from Friends of the ABC, NSW …..

A number of significant issues have arisen for the ABC since mid-October. Some members have voiced their concerns via the FABCList, the FABCDigest, and our website. These issues will also be covered in the December Update, but with the number and consequence of the issues, I have decided to write to those members whom we can reach by email.

Privatise the ABC: A large Opinion piece by Rudi Michelson in The Australian on Mon 16th October called for the privatisation of the ABC, and I responded with an e-mailed letter to the Editor that day which was not published. I will submit it to Helen, our Update Editor, to see whether it can be included in the December Update.

from the Sydney Morning Herald …..

‘Concern is growing among the Coalition back bench over the future of David Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years.

The Liberal senator Russell Trood said yesterday there was concern about how long it had taken Mr Hicks, yet to be charged under the new US military commission process, to receive justice.’

‘He might have lied his country into one of the most foolhardy wars ever schemed into existence. He might have thrown away billions of dollars of other people’s money, and thousands of lives and limbs belonging to other people’s children. He might have played a central role in bringing death to hundreds of thousands and disruption and destruction to millions in order to indulge a personal fantasy about taking out Doctor Evil. He might have declared the "right" to wage pre-emptive war and endorsed the "right" to torture out of one side of his mouth while This Country Does Not Torture was coming out the other. He might have resurrected the spectre of a nuclear arms race. He might have bullied his public into a state of political paralysis, while alienating an astonishing share of the rest of the world. He might have stained an already be-spattered election process and spat on an already be-spittled Constitution. He might have treated one of the most traumatic events in the history of his nation as an occasion to advance a crass political agenda. But Ted Haggard did none of these things – beside the clay-footed calamities of the Bush Administration, his dabbling in drugs and prostitution looks like community service. At least the pastor’s mistakes led to an immediate dismissal, and a frank apology. "I am a deceiver and a liar," Haggard said. In contrast, presidential mistakes seem to bring consequences down on everyone save their perpetrator.

from The new York Times …..

Rumsfeld Resigns and President Bush Pledges to Work With Democrats
White House Moves Quickly to Signal Its Flexibility

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Jim Rutenberg

President Bush portrayed the election results as a cumulative "thumping" of
Republicans and conceded that he bore some responsibility ……

The Prime Minister was busy on Adelaide this morning puttting up an umbrella to shield his electoral hopes from the downfall of the Republicans.

Speaking on ABC-891 today MrHoward explained that Republicans, given their financially conservative nature, stayed at home in protest of the Bush Administration's fiscal deficit, and that this was a big difference between the two countries.

"What has happened at the ballot box in America has not changed the situation on the ground in Iraq" Mr Howard said

Detaching himself from Bush's recent comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, the Prime Minister explained that Irraq couldn't be compared to Vietnam as "The judgement in history in relation to Vietnam is that it was a civil war."

The Editor,
Sydney Morning Herald.                                                 November 9, 2006.

Donald Rumsfeld will certainly do better justice to an orange jumpsuit, than George Bush did to a flight suit (‘Rumsfeld resigns in poll fallout’, Herald, November 9).

‘In Geneva today, at the new review of the conventional weapons treaty, the British government will be using the full force of its diplomacy to ensure that civilians continue to be killed, by blocking a ban on the use of cluster bombs. Sweden, supported by Austria, Mexico and New Zealand, has proposed a convention making their deployment illegal, like the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines.

But the UK, working with the US, China and Russia, has spent the past week trying to prevent negotiations from being opened. Perhaps this is unsurprising. Most of the cluster bombs dropped during the past 40 years have been delivered by Britain's two principal allies - the US and Israel - in the "war on terror". And the UK used hundreds of thousands of them during the two Gulf wars.

8 November 2006

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
PRESS CONFERENCE
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA 

JOURNALIST:

Do you think there is a case though for lifting the level of foreign aid?

PRIME MINISTER: 

I think there is a case for increasing it, which we have done. We have increased it a lot and the increases have yet to be paid, so let's just, at this stage, leave it on that basis.

America Votes 2006

‘During national crises, the United States government often reacts overzealously. It takes actions that curtail the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the people. These laws, executive orders and government measures have been in reaction to public fears and public demands for a swift response. Yet the flames of fear have also been fanned for political advantage. Federal agencies have acted to intimidate, harass, alienate, deport, and silence organizations and individuals. Historically, dissenting voices included advocates as diverse as labor and peace activists, immigrant-rights groups, political opponents, and civil-rights leaders.

 
"There is something heroic in my mind for a country that is suffering all that Iraq is suffering, yet it still strove to conduct the trial, to have an embrace of the rule of law which is so fundamental to the establishment of a democracy."

John Howard

‘Every single commercial fishery in the world will be wiped before 2050 and the oceans may never recover if over-fishing continues at its current rate, a four-year scientific investigation has found.

"By the time my nine-year-old son is my age, there would be no wild seafood left," said Emmett Duffy, a scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences in the United States.

‘A ship said to be the world's largest container vessel has arrived in a Suffolk port to unload 45,000 tonnes of Christmas goods from China. Hundreds of spectators lined the shore to watch the Emma Maersk as it was guided into Felixstowe by three tugs.

read more at the BBC

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Gus: this is ugly consumerism that may make the Chinese headquarters laugh a bit...