NSW Senator Doug Cameron made a speech yesterday in the Australian Senate in support of the people of Palestine and particularly referred to the terrible situation of the people of the Gaza Strip.

On taking office in 2007, Labor had the political savvy to get controversial decisions made quickly, while its reputation was still unsullied and before resolve could crumble under Canberra's lobbying system. And at the UN, it seized an early opportunity to signal that foreign policy was under new management, supporting a resolution calling on Israel to stop establishing settlements in the Palestinian territories and a resolution calling for the Geneva Conventions to apply there.

Former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted in an interview that the country "would've been better off" if he had quit after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal and spared no criticism of his colleagues in his new memoir published Tuesday.

In "Known and Unknown," Rumsfeld defends his handling of the war and recounts his government career serving Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.

However the former Pentagon chief also admitted his biggest error during his tenure under Bush was his failure to convince the president to accept his resignation in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, we have lived through a historical period in which the United States relinquished its tenuous claim to democracy.

The frames through which democracy apprehends others as human beings worthy of respect, dignity, and human rights were sacrificed to a mode of politics and culture that simply became an extension of war, both at home and abroad.

It was as unexpected as a red gum, impervious to all that could be thrown at it, suddenly toppling days after the storm.

Julia Gillard, scorned for weeks during the dreadful summer of natural disasters as lacking empathy, as wooden, as incapable of displaying emotion, finally could no longer withstand the strain.

Standing in the Parliament yesterday, she unfurled a muddied Australian flag recovered from the flooded Queensland town of Murphys Creek in the body-strewn Lockyer Valley & her voice began cracking.

There is a lot more behind Hosni Mubarak digging in his heels and setting his thugs on the peaceful protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square than pure politics. This is also about money. Mubarak and the clique surrounding him have long treated Egypt as their fiefdom and its resources as spoils to be divided among them.

Shell stoked up the heated debate about the high cost of fuel on the forecourt today after reporting it made profits of nearly £1.6m an hour over the last three months.

A leading member of the road lobby said motorists would be "sick to the stomach" and declared that Shell - and a tax-taking Treasury - were "laughing all the way to the bank".

from Crikey ......

Abbott has buggered up his anti-flood levy campaign

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

In my view, the only thing that Julia Gillard has going for her these days is the leadership of the Liberal Party ......

For Tony Abbott, the definition of an acceptable levy is apparently one imposed by the Coalition.

In government, the Liberals and Nationals tried to impose six levies in 12 years.

They announced a sugar levy in 2003 to assist farmers, a levy on plane tickets in 2001 to pay Ansett workers' entitlements, a milk levy in 2000 to assist dairy farmers, a levy for the East Timor military action in 1999 (ultimately not called on) and a levy for a guns buyback in 1996 through an increase in the Medicare surcharge.

from Crikey .....

The sugar bomb is ticking away dangerously

David Gillespie, lawyer and author of Sweet Poison, why sugar makes us fat, writes:

AUSTRALIAN HEART FOUNDATION, HEALTH, NESTLE, OBESITY, SUGAR

The Heart Foundation has finally trashed the last of its credibility.

Every US administration has its mouthpiece in Washington's think tank world, its courtier that will slavishly praise its every utterance. For the blessedly bygone Bush administration, that echo chamber was the American Enterprise Institute and the neo-conservative broadsheets in its orbit. For the Obama administration, it is the National Security Network, an operation founded in 2006 to bring "strategic focus to the progressive national security community."

One of our grand national delusions is that we are a stoic people, unflinching in the jaws of hardship and disaster, unique in all the world. Knock us down and we dig into bottomless reserves of character to dust ourselves off and get back at it. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.

It's a myth, of course. We enjoy a good whinge as much as anybody, and it's high time to recognise this. I'm thinking of instituting a round of awards for exemplary complaining, with a gala presentation night for the Gold Whinger of the Year.

from Crikey ......

Laugh until you cry -- can we put a levy on political stupidity?

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

The fact that this story appears in Australia's leading Murdoch broadsheet is encouraging. Anything from Israel must be clearly marked as such. Why shouldn't it be? Consumers should know that Israeli products face a global boycott campaign.

When you fly over the earth's oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking.

Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where native vegetation once grew. This change is almost impossible to reverse. The first species to die are those that are most vulnerable.