‘US evangelical leader Pat
Robertson labels Islam, "a bloody, brutal kind of religion," on the
Christian Broadcasting Corporation’s televised 700 Club. Commentator Ann
Coulter writes in the Jewish World Review that "[T]he government should
be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator
sport." Civilized people would like to believe that Coulter is an
anomalous hatemeister, lurking from the shadows of an ill-designed blogsite,
with iron crosses and ads for assault knives in the sidebars. But Coulter is a
welcome guest on cable TV giants like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, and her column
is syndicated by UPI.

Why is Newscorp advertising Pine Gap's role in the Korean missile launches?  A bulletin posted 2 hours ago explains how the CIA base in the middle of Australia was used to organise counter-measures.

Aegis class missile ships, similar to those being built in Adelaide, would have received missile trajectory information important in calculating counter-measures, the report says.

The Murdoch story explains how Pine Gap is one of only two U.S. ground stations used to collect infromation from satellites monitoring the Asia Pacific region.  The other station is located in Alaska.

 It has been reported that the body of Australian soldier Jake Kovco returned to Australia accompanied by the identification of a Halliburton contractor.  The body of Juso Sunanovic,the deceased worker from Bosnia was in a bag bearing the correctname and passport number, and had been delivered to the Kuwait morgue by a Halliburton/KBR employee.

A simple scrap of paper with Private Jake Kovco's
name scrawled in Arabic marks the door where his coffin was stored at
the Kuwait hospital's mortuary.
Photo: Jeroen Kramer (from Kuwait blog Hilalya)

‘Five major military contractors are competing to design a
system to tackle up to two million undocumented immigrants a year in the United
States. Boeing, Ericsson, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are working
on proposals that focus on high technology rather than high fences, but
ignoring some of the fundamental problems of immigration.

At each checkpoint along the path
to citizenship or deportation -- from desert wilderness to urban labyrinth --
private contractors are expected to be hired to detect, apprehend, vet, detain,
process, and potentially incarcerate or deport people seeking economic and
human rights asylum in the U.S.

"I have a message for the people of Australia who are
enjoying the enhanced benefits of AWAs - the leader of the opposition is after
your aspirational prosperity."

John Howard

To celebrate Peter Cosgrove's first day as South Australia's main defence advisor, our Premier gave another fifteen million dollars to The Star Wars Shipbuilding Project.  The project is under the control of Halliburton's former global vice president for infrastructure, Andrew Fletcher.

 "We're actually gearing up to bid for a series of new projects and obviously what we need to do is to have the infrastructure and facilities in place to handle them." said Premier Mike Rann.  Lucky for him that he's got a man with the best infrastructure plans in the world working for him.... or is it vice versa?

Howard dismisses 'fluctuating'
polls …

Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed an opinion poll that shows
a surge in support for the Federal Opposition.

The Newspoll, which has been
published in today's The Australian newspaper, shows Labor has a six-point
advantage over the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis.

Labor has 53 per cent support
compared to 47 per cent for the Coalition.

The rockets red glare,
Bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.

Oh, say does that
Star spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave.

‘When I look at the star-spangled
banner I think of my son who began wearing a uniform with the flag on it from
the time he went into scouting at the age of 6. I also think of one of the last
pictures taken of Casey when he was awaiting deployment to Iraq from Kuwait. He
was standing in a tent holding a bottle of water, wearing his desert cammies
with an American flag patch on the chest. When we buried him a few weeks after
that picture was taken, I was handed a folded flag that reminded me of the
swaddling blanket that I wrapped him in to bring him home from the hospital
almost 25 years before.

‘A black flag hangs over the "rolling" operation
in Gaza. The more the operation "rolls," the darker the flag becomes.
The "summer rains" we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless,
but are first and foremost blatantly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to cut
off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000
people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not
legitimate to penetrate Syria's airspace. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a
government and a quarter of a parliament.

From the ABC …..

Labor takes 6-point lead over Coalition: poll

A new opinion poll shows the
Federal Opposition has a six-point lead over the Coalition.

The Newspoll published in The
Australian newspaper reveals Labor has 53 per cent support compared to 47
per cent for the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis.

The survey also finds
satisfaction with John Howard's performance as Prime Minister has slumped
seven points to its lowest level in eight months - 43 per cent.

 
From letters in The Sydney
Morning Herald

Lawyers: uphold the law .....

Adele Horin, what a case you
presented against the lawyers in John Howard's cabinet ("So many
lawyers, so little responsibility", July 1).

I have a dream that the lawyers
of Australia will unite and declare their outrage at the Government's
denial of justice to David Hicks. 

‘It is hard sometimes to know what is real and what is
fiction when it comes to the news out of Iraq. America is in its "silly
season," the summer months leading up to a national election, and the
media is going full speed ahead in exploiting its primacy in the news arena by
substituting responsible reporting with headline-grabbing entertainment.

So, as America closes in on the
end of June and the celebration of the 230th year of our nation's birth, I thought
I would pen a short primer on three myths on Iraq to keep an eye out for as we
"debate" the various issues pertaining to our third year of war in
that country.’

In its 5-3
decision (PDF), the US Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Hamdan
v. Rumsfeld that the special military tribunals created by the Bush
administration to try suspected terrorists are illegal. Specifically, the court
found
that the tribunals "were not authorized by any act of Congress and that
their structure and procedures violate the Uniform
Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva
Conventions signed in 1949.