Australia's Foreign Minister believes he's responsible for the marriage of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban?  This is the man that George W. Bush wanted to lead the world into Iran?

Ninemsn has reported that Downer was "in the vicinity" when Kidman and Urban met.  Apparently he's just told BBC Radio that he has a photograph to prove it.  Until this photo is released the mental pictures in my head will keep me giggling for days.

Alex, you're always going to be an "extra", even in attempted publicity stunts like this one.  What the Brits think of this announcement is a point of conjecture, but the word "tosser" springs to mind. 

The Australian Government's Aid Agency Ausaid, a major Australian employer of Halliburton/KBR, has been warned to tighten its anti-corruption practices in a report released today (Wednesday)

The report follows admission by Ausaid representatives earlier this year that the organision had no internal protocols for reporting detected corruption in aid deals.

The report, released by the National Audit Office, states that funds earmarked to provided relief to Indonesia following the Decenber 2004 tsunami were used to pay Ausaid officers and to cover administration costs.   It includes the statement that "a key risk for activities is that of fraud and corruption" and claims that numerous contracts were not signed until after the provision of services had commenced.

Do you think that Dick Cheney's words in the US today are going to be echoed in Canberra in next year?

[from SBS) 

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that a
landmark nuclear deal with India will win support of the US Congress
despite strong opposition by critics.

Mr Cheney said in Washington that the deal was "one of the most
important strategic foreign policy initiatives of President Bush's
second term".

Reuters has reported that legislation prepared for action next week
by a key House of Representatives committee would require India to
strongly support US efforts to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions and would
bar lawmakers from amending the formal peaceful nuclear cooperation
agreement still under negotiation by Washington and New Delhi.

The draft bill, which was obtained by Reuters, is "much closer to
the Bush administration's initial cut than things that were being
talked about" earlier by some lawmakers, said a congressional analyst
who closely followed the drafting process.

 Writing the piece Agonies Of A Conspiracy TheoristA and reading the responses both here and on Webdiary has altered the way I go about things.  The main sentiment I was left with was that I should "keep on keeping on".

The trouble is that in my second year of this blog I feel like I'm in a time-loop, almost as if I'm watching last year's script being followed by a sequel.  It even comes down to the sense of "lull" in proceedings I felt last June, which quickly came to an end with the arrival of the London bombings.

Come Mr Alex, man, tell me I'm bananas
Daylight come and me wanna go home
Nuclear missles from Korea gonna harm us
Daylight come and me wanna go home.

May-o, me sing May-ay-ay-oh
Daylight come and me wanna go home

Work all night for a sniff of bum
Georgie-girl gives me a call I come

Love my Halliburton shares
Australia"s ambassador but no-one cares.

Love the old U.S. Of A.
They don't think karaoke's gay.

May, we sing May we sing May we sing May we sing May we sing May we sing May-ay-ay-oh.
Daylight comes and wish you go home.
 

Here we go with another Korean missile scare.  After warnings from
the U.S. for Korea not to test a missile that could potentially drop a
nuke on American soil, Mr Downer has revealed that Australia is also
within range.

 [extract from ninemsn]

A missile North Korea plans to test fire has the range to reach
Australia but the country is an unlikely target, Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer says.

Australia has added its voice to a growing
international chorus demanding North Korea give up plans for the test
launch of a long range ballistic missile.

Judicial Watch, the U.S. public interest group that
investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that
the Department of the Army, per order of U.S. District Court

Judge
Ricardo M. Urbina, has released to Judicial Watch approximately 100
pages of documents which detail the multi-billion dollar, no-bid
contract awarded in 2003 by the Army to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a
subsidiary of Halliburton Co.

One document uncovered by Judicial Watch
suggests the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) may have
publicly lied regarding the involvement of the Vice President’s office
in awarding the contract.

I'd like to show you the levels that My Fine DFAT Friend will go to
protect his reputation.  Given the opportunity to effectively ban a
movie that made his point of view look wrong, Downer leapt at the
chance.

This entry was originally posted  on my private blog in early May 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[From News.com.au]

This map from the South Australian Defence site holds a thousand word painting picture- a line through the middle of Australia, owned by Halliburton, along which every freight container leaving Darwin needs to pass. 

South Australia - the Transport Hub of Australia

" Completion of the line increases accessibility to the Cultana Training Area and positions it as a major asset both for South Australia and the Australian Army." proclaims the website.  It doesn't say that every tank and  every boxcar of uranium waste will line the pockets of the company once run by the U.S. Vice President.

The author of this missive is a
kindred spirit: 

Fear US Down
Under  

I am sitting
at my computer in Melbourne, Australia, and I just read this archived article a
friend forwarded to me about Casey Sheehan. It's oddly moving. The author
is to be commended. (See “Casey
Sheehan,” by Neil Freese, August 26, 2005.) 

Former Iraqi hostage Douglas Wood has revealed his expertise in nuclear reactors and wants to be a prime player in the Australian nuclear inquiry.  The former Bechtel nuclear power plant designer, whose release was used in US military propoganda, recently announced his divorce from his American wife to the Australian media without bothering to tell the woman first.

 I've been a keen follower of Wood's progress since the night that Alexander Downer announced Wood's release and have followed his media trail from the lofty heights of the NBC Today Show to the crevasse of the Shepparton Football club, where a uncooperative CD player refused to provide the backing music for Wood's rendition of "I did it my way"  I've laughed at Wood's attempts to win product endorsements for Coonawara red wine, lamb roasts and VB, and cried with him as, one by one, his media deals failed.  His aspirations to give motivational talks on the lucrative U.S. public speaking also appear to be fading dreams.

 It is unfortunate that the battlelines between the dominant fundamentalists of two religions are being drawn.  As far as logic and common-sense go, the Iranian leadership is lightyears ahead of the Bush Administration of America.

The Iranian point of view is that the U.S. is interfering with the rights of a sovereign state, while America believes that it has the right to eliminate a situation out of which a "threat" might arise.While the US and Australia are threatening sanctions, Iran is capable of serious damage to American energy supplies, and  will do so in retaliation to a military act against it. 

In a coastal town at the shores of Mr Downer's Mayo electorate, the nuclear debate is rippling through the community.

Downer's
fellow S.A. Senator Anne McEwen has cheekily suggested that the tourism
city of Victor Harbor, known to many as "God's Waiting Room" would be an ideal site
because of the abundance of water.

The Minister for Foreign
Affairs has responded rather cattily to the suggestion, describing
McEwen as a senator that nobody has heard of.

"There is no plan to build a nuclear power station anywhere in the
whole of Australia, least of all in Victor Harbor." Mr Downer told the Victor Harbor Times.

Three major defence companies yesterday signed deals with local universities to create "tailor made" defence degrees, and enable more work on defence technology to be carried out on South Australian campuses.

BAE, Tenix and ASC signed the joint agreement with Flinders University and the Universities of South Australia and Adelaide.  The Universities will provide courses dedicated to the companies' contract requirements  

 The announcement closely follows British university Cranfield's decision to create a defence campus in Adelaide.  Cranfield recently won a billion -pound contract from the UK Ministry of Defence to implement defence-based training programs.

Is the Bush Administration's preferred IAEA Director going
toe-to-toe with the UN's nuclear watchdog?  While Mahomed ElBaradai is
telling the US to back off in its aggressive nuclear stance with Iran,
the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister is using the threat of
sanctions as a diplomatic weapon.

A week after energy giant General Electric announced its acquisition of Australian-developed uranium enrichment technology (see Justin Tutty's
last post here)   Mr Downer today has supported US State Secretary
Condoleeze Rice's diplomatic proposal by urging Iran to cease the
enrichment of uranium, and engage in a nuclear dialogue with the U.S.