Pope 'refused audience for Rice'

Pope Benedict XVI refused a recent request by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the Middle East and Iraq, Vatican sources say.

The Pope refused a request for an audience during the August holidays.

Senior Vatican sources told the BBC the Pope does not normally receive politicians on his annual holiday at the Castelgandolfo residence near Rome.

The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its “no-fly list.” No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.

Americans are notoriously good at moving on, which tends to amount to turning our backs on the messes we’ve made, and averting our noses from the stench of what our government likes to call foreign policy. Currently that government is taking pains to assure us that the mess in Iraq is improving, and hinting heavily that we lend our attention to the fresh hydra’s head of Iran. Time to move on. The President’s troop "surge" is doing the trick, Eden is just around the corner, the war really was the grand idea it was always billed to be.

from Crikey

The Fed bails out the fat and the dodgy. And Wall Street

Glenn Dyer writes …..

Excuse me for being cynical, but the US Fed's 0.50% cut on the button overnight was nothing but a bail out of Wall Street urgers, dodgy London and European financiers and fat, complacent Australian banks.

Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress and President Bush's nationally televised address have had little impact on Americans' distaste for the Iraq war and their desire to withdraw U.S. troops, polls show.

Fifty-four percent still favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, a measurement that has not changed in months, according to a poll released Tuesday by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.

Rice returns to Middle East talks

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to Jerusalem in another attempt to restart the stalled Middle East peace process.

Ms Rice is due to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The US is also giving financial assistance to build up the Palestinian Authority president's security forces.

In 2003, University of Lausanne theology professor Thomas Römer received a telephone call from the Elysée. Jacques Chirac's advisers wanted to know more about Gog and Magog ... two mysterious names pronounced by George W. Bush while he was attempting to convince France to enter the war in Iraq at his side. In its September edition, the University of Lausanne's review, Allez savoir, reveals this story that could seem fantastic did it not, as Allez savoir's Editor-in-Chief Jocelyn Rochat emphasizes, reveal the religious underpinnings of Bush's policy.

The Iraqi government Monday ordered Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to stop work and leave the country after the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.

The order by the Interior Ministry, if carried out, would deal a severe blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection.

Rudd brushes off Qld Cabinet misconduct allegations

Labor leader Kevin Rudd says if the Federal Government has concerns about his actions when he was a public servant in Queensland it should approach the police.

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce wants to table a nine-volume report into allegations against the Queensland Cabinet when Mr Rudd was chief of staff to then-premier Wayne Goss.

A US lawyer says thousands of Iraqi families may join a class action against Australian wheat exporter AWB because of the kickbacks it paid which helped fund Saddam Hussein's regime.

The class action against AWB, its US office and a French bank has been filed by lawyers acting for two women whose husbands were killed by Hussein's regime.

Lawyer John Murray says the case alleges AWB entered into a conspiracy to fund a Government which carried out genocide.

"We think it's a bad thing to say to our closest ally in her hour of need in Iraq that we're going to partially walk away from you."

john winston rattus

How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether "we" are bringing them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all.

It is true that the US is increasingly bellicose. The balance of power in
the Bush administration is shifting away from Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, who favours cautious engagement with Tehran, and towards
Vice-President Dick Cheney, who urges confrontation.