Bye, Bye Karl

Karl Rove is quitting "for the sake of his family.”

God, it feels good to blog that. Lucky I didn't quit blogging, eh?

What does it mean?

It means we are winning.

It means Bush is fucked. It means Alberto Gonzales is most certainly fucked.

[Rove] has been the focus in the Congressional investigations into the firings last year of several federal prosecutors, and he was until last year a focus of the C.I.A. leak case investigation that led to perjury charges for Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

Mr. Rove emerged from the cloud of the investigation to try to stave off Republican defeats last fall. The subsequent failure was his biggest political loss during his tenure at the White House.

Remember, in the lead-up to the US mid-term elections in 2006, how everybody was waiting for Karl Rove to pull a rabbit out of his fat right-wing arse? And now everybody is waiting for John Howard to do the same thing...

Rove's departure spells trouble for Howard. It spells a White House in meltdown, which is sure to have further repercussions. And Howard hasn't been doing so well since his own turd blossom, Arthur Sinodis, left town...

Where Is The Post-Cold War World Heading?

From the New York Times via CNET:

At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card...

The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.

Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and developing better controls on an increasingly mobile population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who move to big cities each year. But they could also help the Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when street protests are becoming more common.

Let's Face It: Rudd Will Keep Troops In Iraq

Australia has about 900 soldiers in Iraq, including 515 in the Overwatch Battle Group, which is based at Tallil in Dhi Qar province in southern Iraq. Despite all Howard and Downer's talk of a Labor withdrawal, Kevin Rudd has only ever promised to withdraw those 515 soldiers in Tallil, not the other 400. And even that withdrawal has always been based on a "consultation will allies". And even that will only happen "after six months".

Now Labor's new "khaki" candidate, former Army officer Mike Kelly, has given the game away. Aussie troops under a Labor government will not be withdrawn, just redeployed:

Mr Kelly, the endorsed Labor candidate for the Liberal held seat of Eden-Monaro, said the resources in this substantial deployment could be better used in helping the Iraqi government in other areas.

"You have got to look at the actual situation on the ground in relation to our contribution at the moment," he told ABC radio.

"Our troops are not the primary security provider in the south, in the location they are based in at the moment. There has already been a handover to the Iraqi security forces.

"Principally they are there now really as a flag waving exercise by the Government.

"As professional and as wonderful as those troops are, you have got to remember that they are a precious asset and we have to use them to the maximum effect."

... Mr Kelly, who served in Iraq as an Australian army lawyer with the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, said the massive amount of resources invested in their presence needed to be refocused to areas and others tasks producing a better return.

"It would mean converting the resources that we are expending on keeping them there as merely a back-up to helping to reinforce the Maliki government in the areas that it needs to improve on," he said.

There is only one conclusion here: if you want to see Australian troops out of Iraq, VOTE GREEN!

In other news:

1. Howard's terrorist government will continue trying to scare the shit out of ordinary people as ADF soldiers fire guns for two days during APEC training in Martin Place.

2. The soldier who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib scandal, Joe Darby, says Donald Rumsfeld personally blew his identity live on TV:

When the accused soldiers were finally removed from the base, he thought his troubles were over.

And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.

"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says.

War On The States: Tim Costello Signs Up For Action!

Treasurer Peter Costello's brother says Victoria's poker machine losses are all the State government's fault:

Anti-gambling crusader Tim Costello said the $27.3 billion figures was the price tag of social destruction and he urged the Brumby government to act.

"It's been state-sponsored robbery of those who have no free choice because they are addicted," Reverend Costello said.

"The state has known that all along and has been complicit in the destruction of marriages, savings and even lives.

"The truth is, a Labor government must hang its head in deep shame and never argue to be a party of social justice. They have been a party of social injustice."

Of course, there have been no other poker machine losses of any size in any other state, and the Howard government has been a magnificent and vocal critic of the gaming industry over the past decade.

UPDATE: Tim Costello:

"The notion of a separation of church and state was designed to protect the church from government, not the reverse."

Wanker Of The Day: Natalie O'Brien

You have to read 8 paras into the front page story in Teh Oz to see this:

Although Abu Walid was a confidant of bin Laden and a key ideologue of the global jihad movement, there is no evidence that he was ever involved in terrorist operations. Before he was detained in Iran, he wrote a series of published articles condemning the extremism and tactics of al-Qa'ida.

This bloke was a journalist and an author, who fled to Iran after 9/11 and apparently has been under arrest there ever since. But O'Brien starts her article by calling him "A member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle and the husband of Australia's most watched woman". And who would that woman be? Move over, Nicole Kidman, it's Rabiyah Hutchinson!

Ms Hutchison's links to extremists, terrorists and terror suspects, as well as her string of marriages, have made her the target of 24-hour surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. In Sydney's Muslim heartland of Lakemba she is believed to mentor a group of women following the extremist sect Wahabism.

That's right folks - Wahabism, which was once closely associated with the Saudi royal family and is widespread in US-friendly states like Qatar and Kuwait, is now an "extremist sect". Now watch what happens when Al-Jazeera calls the Baptist Church an "extremist sect" of Christianity!

O'Brien does point out that Aussie Mamdouh Habib was arrested and tortured because he was confused with Abu Walid, but she does not mention the even more horrifying story of Khalid El Masri, who suffered the same fate. And she does not explain why Iran, which is supposedly harbouring Al Quaeda terrorists, is actually imprisoning them. Maybe we'll work that out after we bomb them?

The single main source for O'Brien's article is Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa'ida, who was also the single main source of O'Brien's an explosive article last week about virtual terrorists in Second Life. In fact, Ms O'Brien seems to have a bit of a history of sensationalized reporting. What a surprise for the Murdoch Press.

PS: Cartoon courtesy Tom the Dancing Bug.

PPS: No, I am not back to regular blogging.

Cheney Knew Iraq Would Be A Quagmire

Dick Cheney in 1994:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

That's It

I'm done.

No more blogging.

Thanks to the regulars, and especially to those who bothered to add their voice.

I'm not copping out, just moving on to something else.

UPDATE: Soon.

What Have We Become?

Howard's coalition calls for "Mass Civil Disobedience" and nobody frikkin' BLINKS.

Nothing To Do With Me, Says Howard

Exhibit 1 - Sol Trujillo's pay rise:

"It doesn't help the capitalist system, which I believe in very passionately by the way, that some people appear to abuse it."

Never mind your own obscene pay packet, John. Hypocrite.

Exhibit 2 - Iraq:

Two more British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq yesterday, raising the death toll in the UK's least successful military campaign since Suez in 1956...

British losses have increased as they prepare to abandon their last base in Basra city and retreat to their frequently attacked air base on the outskirts of the city. Here the contingent of 5,500 troops has been hit by mortars and rockets more than 600 times in the past four months.

"Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat," according to a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on Basra published in June. "Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before."

British officials have privately echoed American claims that the Shia militias in Basra and in the rest of Iraq are being manipulated and supplied by Iran. But the three main Shia groupings in Basra, the Mehdi Army, the Badr Organisation and Fadhila, would control most of southern Iraq with or without Iranian aid.

"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior US intelligence official was quoted as saying in Baghdad.

Remember how the clever Brits were teaching the IRaqis how to love their occupying presence?

Exhibit 3 - East Timor:

East Timor is facing a new humanitarian emergency, with hundreds of houses burnt in the country's east and more than 1,000 villagers fleeing to the mountains.

Lucky we stole their oil while we had the chance. Now if our pro-Western puppet government doesn't do the job, we just blame them and replace them with more ADF staffers.

Exhibit 4 - The economy. Say no more.

Can you say "death throes", kids?

Bush Now Wants To Close Gitmo

No, really:

Closing the camp was complicated because inmates' home nations did not necessarily want them back, Mr Bush said, noting delays in setting up trials for those who were incarcerated.

"I did say it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantanamo. I also made it clear that part of the delay was the reluctance of some nations to take back some of the people being held there," Mr Bush told reporters.

Good News From Iraq Never Stops

So how about that Scott Thomas Beauchamp, eh?

This is the story of a single US soldier challenging the might and power of the US Army. It's also the story of a small US newspaper being squeezed by the Murdoch media empire. What a story: the US Army has now forced Beauchamp to recant his facts, and fellow soldiers have also been induced not to support him.

Obviously, nothing bad ever happens in Iraq. Ever.

Is It Global Economic Meldown Yet?

Australia's Reserve Bank has just spent $5 BILLION propping up the share market in the face of a global onslaught. The Bank of Japan spent double that, while the European Central Bank spent a record 94.8 billion euros.

The panic has been prompted by widespread fears about the state of the US economy after 7 years of George W. Bush, who insists the US economy is sound and suggests the best reponse is yet another cut in the corporate tax rate. No, really.

John Howard insists there's nothing to worry about. But he would say that, wouldn't he? Meanwhile, I can't help wondering how the Aussie mining executives who financed Howard's latest anti-Labout election propaganda are feeling? Mining stocks are leading the drop on the ASX.

Just remember folks: global economic meltdown would be even worse under Labor, so be sure to vote for the people who made it happen.

War On The Law: Howard Attacks

Our War Criminal PM has his back to the wall, with everything to lose. Now Howard is launching a full-scale attack on the judiciary. When I first heard of these laws, I couldn't believe the Senate would ever dare pass them:

On Wednesday the Senate passed a bill that provides for "delayed notification search warrants". These are warrants to empower the federal police and other agencies to covertly take a look around your home, download the contents of your computer and sniff the bedsheets, and not tell you for up to 18 months after the warrant has been executed, or never, ever, if Philip Ruddock says so.

These warrants can only be issued by judges, and even non-judges, who have been carefully screened and approved by the Government. We are not told who these judges are and what makes them "eligible". Maybe it is shorthand for "on the team".

Members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal can be selected to issue these warrants, and they need not even be lawyers, let alone judges. Some are even retired Liberal Party MPs, along with a sprinkling of Colonel Blimps out of the armed services.

Got that, folks? The cops can break into your house, and do what they please, and only Howard's hand-picked elites ever need to know about it. There is no judicial oversight of these illegal government operations.

We have just been entirely subsumed into BushWorld. Look at the parallels:

The Protect America Act... does not enhance security-related surveillance powers. Rather, it allows the government to spy when there is no security justification. And it abandons all but the pretense of oversight. The result, as with so many of this Administration's ill-advised policies, is power without responsibility -- and it is by now all too clear how wisely and carefully this Administration wields power in the absence of accountability.

Consider the following para from the SMH URL above, which will surely sound familiar to US readers:

Justice Michael McHugh said that between 1989 and 1994, of the 2639 police applications to the Federal Court for telecommunication interception warrants, only 13 were refused.

Given that the courts are not actually blocking such police applications, why does the government need expanded powers? Neither Washington nor Canberra can answer that one.

Howard is now pushing his major policy initiatives - the War on Aborigines and the War on the States - towards a judicial showdown. I think Peter Beattie is gambling that he can stave Howard off in court long enough for the federal election to make any outcomes irrelevant. But that assumes the Judiciary will adhere to current laws, and such an assumption looks increasingly less certain.

There are seemingly no depths to which this immoral, discredited PM will not stoop.

War On The States: Howard's Coalition Calls For "Mass Civil Disobedience"!!!

Can you believe it? Coalition members on both sides of the country are calling on ordinary Australians to mount campaigns of civil disobedience! And with APEC only weeks away! Really!

In WA, Nationals MP Max Trenorden is actively encouraging insurrection:

"The only way we're going to have any impact on that is through a passive resistance of government and basically I mean the same things as Mahatma Ghandi used to do, that is do things that are not quite lawful but are not violent," he said.

"I ve been slammed before, but the facts are we're in a position that unless we make a statement about our current plight in the regions this government is going to totally ignore us."

Ooh, yes, that naughty WA Labor government - they won't even join the Coalition of the ever-so-willing in their War on Aborigines! Max Trenorden wants citizens to fake police reports and show up at hospitals feigning ailments!

And it's the same thing on the other side of the country, where Queensland Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney (no, I've never heard of him either, and I live in Queensland!) is also urging widespread insurrection against the Beattie Labor government:

"I think we'll see mass civil disobedience and that's what I think councils should do," Mr Seeney said.

His call was echoed by disgruntled pro-business Council members across the state.

So there you have it, Australians. Whenever your government pisses you off with laws that you don't like, just toss the law aside. It's what Johnny wants!

Mister Howard government took the lead, of course, tossing aside international laws and treaties like the Geneva convention as he launched a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. Your Prime Minister is proud to be a War Criminal, damn it! Alexander Downer, who helped the AWB breach UN sanctions and support a violent dictator, is another outstanding lawless rebel, as is Kevin Andrews, who threw his own immigration laws out the window just to vilify Dr Haneef. Then there's Phillip "Che" Ruddock, who happily ignored the law to ensure that David Hicks spent five years rotting in Gitmo, and Brendan Nelson, who admits we are only in Iraq for the oil but simply doesn't give a shit what anybody thinks about that.

These are you leaders, Australia, and they are calling on YOU to ignore the laws of this land. It's time we stood up and showed them what we are made of!

Dubya Calls Johnny: "Is It Safe To Come Visit?"

With APEC looming, Bush calls his little Deputy:

"The president also brought me up to date on his latest feelings about what's occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mr Howard told Macquarie radio.

"There is progress being made. It's tough. It's not all negative.

"Nobody pretends that it's easy, but the alternative urged on us by the Labor Party and others of pulling out will guarantee a descent into civil war and chaos and a victory for terrorism, and we're totally opposed to that."

Mr Howard conceded that Mr Bush was under pressure in the United States over the military action.

"He is under pressure at home, of course he is. But he's not a person who succumbs easily to pressure and he's right," he said.

"Because if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq in circumstances of a perceived defeat, that would cause enormous instability in the Middle East and it would be a terrible blow to American prestige.

"Whatever you may have thought about the original invasion, you've got to deal with the reality of what is happening now."

Civil war? Already happening.

Chaos? Already happening.

A victory for terrorism? Already happening.

Instability in the Middle East? Already happening.

A terrible blow to American prestige? Too late for that, Mr Howard. What about Australian prestige?

Protesters With Frikkin' Laser Beams!?

A dangerous new craze reveals a major flaw in safety and security for the upcoming APEC meeting in Sydney. With Black Hawk helicopters now buzzing the city's rooftops, the potential for a major accident is huge.

In December 2004, a laser beam tracked a US commercial jet on approach to a Cleveland airport:

The pilot of the aircraft said the green laser light came into the cockpit and tracked with the plane for several seconds as it closed in on Cleveland Hopkins Airport at a speed of 186 km/h.

"It didn't just splash and vanish, which made the pilot believe he was being tracked," said FBI agent Robert Hawk.

The incident occurred late on Monday December 27, as the jet, with 25 crew and passengers on board, flew over the suburbs of the Ohio city and is the latest in a string of similar incidents reported to US authorities in the past 12 months.

The FBI has traced the beam to a residential area of the mid-western city, but has still not yet been able to determine if the incident was a prank or something else.

There were at least six other investigations underway in the USA at the time. In June this year, an Adelaide man shone a laser beam at a police helicopter. Police found a loaded rifle and a silencer in the man's car.

Last Friday, a laser beam targeted a Qantas flight into Darwin:

The plane, on a flight from Sydney, was carrying 185 passengers.

Mr Quartermain refused to say if the pilot was injured, but said he travelled as a passenger on the return leg to Sydney as a precautionary measure.

He has now been referred to the airline's doctor for assessment.

The Aussie press is generally not making a big thing of it, but this Herald Sun story blows the lid:

More than 100 incidents of aircraft being tagged by laser beams have been reported by pilots nationally since January last year.

"People . . . have been caught using lasers to tag aircraft in every state in Australia," federal Transport Department spokesman Jeff Lamb said.

Victoria Police helicopters have also been the target of laser beams.

"It's not something we usually talk about because we don't want to encourage it," a police spokeswoman said.

Aviation sources said authorities were also reluctant to talk about the problem as "it exposes a major flaw in airport safety and security".

Pen-sized laser lights, commonly used in surveying equipment or by professional and hobby astronomers, can project beams up to 5km and cost as little as $25...

A Civil Aviation Safety Authority advisory circulated after the most recent attacks at Melbourne Airport said protecting pilots against lasers had become a serious safety factor.

"Lasers can produce a beam of light of such intensity that permanent damage to human tissue, in particular the retina of the eye, can be caused instantaneously, even at distances of over 10km," CASA's advisory said.

As Darryl at The Orstrahyun blogged yesterday, the RAAF is also guilty of recklessly using laser beams, and there is a lot of military interest in laser technology:

This page on laser safety makes 'class four lasers', as cited in the above story, sound more like a focused light energy weapon than simply a jet fighter's targeting tool:

Class 4 lasers are harmful to eyes and skin, even diffuse reflections are hazardous. Class four lasers may also present a fire hazard. (Examples: laser welding machines, laser canons)

That laser safety page also says that even being in the vicinity of an activated laser as powerful as a 'class four' can be very unhealthy, even if it's not burning through your retinas.

Darryl's post described an incident in May when two RAAF jets "accidentally" targetted vehicles north of Newscaste:

The RAAF says two jets from the Williamtown base were flying at 20,000 feet on May 28 as part of a training exercise.

Weapons guidance lasers were pointed at a car at the intersection of the Lakes Way and Seal Rocks road near Forster, but eight other vehicles drove past the same spot.

Air Commodore Geoff Brown says it was a computer malfunction but the risk to the public was remote.

"The biggest risk of major injury is if you are actually inside that laser spot and looking directly back up at the aeroplane," he said.

"That's why we think it's extremely remote."

But it now seems like at least one innocent civilian was injured:

"The RAAF admits it is possible people may have been injured in the incident... The RAAF says people who may have been affected can call a hotline on 1800 000 655."

I'm betting some poor sap has been lying in hospital for months while the police suppress the story and the Air Force do a long investigation. Why the delay?

Air Commodore Geoff Brown says the matter had to be thoroughly investigated before information could be released.

"It took us actually a while to realise the laser had fired, if you can say that," he said.

So how much did this crappy, faulty, dangerous weapons system cost Aussie taxpayers? This is just another example of how our nation is being subsumed by the US military industrial complex.

I think that rather than ignoring this story, the media has a responsibility to ask government officials what preventative measures are being put in place to ensure public safety during APEC.

UPDATE: Fairfax picks up the story with an interesting new angle:

Darwin International Airport, which is less than 15km from the city centre, shares a site and runway with Darwin's RAAF base.

Mr Quartermaine would not comment on the possibility of a military-grade laser being involved in the incident.

Apparently the US military is doing tests on how pilots react to such beams. Per that Herald Sun story:

The US Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration last week launched a study into the reactions of pilots exposed to lasers.

What if the military in Darwin were doing the same thing, but aimed at the wrong plane? Woops?

What If...?

Mike Whitney explores evidence that the USA was behind the bombings of the Golden Dome Mosque in Iraq. He suspects Philip Zelikow was involved.

Zelikow served under Reagan and Bush 41, then under Condi Rice at the State Deptartment. Zelikow, a former director of the Aspen Strategy Group, believes that contemporary history is "defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public's presumptions about its immediate past".

In the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, he co-authored an article entitled "Catastrophic Terrorism," in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after.

A year after 9/11, at Condi Rice's request, Zelikow re-wrote America’s national security strategy.

Most famously, Zelikow was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which deliberately suppressed information showing that Condi Rice was (at the very least) negligent in ignoring repeated warnings about an impending attack:

Notably, on July 10, 2001, Rice met with Tenet in what he referred to as an "emergency meeting" held at the White House at Tenet's request to brief Rice and the NSC staff about the potential threat of an al Qaeda attack. Rice responded by asking Tenet to give a presentation on the matter to Secretary Rumsfeld and (now-former) Attorney General John Ashcroft.

When asked about the meeting in 2006, Rice asserted she did not recall the specific meeting, commenting that she had met repeatedly with Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Moreover, she stated that it was "incomprehensible” to her that she ignored terrorist threats two months before the September 11 attacks.

This Rice-Tenet meeting was not revealed to the 9/11 Commission because Zelikow personally kept it secret.

Zelikow has also said that the main reason for invading Iraq was to protect Israel:

"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,"

"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."

At the risk of being labelled (again) an anti-Semite, I'm going to guess that Zelikow is a Jewish name. Zelikow is now vocally supporting the practice of CIA renditions and arguing against any more legal restrictions on it.

Rates Up, War Efforts Failing - What You Gonna Do?

The government's solution - buy another Navy vessel:

The navy appears set to receive another advanced Air Warfare Destroyer with the government likely to exercise an option for construction of a fourth vessel.

No decision has yet been made, but the government is very much inclined to go down this route.

I can't help thinking Howard is just selling out completely to ensure his place on the Carlyle Board.

Words Of Gold

From Opposition treasury spokesman Wayne Swan:

"It is the fifth rate rise since John Howard said he could be trusted to keep interest rates at record lows," he said.

"And what we need now is not the blame game from John Howard, we need him to roll up his sleeves and put in place some policies to curb inflation and put downward pressure on interest rates.

Downward pressure = STOP SPENDING!!!

Do Only White People Matter?

Oh my god. Thirteen miners trapped by a flood in a mineshaft! Will this story be on your TV news tonight? Not bloody likely - the mine is in China:

Water burst into the mine in Qianxi County on Tuesday night, when 20 workers were down the shaft. Six were rescued, one died and 13 were trapped. Last week, 69 coal miners were rescued after being trapped underground by flood waters for more than three days in central Henan province.

China's coal mining industry is the deadliest in the world. Some 1,799 coal miners died in 1,066 accidents in the first half of 2007, down 14.3 per cent from the same period last year.

Can anyone explain to me why stories about US citizens should dominate our news, when many more deserving stories closer to home are routinely ignored?

It used to be a case that only US stories got TV coverage, but that is no longer true. One assumes that the main reason now has more to do with news-sharing network affiliations between the USA and Australia, but don't we have such affiliations with other countries as well? Are the lives of US citizens somehow more important than those of people from other nations?

We also pay an inordinate amount of attention to UK news, of course. But that can be explained by demographic and historical reasons. Is the Aussie public really demanding US news stories, or are they just being foisted on us? We don't seem to care so much about what happens in Canada. or even New Zealand. Is it perhaps the US media's own hyperventilating sense of self-importance which generates our own media interest?

Meanwhile, In What Used To Be Called Iraq...

Next time you hear Howard talking about the glorious new Democratic government in Baghdad, consider this:

The cabinet ministers in the al-Maliki government belonging to the National Iraqi List led by Iyad Allawi suspended their participation on Monday. They did not withdraw altogether from the government, just declined to come to meetings. But now some 17 cabinet ministers have either resigned or suspended their membership, out of 38.

Until the various rifts are repaired, assuming that they can be, it is no longer possible to speak of al-Maliki's as a national unity government. Indeed, it is likely that it is a minority government that does not fall only because it is not clear to parliamentarians what would be gained from inducing its collapse.

And next time you hear Howard or Downer talking about how Al Quaeda or Iran is supporting the insurgents in Iraq, consider this:

The 20-page report - Stabilising Iraq: Department of Defence cannot ensure that US-funded equipment has reached Iraqi security forces - says the Pentagon and the multinational force in Iraq responsible for training "cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces as of September 22 2005".

During that period the US was desperate to get the Iraqi security forces up and running and was arming them as fast as it could.

The failure of the US to account for so many weapons is an embarrassment for the Bush administration after months in which it has repeatedly accused Iran of supplying weapons and explosives to the insurgents.

And next time you hear Howard talking about how things are getting better in Iraq, and should be fully stabilized sometime after he wins the next election, consider this:

Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground...

Iraq would not have held together even if we had been spared the gross incompetence of the Bush administration. Saddam Hussein, like the more benign dictator Josip Broz Tito in the former Yugoslavia, understood that the glue that held the country together was the secret police.

Iraq, however, is different from Yugoslavia. Iraq has oil -- lots of it. It also has water in a part of the world that is running out of water. And the dismemberment of Iraq will unleash a mad scramble for dwindling resources that will include the involvement of neighboring states.

A PM Bereft Of Both Ideas And Integrity

Did Howard look pathetic on the 7:30 Report last night or what?

I thought the worst bit was when he was asked repeatedly about his reasons for extinguishing Native Title claims and creating harsh laws that apply to Aboriginals only. Howard, who could not provide a real answer, protested that his intervention "in aggregate" was neither racist nor unfair (thereby all but conceding that parts of it are indeed racist and unfair).

He also bristled at being labelled "dishonest", as if Kerry O'Brien were the only person in Australia suggesting it! And he voluntarily raised the issue of WMDs:

I'm not dishonest. There are many examples thrown up by my critics in relation to that but let me take one of the most egregious of all and that is weapons of mass destruction in relation to the war in Iraq.

I believe there were weapons of mass destruction because that's what the intelligence said, so did Mr Rudd. He said it was an empirical fact and not based on available intelligence. So did Tony Blair and George Bush and Jacques Chirac and most members of the United Nations.

Eh, how's that? They only believed it was an "empirical fact" because of the intelligence presented to them, which was carefully cherry-picked by Dick Cheney & Co. (ably abetted by John Howard and his heavily politicized Aussie agencies).

You'd think Howard would just leave the whole thing alone, but he even started jabbering about Children Overboard again. Methinks he is scared of the looming shadow of accountability. A Rudd government will no doubt have a lot of smelly political skeletons to dig up (should they choose to do so).

Howard's efforts to close the interview with a hit on the States also fell flat. This morning, even Paul Kelly in Teh Oz is pissing on Howard's new anti-state campaign:

Howard and his advisers are driven by the prospect of wall-to-wall Labor governments if Rudd wins. In many ways this is Howard’s final political resort...

Howard’s pragmatic attitude towards federalism is driven by politics. He has no interest in reform of the federal system. His outlook has varied between action and inaction depending on political advantage, with the consequences of his action usually being to increase federal powers.

If you think about it, anyone who really wants to see major changes in the federal-state-council heirarchy of power would probably be better off voting Labor, and giving them near-total control of the whole system for a few years.

Howard Looks To Keating For Inspiration

No, really:

Mr Howard reminded the party room that the Keating Labor government had also appeared doomed a month before the 1993 election.

But that was then, and Australians were never really going to vote for a muppet.

Meanwhile, speaking of muppets, and youth trumping age, News Ltd has revealed that Teh Poo picks 25-year-old Amanda over 48-year-old "cougar" Jen:

"You make me happy, you make me smile. All I want to [sic] in this life is to be happy."

I guess he won't be donating much career prize-winnings to East Timor, then.

And News Ltd chairman John Hartigan has warned his newspaper industry colleagues that consumers now want to be involved in creating content:

"We are moving from a speech to a conversation."

Did you hear that, Dennis Sham-I-am? Now shut up and listen to ME!

Howard's Salary Rises $21,000 to $357,656 - Up 63% in 11 Years

In Saturdays' online SMH, Alan Ramsey had a good article about the looming pay rise for MP's, which will bring their pay up 14 per cent in just 18 months. Strangely, the article does not appear under Ramsey's SMH page and (according to my Mum, anyway) it was not in the Saturday print edition.

Maybe it was spiked? Or maybe Ramsey himself pulled it in favour of this article attacking Kevin Andrews. Anyway, you can still read the article here. It describes how Howard has slowly but stealthily taken over the government Remuneration Tribunal, which determines MP's pay:

This is the tribunal Gough Whitlam's Labor government set up in 1973 to adjust the salaries and allowances of federal politicians, federal judges and all Commonwealth public office holders, full-time or part-time. Its intent was to remove politicians entirely from the business of fixing their pay and their perks. And it worked.

The process was wholly transparent. The tribunal had its own small secretariat located outside the public service departmental structure. It had its own budget. The three tribunal members were headed by a retired judge who was paid nothing except his expenses. Its two other members were retired business- people or former senior bureaucrats. Every year the tribunal's secretariat sent a consolidated report to Parliament on all matters dealt with in the previous 12 months. It included details of what it had done and precise explanations of why. Parliament had the right to accept or reject its decisions. It could not vary them. It was all or nothing.

Any issue before the tribunal in any given year was advertised. Anyone had the right to make a written submission. The tribunal considered all submissions in private. It had the right to hear evidence in private. But all written submissions - including by individual politicians, judges, bureaucrats and by the government and the opposition collectively - were open to public scrutiny after the tribunal had dealt with them. You simply went to the tribunal's office in Canberra and asked for the files to read. You could copy what they revealed but you couldn't remove them. No file was out of bounds.

Then John Howard's Government came to power. Nothing has been the same since.

Ramsey describes how the old arrangement has slowly morphed into the present atrocity:

Within two years, Betty Collins, head of the small office of six to eight public servants who staffed the tribunal secretariat, had been eased out. She'd been in the job the better part of a decade. She never survived her new minister, Peter Reith. Neither did the entire secretariat staff. They were all moved or displaced.

The secretariat's office, in its separate, rented premises, was closed and the new secretariat was subsumed, first within the Department of Finance and later within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. There it got a new secretary, which had been Collins's title, but was henceforth overseen by a senior bureaucrat. The "independent" Remuneration Tribunal was now just another anonymous arm of the bureaucracy. And it was run as such in the new, well-paid bureaucracy that answered to John Howard, Prime Minister.

Parliament no longer gets an annual consolidated, detailed report on the tribunal's work tabled each year, as used to be the case. You can't pick up a copy that tells you exactly what has happened and why and what the changes are. Submissions to the tribunal are a closed shop. The secretariat now has a private media firm, on a three-year contract, to handle press inquiries. Getting past the gatekeepers is extremely difficult.

Those gatekeepers include John Conde, a member of the tribunal for nine years and its president for the last four years, who used to be Alan Jones's managing director at radio 2UE.

Howard's tribunal - and it is that - is simply another arm of the corporate world that is his constituency.

What it knows and understands about a public sector that is only a pale shadow of the apolitical public service it used to be, I have no idea.

The Greens are today introducing a motion to block the pay rise but it is almost certain to be defeated by the major parties. One more good reason to vote Green, I should think.

Rats. Ship. Jump.

I wonder what John Howard, 68, thinks about this Liberal Senator's resignation:

Senator Calvert, 67, said he had decided months ago he wished to retire.

"I decided on this course of action many months ago because I believe that after 20 years in the Senate and five years as president, it is, for me, an appropriate time to retire," he told parliament.

"I also intend to resign as a senator for Tasmania before the September sitting period."

Oh yes, he decided "months ago", but he just chose to announce it now. Just before the election. And he is citing his age as a good reason for retirement.

Don't expect a big farewell lunch from Johnny, Senator.

Winners Are Grinners: Who's Clever Now, Eh?

Well, the latest Newspoll results vindicate Rudd's stance on the Haneef issue. They also confirm Australia's standing as a nation of stupid, racist sheep.

Forty-nine per cent of those questioned approved of Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews' handling of the Mohamed Haneef case while 36 per cent disapproved.

In spite of this, Howard still did not get a poll bounce. Why not? Partly it's because Rudd refused to be wedged on the issue (and the poll results vindicate this as a "clever" political move). But it's also because Howard's handling of the Haneef fiasco is nothing new, as even Dennis Sham-I-am acknowledges:

The case of Mohamed Haneef is a classic point of the public refusing to give extra credit to a government doing what it is supposed to be doing. For weeks, the allegation has been that Howard, via Kevin Andrews, was trying to “wedge” Labor over counter-terrorism, was dog whistling to racists on immigration and scoring easy populist support.

The Newspoll figures show that while more people support the Government’s decision on Haneef, Labor is not wedged, thanks to Rudd supporting the decision.

Voters backed the decision to cancel the visa but weren’t about to go the next step into backing the Coalition politically.

If it was a dog whistle, it didn’t work; if it was the Government doing its job, it didn’t get any extra kudos; and it’s going to take more than a confected “mini-Tampa” or base appeal to racism to save the Coalition.

Someone call a doctor - Howard's looming health problem just came a big step closer. I wonder if they will do the whole rushed-in-an-ambulance-to-hospital thing? Of course it won't happen until after the APEC show next month. Only a big post-APEC lift in the polls will save his fat 68-year-old arse.

Dear Mister Howard

Wow. Our hip young PM is going interactive! It's very exciting! And he is going to answer five - count 'em, five! - whole questions from real plebs like you and me!

So here are my five simple questions:

1. Up to a million Iraqis are now dead as a direct result of your illegal pre-emptive invasion of their country. Another 5 million are displaced, the nation's electricity system is on the point of collapse, children are dying because of a lack of clean water, and there are no clear prospects for a better future on the horizon. Isn't it well past time that all those responsible for this disaster akcnowledged their guilt and withdrew their voices from the decision-making process?

2. You have repeatedly claimed that the decision to invade Iraq was made on the basis of the best intelligence available at the time, and that Australian intelligence agencies, like their counterparts in the US and UK, were mis-informed about Saddam's WMDs. If that is so, why were whistle-blowers like the ONA's Andrew Wilkie, and DFAT's Trent Smith, not just ignored but actively vilified? Why did the government ignore pre-war information from the British Government's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which said a war with Iraq would actually increase the global threat of terrorist WMDs? Is it not true that you and your cabinet have actively conspired, against the interests of the Australian people, to ignore and suppress any evidence contrary to your own pro-war spin?

3. You were in the USA on September 11th, 2001, meeting with President Bush and then dining with Rupert Murdoch on the day before the attacks. You visited the White House again in June 13th, 2002, just a week after Tony Blair had visited Bush’s Crawford ranch. While you have always denied that you committed Australian forces to an Iraq invasion at this stage, it has now been conclusively proven that Bush himself was already fully committed to an invasion. For example, six of the leaked Downing Street memos detail frenzied meetings between senior US and UK officials, "fixing the intelligence" around the policy of an invasion in the month before your 2002 US visit. Can it really be trued that neither you nor any of your ministers was aware of Bush's invasion plans, and if so, what does that say about the nature of our relationship with the US and UK governments, and their intelligence agencies?

4. Australian troops had already invaded Iraq before we officially declared war, and before Bush’s public ultimatum to Saddam had even expired. According to International laws to which Australia remains a signatory, is that not a War Crime? Given that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan himself has declared the Iraq War an illegal war of choice, does that not make you a War Criminal?

5. You have often claimed that our nation's involvement in the Iraq War is in the best long-term interests of the Australian people. Is that really true, or have you just painted yourself into a corner? Given that there is now widespread evidence that our involvement in Iraq is not only making Australia a more dangerous place, but also exacerbating the real threat of terrorism worldwide, are you suggesting that the economic benefits of sucking up to the US military-industrial establishment outweigh any such dangers, or any moral concerns?

Unfortunately, the Yahoo Answers website only allows users to post ONE question, so maybe readers can help me out? (You will need to set up a Yahoo account if you don't have one).

War-Mongers Waiting For Oblivion

As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the Bush Cabal is just playing for time now:

Omertà (or a code of silence) has become the final bond holding the Bush administration together. Honesty is dishonorable; silence is manly; penitence is weakness. Loyalty trumps law. Protecting higher-ups is patriotism. Stonewalling is idealism. Telling the truth is informing. Cooperation with investigators is cowardice; breaking the code is betrayal. Once the code is shattered, however, no one can be trusted and the entire edifice crumbles...

Bush cannot afford to have Gonzales resign or be removed. Gonzales' leaving would ratchet up the administration's political crisis to an intense level. Bush could not nominate a replacement without responding to the Senate Judiciary Committee's inevitable request for information on every matter that he has attempted to keep secret. On every unresolved and electrified issue the Senate would demand documents -- the entire cache on the development of policy since 2001 on torture, the gutting of the Civil Rights Division, the U.S. attorneys and much more. Only Gonzales' perpetuation in office holds back the deluge.

It's the same thing in Iraq, of course, where Teh Surge is a monumental failure, the electicity system is close to breaking point, and the Iraqi "unity government" has collapsed, but we still have to wait for General Petraeus to say so - in September (or maybe November) - before we all get to hear the next big excuse for further time-wasting.

By that time we should have fully-armed robots on the battlefield and other cool new taxpayer-funded weapons, so we won't have to worry about casualties from anyone but the Untermenschen. Maybe that will keep our war alive for a few more years.

And with a bit of luck, we might hold off the global stock market meltdown for a few more months too:

We are now beginning to feel the first tremors from the massive credit expansion which began 6 years ago at the Federal Reserve. The trillions of dollars which were pumped into the global economy via low interest rates and increased money supply have raised the nominal value of equities, but at great cost. Now, stocks will fall sharply and businesses will fail as volatility increases and liquidity dries up. Stagnant wages and a declining dollar have thrust the country into a deflationary cycle which has---up to this point---been concealed by Greenspan’s “cheap money” policy. Those days are over. Economic fundamentals are taking hold. The market swings will get deeper and more violent as the Fed’s massive credit bubble continues to unwind. Trillions of dollars of market value will vanish overnight. The stock market will go into a long-term swoon.

And who knows, maybe the lid will never be blown on all those trigger-happy "security" contractors in Iraq:

The internet is alive with videos of contractors seemingly using Iraqi vehicles for target practice, much to the embarrassment of the firms involved. Yet, despite these incidents, and although 64 US soldiers have been court-martialled on murder-related charges, not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for any crime, let alone a crime against an Iraqi. US contractors in Iraq reportedly have a motto: "What happens here today, stays here today."

And so we wait, and we wait...

Because, after all, what is the alternative? To admit that we were wrong is to invite accountability, and that would be terrible indeed.

And so, for example, Australian Prime Minister John Howard must fight to contest the next election, whether he wants to or not, because the thought of an opposition government asking hard questions is just too much to bear. And even members of his own party cannot be trusted to take the helm - even those whose hands, like Howard's, are bathed in Iraqi blood.

So we go on, we go on... Waiting for that moment when it all ceases to matter any more.

Time To Go, Johnny

Oh dear. Howard could have gone voluntarily, but now it looks like ambitious young dissenters within his own Party are going to push him out the door.

There is no way Howard can win the next election if he can't stop this series of embarrassing leaks. The leaks undermine Howard's authority and expose his every well-orchestrated media pronouncement as a sham. Either Howard finds the leaker(s), and puts a stop to it, or he steps down. It's that simple.

I suspect that quite a few people in Canberra know exactly who the leaker(s) is (are). Maybe even Howard himself knows, but is powerless to stop them. In either case, it is a sign of serious party disunity. Factor in the Towke affair last week and you have a party that is not unly unfit to govern but also, as Kevin Rudd says, incapable of doing so.

UPDATE: Howard is sounding desperate:

"We have been struggling this year, politically, there's no doubt about that, and I think that research reflected some of the negative views that were around," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"It was done a couple of months ago, I think our position has improved since then."

Mr Howard said he thought people had reacted positively to a number of recent government initiatives.

"I think they have reacted very positively to the Northern Territory initiative, which incidentally was announced the same day as this document has allegedly been prepared, and that is the 21st of June," he said.

Heh. So two months ago Howard was too old, and now he's not? And voters really do like his War On Aborigines, even if the authors of the report that triggered it say they "feel betrayed, disappointed, hurt and angry — pretty pissed off, all at the same time". Ri-i-ight...

Don't You Worry About That

John Howard:

"I have some understanding of the disposition of people in these situations..."