‘"At a joint White House press conference May 16 with
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, as the two men stood side by side, Bush
slipped in a couple of zingers about Howard’s bald head and supposed
homeliness," recalls Parry by way of illustration. 

"Bush joshed: 'Somebody said
"You and John Howard appear to be so close, don’t you have any
differences?" And I said, "yes, he doesn’t have any hair."'
Getting a round of laughs from reporters, Bush moved on to his next joke: 'That’s
what I like about John Howard,' Bush said. 'He may not be the prettiest person
on the block, but when he tells you something you can take it to the bank.' 

‘Less than 18 months after U.S. President George W. Bush
declared in his 2005 Inaugural Address his unequivocal commitment to the
"ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world", tyrants, particularly
in the Islamic world, are taking heart. 

From North Africa to Central
Asia, top U.S. officials are busy embracing dictators - and their sons, where
appropriate - even as they continue to mouth the pro-democracy rhetoric that
became the hallmark of the administration's foreign policy pronouncements,
particularly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq failed to turn up evidence of
weapons of mass destruction or ties to al Qaeda. 

Who's involved in an unexpected consortium proposal for a nuclear reactor at Woomera? 

Australian foundation member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy Professor Leslie Kememy has spearheaded a push for a reactor near South Australia's Spaceport, and a feasibility study for a three billion dollar reactor was being conducted.

Leslie, who told Adelaide's Advertiser that he had been hired by a consortium as a technical consultant, but declined to give their name

‘Fear is a very powerful tool. Powerful enough to cause
human beings to hold a gun to their head and pull the trigger. Fear is powerful
enough, too, to cause an entire society to, figuratively speaking, hold a gun
to their liberty and pull the trigger. John Adams said, "Remember,
democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There
is never a democracy that did not commit suicide." 

Only
fear can cause a democracy to commit suicide. Fear and a group of people so filled
with greed and their belief in their right to rule, that they forsake the
politics of hope and prey on the fears of the people.’ 

‘Amnesty International says President George Bush's
tactics in his fight against terrorists have made the United States comparable
to Augusto Pinochet's Chile and Hafez Assad's Syria in its acceptance of
torture and disregard of legal restraints. 

In its annual report of human
rights conditions around the world, Amnesty included the US alongside China,
Russia, Columbia, Uzbekistan and others as states that claim anti-terrorism to
justify gross violations. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate
Agriculture Committee on Tuesday called for a probe into the Australian
Wheat Board's alleged violations of the United Nations oil for food
program, saying the Bush administration had not heeded the concerns of
America's wheat farmers.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa wrote to the
U.S. Agriculture Department Inspector General seeking an independent
review after letters to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and U.S.
Trade Representative Rob Portman earlier this year failed to produce
any action, a spokesman for Harkin's office said.

‘I would emphasize that it's not because Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Wolfowitz are diabolical creatures intent on doing evil. 

They genuinely believe it's in
the interests of the United States, and the world, that unconstrained American
power should determine the shape of the international order. I think they
vastly overstate our capabilities. For all of their supposed worldliness and
sophistication, I don't think they understand the world. I am persuaded that
their efforts will only lead to greater mischief while undermining our
democracy. Yet I don't question that, at some gut level, they think they are
acting on your behalf and mine. 

‘We have reached a deplorable state where an injured horse
elicits a stronger response than a dead or maimed fellow American. 

Recall for a moment the soldier cited in the film who lost
both legs and an arm. He won’t ever again ride a bike as he did as an energetic
young boy. He won’t be able to take leisurely evening strolls with his wife. He
won’t be able to practice tackling or jump shooting with his son. And he won’t
be able to walk his daughter down the aisle on the most important day of her
life as he "hands" her off to the man of her dreams. 

 This is all that is really relevant about Adelaide now.  All the rest is superficial:

(map and links below from defence-sa.com)  Map shows up on edit but won't publish... weird.

Follow the links for news stories and articles to
find out more about the recent successes of South Australia's
defence industry.

‘Two years ago, with great fanfare, Egypt's president,
Hosni Mubarak, set up a new organization called the Egyptian Supreme Council
for Human Rights. The aging dictator named Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former
secretary-general of the United Nations, as the Council's chairman. 

‘The government-backed body was
greeted with widespread skepticism from the Egyptian and international human
rights communities. The Council had no independent authority to investigate
allegations of human rights abuses committed by the government. Its role was
strictly advisory. And it did not report to the president, rather to a body
known as the Shura Council, which is roughly like Britain's House of Lords. 

South Australian Premier Mike Rann isn't known as "Media Mike" for nothing.  This is why it's suprising that Rann has made a trip to England with no public fanfare.  His website isn't even operative to convey his media releases!

Mr Rann usally makes great media mileage from his visits, proposing M-1 tank reconstruction facilities, visiting warship contract contenders, generally publicising his intentions from the perceived locales of "the horse's mouth"  This is why it's surprising that the best our Premier has had to offer is that our defence contract bids are to be managed by a man who doesn't live in South Australia.  Rann's climate change consulant, by the way, is also about to become a Sydney resident.

[ABC]

‘Nothing the Bush administration
ever does is about oil. It didn’t invade Iraq because that country might have
more oil than Saudi Arabia. It isn’t threatening Iran because Iran has a tenth
of the world’s oil and one-sixth of its natural gas. And the United States
isn’t cozying up to autocrats in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan because the Caspian
Sea is a mini-Persian Gulf in the middle of Central Asia, either. 

So it stands to reason, doesn’t
it, that Washington isn’t making a fuss over Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez because
that country is a major supplier of oil to the United States? And that it isn’t
making nice to Libya’s erratic Colonel Gadhafi because of oil, either?