This week's presidential election in Afghanistan will be an elaborate piece of political theater designed to show increasingly uneasy Western voters that progress is being made in the war-torn nation after seven years of US-led occupation.

Most Afghans already believe they know who will win the vote: the candidate chosen by the United States and its NATO allies.

Voting will mostly be held in urban areas, under the guns of US and NATO troops.

It's nice that the great lumping discussion paper on freshening up security laws, the 60th birthday of the Geneva Conventions and a new round of official finger-wagging about plea bargaining have all arrived on our doorstep at the same thrilling moment.

It's always good to have a discussion paper. It just depends who does the discussing and what laws ultimately settle on the books.

The most significant voices in this discussion, although you may not hear them, will come from the security agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

from Crikey .....

Clive Hamilton: our parliament sabotages our future

Clive Hamilton writes:

Is parliamentary democracy capable of responding adequately to the climate crisis?

Wait a minute. Is it just me or does anyone else see the inherent absurdity of this headline from the August 10 edition of the New York Times: "U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban."

DATELINE JUDEA, A.D. 26 - Pontius Pilate to Jesus: "Look you seem to be a nice Jewish kid from ... where izzit? ... Nazareth? But you gotta quit fuckin wid da moneychangers, cause I get a piece of dat action, see? So stop dickin' with 'em. And especially you gotta swear off this Son of God, King of the Jews shtick. Ain't but one king aroun jeer, and you're lookin' at him. So lay off that stuff, and we can put this whole thing behind us, you and me. On the other hand, I got a couple of thieves I'm gonna do in tomorrow; and you can join 'em if you want. Your call kid. Now who's yer daddy?"

Politicians are particularly fond of claiming battler status. I was reminded of this when, about a week ago, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who has previously told childhood stories of being evicted from a farm and living in a car, spoke on radio about the menial jobs he did after finishing school.

Early on the morning of June 12, the Liberal senator Eric Abetz and his chief of staff, Brad Stansfield, boarded a plane from Hobart to Sydney. Of several Abetz meetings in Sydney that day, one would go down in political infamy.

Already it has severely wounded Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, although the extent of the injury is still to unravel.

In 2007 an extreme right wing, pro-US, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-Zionist Labor Party was elected to government under Kevin Rudd with the promise to stop involvement in Occupied Iraq (Australia still has troops there), to remove draconian workplace legislation (key draconian provisions remain) and to act on climate change (Australia's world leading per capita greenhouse gas pollution continues unabated and Labor is now on the verge of destroying the renewable energy industry).

In America's first war against Islam, we were the ones who introduced the use of suicide bombers. Indeed, the American seamen who perished in the incident were among the U.S. military's first missing in action.

from Crikey .....

Why is there no media scepticism about these terror raids?

Greg Barns writes:

Kyle's contract and the crew he took along for the ride

Glenn Dyer writes:

The world renowned journalist, author and film-maker John Pilger has been awarded the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize. The jury's citation reads:

"For work as an author, film-maker and journalist as well as for courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard. For commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form.'

Over the weekend, the government has identified another way to embarrass itself.

Karen Steyn is the barrister representing David Miliband, who has been arguing that we must suppress evidence of torture in the case of Binyam Mohamed. On Saturday, the high court judges sent the foreign secretary a transcript of their interrogation of Steyn for him to confirm in writing whether he really means what she says.

Burma's isolated military junta is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, according to evidence from key defectors revealed in an exclusive Herald report today.

The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Burma, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards.