Friday 22nd of November 2024
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Australia to Double Foreign Aid Spending, KBR Hiring Foreign Aid Administrator

The Australian Prime Minister Mr Howard will unveil plans to increase aid to $4 billion a year by 2012 from the current level of $2.7 billion.

The increase will take Australia close to the 0.7 per cent of GDP set at the Millennium Summit five years ago.

Source: Melbourne Herald Sun 

The main Australian aid provider would possibly  be the company in the
process of settling a new foreign aid administrator into its Adelaide
office.

Aid  contracts have been given to Halliburton KBR in Adelaide over the last three years under the pretext that they were being given to a local company.   But the way, the minister's contact in that  media  release is now a senior journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser.  He is also a former conservative member of Parliament, and led the newspaper's campaign to invoke support for the Adelaide Warship Contract

Question Of  The Day.  Given that the impending visit of U.S. Cabinet membesr Rumsfeld and Rice  to Adelaide in October will be an obvious "terror target", what laws will South Australians be subjected to within weeks?

Payback

They may have grabbed Scott Parkin in retaliation for Cindy Sheehan's activities. They will be testing their facial recognition technology, and I can imagine the geeks doing hi-fives in a room full of plasma screens, deep under Fort Knox, when the red flag went up on Parkin as he was outside the Halliburton office. Bronwyn Bishop's rantings about head-coverings probably had more to do with protestors wearing disguises to foil surveillance cameras.

I guess Kim Beazley has secured his tenure, by taking a blood-oath that Australia under Labor would never exercise the Kiwi option, of banning nuclear-armed vessels from its ports. Perhaps they extracted that from Kim first, then bagged Parkin for good measure, so Kim could demonstrate his gratitude. I'm taking a bet with myself, that the next time Kim is quizzed on Parkin, he'll say something like "we are soooo over that".

johnnie's pea & thimble trick .....

Sadly Richard, as per my latest blog, the 2010 'target' of $4 billion will only represent 0.36% of GDP & won't come within a bulls roar of meeting the minimum level required to meet the Millennium Development Goals of 0.5% of GDP - let alone little johnnie's earlier (2000) commitment of 0.7% of GDP.

The new mercenaries

THE NEW MERCENARIES

“Look mate, I’m just doing my job..