from Crikey .....

Ben Sandilands writes:

Just yesterday, the New York Times, had a lead story about Israeli planning to possibly "go it alone" in an attack on Iran if the US were not to "succeed" in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to "stop" it's alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon capability.

With the long awaited decision by the Obama Administration in regards to the new strategy for Afghanistan, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated to the point that the US commanders started using the word 'defeat' in their report to Washington.

The word defeat has rarely been uttered by military; however, Afghanistan is the exception, where defeat is a realistic outcome. There, defeat is a reality that all invaders have faced since the beginning when Pashtuns have inhabited this region.

Melbourne delivers a perfect storm .....

As Tiger Woods returns to golf, not all his affairs are salacious headlines. The Tiger Woods Golf Course in Dubai is costing $100million to build. Dubai relies on cheap third world labour, as do certain consumer brands that have helped make Woods a billionaire. Nike workers in Thailand wrote to Woods, expressing their "utmost respect for your skill and perseverance as an athlete" but pointing out that they would need to work 72,000 years "to receive what you will earn from [your Nike] contract".

In what could be seen as an effort to respond to the March 11, 2009 edition of the U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights, Ecuador has promised to publish its own human rights counter-report. This initiative is meant to assess Washington's own respect for human rights from an outside perspective and is meant to be a necessary response to the State Department's often imprudent document. Also, the very next day, March 12, China published "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009."

In the fall of 2001, a nation reeling from the horror of 9/11 was rocked by a series of deadly anthrax attacks. As the pressure to find a culprit mounted, the FBI, abetted by the media, found one. The wrong one. This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade - and nearly destroyed an innocent man. Here, for the first time, the falsely accused, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, speaks out about his ordeal.

The Wrong Man

Imagine for one moment the corridors of power and influence, from presidential palaces to military command centres, being populated by the likes of Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists etc, who utter such racist nonsense that one race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that they are more apt at ruling the world's affairs!

Goldman Sachs will incur further damage to its reputation today when it releases details of a $5 billion bonus package for staff for the first three months of the year. Fabrice 'Fabulous Fab' Tourre, the now-suspended London-based banker targeted by US authorities for his role in an alleged $1 billion mortage-hawking scandal, can expect to receive a substantial slice of the cake.

Piers Akerman has been testing his vast capacity for self-parody. His piece in Monday's Telegraph on asylum seekers reads as if written on a bet or a dare. The frenzy whipped up over asylum seekers after the Tampa's arrival was a tragedy for this country. Akerman seems determined to repeat it as farce.

Today, in New York City, the US is torturing a Muslim detainee with no prior criminal record who has not even gone to trial.

It is hard to summarize Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes because there really isn't anything that can be cut from it. Every page is packed with stories of incredible sacrifice at low levels and incredible malfeasance at the highest level (low-level people thinking of sacrificing yourselves, take note).

There they go again, our very own Keystone Kops. The Australian Federal Police have bungled yet another ''anti-terrorist'' investigation. The fiasco finally came crashing down around their ears in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday. To cut a long story very short, three prominent members of the Australian ethnic Tamil community - all Australian citizens - had been charged with acts of terrorism in support of the Tamil Tiger rebellion in Sri Lanka.

After eight years imprisonment without charge or trial, five former Guantánamo prisoners are beginning new lives this week - two in Switzerland and three in Georgia.

Their stories reveal, yet again, how Republican lawmakers and media pundits in the US, who have, in recent months, renewed their fear-filled attacks on those still held, are guilty of hyperbolic and unprincipled outbursts and, in addition, how these critics' attacks are damaging to the prospects of cleared men, seized by mistake, finding new homes in countries that, unlike the US, are prepared to offer them a chance to rebuild their shattered lives on a humanitarian basis.

The World Health Organisation is to set up an independent panel to investigate charges that it exaggerated the impact of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic and is unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travellers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."