Switzer and Alex Hawke, the secretive Federal President of the Young Liberals who featured so prominently in Monday night's Four Corners program.

Is there anything wrong with any of this? No, except when 'movement' activism infiltrates the news coverage.

Wilson Da Silva follows up an SMH investigation:

Australia's neo-conservative think tanks wield extraordinary influence over government policy.

They are so influential that they regard themselves as "the fifth estate", as essential to democracy as the other four: government, parliament, the judiciary and a free press. Each think tank has a clear political agenda, but prefers the camouflage of innocuous-sounding names such as Sydney's Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) or Melbourne's Institute of Public Affairs...

In Australia, as elsewhere, they ply their trade by publishing "independent research" from a network of like-minded scholars whose reports invariably end up backing the neo-conservative world view. Staff and friendly scholars are paid to write newspaper articles which are submitted - usually free - to opinion pages.

By publishing reports that confirm their arguments, neo-conservative think tanks seek to mould public debate. But they also peddle influence, holding closed seminars and lectures where visiting international conservative luminaries address selected rising members of the political elite - such as last week's CIS gathering on the Sunshine Coast. Von Hayek would have been pleased. He died in 1992, but not before Thatcher rewarded him with a visit to Buckingham Palace, where he was bestowed with a Companion of Honour - a tribute to the most successful, if unheralded, political puppet-master of the past century.

BUSH KNEW

The Decider speaks:

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

"Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

Powell wimps out (again):

Powell said that he didn't have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees."

Where's The Bread Line?

"The time has come for me to open a new chapter in my life. I will be looking to build a career post-politics in the commercial world."
- Peter Costello.

Andrew Fraser suggests Smirky might take another swing at the Liberal leadership simply because he has nothing better to do:

Maybe he'd appear desirable to a bank for his ability to conduct government relations save for the fact that, for this year at least, the nation's nine governments are all in Labor hands.

BWAAAAAAHHH!!!!

John Roskam, executive director of a right-wing, corporate funded think tank, obviously did not get an invite:

The problem with Labor's summit is that 95% of the participants will be in enthusiastic agreement that the Rudd Government is good, that the Howard government was bad, and that the solution to any problem is higher taxes and more government spending.

The Australia 2020 Summit is an exercise in pure and simple politics. The summit will co-opt the country's elite into endorsing the Rudd Government's policies, and in the process the Howard government will be airbrushed from history.

Sounds good to me.

As long as the "higher taxes" are for rich bastards, like those who fund Roskam's think-tank.

Yes Of Course It Was F%*&ing Cheney

AP picks up on the ABC story about those White House torture meetings, noting that the participants "took care to insulate President Bush". Furthermore, the executive meetings synch up with the legal memos:

"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said.

In other words, Cheney and Rumsfeld gave the thumbs-up to the CIA, then told their DOJ lackeys to go and make it all legal.

The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

The small group then asked the Justice Department to examine whether using the interrogation methods would break domestic or international laws.

"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a second former senior intelligence official. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."

Why Do We Have An "Obligation" To Iraq?

Joel Fitzgibbon confirms Australian combat troops are coming home:

"We have an obligation to do what we can on the non-military side to rebuild their country."

Why do we have an "obligation" if we have done nothing wrong? Didn't we help depose Saddam? Didn't we help rid Iraq of terrorists? Shouldn't they be the ones with an obligation to us???

The official narrative makes no sense unless you accept that we are guilty of War Crimes.

Dolly As A Panda, Moneybags As A Vulture

Perhaps the most pathetic election bribe last year came from Dolly Downer in September:

"It is true that I've been working with the Chinese in my position not only as an Adelaide MP, but also as the Foreign Minister, to try to get them to lend to us, an Australian zoo, two giant pandas.

"And they've agreed to do it to my own home zoo which my own grandfather was once the president of, so I'm kind of excited about it."

But Dolly never mentioned the $15 million project costs, including $1 million annually to fund conservation efforts in China and $5 million for a new enclosure. Suddenly the deal is looking shaky. Dolly blames Kev (but not for his pro-Tibet human rights talk, of course):

"The Labor government is considering cutting the $5 million.

"If that were to happen, then the project wouldn't go ahead. That of course would be quite a slap in the face of President Hu Jintao."

BWAAAAAA!!!! But wait a minute, Dolly - isn't Moneybags calling for greater budget cuts? Or is that just part of his careful branding exercise:

The Age has been told that leadership aspirant Malcolm Turnbull called colleagues this week, assessing whether there was a mood in the party for a leadership switch.

Arguments for and against a change were canvassed; weighing up perceived risks to the Liberal brand against the long run to the next election.

Let's ask Malcolm if he wants Dolly's pandas flying into Adelaide on special immigrant visas, shall we? And if he doesn't want them, please don't tell that nice Mr Hu. M'kay?

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire — nil nisi divinum stabile est...

UPDATE: Rudd has assured Clowner his precious panda project is safe from the razor gang. I suppose people in Adelaide need something to do.

Misery And Joy

"Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq. Today, thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success."

- G.W. Bush, April 10, 2008.

Who knew? Michael Leunig has a regular column in The Age. I've only ever seen sporadic articles in other papers. Here's a delightful sample:

I would like to thank you, B, wherever you are; you gave me my first worldly lesson in false witness and dismay.

You helped greatly to open my eyes to the mysterious human darkness where I eventually learnt to see - you helped to prepare me for many things disgusting and consoling in the human story: the passion of Christ, The Crucible, Kafka, politics, dog whistle politics, dirt files, hate mail, hate blogs, hoaxes, satire without values, envious attacks, art critics, book critics, suburban blood lust, lynch mobs, witch hunts, sanctimonious warfare - and the shower of shit that falls from the sky upon anyone who dares to go it alone and live creatively, holding what is personal, unique and vulnerable above what is corporate, systematic and tribal.

Thank you B, ours was a forlorn and pathetic little episode compared to what followed for me and perhaps for you. It comes to us all in time...

Later in life I saw it again and again - even in intellectual and cultural life - the most innocent thing, the most natural unadorned and beautiful idea or the most weak, wretched and vulnerable situation was sometimes, perversely, the thing that was most viciously targeted and abused. Nothing awakens fiendish and destructive anger like the presence of the naked and the powerless - and the vast contemporary culture of popular perversity is energised by an eternal envious loathing of innocence and integrity.

Thank you, thugs, for your precious and profound lesson in life. Your vulgar indiscretion gave the game away - the same deeply human and deeply canine game we see played out at the highest levels of polite society in more cunning and sophisticated ways by the guilty, who alas, all too rarely stand accused or face trial.

Looking In China's Mirror

"I have heard cynics who say he’s a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes."
- Rupert Murdoch, currying favour with Beijing by ridiculing the Dalai Lama.

Western outrage over Chinese human rights forces us to reflect on our own countries' records. While Western nations may have a long and proud (if somewhat manufactured) history of freedom and equality, we are clearly moving towards more repressive models, even as the Chinese Communist Party moves slowly in the other direction.

For example, compare the Western media's fawning approach to government elites with this description of China's media:

[A]ll newspapers and TV and radio stations are owned by the government and edited by men and women who know where the red lines are drawn. Each time a new issue comes up, the Communist Party propaganda department sends them a directive telling them the line to take.

Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the constitution. But it is upheld only for those who do not challenge Communist Party rule. Communist Party security agents decide what constitutes a challenge.

In the West, media is owned by Big Business, and news stories are edited by people who know where the company lines are drawn. Political parties distribute the talking points. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in theory, but not necessarily in practice.

Then there are issues like the treatment of protesters, the validity of legal procedures, corrupt business deals, police brutality, the death penalty, land rights, and so forth. You get the idea!

The Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP) are now warning that there will be a massive security operation surrounding the Olympics, including a crackdown on potential "terrorists".

"To judge from the pattern of past Olympics, security must be given top priority."

So what's new?

On all these issues, the West's moral high ground is increasingly diminished, particularly thanks to our disastrous invasion of Iraq and George W. Bush's ridiculous "war" on terrorists.

And all this forces us to question the continued validity of the old "Right versus Left" political duality. You don't get much more "Left" than China these days - at least not on paper - but the Chinese are embracing Western business models in a big hurry.

Similarly, the supposedly "Left" political parties in the USA, UK and Australia are all rabidly pro-business and increasingly indistinguishable from their "Right" wing opponents. Does it really matter to ordinary working citizens whether it is The State or a Big Business Elite that controls the media, the military, and the means of production?

So what makes us different from, or better than, the Chinese? I mean, aside from our soccer team? Does "Right" versus "Left" even matter any more? Maybe it should be "People" versus "Elites"?

CONFIRMED: TOP BUSH WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS DESIGNED AND APPROVED TORTURE TECHNIQUES

A must read:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Atrios calls them Monsters and War Criminals who should all be in jail. TPM highlights this bit:

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Now can we start to ask about Australian government involvement please? A comment from our former PM?

Torch Farce Continues

Latest news from LA Times:

In the early afternoon, the “first flame bearer left the podium near downtown and, surrounded by security, dashed into a massive pier-side building less than 300 feet away, leaving stunned onlookers shaking their heads,” Los Angeles Times staff writer John Glionna reported today.

Later in the day, angry protesters engaged in shoving matches with police over the sudden route change that apparently was made to deter any violent clashes with demonstrators. The Associated Press then reported that the planned closing events for the Olympic torch at the waterfront were canceled and “another one will take place at an undisclosed location.”

Seriously, what's the point? Once things have reached this level, you are better off canceling such events, right? Well, not if you are in control of the media:

Here’s how the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games official website covered the torch relay: “San Francisco embraces Olympic flame with pride.” The story, written by New China News Agency, went on to say: “Under a sunny sky, thousands of people began gathering along the route of the Olympic torch relay early Wednesday morning to show their support for the torch run.”

Canberra please take note: do we really want to be a part of this?

Let's NOT "Move On" From Iraq

"The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
- Milan Kundera.

John Pilger rails against those who "celebrate a system of organised forgetting":

Every day, we breathe the hot air of these pseudo ideas with their pseudo truths and pseudo experts. They set the limits of public debate within the most advanced societies. They determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. They manipulate our compassion and our anger and make many of us feel there is nothing we can do.

Pilger's article focusses on South Africa, but the message is universal:

Those who led the struggle against racial apartheid often said no. They dissented. They caused trouble. They took risks. They put people first. And they were the best that people can be. Above all, they had a social and political imagination that unaccountable power always fears. And they had courage. It is this imagination and courage that opens up real debate with real information and allows ordinary people to reclaim their confidence to demand their human and democratic rights.

I am lucky: here in Australia, I enjoy pretty much all my "human and democratic rights". But my nation has conspired to actively participate in denying those rights to others. And until my country addresses those War Crimes, I will not know true peace.

I tell you this: as long as one child lives in poverty anywhere on this planet, as long as one man remains in prison for political reasons, as long as one woman is beaten and abused by government agents, the "Free World" will never be free.

One world. One people.

Gently Weeping

Spare a thought for my good US blogging buddy Winter Patriot, whose wife's best friend has just been murdered.

Like WP says, multiply by a million all the grief and agony his family and friends are experiencing right now, and you start to get some idea of what we have done in Iraq.

WP's latest post got me looking back at this old post of his. If you thought 9/11 was traumatic, imagine how much more traumatic it was to people who had some idea of what was really going down. I don't know what miniscule percentage of US TV viewers immediately connected thoughts of Osama Bin Laden and US government "black ops" when they saw those planes hit the WTC, but WP was one of them:

Late on the night of 9/11, there were huge vigils in Manhattan. People had brought pictures of their lost loved ones, whom they called 'missing'. There were flowers and candles all over the place, people sitting quietly holding hands or just staring into the tiny flames of the candles. It was a heartbreaking scene, repeated over and over all over lower Manhattan. At many points it was too painful to watch.

But at one point when I was watching, the TV camera found and zoomed in on something that looked very out of place. There amid the flowers and the candles, among all the weeping silent people, there was a hand-painted sign, which, if I remember correctly, said "President Bush: Bomb Afghanistan Tonight". Ever since that night, I have wondered who painted that sign, who planted it in the midst of those grieving people, and who pointed it out to the TV cameraman.

I didn't sleep that night. I didn't sleep much for the next week or two. Maybe it was a month; I can't really remember. But it doesn't make any difference...

Who brought all this pain upon us?

WP is an Internet Legend, and I am honoured to have him as a regular reader here. In fact, I probably would not even be blogging any more if not for his constant support and enthusiasm. He is a good man who bleeds tears for all the twisted horrors that others prefer to ignore, and the last thing he deserves in his life is more sorrow and pain.

Please spare a thought, and a prayer if you believe in them, for WP and his loved ones.

Bloody Murderers

Don't forget that Australian officials were present at some of these interrogations, and worked closely with US legal teams. From Scott Horton via Atrios:

Haynes had previously authorized the use of the torture techniques, and had secured an order from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorizing them.

Following the implementation of these techniques, more than 108 detainees died in detention. In a large number of these cases, the deaths have been ruled a homicide and connected to torture. These homicides were a forseeable consequence of the advice that Haynes and Yoo gave.

John Conyers is now calling Yoo before the US Senate House Judiciary. Did I mention that Australian officials were involved in these interrogations?

In May 2004, the Secretary to the Department of Defence, Ric Smith, and armed forces chief, General Peter Cosgrove, released a joint statement stating that no ADF personnel were aware of “abuse or serious mistreatment” before they became public knowledge in January 2004. A week later they retracted that statement, admitting they were aware of the allegations since at least November 2003. But of course...

Prime Minister John Howard immediately denied any culpability. “I am very unhappy that I was misinformed by the defence department. So is the defence minister,” Howard declared. “Everything that I said was based on the advice of the defence department. I did not set out to mislead anybody.”

When the Abu Ghraib photographs were first published in April, the government claimed to be appalled by the evidence of abuse, and insisted that no-one in Canberra had any idea of the extent and nature of the mistreatment. Howard repeatedly emphasised that no Australians were implicated. “We were not involved,” he declared.

Howard stuck to this claim yesterday, but it has unravelled completely. Leaks from within the defence establishment fuelled a Sydney Morning Herald investigation. It soon emerged that a number of Australian officers were working at the highest levels of the US military legal team in Baghdad, and played a central role in the US prison regime. Australian military lawyers advised US forces on interrogation techniques, and drafted replies to the Red Cross justifying violations of the Geneva Conventions...

Either the government is hopelessly incompetent, or it knew the truth all along. The fact that Howard has expressed his full confidence in Smith and Cosgrove — despite claiming to have been misled by them — suggests that the latter explanation is more likely.

Even if true, Howard’s explanation of the events represents a damning self-indictment. According to his account, the government first learned of the abuse allegations in January, following which it made no attempt to discover the nature of these allegations, or the extent of the torture. No clarification was ever sought from either the US military or the Bush administration, and no attempt was made to obtain a copy of the Red Cross reports. Nor did the government ever ask the Defence department whether any Australians working in the Coalition Provisional Authority were involved in any aspect of the affair. Far from constituting a defense, the government’s account is an admission of criminal negligence...

The Howard government is as culpable for war crimes as is the Bush administration. Howard, Hill and Downer should all be prosecuted for their role in the illegal invasion of Iraq, and the torture of Iraqi detainees.

We need a bloody Royal Commission NOW!!!

Olympic Games As Political Bargaining Chip

See if you can work it out:

US President George W. Bush was challenged on Monday by Senator Hillary Clinton to skip the ceremony, although the US leader has consistently said he plans to attend, arguing that the Olympics is about sport not politics.

However the White House on Tuesday did not rule out the possibility of Bush missing the event.

Asked by reporters if Bush would attend the opening ceremony, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "We haven't provided any schedule on the president's trip."

It makes no sense, does it? If the Games is not about politics, why are so many politicians going? And if Bush is going, why won't the White House confirm it?

Obviously, the USA is now using Bush's attendance at the Opening Ceremony as a bargaining chip to push the Chinese on other issues, particularly (one assumes) financial ones.

Moral high ground be damned, eh? This is business.

Saint Tony Of Iraq

Tony Blair dedicates the rest of his life to God:

"People will think this is a piece of spin but, I've always been as interested in religion as politics. I see this over time as the rest of my life's work."

If only he'd lost his faith in politics before he went on his Crusade.

Complicity And Guilt

Christopher Kin says the USA can’t leave Iraq because it needs the oil. And he expects Teh People to be OK with that:

...the US will not only endeavour to remain in control of Iraqi oil, but will also attempt to seize Iran’s oilfields and that, moreover, the US people will support this in order to preserve their living standard...

We have tended to think that the American people have been deceived by the Bush administration’s lies. It appears that, although initially this was the case, America has realized the truth but cannot admit its complicity. It cares about its high living standards and American deaths, not Iraqi or Afghan poverty and deaths. The American people do not recognize themselves in the mirror. They evidently see only fantasy images, unrelated to reality, derived from films.

Of course it's not so much films as the news media. And the question is whether the US people, who are mostly decent, would still think like that if the media did not present facts in such a distorted manner.

We see the same thing happening in Australia, where many ordinary people would rather just not talk about the war, either because they have been fed a false story or because they recognise the potential implications for their wallet.

But the narrative in Kin's article ignores one important fact: the USA cannot win in Iraq and will never have full control of Iraq’s oil (let along Iran’s). The pipes will always be sabotaged while the occupiers remain. So all that’s really being achieved is a higher oil price (and higher oil company profits for Cheney's friends) in the interim.

NB: h/t wbb at JQ's blog.

Is Rupert Murdoch Teh Evil?

The Guardian's Michael White recently asked Why are politicians scared of Rupert Murdoch?

Murdochian manoeuvres matter to us all as more than simply worth a good chuckle because so many politicians around the world behave as if Dad must always be placated...

Look how Rupert's ill-will towards Europe has frightened successive British governments into being either negative about it (G Brown) or laughably timid (T Blair).

I'm not starry-eyed Europhile, but it has been a bit pathetic.

One person who is not scared of the wrinkly old bastard is his new wife, Wendi Deng. She's just landed Rupert at #8 on GQ's list of "the twenty-five most emasculated, disempowered, henpecked husbands on the planet":

"[S]he's said to have revealed that he uses Viagra (but doesn't need it) and once asked him in front of colleagues, "Are you going deaf, old man?" In January, Deng got her mighty mogul to play waiter at a women's-empowerment event in Davos, Switzerland, much to the amusement of Murdoch watchers the world over. Then again, waiting on Deng has helped Murdoch gain access to the multibillion-dollar Chinese-media market, so who's using whom?"

So what's Wendi Deng doing these days? Apparently says she is setting up a "DreamWorks-esque" film company together with her actress friend Zhang Ziyi, China's fifth richest celebrity. You can see why Deng and Zhang get along: both have slept their way to the top, including extra-marital affairs that boosted their careers.

The friendship between Wendi Deng and Zhang Ziyi began about 5 or 6 years ago... Zhang also met her present boyfriend Vivi Nevo, a mysterious Israeli tycoon holding major shares of Time Warner, on Deng's yacht.

Um, shouldn't that be "Rupert's yacht"? Anyway... So who is this Vivi Nevo fellow? MenStyle.com rank him #23 in their Power Top 50:

If your average Master of the Universe pays a publicist to craft his image, what does it say about Vivi Nevo that he enlisted one of the world’s biggest PR firms to keep from having one? Despite being a player on the scene, Nevo has kept himself and his work shrouded... The venture capitalist has been attending the moguls-only Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference for more than a decade, and he is one of the biggest individual stockholders of the biggest media conglomerate in the world, Time Warner. When Harvey Weinstein was looking to break free of the Disney yoke, he turned to Nevo, who became one of the Weinstein Company’s earliest backers. Inevitably, questions about Nevo turn to his money. We do know this: His L.A.-based company specializes in strategic investing in the global technology, telecom, media, and entertainment sectors, and his wealth is reported to be inherited, which adds a wink to his firm’s name, NV Investments. Say it aloud.

Here's a pic of Zhang and Nevi:

The Olympics Have Become An Exercise In Government Propaganda

A WTF??? moment in Paris:

There are calls for the Olympics Torch Relay to be canceled after the torch was extinguished several times during Paris demonstrations:

Chinese organizers finally gave up on the relay, canceling the last third of what China had hoped would be a joyous jog by torch-bearing VIPs past some of Paris' most famous landmarks.

Thousands of protesters slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with impassioned displays of anger over China's human rights record, its grip on Tibet and support for Sudan despite years of bloodshed in Darfur.

Five times, the Chinese officials in dark glasses and tracksuits who guard the torch extinguished it and retreated to the safety of a bus...

The torch is due in San Francisco tonight, where protesters have already scaled the Golden Gate Bridge. The FreeTibet.org message on their banners is usually obscured in media photos I've seen: this better pic is from Fairfax:

Kevin Rudd is planning to avoid the torch ceremony and has pledged that the torch will be guarded by Australians, not Chinese officials. But that's just not good enough. A desperate Hillary Clinton is calling on Bush to boycott the opening ceremony, but even that is not good enough.

It's time for the world to recognise that the Chinese government has not taken advantage of this historic opportunity to improve their human rights record, as they promised they would when granted the Games. Instead, what they have done is build stronger business and political ties to the global economic community, and used this influence to stifle criticism. That's why French protesters were calling the Chinese officials "Fascists".

The whole thing is now a sad piece of government propaganda. We should not be a part of it any longer. It's time Kevin Rudd (flying to China with Penny Wong today) canceled the Canberra torch relay and announced a complete Australian boycott of the Games. If our government won't do it, our athletes should.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

And this is the stupidest idea I have heard in a long time:

THE Australian Defence Force has presented the Government with a plan to recruit more indigenous Australians.

This would involve the army embracing traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremonies and signage for bases acknowledging traditional owners.

US Style Democracy Comes to Iraq

Maliki threatens to bar Sadr from vote:

"They no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mehdi Army."

Does the same rule apply to all political parties and private militia in Iraq? This could be a very quiet election!

Or maybe al-Maliki is just trying to scare people off the streets ahead of tomorrow's big anti-US demonstrations? Hmmn?

Juan Cole reports that a blockade of Sadr City is leading to food shortages. He says the Mehdi Army gets $2 billion a year from blackmarket oil sales, and may be buying better weapons with it. But Cole doesn't think it's fair to blame Iran for that, and he goes into some detail dismantling the increasingly common equation of Al Sadr with Iranian influence. Of course, that won't stop Cheney, Petraeus and McCain from peddling the line.

Elsewhere, the Iranians are urging OPEC to drop US dollar pegging.

And (also via ICH), the Saudis are calling for Israel to open its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors and sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That sounds eminently sensible to me, given that Israeli nukes are no longer a state secret. Let's hear Kevin Rudd support that, eh?

And You Thought Garnaut Was Tough

NASA's top climate scientist warns that existing EU carbon targets are a recipe for certain disaster:

In a startling reappraisal of the threat, James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, calls for a sharp reduction in C02 limits.

Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed".

This study puts to rest the myth that this is just normal cyclical change:

Instead of using theoretical models to estimate the sensitivity of the climate, his team turned to evidence from the Earth's history, which they say gives a much more accurate picture.

The team studied core samples taken from the bottom of the ocean, which allow C02 levels to be tracked millions of years ago. They show that when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35m years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm.

"If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that's a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster - a guaranteed disaster," Hansen told the Guardian.

I Looked Into Putin's Soul

And he told me to piss off and die:

President George W Bush's last ever summit with Vladimir Putin ended in failure last night when the Russian president stood firm in his opposition to Washington's controversial missile defence shield.

I would have thought there was a good opportunity here to use the scaling down of NATO as a bargaining tool with Moscow. But what do I know, right?

Losers Convention

Howard' first post-election public speech in Australia will be in front of the QLD Liberals in Brisbane

The Queensland Liberal Party is charging guests up to $250 a head to hear Mr Howard speak at a "testimonial" dinner at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on April 14.

"It's getting bigger than Ben Hur. It was supposed to be an intimate thing but we've been inundated (with interest)," Liberal Party deputy state director Peter Epstein said.

"It's basically for him to talk about his achievements and also to thank the party faithful up here.

What a laugh. Lazarus with a triple bypass addressing the Living Dead on make-up techniques.

Splitting The Black Vote

Condi wants to be McCain's Veep. I suspect she has a good chance, particularly if Obama gets the Dems nomination, but how is she gonna handle all those embarrassing quotes and questions on the campaign? Who could have imagined "McCain-Rice 08": it's gonna be pretty surreal, isn't it? Maybe they could use "Psycho Killer" as a campaign song?

Winter Patriot: The 'Liquid Bombers' Series

Great stuff, WP.

If only I had a few weeks to digest it all! :-)

Memo To CCP And IOC Members

This is not a good look.

Pictures of the London relay were broadcast on China's state-controlled TV, but not of the protests and disruption.

The Olympics became a business quite a few years ago, when nobody wanted to host the games until they realised they could turn a profit. And of course TV revenue is the key, so the meejah is a playa.

UPDATE: Jeremy Sears slams Rudd's fence-sitting. My comment:

And you've gotta love this media line that boycotts and protests are a waste of time because the Chinese people never get to see them. In fact, according to this meme, the Chinese people have been educated to believe that Tibet and Taiwan are parts of China and anybody who denies that is a radical terrorist, so if we don't want to offend the Chinese people (who after all have no skin in the political game) then we should all shut about that too.

Has Beijing been buying stakes in our news companies, or are our media barons still just trying to crack that market by sucking up to the mandarins?

Rockets Rain Down On The Green Zone

Two dead, seventeen wounded inside the heavily fortified government and diplomatic compound. Meanwhile the USA is bombing civilian areas on the other side of the wall.

Al-Sadr has called for a "million-strong" anti-U.S. demonstration on Wednesday in Baghdad to protest the fifth anniversary of the capture of the Iraqi capital by invading U.S. troops.

Sounds like everything is going fine, then...

UPDATE: One of the wounded was an Aussie soldier who suffered shrapnel wounds but was apparently not badly injured: he was discharged quickly and has asked not to be identified. So everything is still fine, m'kay?

Kev's New Bestest Friends

Murdoch hacks are reinventing themselves as a Close Friends Of Kev. Today Planet J. defends Rudd's demeaning salute to Bush:

"Anyone who has met the PM can vouch for the fact that this simply his rather awkward form of greeting."

[Sic]. That's top-class writing right there, kids. BTW Kev salutes everybody in the News Ltd office, dontcha know?

Sheridan and the team at News Ltd are all frothing with delight at Rudd's trip to the USA. He didn't tell the Bush to take his Military Industrial Complex and stuff it, so now he's their new Bestest Friend Evuh:

Once again anyone who knows Rudd knows that he is a long-time supporter of the Australia-US alliance...

And of course being a Close Friend Of Kev is clearly what makes Janet such an indispensable read nowadays. But her influence doesn't end there - it's planetary!

I was contacted by a senior editor from a major US newspaper ... I was also approached recently by the BBC.. I was, apparently, the go-to-gal for criticisms on the Labor Government, given my conservative tendencies.

Look at moy, Rupert! Look at moy...! I'm not just a hack, I'm a player! No, really I am!

Another Independent Aussie Blog Sucked Down The Murdoch Hole

Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo gets his own news.com URL.

I can totally sympathise with Mark's desire to make a bit of money out of blogging, but seriously - the Government Gazette Opposition Orifice?

What a disappointment. Bahnisch has a lot to offer, but he has sold himself short.

I mean, how much do these bastards pay, anyway? Can it really be worth it? Murdoch must chuckle himself to sleep at night thinking about how all his strident critics just roll over and play dead whenever the cheque book comes out.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Sure, L.P. will still struggle on as a blog, just like Road To Surfdom does. I hear there are even some changes coming. But I won't be a part of it no more.

It's Teh Credibility, stupid. This is from The Guardian, February 2003:

Most revealing of all was Murdoch's reference to the rationale for going to war, blatantly using the o-word. Politicians in the United States and Britain have strenuously denied the significance of oil, but Murdoch wasn't so reticent. He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil. "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

He went even further down this road in an interview the week before with America's Fortune magazine by forecasting a postwar economic boom. "Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else."

So there was the maestro's music. What then of his editors' lyrics?

All in tune back then, and still in tune today. Economic rationalism gone mad.

What Manner Of Beast Is Kevin08?

This 3-week world tour looks like becoming a life-changing experience for Kevin Rudd. I'm starting to wonder what our nerdish little Kevin07 might be like when he gets back home. His buddy-buddy conversations with Hillary and McCain made me nervous. Then he said this to a European audience:

Afghanistan under the Taliban became a haven for terrorists. These are the terrorists that planned and executed the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 – which was in every respect an attack on the collective civilisation of the West.

That kind of talk makes me nervous. For starters, he's conflating Al Quaeda with the Taliban of 2001 while asking for more NATO troops in Kabul today.

And now he's in Bucharest giving Bush a salute! You can just imagine how that will look on Iraqi or Indonesian television. Oh well, at least it wasn't a Nazi salute!

UPDATE: Brendan Nelson is like a dog waiting for sticks to chase, isn't he? And here he goes again:

"I think it's conduct unbecoming of an Australian prime minister," Dr Nelson said.

Seriously, how can Nelson POSSIBLY criticize Rudd for sucking up to Bush? The hypocrisy just beggars belief, doesn't it?

UPDATE 2: Here's the video. Actually, it looks worse than I thought. Rudd's wandering around the room looking lost and lonely until he makes eye contact with Bush across the room. The salute is clearly meant as a joke, but it is nevertheless demeaning.

Of course, even if 0.07 is right, he's still a hypocritical little dickhead.

What's The Big Idea, Mate?

A great Op-Ed in Fairfax papers today. David Hetherington says Australia's marketplace for ideas is broken. He identifies four main blockages in the national ideas pipeline, starting (hallellujah!) with media ownership. If you have a nice cold beer or Chardonnay on hand, take a sip while you enjoy this lovely little para:

Firstly, concentration of media ownership means that our public debate is dominated by a small clique of commentators who have held sway for decades. Big cities have at most three newspaper opinion pages, and TV discussion of ideas is restricted to late nights or Sunday mornings. The result is a tired, recycled exchange that resembles a school debate. "Proposition: that there is systemic left-wing bias among teachers/universities/the ABC." For the affirmative, Gerard Henderson, Piers Akerman, Miranda Devine. For the negative, Phillip Adams, Mike Carlton, Robert Manne. Sound familiar? You bet. But because of the closed circle of participants, there's little room in this debate for new ideas to flourish.

Damn straight, mate!

The second problem is "a generation of leaders who excelled at machine politics, but struggled to infuse new thinking into their political message". Tick that one off too!

Thirdly, we lack a culture of investment in ideas. Other developed countries have long traditions of philanthropic investment in ideas dating back to the Industrial Revolution. The Barrow Cadbury Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment contribute to economic and social research with a public return on investment as their only expectation. Their dividend is social, not financial. In Australia we give generously to volunteer associations, charities and disaster relief - all worthy causes - but investing in a marketplace for ideas is foreign to us.

Anyone wealthy altruists wanna support this blog? Anyone? No. OK, what about Mark Bahnisch's Larvatus Prodeo blog? Not good enough either? Exactly.

The last blockage identified by Hetherington, who heads a "progressive" thinktank called Per Capita, is our sunny climate. Who wants to think when there's beer in the fridge, cricket on tele, and the surf is pumping? Burp!

Maybe I should be hitting up Hetherington and his mates at Per Capita for some sponsorship money? They just got a million dollar kickoff from private and corporate donors. At last, some serious opposition to the rightwing thinktanks which give us imbeciles like Gerard Henderson and Co.! More here and here.

Bush Walks Out On NATO

Does this mean no new money/troops for Afghanistan? Or is Dubya just racing back to Crawford for another colonic? From WaPo *:

Enough is enough, it seems. With the NATO summit meetings consistently running two hours over schedule most of the day, President Bush abruptly got up and left the last formal session of the day, not bothering to wait for an official summit photograph of all the leaders.

Bush is no fan of windy meetings and evidently had had his fill. He left behind Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to represent him for the rest of the session, which concerned NATO operations in Afghanistan, but his departure was so sudden and unexpected that he left some of his motorcade behind, including his press pool, when he got into his car and headed back to his hotel.

* - (via Think Progress, via Atrios)!

Find Me Something, Anything

You've gotta be kidding me. This is starting to sound like the search for Saddam's WMDs:

NINE federal police staff members are still working full-time on the Mohamed Haneef case as the investigation of the Indian doctor - and the bill to taxpayers - keep ticking over.

That's not all - another five officers are providing assistance "periodically". The AFP is still working with authorities in Britain and India, who are probably also desperately trying to nail something - anything! - on Haneef.

Mick Keelty, resign now.

What's On Antiwar.com Today?

Retired US General William Odom calls for a quick withdrawal, ridiculing the idea that Bush is building a democratic nation in Iraq:

I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.

How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.

And Robert Sheer laments the money wasted on useless weaponry since 9-11:

In the horror of that moment, the floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible connection with fighting stateless terrorists...

The explosion of spending on expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to come.

And get this:

Credit the GAO for providing a rare glimpse into the most egregious waste of taxpayer dollars, concluding in its exhaustive, 205-page report:

“Of the 72 programs GAO assessed this year, none of them had proceeded through system development meeting the best-practice standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and performance outcomes.”

That’s a grade of zero for every major weapons system.

As ever, it's not really about "security" at all; it's about $$$$$$$$$...

Bush Threw Out The Fourth Amendment in 2001

Oh my:

"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

That footnote was discovered at the bottom of a recently-disclosed memo authorizing torture.

Oh, say can you see......????

Great Quotes From The Past

Ever wondered how Islamic fundamentalists came to be labeled "Islamofascists"? The desperate linguistic contortion was at least partly derived from the White House's desperate legal contortions. This is from a speech by then US Home Secretary, John Reid, in August 2006:

We are in some ways attempting to fight a 21st century struggle with a framework of thought, culture and international legality which was provided for the mid-20th century. The European Convention, for example, drawn up by British lawyers, of which we are immensely proud, drawn up by British lawyers in the aftermath of the second world war was shaped inevitably by that war and by what was happening, not only during that war in places like Germany but across the iron curtain. And from the struggle to defeat fascism and the fascist state, and stand up to Stalinism, came an understandable focus on protecting the individual from the overweening evil power of the fascist state. That is why we formed those conventions.

So protections from unlawful detention, from forced labour, from torture, from punishment without trial came centre stage, as they should have done - rightly so, given what had gone before. But the emphasis was on the protection of the individual and the individual's rights in the face of a challenge from the state, from the community entrenched in a state structure with fascist inclinations...

But now we are faced with a slightly different challenge, you see, perhaps greater than any faced in the last 50 years. And it's a challenge for this new consensus, it's a challenge for discussion and debate around the core values of a free society - and the challenge is this: what happens when the threat to the nation and hence to all of us as a community, represented by the state in a particular sense, comes not from the tendencies of a fascist totalitarian state, but from what might be called fascist individuals?

In other words, Bush's lawyers were trying to manipulate post-WWII laws into a framework that let them treat Islamic terrorists as a threat on a par with Nazi Germany. The fact that there was no logical parallel made no difference to them: you go to war with the laws you've got, I guess!

It's the old problem that DIY-reality ideologues always face, trying to fit existing realities into their preconceived concepts rather than vice versa. Things get Orwellian pretty fast. I know my friend WP will like this little bit:

And from our point of view, I believe that the biggest achievement of democratic socialism, social democracy, progressive politics, whatever you want to call it [not "conservatism" obviously - gandhi], is not just a legal framework for human rights, though that is important, but the fact that real power and opportunity is now exercised by the many in this country, the vast majority, not just the few, in a way that our forefathers could not have imagined.

Well, he got that last little bit right, at least.

The Reflecting Pool

Joel S. Hirschhorn reviews a movie you probably won't be seeing at a filmfest near you anytime soon:

It is not about 9/11. It is about the credibility of the official government story about 9/11...

The plot follows the efforts of independent journalist Alex Prokop and Paul Cooper, a researcher and father of a 9/11 victim, to piece together fact-fragments into a picture that ultimately implicates the US government in the attacks. The horror of this revelation rivals the horror of the 9/11 events themselves, especially when we realize that far more people, especially American soldiers, have died because of 9/11 in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than on 9/11. Yet to close our eyes to this truth makes us co-conspirators in one of the world’s most devilish and despicable events.

I think this movie takes an intelligent approach: rather than jumping to conclusions about 911 (even the most intelligent of which are necessarily based on minimal evidence and conflicting accounts) it's better to focus on the gaps in the official narrative.

For example, I have often wondered if the plane that was supposedly brought down by passengers on 911 was supposed to hit Building 7. If there were explosives in the building already, perhaps the decision to "pull it" was made as much to hide that evidence as anything else. But that's just pure supposition, based on a desire to understand things which have never been properly explained.

And that's the real issue right now. For example: why didn't Bush give whole-hearted support to the 911 Commission from the get-go? Why did he install someone like Phillip Zelikow to head the commission (he wanted Henry Kissinger originally!)? Why was it so hard to get the truth from people like Condi Rice? Who wouldn't Bush testify under oath without Cheney at his side?

What are these guys hiding?

This story will never die until we find out the truth.

The film illustrates that, as so often is the case, the truth does not set you free; it ties your stomach and conscience into knots. It will remind you of All the President’s Men and JFK, films that also used drama to pursue political truths.

The DVD is available for only $15 on http://reflectingpoolfilm.com/ and you will want to loan it to friends and family or give as a gift, which is made especially attractive with even lower prices for packs of five or ten DVDs. An extended trailer is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32b-e-xwuB8. Details about the film and its actors are at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1015468/.

Video rental outlets like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Netflix and Redbox should make this DVD available. Otherwise, it is further evidence that status quo thinking is subverting 9/11 truth to the detriment of American democracy. Public libraries should also stock this important educational film. Once you watch it you too will feel strongly about it reaching a wide audience.

Warning: No matter what you know or think you know about 9/11, this movie will rattle your brain, make you think, and perhaps keep you up at night.

Bush's Torture Policy Inspired By FOX TV

I kid you not:

The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. “We saw it on cable,” Beaver recalled. “People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular.” Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. “He gave people lots of ideas.”

That's from a fluff piece in Vanity Fair which includes this quote from Douglas Feith, when asked if the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority:

“The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

Next question:

When will Congress insist upon hearings at which Geoffrey Miller, Jim Haynes, Donald Rumsfeld, and other DOD officials, explain why they kept the Yoo memo and the Working Group Report secret -- undisclosed even to the Working Group itself -- and why they briefed Miller on Yoo's multiple theories of legal absolution on his way out to Iraq?

Let's hear what Obama and Hillary have to say, for starters. Anyone wanna talk about impeachment yet? No?

Obama Hearts Gore

Interesting:

"I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem. He's somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I'm already consulting with him in terms of these issues, but climate change is real. It is something we have to deal with now, not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now."

...Obama said he would use Gore to help forge a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions designed to lower pollution.

The Illinois senator cautioned that such a system could mean an increase in electricity bills from power companies that rely on coal-burning, and that some of the money generated from a cap-and-trade system may be used in the beginning to help lower income or fixed income customers with those bills.

It could be a tight battle with the Clintons to see who gets Gore's endorsement, which could even be the clincher in this Dem race. Would Gore want the VP role again?

UPDATE: Wanna know who Gores is endorsing? FOX NEWS has the answer already, whether it's true or not.

So How Did Abu Ghraib Happen Anyway?

Finally we have proof that it wasn't just "a few bad apples" - it went right to the top. A controversial torture memo from Bush's Office Of Legal Council has just been released. As has been long suspected, Bush's top legal advisers assured him that he was "free to override [international law] at his discretion".

And US soldiers practicing torture had nothing to worry about either:

"Even if... an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability."

The Justice Department memo was written by John Yoo and dated March 14, 2003. It was sent to the Pentagon's top lawyer, William J. Haynes, and not rescinded for another nine months. By that time there was a rampant culture of abuse prevalent at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. It wasn't till 2004 that investigations began to reveal the extent of it.

Tell me again: where does the buck stop?????

Flying Penguins

Amazing stuff. Certainly better than this sort of thing.

Oh no! Now I've gone and ruined all my Teh Credibility!

Cheney's Desperate Endgame: Do We Still Have Time To Bomb Iran? Or Is It Time To Kill McCain?

Juan Cole looks at various reasons why al-Maliki attacked Basra, but doesn't even mention Cheney's name. Nevertheless he notes:

John McCain said he was surprised that Nuri al-Maliki would abruptly launch an operation against Basra. It seems to me that there are only two possibilities here.

Either McCain really did not know and did not anticipate the trouble in Basra, in which case he does not know much about Iraq and isn't better qualified to deal with it than anyone else.

Or, he and Cheney helped put Al-Maliki up to the whole thing while he was there, and now is petrified that someone will hang the fiasco around his neck.

Here's my take on it:

Cheney was the "brains" behind the attack on Basra. And McCain, who was in Iraq with Cheney just before the attack, knows that perfectly well.

Cheney wanted to get Moqtada's fist off the Basra oil spiggot. His political clock is running down and he wanted to inflict a heavy defeat on Al Sadr so Al-Maliki can push through those Oil Laws before November. That will be the real "Mission Accomplished" moment for Cheney.

One of Al-Maliki's top generals said they needed a few more months before any attack on Al Sadr could be ready. He was threatened with dismissal. Sounds familiar? As Rumsfeld once said, you go to war with the army you've got. Once again, it wasn't good enough.

Blame Cheney. And don't imagine McCain doesn't know what's going on. Cheney is now playing an increasingly dangerous End Game, and McCain's political hopes are riding the storm.

In fact, if I was John McCain, I might start worrying about being assassinated.

McCain's candidacy is the last desperate act of a political and cultural elite whose ideological, financial and military excesses have crippled the very notion of the 21st Century US Empire they once imagined. That McCain won the GOP nomination shows how this elite group still maintain an iron grip on the party. But if Cheney cannot pull an oil-soaked rabbit out of his hat very soon, McCain's campaign is going to be looking increasingly ridiculous. At that stage, somebody very high up (maybe even Cheney) might decide enough is enough.

Josh Marshall recently mentioned a work of fiction where the Republican candidate is murdered in a violent terrorist attack. Couldn't happen? Just think of the sympathy vote it would deliver to the replacement cadidate:

"Vote GOP #1 - because terrorists don't want you to vote Republican."

It would of course help if the alleged perpetrators appeared to be Iranians (at least till after Tehran was bombed).

Meanwhile, Al-Maliki is declaring victory:

"We went to Basra after its people complained of criminals who targeted the government's security, its men, women, clerics, doctors and engineers," he said in a statement broadcast by state television.

"The government responded and fulfilled its responsibility. We delivered a painful blow to these gangs. They lost their mind and escaped leaving their weapons in the streets."

Latest figures indicate over a thousand Iraqis killed in March, including over 900 civilians. Heckuva job, Nouri.