From the SMH ….. 

‘Downer's memory at a loss over
wheat deal talks’
By Cynthia Banham and Marian
Wilkinson
March 28, 2006 

The Foreign Affairs Minister,
Alexander Downer, said yesterday he could not recall details of a
conversation he had last September with the head of the United Nations
investigation into the oil-for-food scandal, when he allegedly said AWB had no
option but to pay kickbacks if the company wanted to do business in Iraq. 

‘Psychological torture, sleep deprivation, brutality,
severe sexual humiliation, and murder summon visions of a dank dungeon in a
remote region of pre-invasion Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, replete with evil
inquisitors and hooded executioners. However, those manifestations of horror
did not spring forth from the Axis of Evil. They are actually drawn from
official post-9/11 US policy. Despite its fabled commitment to human rights,
the United States government has been committing and enabling acts of torture
for half a century. Not even Superman had the power to snatch “Truth, Justice
and the American Way” from the crushing jaws of imperialistic ambition and
avarice.

Ironically titled, Albert McCoy’s A Question of Torture probes and exposes the
extent of “the Land of the Free’s” involvement in human torture over the years.
Only a mainstream media 90% controlled by five major corporations (whose
executives and major stockholders are amongst the de facto rulers of the
America’s so-called republic) could so effectively maintain the illusion that
the United States is the world leader in protecting human rights. Somewhere out
there, David Copperfield is burning with envy. Rest easy, David. They are
running out of magic. Destroying our Constitution and reversing the
humanitarian gains achieved by millions of Americans with a social conscience
throughout our nation’s history, the Bush Regime is extinguishing the candle of
hope America once offered to humanity. Despite the exhaustive efforts of the
media handmaidens, people are taking notice.’ 

This isn't a comedy script.. this is reality.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
INTERVIEW WITH NEIL MITCHELL,
RADIO 3AW, MELBOURNE
24 March 2006

MITCHELL: Prime Minister the AWB bribery scandal. Do you think people care about it?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I care about it. I want to get to the bottom of
it. That’s why I established the Cole inquiry. This seems to have been
forgotten.

MITCHELL: But what about the electorate? What about the voters?

 Tony Blair, in calling for Australian assistance, has invoked the circumstances of Australia's UK support in World War Two

Two months from the date of 6/6/06, the British Prime Minister has called for what is basically a Global Alliance against Islam.

After spending a few minutes on jokes and feelgoods to "warm up" his audience (dodging crows in Adelaide as a child taught him to deal with the media, etc) Blair launched into his prepared invitation to join the US in a global Alliance.  This alliance is, unlike the Bush version, not "against" or "on" anything, but "for" the values that Western society holds dear.  "If we want to secure our way of life, there is no alternative but to
fight for it... we need to construct an alliance for these global values
and act through it." Mr Blair said.

Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert

One of my least favourite ex-premiers, having privatised our water
and electricity and brought the globals into Adelaide, is now telling
us that we need to change our ways.  He says that Americans live to
work while Australians work to live and has addressed Adelaide business (who put all their support behind Olsen's former opposition) with such choice phrases as

"In the U.S. you get a pat on the back ... in Australia someone says who did you rip-off to make that money?"

‘How three young men from the UK
ended up in the world's most notorious prison. 

Every American Should Be Required
To Watch This Video. 

This docudrama shows the sadism
and stupidity of the US and British soldiers. The guards behave with the same
cruelty you expect to see from SS officers in lurid second world war movies. It
takes a moment or two to realize that these events reflect the reality of those
held in Americas notorious gulag.’ 

‘When President Bush signed the
re-authorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum
saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform
Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. 

The bill contained several
oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special
terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The
provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often
the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the
administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain
dates. 

From the Seattle Times

Seattle to Kyoto: You can't get there by car
By Warren Cornwall
Seattle Times staff reporter

If Seattle is going to do its part to slow global warming, people are going to have to get out of their cars.

That's the cornerstone — and also the biggest challenge — of a plan to be unveiled today for how the city can join countries from around the world in trying to meet the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty to reduce climate-changing gases such as carbon dioxide.

The report, written at the request of Mayor Greg Nickels, says that if the city really wants to cut greenhouse gases, it needs to spend millions more on transit, build more compact neighborhoods, encourage energy efficiency and use more fuels from plants rather than petroleum.

‘They keep telling us 9/11
changed everything. But even in this Photo-shopped age of unreliable narrators,
much remains the same. The assassination of President John Kennedy, the Crime
of the Last Century, occurred in plain sight, in front of thousands - yet
exactly what happened remains in dispute. The Warren Commission found that Lee
Harvey Oswald, fellow traveller of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shot
Kennedy with a cheap Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from a sixth-floor window of the
Texas School Book Depository. The commission found that Oswald, who, two days
later would be murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, acted alone. 

‘Two of America's top scholars
have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's
pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive"
role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action
against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their
article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.  

Professor John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and
author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S.
Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.