‘When President Bush signed the
re-authorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum
saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform
Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. 

The bill contained several
oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special
terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The
provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often
the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the
administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain
dates. 

From the Seattle Times

Seattle to Kyoto: You can't get there by car
By Warren Cornwall
Seattle Times staff reporter

If Seattle is going to do its part to slow global warming, people are going to have to get out of their cars.

That's the cornerstone — and also the biggest challenge — of a plan to be unveiled today for how the city can join countries from around the world in trying to meet the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty to reduce climate-changing gases such as carbon dioxide.

The report, written at the request of Mayor Greg Nickels, says that if the city really wants to cut greenhouse gases, it needs to spend millions more on transit, build more compact neighborhoods, encourage energy efficiency and use more fuels from plants rather than petroleum.

‘They keep telling us 9/11
changed everything. But even in this Photo-shopped age of unreliable narrators,
much remains the same. The assassination of President John Kennedy, the Crime
of the Last Century, occurred in plain sight, in front of thousands - yet
exactly what happened remains in dispute. The Warren Commission found that Lee
Harvey Oswald, fellow traveller of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shot
Kennedy with a cheap Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from a sixth-floor window of the
Texas School Book Depository. The commission found that Oswald, who, two days
later would be murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, acted alone. 

‘Two of America's top scholars
have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's
pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive"
role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action
against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their
article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.  

Professor John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and
author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S.
Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life. 

‘Readers tell me that Americans don’t live here any more. They ask what responsible American citizenry would put up with the trashing of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers, with wars based on deception, and with pathological liars in control of their government? One reader recently wrote that he believes that "no element of the U.S. government has been left untainted" by the lies and manipulations that have driven away accountability. So-called leaders, he wrote, "talk a great story of American pride and patriotism," but in their hands patriotism is merely a device for "cynical manipulation and fraud." 

What follows, when you follow it to the other end, makes you wonder
how much infrastructure work is being "disguised" throught the SA
Tourism Budget, and how much of the money will end up in the hands of
Halliburton/KBR. I'm also pondering what funds the current Treasurer,
who was happy to stand on the Assembly floor and accuse the previous
Minister For Transport of using road money "to buy stained glass
windows" (I was there on the day) might be diverting across Cabinet
portfolios to achieve desired objectives.

[extract]

It’s time to resolve “Iemma’s
Dilemma”. 

Why not immediately resume
“Scully’s Gully”, declare it a sacred site & rename it “Gallipoli Heights”:
a multi-purpose public venue dedicated to the promotion, preservation &
veneration of core Australian values, including our contempt for the folly of
war, PPAs & well meaning but incompetent politicians. 

‘The security of Americans has nothing whatsoever to do
with Iraq. Iraq cannot overthrow the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the
separation of powers, and American civil liberties. Iraq cannot illegally spy
on American citizens, declare them to be "suspects" and detain them
forever without warrant or charges. Iraq cannot put American critics of the
Bush regime on "no-fly" lists.  

The real dangers to Americans
reside in the neo-con Bush administration. This delusional warmonger
administration believes it has the power and the right to dictate to Muslim
countries their political and social institutions. This extraordinary arrogance
and hubris breeds opposition where there was none. The world is not going to
obey Bush and a handful of stupid neo-cons.’ 

There were movements down in Mayo when the memo got around that the kickbacks, through neglect, had leaked away. Brown trousers? More than likely, Downer lost a thousand pounds, and all of DFAT's cracks began to fray.

And Johnny, full of overflow, came down to lend his hand. It was grand to see a Canberra man astride all the gossip from the media, herding stories left and right, and defending all his ministers with pride.

This hardy little memo had been seen around before... Aussie dollars buying bullets in Iraq, but nobody said they'd seen it, and it safely slid away, to be hidden from the public in the dark.

I had written
him a letter, which I had, for want of better

Knowledge, sent
to where I met him at the wheat board, years ago.

He was chairman
when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him

Just on spec, to
make the point that "Howard doesn't want to know".

‘What possible version of reality could Cheney be
referring to? And they say he wasn't drinking before he blew the old lawyer's
face "clean-off," as Dirty Harry once said. Cheney is a member of
what is, perhaps, the most self-deluded and delusional administration in the
history of human civilization. It is no easy feat that something uttered by any
member of this gaggle of goofballs could ever stand out in comparison to the
rest, but Cheney's insanity is beginning to command attention like a slow-speed
car-chase on a Los Angeles freeway. 

The author of this piece, reprinted from American Free Press,
is an expert on the environment effects of depleted uranium and has
worked at two US nuclear weapons laboritories. The links have been
added by yours truly

By Leuren Moret

 
Fresh from the elections, Premier Rann is now chastising the RAA (our equivalent of NRMA and RACV) of acting like a political party during the election, and questioning the government's relationship with the peak body, in spite of their denials of heavy-handedness.  Rann may well have saved the state from a major Halliburton gambit.

Given the intrinsic nature of roadway infrastructure to urban planning and
thence property development, in some cases the speed of the arrival
involves a helluva lot of money. A good example is to the south of our
town, where the previously tourist based coastline has been subjected
to a whirlwind of purchase and redevelopment ahead of one of the
state's worst-kept secrets, the proposed four-lane road (tollway?)
being re-championed by the RAA and Liberals a couple of weeks back, and planned by "guess which
company". Certainly parts of the road, on which I travel regularly, are
a death-trap, and a road built in the 50's isn't equipped to handle the
transport loads it now carries. However, the cynic in me can't help
wondering if these issues might be of secondary importance to the
profitability levels of new housing being created for the "population
influx" that the new "dormitory distance" to Adelaide that the new road
would create.