From the ABC

Sedition changes will protect free speech: law reform group
The Australian Law Reform Commission (LRC) says freedom of speech will be protected in its draft recommendations on the nation's new sedition laws.

The LRC has been looking into the laws, implemented last year, with a final report due to the Federal Government later this year.

LRC president Professor David Weisbrot says many theatre groups, writers and artists have expressed concern about free speech.

Professor Weisbrot says it has recommended some changes to the laws to ensure free speech, even if the comment in question is highly critical of the Government.

"Even caustic expression or the expression of unpopular views or challenging views - they should all be part of a democratic society," he said.

"Where it crosses the line, however, into unlawful behaviour we suggest is where people urge the use of force or violence and there's different contexts intentionally and with the intention that force or violence actually occur."

He says the word "sedition" itself should be dropped, as the public associates it with punishment for those who criticise the established order.

Terrorism laws
The LRC has ruled out the need for a United Kingdom-style charge, regarding the glorification of terrorism.

Professor Weisbrot says the UK's charge of glorifying terrorism is too imprecise and that existing Australian law already covers the crime of inciting terrorism

read more at the AB C

From InfoPlease

Forced Removal of the Indigenous Inhabitants
Although Diego Garcia once had a small native population, the inhabitants, known as the Ilois, or the Chagossians, were forced to relocate (1967–1973) so that the island could be turned into the U.S. military base. Most of the roughly 1,500 displaced Chagossians were agricultural workers and fisherman. Uprooted and robbed of their livelihood, the Chagossians now live in poverty in Mauritius's urban slums, more than 1,000 miles from their homeland. A smaller number were deported to the Seychelles. About 850 islanders forced off Diego Garcia are alive today, and another 4,300 Chagossians have been born in exile. A 2003 60 Minutes segment and a 2004 documentary by Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, Stealing a Nation, have done much to publicize the little-known plight of the islanders.
The Chagossians' Search for Justice
The Chagossians have turned to the British courts to fight for the right to return to their homeland. In 2000, a British court ruled that the order to evacuate Diego Garcia's inhabitants was invalid, but the court also upheld the island's military status, which permits only personnel authorized by the military to inhabit the island. The Ilois also sued the British government for compensation, but in Oct. 2003 a British judge ruled that although the Chagossians had been treated "shamefully" by the government, their claims were unfounded.
A Further Setback
To further thwart the Chagossians' claims—and as a result of strong pressure from the U.S., which has cited security reasons for keeping the islanders from returning—the British government issued an "Order of Council" in 2004, prohibiting islanders from ever returning to Diego Garcia. This archaic, centuries-old royal prerogative permitted the Blair government to overrule the 2000 High court verdict.
Vindication
But in May 2006, the High Court in London ruled that the Chagossians may in fact return to other Chagossian islands, and offered a withering assessment of the British conduct in the case, calling it "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards."
"The suggestion that a minister can, through an Order in Council, exile a whole population from a British Overseas Territory and claim he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the Territory is repugnant."
American Resistance
The Chagossians have accepted that they cannot return to Diego Garcia because of the U.S. airbase, but this new verdict paves the way for the islanders to move elsewhere in the Chagos archipelago, to the Salomon islands and Peros Banhos, which are more than 100 miles from Diego Garcia. The U.S., however, is opposed to anyone other than military personnel and their employees living anywhere in the Chagos archipelago, asserting that security will be compromised. According to a State Department official, Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., allowing civilians in the archipelago could potentially lead to "terrorists infiltrating the islands." Having finally triumphed in a hard-won and lengthy legal battle, the Chagossians now find themselves at loggerheads with the world's superpower.

read more at infoplease

From somewhere at the NYT

Pentagon Seeks Nonnuclear Tip for Sub Missiles

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: May 29, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 28 — The Pentagon is pressing Congress to approve the development of a new weapon that would enable the United States to carry out nonnuclear missile strikes against distant targets within an hour.

The proposal has set off a complex debate about whether this program for strengthening the military's conventional capacity could increase the risks of accidental nuclear confrontation.
read more at the New York Post
----------------------------
Gus says why not...
Faster to annihilate a nation than for us to go to work...
And a "nucular" "accidental" biffo may be what the US are after...
Why not let the Pentagon eradicate the human species in one selected hit and let the rats and cockroaches take over?
Unless I get reincarnated as a chimp and start the next line of intelligence?... Why not.

Any parent who can read this without choking back a sob, is tougher than an old boot. 

From An Army of One:

... He had just returned from the Sunni Triangle near Falluja and was stationed now in the West. His roommate had been killed — as well as a friend on his third tour of duty. At another point, a Humvee he was riding in had been half-melted into the street by a roadside bomb. ...

Or, maybe it's just me, a bit feverish.

Yes T.G.,

More from the global eye/Moscow Times
....
Thus we come to the bitter irony at the heart of the story: the Pentagon ethos -- which enthrones "national security" as a supreme value for which the "guardians" are willing to sacrifice millions of innocent lives, the nation's civil liberties, even the planet itself -- has, at every turn, only made America less secure.

This brief look at Carroll's masterful, multilayered history [House of War:The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, James Carroll, Houghton Mifflin, May 4, 2006] hardly does the book justice. It should be read in full by anyone who wants to understand how America has reached its present degraded condition -- and how daunting the prospects are for real change in the crippling militarism that holds the nation in thrall.

read more at the Moscow Times
-----------------------
Gus: The Pentagon plans the death of millions while one American soldier takes a rose to his girl... Others shake hands with grenades...

Did anyone else see the piece on the internment of the Japanese airmen at Cowra, on 7.30 Report? Very moving. The report featured a 91 year-old Japanese woman who had come here from her home near Hiroshima, to see the grave of her little brother, Kiyoshi Akamatsu. 

Historian Bob Piper trawled through records to establish the identities of 31 airmen, previously "unknown".

What a waste. And, today, another criminal idiot is in charge. Crazy.

And this is the way they treat an opposing view - Leading Global Warming Skeptic: "Gore Believed In Global Warming Almost As Much As Hitler Believed There Was Something Wrong With The Jews"... .

‘The first document is called Uncovering the
Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress,
and the Media from September 12, 2001 to October 11, 2002. 

It was written by Devon M. Largio
in 2004 as a thesis for a bachelor’s degree in political science at the
University of Illinois. It is a total of 212 pages. Print it out and read it in
its entirety. If you don’t have time to read it right now then at least read
her executive summary. 

Largio documents twenty-seven
rationales given for the war by the Bush administration, war hawks in Congress,
and the media between the September 11^th attacks and the October
2002 congressional resolution to use force in Iraq. It was "the Bush
administration, and the President himself" that "established the
majority of the rationales for the war and all of those rationales that make up
the most prominent reasons for war." 

The result of this investigation
shows that Bush is a bigger liar than Clinton ever was, and, even worse, his
lies are more deadly.’ 

Dying For A Lie

Some thoughts from the 'democrat'
whom Australia is now promoting as Timor Leste's new Prime Minister ….. 

State
Of Flux

‘Three years ago, I wrote a piece talking about attempts
to oust Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in East Timor, then a new struggling
independent nation. I wrote that I believed the US and Australia were
determined to oust the Timorese leader, due to his hardline stance on oil and
gas, his determination not to take out international loans, and their desire to
see Australia friendly President Xanana Gusmao take power.  

Three years later, I am unhappy
to say that the events I have predicted are currently taking shape. The
patriotic Australia media, that has unquestionably fallen into line over every
part of John Howard's Pacific agenda - including the Solomon's excursion - is
now trumpeting the ousting of Alkatiri, a man who has gamely defied Australia's
claims over it's oil and gas, many of the paper's foreign editors clearly more
in tune with the exhortations of Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade than the sentiments among Timorese.’ 

East
Timor

‘On 28 April last, a section of the East Timorese army
mutinied, ostensibly over pay. An eyewitness, Australian radio reporter Maryann
Keady, disclosed that American and Australian officials were involved. On 7
May, Alkatiri described the riots as an attempted coup and said that
"foreigners and outsiders" were trying to divide the nation. A leaked
Australian Defence Force document has since revealed that Australia's
"first objective" in East Timor is to "seek access" for the
Australian military so that it can exercise "influence over East Timor's
decision-making". A Bushite "neo-con" could not have put it
better.

The opportunity for "influence" arose on 31 May,
when the Howard government accepted an "invitation" by the East
Timorese president, Xanana Gusmão, and foreign minister, José Ramos Horta - who
oppose Alkatiri's nationalism - to send troops to Dili, the capital. This was
accompanied by "our boys to the rescue" reporting in the Australian
press, together with a smear campaign against Alkatiri as a "corrupt
dictator". Paul Kelly, a former editor-in-chief of Rupert Murdoch's
Australian, wrote: "This is a highly political intervention . . .
Australia is operating as a regional power or a political hegemon that shapes
security and political outcomes."

Translation: Australia, like its mentor in Washington, has
a divine right to change another country's government. Don Watson, a
speechwriter for the former prime minister Paul Keating, the most notorious
Suharto apologist, wrote, incredibly: "Life under a murderous occupation
might be better than life in a failed state . . ."’

Australia
Builds Its Empire