Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.

When one declares that his robes are the most beautiful, made of the finest silk, so glorious that they compete with the sun - sometimes a little blond-haired boy with a most serious look about him declares that it seems to him that the Emperor has no clothes! And we see, slowly at first, then an unstoppable surge of laughter and finger-pointing by the common people who, for all their ignorance and all their flaws, know enough to put on clothes before going out in public.

from Crikey .....

Electricity privatisation: Keneally piloting death star that is Labor

Candace Sutton, a former NSW government media adviser, writes:

Even for the humble among us who try to avoid jingoistic outbursts, some national achievements are so grand that they merit a moment of pride & celebration.

The Soviet Union couldn't win in Afghanistan & now the US is about to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.

On Friday, the US-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state.

Gay prostitutes the world over have been thrilled by the Pope's decision to allow them to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

''It's a dream come true,'' said Trent, 21, a strapping blond guardsman and part-time rent boy in London's St James's Park. ''It's the last thing I expected from the Vatican.''

Jai, 24, who works for a male escort agency in Sydney's Kings Cross, agreed. ''As a devout practising Catholic, I've worried both about AIDS and the sin of wearing a rubber. This OK from the Pope means I can see my Catholic clients without fear of either disease or damnation.''

A poll shows Labor's core support base is evaporating just five days out from the Victorian election, with Ted Baillieu gaining ground.

The Herald Sun says the private Galaxy poll shows Premier John Brumby will cling onto power, but only with Greens preferences.

The poll shows a collapse in Labor's primary vote, putting at least 18 government-held seats in jeopardy.

On a two-party preferred basis Labor is leading 51-49 but the poll shows the opposition leader has not only secured his own supporter base but is eating into Labor's support in key outer suburbs and regional centres.

When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America recently, he was relaxed, charming and at his deluded best. For Jewish audiences which don't want to know the truth of history, there's nobody who can deliver Zionism's propaganda lines and lies more effectively than him. (Though he didn't say so, he was obviously delighted that President Obama had taken a hammering in the mid-term elections).

I could take issue with Netanyahu on many of his mad assertions but on this occasion I will settle for challenging just one of them.

from Crikey .....

Herald Sun caught trying to entrap Victorian MPs

Crikey senior journalist Andrew Crook writes:

In almost every recent Victorian election, we have seen the Labor dirt unit roll out several old chestnuts about the Greens' ''extreme'' policies. And boy, do they love to tell voters that the Greens-backed position on medically supervised injecting rooms is an extreme policy.

What Labor doesn't tell say is the policy was once its own. It went to the 1999 election promising to set up a heroin injecting facility. The idea was shelved once the Bracks government came to power.

Like the morning after a big party, government can be quite sobering.

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous.

Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem - so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital - and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land.

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard met President Barack Obama for the first time last week, Gillard reminded the world that the US and Australia were "great mates" and Obama in turn affirmed: "The United States does not have a closer or better ally than Australia."

from Crikey .....

Elite Oz soldiers in covert operations for top-secret Alliance Base

Antony Loewenstein writes:

Tony Abbott has been in public life for a long time. Most recently there has been his meteoric rise to leadership of the Liberal party and to a hair's breadth from the prime ministership itself. Charming and disarming as he can be, there is something deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role.

It has not always been pretty, but it has always been entertaining - usually comic and at times tragic. During the whole episode of the supposed 'love child' with his university girl friend, he managed to maintain a quiet dignity, particularly in the face of the final revelation that the child he thought he had fathered was not actually his. 

Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).

The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American media used the occasion of her release to get on Burma's case for the absence of the rule of law. I'm all for the brave lady, but if truth be known, "freedom and democracy" America needs her far worse than does Burma.

On September 13, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published a set of articles by Fairfax group Indonesia correspondent Tom Allard presenting detailed claims by victims of torture by members of the elite Indonesian National Police (POLRI) Anti-Terror Squad known as Densus 88 or Detachment 88.