from Crikey ….. 

NT intervention: Macklin ignores review board in favour of anecdotes  

Professor Jon Altman from the Australian National University writes:  

Even before the spectacular presidential election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing.  

National newspapers had long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple - usually front page – reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals of mostly inside-the-fold summary stories.  

This November, Americans face a choice. But the choice not between John McCain or Barak Obama; it is between submitting to the will of the corporate-military establishment or taking a moral stand in boycotting their rigged institutions of fake democracy.  

The Australian Federal Police is accepting no blame for the detention and charging of Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef last year.

A public version of AFP submissions to the Clarke inquiry into the Haneef case released yesterday blames Scotland Yard for providing incorrect information and the office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for advising that Dr Haneef be charged. 

from Crikey ….. 

This morning Treasury Secretary Ken Henry talked - when permitted to by Coalition senators - about the Rudd Government’s bank guarantee and the claims, made with alarming prominence in The Australian yesterday, that the RBA had always wanted a cap on it.  

On the brief occasions when the President now appears in the Rose Garden to "comfort" or "reassure" a shock-and-awed nation, you can almost hear those legions of ducks quacking lamely in the background.  

Ordinary Cubans could reasonably be excused for wondering why the fates have dealt them such a rotten hand over the years, but at last it seems that their luck may have changed.  

Democratic Party circles are in raptures over Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama.  

So, we Australians don’t trust politicians. Tell us something we don’t know. 

from Alan Ramsey …… 

The Rudd Government this week "dealt" with the gravest "global financial crisis" since the Great Depression of the 1930s by ignoring Parliament. 

The Government has some power to influence executive pay levels. But it can't do so alone. It needs help from company boards. Hitherto boards have been in the thrall of chief executives, seduced by the cult of the big chief, happy to be duchessed and co-opted.  

No knives, or sharp objects

No liquids or gels over 3 fl.oz

No weapons

- sign on door of Richmond International Airport

Exorbitant executive salaries may get a trim under a Federal Government plan to deal with the "extreme capitalism'' at the root of the global financial crisis. 

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today revealed the government will work with the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) to bring fat-cat pay packets under control. 

If it sometimes seems that Wall Street is a small world, well, it is. For all its global reach, and for all the bitter conflict in recent months, where, for example, Lehman Brothers was left to tumble into bankruptcy while American International Group was bailed out, these are people who know each other, often well.