I had written
him a letter, which I had, for want of better

Knowledge, sent
to where I met him at the wheat board, years ago.

He was chairman
when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him

Just on spec, to
make the point that "Howard doesn't want to know".

‘What possible version of reality could Cheney be
referring to? And they say he wasn't drinking before he blew the old lawyer's
face "clean-off," as Dirty Harry once said. Cheney is a member of
what is, perhaps, the most self-deluded and delusional administration in the
history of human civilization. It is no easy feat that something uttered by any
member of this gaggle of goofballs could ever stand out in comparison to the
rest, but Cheney's insanity is beginning to command attention like a slow-speed
car-chase on a Los Angeles freeway. 

The author of this piece, reprinted from American Free Press,
is an expert on the environment effects of depleted uranium and has
worked at two US nuclear weapons laboritories. The links have been
added by yours truly

By Leuren Moret

 
Fresh from the elections, Premier Rann is now chastising the RAA (our equivalent of NRMA and RACV) of acting like a political party during the election, and questioning the government's relationship with the peak body, in spite of their denials of heavy-handedness.  Rann may well have saved the state from a major Halliburton gambit.

Given the intrinsic nature of roadway infrastructure to urban planning and
thence property development, in some cases the speed of the arrival
involves a helluva lot of money. A good example is to the south of our
town, where the previously tourist based coastline has been subjected
to a whirlwind of purchase and redevelopment ahead of one of the
state's worst-kept secrets, the proposed four-lane road (tollway?)
being re-championed by the RAA and Liberals a couple of weeks back, and planned by "guess which
company". Certainly parts of the road, on which I travel regularly, are
a death-trap, and a road built in the 50's isn't equipped to handle the
transport loads it now carries. However, the cynic in me can't help
wondering if these issues might be of secondary importance to the
profitability levels of new housing being created for the "population
influx" that the new "dormitory distance" to Adelaide that the new road
would create.

‘George Bush said today that the war was going to take
more fighting and more sacrifice. I want to know who is fighting? I want to
know if the members of the executive and legislative branches that are so
willing to leave our troops in the middle of sectarian violence and a
militarily undefeatable resistance are willing to send their children and other
of their relatives over to the dessert to take the place of the at least 72% of
soldiers who want to come home? Are they willing to go over there themselves to
fight? George Bush didn't finish his commitment to the country when he went
AWOL from the Alabama National Guard, why hasn't he been called back up to go
and fight and die in his own "noble cause?" I have heard of other men
and women his age who have been called back up. This is not our children's
fight. As in all war, the only people who benefit are the war profiteers. 

‘Bush says: "I reserve the right as
commander-in-chief to do what I need to do to defend America." He has
given the CIA carte blanche to continue torturing, also coming up with a
"Pacific solution" argument he might have borrowed from his friend
John Howard. For the purpose of the McCain bill, Guantanamo Bay is excised from
US territory. The same applies, of course, to the vast number of "black
sites" the US has arranged for the specific purpose of torture across the
world. 

In front of Alexander Downer's office, we stood with our placard to mark the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion.  We weren't many, sadly on 20 or so,  but in the late afternoon city bustle we were certainly noticed by a few hundred. 

A friend of mine had dressed herself in a shirt covered with blood-oozing bullet holes, and stood near where she's scrawled AWB on the footpath.  A quick-eyed, fast framing photographer snapped a shot of the two of us with the letters in the foreground out our feet I('d love a copy, if you're reading this)and went away.  Perhaps we sent messages in different directions... I hope so.

AWB executives
'expected to spy on Iraqis' 

It is claimed AWB executives were
asked to gather intelligence for the Federal Government in the lead-up to the
war in Iraq.

The Cole inquiry is examining
allegations AWB was paying kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, in contravention
of United Nations sanctions.

It’s been said that there are two
essential qualifications that a US ambassadorial aspirant must possess: they
must be a personal friend of the President & a significant donor to the
President’s political party. Diplomacy doesn’t rate a mention. 

After allowing the position to
languish vacant for more than a year, the US has now announced the appointment
of Robert McCallum as its Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary to
Australia. 

Sydney, Australia
March 16, 2006

FOREIGN MINISTER DOWNER: Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by saying
how delighted I am to host this visit to Australia by Secretary Rice.
It's her first visit as the Secretary of State though she was here not
that long ago with President Bush when he was last in Australia. We had
this morning, the first part of the visit, which is our bilateral
meeting, I suppose it’s been an hour or an hour and ten minutes, and we
have a series of other functions and meetings over the next couple of
days, culminating on Saturday in the Trilateral Security Dialogue with
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

Tomorrow No-War are going to walk around corners on the green lights, and Resistance are going to protest at Downer's King William Street office at 4.30.  So what?

 One thousand people came out in New York.   So what?  15,000 of London's population came out.... so what?

If we don't get out and support these protests, the message that we're sending is that we don't give a damn, and can't be bothered with doing more than paying lip-service to peace.

From the ABC ….. 

Rice
salutes Australian troops 

US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has thanked a small contingent of Australian
troops who have returned from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sumatra at a gathering in
Melbourne. 

‘The British Labour Party apparatchiks have come a long
way in a few years. The upper reaches of the Labour Party lead lives that bear
no relationship to the lives of their supporters. To the leadership, playing
around with extravagant sums of dough is, well, just normal. Why do bus
drivers, office cleaners, schoolteachers, and gardeners fail to understand
this? 

The political classes in Britain
(and no doubt the US) are beneficiaries of double standards and condescension.
They preach to working people about the importance of hard work and of paying
ever-increasing taxes, yet play footsie under the table with those whose job it
is to provide advice on how to squirrel away their wealth and earnings.