Hypocrite-In-Chief

Bush tells Musharraf that "you can't be President and head of the military at the same time".

SHOCKING NEWS!

From The Times:

TONY BLAIR privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today.

John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), also "assented" that Saddam had no such weapons, says Cook.

His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented "a real and present danger" to Britain.

Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq.

The prime minister ignored the "large number of ministers who spoke up against the war", according to Cook. He also "deliberately crafted a suggestive phrasing" to mislead the public into thinking there was a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and he did not want United Nations weapons inspections to be successful, writes the former cabinet minister.

Cook suggests that the government misled the House of Commons and asked MPs to vote for war on a "false prospectus".

He also reveals that Blair earlier gave President Bill Clinton a private assurance that he would support him in military action in Iraq if action in the UN failed "and it would certainly have been in line with his previous practice if he had given President Bush a private assurance of British support"...

Cook reveals that on February 20 this year he was given a briefing by Scarlett. "The presentation was impressive in its integrity and shorn of the political slant with which No 10 encumbers any intelligence assessment," Cook writes in his diary. "My conclusion at the end of an hour is that Saddam probably does not have weapons of mass destruction in the sense of weapons that could be used against large-scale civilian targets."

Two weeks later, on March 5, Cook saw Blair. At the time the government was still trying to get a fresh UN resolution and Cook was still in government as leader of the Commons.

Cook writes: "The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam's arsenal. I told him, 'It's clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?'

"[Blair replied:] 'Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use'."

Cook continues: "There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix [the UN's chief weapons inspector] might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion.

"The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it.

"At the time I did believe it likely that Saddam had retained a quantity of chemical munitions for tactical use on the battlefield. These did not pose 'a real and present danger to Britain' as they were not designed for use against city populations and by definition could threaten British personnel only if we were to deploy them on the battlefield within range of Iraqi artillery.

"I had now twice been told that even those chemical shells had been put beyond operational use in response to the pressure from intrusive inspections. I have no reason to doubt that Tony Blair believed in September that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within 45 minutes. What was clear from this conversation was that he did not believe it himself in March."

Cook asks: "If No 10 accepted that Saddam had no real weapons of mass destruction which he could credibly deliver against city targets and if they themselves believed that he could not reassemble his chemical weapons in a credible timescale for use on the battlefield, just how much of a threat did they really think Saddam represented?"

He raises "the gravest of political questions. The rules of the Commons explicitly require ministers to correct the record as soon as they are aware that they may have misled parliament. If the government did come to know that the [United States] State Department did not trust the claims in the September dossier and that some of even their top experts did not believe them, should they not have told parliament before asking the Commons to vote for war on a false prospectus?"


... According to Cook, Blunkett asked Blair: "What has changed that suddenly gives us the legal right to take military action that we didn't have a few months ago?"

Hewitt warned Blair: "We are in danger of being seen as close to President Bush, but without any influence over President Bush."

But the prime minister was "totally unfazed" and, when Hewitt again raised objections at cabinet the following month, Blair refused to be boxed in, telling colleagues: "The time to debate the legal base for our action should be when we take that action."

This is actually old news, re-posted at ICH from October 2003. Robin Cook is now dead. But just think about it - if Blair knew that Saddam had no WMDs, then surely Howard knew too.

If Blair misled the UK parliament and people, then Howard misled us too.

If Tony Blair and George W. Bush are War Criminals, then so too is John W. Howard.

Pull The Other One, John

It plays Jingle Bells:

PEOPLE are getting more money back from the Coalition's tax cuts than they are spending on mortgage increases, Prime Minister John Howard has said.

Meanwhile, Costello is refusing to include the Fraser years in his inflation graphs. For anyone who cares what happened back 20 or 30 years ago, here's an interesting little graph:

Howard was Treasurer from '77 to '83. The previous dramatic spike was caused when the Coalition Senate blocked passage of Gough Whitlam's bills.

Wanker Of The Day

Sol Trujillo - and his all his big-fat-arsed business mates too.

We are being screwed by the Corporatocracy.

Teh Irony

"For tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his owne petar".
- Hamlet.

I was expecting the cartoons today to show Howard hoisted by his own petard (a medieval contraption that was used to hurl small explosives at castle walls).

But this will do.

Divide And Conquer: Neoconservatives Target Georgia

Strange things are happening in Georgia today, and Rupert Murdoch is closely involved. As his flagship paper states, the Georgian government appears to have prevented a coup:

GEORGIAN President Mikhail Saakashvili has declared a state of emergency in the capital after sending in riot police to battle protestors and special forces stormed a leading opposition TV station.

What Murdoch's paper omits to say is that Rupert now controls that "opposition TV station". So this is pretty misleading stuff:

Imedi is controlled by billionaire tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Actually, Patarkatsishvili just handed control of the station to Murdoch under a 12-month deal. And where is Patarkatsishvili in all this? He's in Tel Aviv. Which may or may not seem strange, given that he is Jewish.

Patarkatsishvili sounds like an utter rogue, but he is not the only one in this story. Saakashvili is considered a pro-Western leader, who is blaming Russia for his problems. But both Russia and the Georgian opposition say that is ridiculous.

"The Georgian people are already tired of Mr Saakashvili's declarations, which always blame Russia" former Georgian foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili said. "What has this got to do with Russia ?"

I don't doubt Russia is involved, but I'll bet Murdoch and his neoconservative friends in Washington and Tel Aviv are also in it up to their eyeballs.

Meanwhile, Murdoch's News Corporation has posted operating income of $US1.05 billion, an increase of 23 per cent on the first quarter last year. Losses from his rightwing newspapers, books and TV stations like Fox News were subsidised by profits from movies and other interests.

And get this:

News Corp said it was considering nominating Natalie Bancroft, a member of the family involved in selling Dow Jones & Co Inc to News for $US5.6 billion ($A6.06 billion), to its board...

Family members missed a deadline to nominate their own candidate for the News Corp board, according to letters posted on the Journal's website.

Natalie is a 27-year-old opera singer with no experience in journalism or business. Fairfax has the inside story:

Most family members wanted to send an experienced newspaper person to News Corp's board who would defend the Journal's journalistic integrity. Their first choice, the former managing editor Paul E. Steiger, declined the offer. A second candidate, the former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll, was knocked back by Mr Murdoch, who may have seen him as a potential troublemaker. Mr Carroll walked out on his job last year after refusing to give in to further cost cutting by that paper's owner.

In an email breaking the news of the rejection, Christopher Bancroft told his relatives: "Rupert made the [board seat] offer to the family as an incentive to sell and because he would like the appearance of the support a Bancroft family member sitting on his board brings. It is not because he needs or wants a 'seasoned champion of journalistic values' from the world of journalism…"

"I can only say what a joke this episode has become," a family member, Crawford Hill, replied in disgust. "This entire, sad and pathetic, final episode is a fiasco. No wonder we lost Dow Jones."

Most of the relatives finally settled on Crawford's brother Mike Hill, who had taken an active interest in the company for years. But people familiar with the deliberations told the Journal that News Corp "wasn't comfortable with his activism". News Corp also wanted to add a woman to its all-male board.

Natalie Bancroft originally opposed Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones, but has now relented:

"Sentiment has a very small place if one wants success," she says.

I suppose it depends how you define "success".

Hans Blix, C'est Moi!

OK, folks. After more than four years of pseudonymous blogging, it's finally time to reveal my true identity: ladies and gentlemen, I am really Hans Blix:

Former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix says he fears the United States has a secret plan to keep its troops in Iraq.

Dr Blix, who warned against the invasion of Iraq after his inspectors found no evidence that weapons of mass destruction were being held by Saddam Hussein, is in Sydney to receive the Sydney Peace Prize.

"One fear I would have is that the US has a hidden thought to remain in Iraq," Dr Blix told ABC radio on Wednesday.

"One reason why they wanted in was that they felt they must leave Saudi Arabia.

"After the Gulf War in 1991 they left their troops in Saudi Arabia to protect pipelines," he explained.

"And when they felt they could no longer stay in Saudi Arabia, Iraq was the next best place because it was more secularised than Saudi Arabia and had the second biggest oil reserves in the region." ...

Earlier, Dr Blix said Australia's 500 troops in Iraq served mainly a symbolic role.

He told News Ltd that Australian troops provided more public relations value than anything and withdrawing them might not make any difference to the situation.

Dr Blix recalled the UN team's failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in 700 searches of 500 sites in Iraq.

"The aims of the war were, first of all, to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that did not exist," he said.

"Secondly, to establish a democracy, and what they ended up with was anarchy; and thirdly, they wanted to weed out al-Qaeda which was not there but which came there (after the invasion)."

He said the elimination of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was the war's only positive outcome.

OK, OK... I'm not really Hans Blix, but we are obviously soul brothers when it comes to this shit.

Meanwhile, I'd better be careful what I say from now on... right??? :-)

Meanwhile In BushWorld...

Logic stood on its head:

Democratic leaders long ago rejected any consideration of impeaching Cheney and President Bush as an irresponsible move supported only by the far left, so they tried today to table Kucinich's impeachment resolution. After initially having more than enough votes to kill the resolution - the "yea" tally to table impeachment topped out at 291 - Republicans decided they had a chance to politically shame Democrats into a full debate on the sensitive issue. Republicans gleefully said they wanted the debate to show the public how many Democrats would actually support impeaching Cheney, which they consider a move supported only by a fringe element of anti-war activists.

More than 120 members, predominantly Republicans, then switched their votes in favor of holding a one-hour debate on the issue, with a final vote of 251-162 supporting a debate on impeachment. Rather than allow a debate fraught with political risk, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) moved to send the Kucinich resolution to the Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), has publicly speculated about impeaching the president or vice president but has declined taking any action since taking the gavel in January.

Defusing any chance of an actual impeachment debate today, the House then voted 218-194 to send the motion to Conyers's committee, with Democrats overwhelmingly supporting the move.

Today's resolution from Kucinich (D-Ohio) was essentially the same as the legislation he introduced earlier this year, which included three articles of impeachment against Cheney based largely on allegations that he manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The last article accuses Cheney of threatening "aggression" against Iran "absent any real threat."

I guess the best argument AGAINST impeaching Cheney is that it would be hard to legally PROVE that he deliberately misled the entire world on Saddam's WMDs, despite mountains and mountains of circumstantial evidence to that effect. Nevertheless, to think that the Democrats would let themselves be pressured like this is just depressing: the hopes and dreams of many of their supporters lie dead.

The whole world can see what's happening: the elites in power will not even contemplate acceding to the will of the people. To that extent, this impeachment process now becomes a battle between the Elites and the People. There is revolution in the air! Over to you now, John Conyers...

Elsewhere, a new report tells us what we already knew:

"The terrorist attacks on 9/11 caused America to become a frightened and angry nation. We reacted in ways that alarmed people the world over ... we relied excessively on hard military power to fight the war against terrorists and violent extremists. Ultimately this is a battle that will be won by ideas, not bullets. Just like the Cold War, we will prevail when the world chooses the opportunities we defend over the despair offered by our enemies..."

Of course, there is an increasingly good chance that the world will choose neither of these options.

The New Political Correctness

I cannot help thinking that 66-year-old grandfather Ken Proctor may be the ultimate victim of John Howard's Australia. Proctor was killed because he was watering his garden in a drought. Todd Munter, who has been charged with Mr Proctor's murder, no doubt felt that he had all the weight of government authority at his back as he punched the old man to the ground.

Howard Runs Out Of Credit

They think it's all over, and maybe it is now, as this brilliant graph from Possum illustrates.

Given that Howard07 (unlike Howard04) insists that his government has no control over interest rates, you have to wonder why he is now busy apologizing to borrowers:

"I sympathise with them ... I'm sorry, I regret the additional burden that will be placed upon them as a result."

The News Ltd staff writers have gone into overdrive, insisting that this MAY NOT be "Black Wednesday" for the government:

An online survey conducted for The Australian has found that less than 20 per cent of respondents would blame Mr Howard for rates going up. A Galaxy poll in Monday's Daily Telegraph found that only 12 per cent of voters would blame the PM - and that figure only rose to 20 per cent among Labor voters.

Well, this should be an interesting little test of their polling credibility, shouldn't it? The media is focusing on home loan borrowers, but Australians spent $18 billion on credit cards just last month, and the average card is already $3,000 in the red. That's gotta hurt... I suspect that in this particular case, Rupert's early polls and the November 24th exit polls will be startlingly dissimilar!

The United States Of Torture

Keith Olbermann says says the Presidency of the USA is now a criminal conspiracy:

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...

All of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the refocusing of our entire nation, toward keeping this mock president and this unstable vice president and this departed wildly self-overrating attorney general, and the others, from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country.

But of course torture is only one aspect of the criminal conspiracy:

Study after study for generation after generation has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.

Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn't a problem if you don't care if the terrorist plots they tell you about are the truth or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.

If, say, a president simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared.

If, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the threat he didn't interrupt.

If, say, he realized that even terrorized people still need good ghost stories before they will let a president pillage the Constitution...

Now if that's what this is all about, you tortured not because you're so stupid you think torture produces confession but you tortured because you're smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction — well, then, you're going to need all the lawyers you can find … because that crime wouldn't just mean impeachment, would it?

That crime would mean George W. Bush is going to prison.

But of course there are a few thousand aiders and abettors who also need to be locked up with him, including our own John W. Howard.

Australia's Greatest Treasurer Got It Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Funny:

774 ABC Melbourne presenter Jon Faine says a couple of months ago he asked Mr Costello why the Coalition had not called an early election to get the campaign out of the way before the Reserve Bank decision.

Mr Faine says Mr Costello's answer surprised him.

"He looked me in the eye ... and said 'there will not be a rate rise in November, take it from me'," he said.

"I said, 'You might be right, you might be wrong, but you're prepared to punt on it?' And he said 'there will not be a rate rise in November'.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong."

One would assume that Costello told Howard exactly the same thing, which is why Howard delayed the election so long. So when Howard loses the election and Costello does not take over the keys of the Lodge, we'll all know why. Greatest treasurer? Pig's arse!

Die and you're under arrest!

This is hilarious. Britain's stupidest laws revealed:

Most ridiculous British laws

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down.

3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store.

4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day.

5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter.

6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet.

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail belongs to the queen.

8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing.

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour.

10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

Wankers One And All

They used to call Derryn Hinch the Human Headline, but it looks like Dennis Shanahan has taken over the title. Whatever may be happening in reality, you can always find a wilfully misleading Shanahan headline plastered across the front page of Teh Oz.

Today it's "PM Defies Rates Backlash". Never mind that there hadn't even BEEN a rates rise, let alone a backlash, at the time of writing (UPDATE: 0.25% now) our stoic PM was already defying it. According to Dennis (and despite a never-ending parade of polls pointing to a Labor landslide) this "news" has "further confused the politics of the 2007 campaign."

One Murdoch hack who is not at all confused is Paul Kelly. He has reached "an inescapable conclusion" - Rudd would seize more power as PM. I'm not even going to bother with the contorted logic that leads to this fear-mongering conclusion, I'll just point out that the entire Coalition front bench wanted to get rid of Howard at APEC, and they couldn't do it.

Still in the Murdoch stable, that old nag Janet Albrechtsen has a go at Julia Gillard:

This is not just about her image as the unmarried, childless woman eschewing all the ordinary ambitions of Howard's middle class and the working-class aspirationals.

No, it's "deeper" than that. It's about her - gasp! - "anti-American sentiments" and her "long history of left-wing politics". Who would ever have expected a senior Labor Party member to have such a background, eh? Give me a break.

Crossing to the Fairfax stable, we find Tony Abbott pulling out his hair (what's left of it) with frustration:

Rudd thought that the Howard Government had forfeited all legitimacy. Now, he wants voters to think that he is actually a leader in Howard's own tradition. But for the opinion polls, it would all be dismissed as a shameless fraud.

In a recent profile, The Australian's Paul Kelly described Rudd as "a political identity still under construction" and concluded: "whether he can control the hubris generated by any political victory and possesses the personal qualities needed to run a government are unknown".

All that can be said with certainty about Rudd is that there is nothing he won't pretend to be if it helps him to become prime minister.

How's that, eh? A Howard minister quoting a Murdoch hack for proof that Kevin Rudd cannot be trusted. We have come full circle.

Before I go, just one more wanker: Alexander Downer on Lateline last night:

TONY JONES: Is the government - like your MP, Cameron Thompson says - looking forward to the positive news of a rate rise tomorrow.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Oh, I'm sure he didn't say that...

But actually Cameron Thompson did say it! He said a rise would "underline the strong economic performance of this Government". But two and a half weeks out from the election, nobody in the Howard camp wants to acknowledge reality. What a pack of miserable wankers!

Helen Coonan Is Full Of Shit

I work for a major international software company and I have a background in telecoms: I've worked for big companies like Optus in Australia, and British Telecom in Europe. And I can tell you that Australia's slow broadband speeds are a regular topic of conversation with visitors from the USA and Europe.

Moreover, any telecommunications professionals who listen closely to Coonan's discussions soon realise that she doesn't really understand the technology she is talking about.

The Business of Efficiency

Here's the story from Flemington that you may not have heard today, from Race Three:

Bling Bling lay motionless on the track, but Bay Story tragically staggered on towards the line with its crushed left hind leg sagging underneath.

Many punters couldn't watch, while others wept as the drama unfolded...

Bugger that, mate! We can't let tragedy stand in the way of fun, can we?

Speaking of fun that is funny, you have to wonder if the RBA guv'nors made their decision early, sat down for some champers and a cheese spread, and watched the Melbourne Cup today. A rate rise announcement in the morning, innit? Meanwhile, you just blew next months' mortage top-up, but hey! - it's all for the good of Teh Economy, right? The joke's on you, sport!

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, men in suits are being thrown in jail. In Burma, men in orange togas are being thrown in jail. In Iraq and Afghanistan....

Greens set to hold balance in Senate

Interesting analysis from the ABC election site:

This election, the Greens have also pitched themselves to voters as the buffer against either major party having the majority in the Senate.

"We've had three years of the Coalition dictating and getting through its nasty WorkChoices legislation, and selling off Telstra, etcetera, without any real review by the Senate and its committee system because they simply had the numbers," Senator Brown said.

Mr Mackerras says the idea of returning an umpire to the Senate will be very attractive to some voters.

"Since the Hawke era effectively, the minor parties have essentially assumed that they would have the balance of power and they have behaved very responsibly," he said.

"But Mr Howard is a control freak, let's face it, and once he got a majority in the Senate, he told the Australian people that they voted for WorkChoices, so he foisted WorkChoices on us. This was a blatant abuse of the Senate's power."

Just imagine if the Greens had held the balance of power for the past three years...

YES OF COURSE IT WAS TEH BLOODY OIL GODDAMMIT!!!

Suz at LP points to a great article by Jim Holt:

Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

The writer politely suggests that we should be sceptical of such post-facto analysis, since such clever plans rarely work out as envisioned.

But he omits one very important detail: the invasion was both immoral and illegal. And that should surely be the key to unravelling the whole sorry thing, restoring justice, and putting the criminal perpetrators behind bars.

Of course, ending the war on this basis assumes that the ordinary people of the USA are informed enough, and decent and honorable enough, to do the right thing and give the oil back to the Iraqis. Will they do that, or just turn a blind eye to this wicked crime?

And what about here in Australia? Howard has repeatedly implied that the main reason we Aussies are in Iraq is to support our key ally, the USA, and save them from the "embarrassment" of defeat. Does that mean we will get a cut of the oil revenues, or cheap oil via special deals with US distributors, or access to a few Iraqi oil wells for our own selected companies? What's OUR bribe, Johnny??? Of course, Howard cannot even speculate on such things because the whole damned business is so totally unspeakable.

So we plod on, we affluent Western citizens of the 21st Century, pretending that this great crime never happened. The pages of our newspapers are filled with empty spaces. Our television news is full of silence.

The truth has been hooded, bound, duct-taped and water-boarded. Welcome to the New World Order.

Chez Downer: Ain't Nobody Home

Last night a senior Iraqi politician very diplomatically urged Australia to leave his country as soon as possible:

He says Australian troops have made a valuable contribution in Iraq, but the US military is capable of taking over if they leave.

"The role is still there, but it can be executed through the agencies of the US military, so if Australia pulls out tomorrow it will not have a significant effect on the combat and the battle situation in Iraq," he said.

Alexander Downer is not having a bar of it:

"This is hardly the time, just as we are making real progress there, to throw the whole situation into turmoil by going around arguing that western forces should be withdrawn from Iraq."

Downer would rather talk about Kevin Rudd talking Chinese:

"He likes to show off, and you get that a bit with certain people in life. I'm familiar with those types of people who like to show-off ... "

I bet you are, Alexy. People like Benazir Bhutto, for example:

Her record isn't pretty, but her backers in Washington, London and Canberra seem to have developed an acute bout of amnesia about her abilities.

Witness Alexander Downer's unbounded regard for Benazir Bhutto, now angling for a third stint as Pakistan's Prime Minister. Downer said last week he thought Bhutto was "a good woman", someone who "stands for the things we stand for in Australia". Perhaps Downer sees in Bhutto shades of another irrepressible politician dear to him. Ambition also unbounded, Benazir qualifies as a subcontinental "Lazarus with a triple bypass", in trademark white headscarf instead of a Wallabies tracksuit.

But Downer is more correct than he might imagine (and here's that possibility of "something else"). Like the AWB oil-for-food scandal he claimed ignorance of in his departmental backyard, Bhutto has a very similar skeleton dangling in her closet; allegations raised by the same UN probe that fingered AWB of some $US144 million in dubious Iraqi oil trades her company made when Saddam ruled Baghdad.

That's from a great Eric Ellis article in Fortune Magazine, looking at the corruption of Pakistan's Epaulette Empire, a $US40 billion sprawl of businesses controlled by Musharraf's comrades in the military:

Controlling around 10-15 per cent of the economy, the military is the biggest single stakeholder in Pakistan's booming economy. Property, tourism, construction, transport and telecommunications, there's barely a business sector not tinted with some sort of brass hue. The generals even own a popular breakfast cereal brand, alongside bakeries, petrol stations, farms, banks, and some listed on Karachi's soaring stock exchange.

Pakistanis grumble that other countries have a military, but in Pakistan the military has a country.

Obviously Alexy is not too worried about that little military dictatorship problem. In fact, he is giving Musharraf even more money:

"We don't want to withdraw aid that might be helping to stabilise the country," he said.

"We announced recently an increase in aid into the western part of Pakistan in order to try to contribute to stabilising that part of the country and reducing the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Ah yes, it's not the corrupt men in shiny suits we need to worry about, it's the terrrrrrrsts! Funny, that's exactly what Musharraf says...

Another thing Alexy doesn't want to talk about is interest rates. Let's talk about Sheikh Al Hilali instead, shall we?

Wanker Of The Day

John Howard is not the only one still living in the 1950s. Gerard Henderson today stokes the still-raging bonfire of 20th Century military glory. By implication, anyone (like me) who says our blessed troops are wasting their time in Iraq and Afghanistan is also failing to honour the glorious dead from WWI and WWII, including Hendo's beloved Uncle Alan.

Might be a good time to check the dictionary definition of FASCISM again...

fas·cism (fāsh'ĭz'əm) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

[Italian fascismo, from fascio, group, from Late Latin fascium, from Latin fascis, bundle.]

Remind me again, Hendo, what were we fighting for in WWII?

Friends Like These

Informed Comment:

Musharraf has been invoking the need to fight Muslim extremism as a pretext for his coup. But in fact, he made the (further) coup because the Pakistani Supreme Court had unanimously decided that he was ineligible to run for president...

If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Here we go again:

THE Coalition has continued its march back toward poll parity with the latest Newspoll showing the government now trailing by just six per cent in the two party preferred stakes.

Labor has dropped one point to 53 per cent while the Government has gained one point and moved to 47 per cent.

The preferred prime minister poll also shows encouraging signs for the Coalition, according to the Newspoll, to be published in The Australian tomorrow.

Prime Minister John Howard is up two percentage points to 43 while Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has dropped one to 47 per cent.

The gap in the primary vote poll has also narrowed, to just five per cent with Labor down one point to 47 and the Government steady at 42 per cent, according to figures broadcast on Sky News.

Prime Minister John Howard has again denied rumours that, if elected, he will hand over power to Dennis Shanahan.

Yo, Jimbo...

Things are looking pretty dark on the other side of the Pacific. And it's not just Bush's GOP causing the problems. The US Democrats now have the power to end the war in Iraq, but choose not to. They are about to endorse a new Attorney General who point-blank refuses to condemn water-boarding as torture. Blackwater's crimes in Iraq are being ignored, if not whitewashed, and impeachment is still not considered an option. What's going on?

Phillip J. Cunningham, who teaches at a Japanese university, compares the US rightwing today with rightwing denialists in Japan, who still hold firm to a totally discredited version of 20th Century history:

The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.

The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.

The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial.

Fortunately, the same thing is not happening here in Australia. I swear it isn't. And I will personally kill anyone who says it is.

Scumbags

Somebody put together a youtube video of Kevin Rudd picking his ear many years ago. Somebody poked pictures of it into Canberra pigeon-holes. And somebody has launched a spam attack that has crippled the Larvatus Prodeo blog for the past three days.

Given the Coalition's desperate situation with three weeks left to run, this campaign is going to get a LOT dirtier.

Vote Like You Care

My friend Winter Patriot is a finalist in the 2007 Weblog Awards. WP's excellent political blog is struggling to defeat a cooking blog called "Slow Cooker Recipes"!

Winter writes about 9/11 truth, other false flag terror, American politics, the bogus GWOT, and some of the key hot spots of south Asia, especially Pakistan, where things are rapidly deteriorating as we speak. He's done excellent work lately on subjects like the proxy war in Pakistan, the Sadr City airstrikes against sleeping civilians in Iraq, and Blackwater's Nisoor Square massacre.

I just don't see how we can let his blog finish behind -- or even just a little bit ahead of -- a site that tells people how to heat up cocktail wieners in their slow cookers!

Will you help us? I'm sure WP will appreciate it. But this is not just about showing appreciation to WP. If his blog does well in this "election", and especially if it wins, it will bring many more readers to the important stories that he writes.

Click here to go to the polling booth and then click again on the appropriate button to vote for Winter Patriot's blog. The voting is open until November 8th, and you can vote once per category, every 24 hours. If you can vote more than once, that'll be great! And If you can remember to vote every day until the 8th, that'll be even better.

Thank you very much - and good luck WP!

Lip Service

Finally something all the media players can agree on: the Report
of the Independent Audit into the State of Free Speech in Australia (PDF here) was commissioned by News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC, SBS, Sky News, AAP and others.

Fairfax CEO David Kirk says:

"We are not living in a dictatorship, but we are not living in a gold standard democracy. We are paying lip service to the principle of open government."

John Hartigan, chairman and CEO of News Limited, said the finding were "deeply troubling".

Who to blame, eh? Who to blame?

Pity The Poor Diggers? Piss On That!

Bwaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!

AN Australian army officer serving in Iraq says Diggers are disappointed with the media coverage of their positive work in the troubled nation...

"The boys get disappointed with what they see in the media. There's no focus on what we're achieving here, it's more of a focus on the political side and it's really upsetting for them," said Maj Kerr, a 33-year-old from Sydney.

Well, why the hell do you think you are over there in the first place, Major Kerr? POLITICS: Howard wanted to support Bush. Why do you think "the boys" are rebuilding orphanages and painting schools? POLITICS: the warmongers want good PR. What do you want - a big fucking HUG?

"I think the guys have done very well to improve the life of the Iraqis in the area. It's all stuff that is going to help Iraq sort itself out. All we hope is that message gets home. It's not a political issue, we just want people to know we're doing a good job."

You stupid bloody idiot. Do you really think the lives of any Iraqis (aside from Ahmed Chalabi & Co) have improved since the invasion?

Or are you in fact just doing your own bit of PR for the war, three weeks out from an election? Hmmn?

Wanker Of The Day: David Briggs

One thing you can say about David Briggs's Galaxy polling service: you gets what you pays for. His former employers at News Ltd commissioned the latest poll, and this is what they got for their money:

Voters will not blame Prime Minister John Howard if interest rates go up as expected this week, a new Galaxy poll has found.

The poll also found that while Labor has retained its election-winning lead, 22 per cent of voters have yet to make their final decision.

What a crock. The rates haven't even gone up yet, and in truth 100 percent of voters still have to make their "final decision". But even Galaxy cannot hide the harsh truth: voters have deserted Howard and they are NOT coming back.

Loathe as I am to call this election three weeks out, the coming interest rate rise surely sounds the death knell for John W. Howard. It may not be the last nail in his political coffin, but it's surely the one that shuts the lid down so tightly that even he cannot escape again. Surely?

The lesson from abroad today is that repressive governments and military dictatorships are not, and never will be, friends of true democracy. The lesson at home is that the Coalition never could be trusted to keep interest rates low. Can someone please tally a list of all the public assets Howard has sold off in the past 11 years? Then add up all the profits made from selling our country's natural resources overseas? Then look at what we ordinary Australians have gotten in return?

So what do you do now, if you are in John Howard's fear-soaked socks? You keep spinning it like it's real. You stick with your Karl Rove playbook and pretend that your greatest weakness is actually a strength, and you use it to hammer your opponents, even if that makes no sense whatsoever. Howard is warning to Costello's talk of a global economic tsunami, ignoring the fact that it was his great mate in Washington, George W. Bush, who criminally misguided policies created that same tsunami.

And Howard cheered him all the way.

Rodentus Super

Is this the answer to the Liberals' woes?

A GENETICALLY engineered "supermouse" has stunned scientists with its physical abilities.

The mouse can run up to six kilometres at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping, British newspaper The Independent reports.

Scientists say that's the equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break.

The engineered mouse also lives longer, has more sex and can breed well into old age, and eats more without getting fat, the paper reports.

The “supermouse” is the creation of American scientists who are working to create a community of 500 of the rodents,

Scientists say the super abilities came about from a standard genetic modification to a single metabolism gene shared with humans.

The Rodentus Super also lives longer, but is unusually aggressive. Let's hope they keep them all in that cage!

Howard Is Taking YOUR Money And Giving It To His Rich Mates

The latest figures confirm what many people have long known:

REAL pay has gone backwards under the Howard Government's new wage setting system, with some workers on award pay rates now more than $15 a week worse off in the past 12 months.

Recent higher inflation has overtaken the modest pay rises handed out by the Australian Fair Pay Commission last month, pushing most of the 1 million workers covered by award rates into the red, according to new figures.

The commission confirmed the figures yesterday, saying it had relied on Reserve Bank inflation forecasts, which were too low.

Meanwhile, the CEO of a company branded the worst price-fixing cartel in Australian history is a close friend who Howard invites around for dinner.