Reading the Chinese Premier's toast to Australain PM Howard today, I felt someone walk over my grave.  The knowledge that Halliburton's railway line is suddenly going to worth a large fortune as the overland transport system for China-bound uranium didn't come as a suprise- there's enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in place now to see good glimpses of the picture. 

An omen of hope came through today, a new suburb for Adelaide was announced, and for a change Halliburton hasn't got the infrastructure job- in fact nobody has.  The local council in which this State Government driven southward expansion of Adelaide will be located expressed suprise that the land was declared available to the public  before the infrastrujcture was plotted. 

‘"Today, we had a meeting at the White House of some
of the top educators from all around the country and I asked them the one
question that nobody’s been askin’: Is our children learning?" Then he can
look genuinely surprised and puzzled when the audience starts laughing. It will
all come so naturally to him.  

Or he could talk about how hard
he’s working to strengthen the economy to "put food on the American
people." Or he could tell us how he has warned "outsiders" not
to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign Iraq. Again, the laughter will
likely take him by surprise and when he reacts with surprise it will evoke
further laughter.  

‘This is the news from Iraq according to Donald Rumsfeld
and the Bush administration.  

A week after the US Defence
Secretary criticised the media for " exaggerating" reports of
violence in Iraq, The Independent has obtained examples of newspaper reports
the Bush administration want Iraqis to read. 

They were prepared by specially
trained American "psy-ops" troops who paid thousands of dollars to
Iraqi newspaper editors to run these un-attributed reports in their
publications. In order to hide its involvement, the Pentagon hired the Lincoln
Group to act as a liaison between troops and journalists. 

Rice acknowledges
'thousands' of mistakes in Iraq ….. 

US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice has acknowledged that the United States has made "thousands"
of tactical errors in Iraq. 

But she pleaded that the US and
British invasion of Iraq three years ago be judged on its strategic goal -
the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein to pave the way for democracy - as
she defended Washington's policy in the region. 

From the ABC …..

Downer, Vaile willing to take witness stand in AWB inquiry 

Two Federal Government ministers
say they are happy to appear as witnesses before the Cole inquiry if they
are asked. 

Trade Minister Mark Vaile and
Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer have until Wednesday to reply to
questions sent out by lawyers. 

‘I sometimes remember these
almost endearing fools when I find myself faced with another kind of war lover
– the kind that has not seen war and has often done everything possible not to
see it. The passion of these war lovers is a phenomenon; it never dims,
regardless of the distance from the object of their desire. Pick up the Sunday
papers and there they are, egocentrics of little harsh experience, other than a
Saturday in Sainsbury’s. Turn on the television and there they are again, night
after night, intoning not so much their love of war as their sales pitch for it
on behalf of the court to which they are assigned. "There’s no
doubt," said Matt Frei, the BBC’s man in America, "that the desire to
bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially
now to the Middle East . . . is now increasingly tied up with military
power." 

From the ABC …… 

Ruddock threatens ACT same-sex union laws 

The Federal Government is threatening to block the ACT's civil union laws for gay and lesbian couples.

The Territory Government's bill will be debated in the legislative assembly in May, with the first ceremonies expected to take place in June. 

‘Senior Shiite politicians said
today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the
Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the
country's leader in the next government. 

It is the first time the
Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top
job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans
and some Shiite leaders. 

 
Phone-tapping bill on the way ….. 

SMH
March 30, 2006 

Police and intelligence agencies
are to be given sweeping new powers to tap the phones of innocent people who
come into contact with terrorism suspects, although a bipartisan committee
urged substantial changes to the proposed laws. 

From the ABC 7:30 report

Cole inquiry lacks powers: Opposition
Reporter: Michael Brissenden 

Foreign Affairs, after gagging his family via "security issues", said that incident highlighted the extreme dangers Australians faced in Baghdad.

The fact that an Australian-based mercenary company gunned down an 72 year old Iraqi academic as he drove home from a shopping outing, for fear he might be a suicide bomber, doesn't seem to be a factor in the minds of DFAT's spin-doctors.

For three months of the year Professor Kays Juma lived in the Adelaide suburb of Flagstaff HIll, a couple of miles from a university that had never heard of him, and not much further from Alexander Downer's house.  The bulk of his life was spent teaching animal husbandry at the University of Baghdad.

Addressing our federal Parliament this week, John Howard
said: 

“My job as Prime Minister of Australia is to represent
the interests of my country and to interact with the leaders of other countries
to the best of my ability. And in Tony Blair I have found a man of courage, of
moral purpose, of high intelligence, of a capacity to articulate with great
clarity the challenges of the contemporary world.” 

Our little flatterer went on to
quote Blair’s great friend, the Anglican priest, Peter Thomson, who allegedly
said: 

The Department of Trade and Economic
Development held a forum in Adelaide recentlyy to inform more than 70
SA businesses about multimillion-dollar opportunities in the Official
Development Assistance market.

Department chief executive Raymond Garrand
said the global official development market was valued at $108 billion
last financial year "and still growing".

"Australia allocated $2.3 billion annually to the official
development market through AusAid, and is ranked 15th amongst the OECD
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in
that market," he said.