‘At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers.

One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

Bush Rationale on Libby Stirs Legal Debate

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: July 4, 2007

In commuting I. Lewis Libby Jr.'s 30-month prison sentence on Monday, President Bush drew on the same array of arguments about the federal sentencing system often made by defense lawyers - and routinely and strenuously opposed by his own Justice Department.

from Crikey …..

How the Texacutioner discovered his heart

Jeff Sparrow writes:

So President Bush has commuted the two-and-a-half year prison term facing Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, calling the sentence "excessive".

‘Indeed so secrecy-fixated is this White House that John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House counsel, was once quoted in the Daily Telegraph of London as saying, "Bush and Cheney are a throwback to the Nixon time. All government business is filtered through a political process at this White House, which is the most secretive ever to run the United States."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when Nixon's consigliere calls you secretive, it's like Tony Soprano saying you have anger-management issues.

‘What a great day for peace enthusiasts! A new envoy to the Middle East has been appointed for the Quartet, and it’s no other than the former British PM, Tony Blair. Blair, the man who gave the Israelis the green light to flatten Beirut.

Blair, the man who started an illegal war in Iraq. Blair, a man who, according to the Geneva Conventions, is to be held personally responsible for more than 700,000 dead in Iraq for failing to 'protect civilian populations against certain consequences of war’[1]. A man who is supposed to be charged for genocide at The Hague. That’s right, a man who should end his life behind bars is now becoming a peace envoy.

‘The Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, is not able to say whether general health checks of indigenous children will be compulsory as part of the Federal Government's plan to clean up remote communities.

In an interview on the Nine Network this morning Mr Abbott said the Government wanted all 22,000 indigenous children in the Northern Territory checked and that he hoped their "good parents" would ask for the health assessments.

Bush looks to his father to mend relations with Putin

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Published: 30 June 2007

‘Tomorrow's summit between George Bush and Vladimir Putin raises the intriguing question of whether the shadow of the father can help the son bring an end to the frostiest period in ties between the United States and Russia since the Cold War?

from Crikey …..

Compassionate & caring PM with a $1.8billion winner

Richard Farmer writes:

In an interview with the Financial Times, former World Bank President. “little paulie” Wolfowitz - who resigned in scandal after granting a substantial pay raise to his girlfriend - "vowed to continue in political life."

Getting tough … State Transit buses have been converted into "mobile holding cells" to be used during the summit in September.

Photo: Nick Moir

Cages on wheels: APEC plan to keep the peace

Edmund Tadros

June 29, 2007

‘The CIA worked with two of America’s top Mafia mobsters in a botched attempt to assassinate the Cuban President Fidel Castro with poisoned pills, according to previously classified documents released by the spy agency yesterday.

The extraordinary details of the 1960 plot were contained in more than 700 pages of documents that revealed some of the agency’s past illegal activities, including the targeting of foreign leaders, wiretapping of US journalists, CIA break-ins and thefts.

‘Sometimes numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can.

Long-serving Sydney political journalist Alex Mitchell writes:

This is the last throw of the dice for John Howard. He is doing one big favour for the mining industry that he has faithfully served in public life for the past 30 years, by rolling back Aboriginal ownership of their tribal lands.

Cynically, cruelly but utterly predictably, he’s doing it under the hypocritical colours of humanitarianism. (Very similar to the invasion and occupation of Iraq sold as “spreading democracy”).

Sacred Children and flimsy hearsay

Guy Rundle writes:

In all the debate surrounding the Little Children Are Sacred report, one assumption has held amongst all participants -- that the report is well-founded and clear-eyed.

The more I plough through it, the more I'm beginning to doubt even that.

Consider things from this point of view. The writer of this Jakarta Post opinion piece is Professor of International Affairs, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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China would view a club of big power democracies in Asia as an ideologically charged move that is likely to evolve into a security grouping over time. Such a development is provocative to Beijing which would also see it as a threat to regional stability. And Beijing may have a good point there. The theory of "democratic peace" holds that democracies do not fight one another.