‘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? 

I've highlighted the last sentence of this extract because it seems of particular significance to activity in Australia. 

 [from the Financial Express, poste 20/5/05]

MAY 19:  Seeking to meet its rising energy demands, India may
pay suppliers, including General Electric (GE) Co, Rs 1.8 trillion ($40
billion) to build nuclear reactors over the next 14 years, a government
official said.

France’s Areva SA, Electricite de France and US-based Westinghouse
Electric Co are among the possible providers of 25 to 28 reactors by
2020, chairman Nuclear Power Corporation of India, SK Jain said.

Extract from the speech of our
providores grocer in Ottawa ..........

”And I would have for those around the world who would want to see
a reduced American role in the affairs of our globe, I have some
quiet advice and that is be careful in what you wish for because
a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world. It will
leave a world more exposed to terrorism and it will leave a more
fragile and indeed dangerous world.”

.......

Gus is furious: No Sir. I have some not so quiet advice .... What makes a
more dangerous world is the extraordinary lies that have been concocted
by you and the US and the Poms, to go to war. A war that HAS made
the world more dangerous. A war that hopefully will see a solution but it will
be NO THANKS TO YOU and your two other little porkyists. We are not
opposed to the US having an important role in managing the affairs of the
world but w do not want them to do so like a schoolyard bully with no brains
and two fists. You and your acolytes should resign in shame for having brought
the good reputation of OUR countries (note: not "yours" as when you
claimed ownership of Australia in that other porkies about uranium) ... 

Those avid readers of this site would already know that we are on top of these figures... A few months ago, we alerted the world — this little YD world at least — on the World Prison Population List coming from the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London... These figures exposed the hypocrisy of the US on their pointing the finger at other countries human rights failures... Here Chris Floyd picks up the same pieces and elaborates.. Read more at the Moscow Times...

Global Eye
Gates of Eden

By Chris Floyd
Published: May 19, 2006

Beneath the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush administration -- the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic corruption, the gutting of the U.S. Constitution, the open embrace of presidential tyranny -- a quieter degradation of American society has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn't begin with President George W. Bush, although his illicit regime certainly represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay.

With the world's attention diverted by the latest scandals and shameless posturings of the Bush faction -- domestic spying, bribes and hookers at the CIA, military units roaring down to the border to scare unarmed poor people looking for work -- few noticed a small story that cast a harsh, penetrating light on the corrosion of the national character.

Earlier this month, the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London released its annual World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining city on the hill, the United States of America. But strangely enough, the Bush gang and its media sycophants failed to celebrate -- or even note -- yet another instance where a triumphant America leads the world. Where are the cheering hordes shouting "U.S.A! U.S.A!" at the news that the land of the free imprisons more people than any other country in the world, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of its population?

Yes, the world's greatest democracy now has more than 2 million of its citizens locked up in iron cages, an incarceration rate of 714 per 100,000 of the national population. The only countries within shouting distance are such bastions of penological enlightenment as China (1.55 million prisoners, plus some unsorted "administrative detainees"), Russia (a wimpy 763,000) and Brazil (330,000), whose exemplary prison management has been on such prominent display this week

read more overthere...

On May 13th 2005 I introduced my first Your Democracy Blog with these words:   I am writing this blog because South Australia needs help. We are an
extremely strategically located city, for years headquarters of
Murdoch, Halliburton and BAE, and are being systematically brainwashed
into becoming defence industry drones without ever being given the
choice of taking this path.

Now I learn that the submarine project, constructed at a facility controlled by Halliburton's former Global Vice President for Infrastructure, is to begin a campaign to entice our kids into becoming defence construction workers

The body sent to Australia in the place of a fallen soldier was that of a Halliburton contractor from Bosnia.   The Kellogg, Brown and Root employee was finally buried last Friday, a month after he died.

Halliburton have indicated  that they will pay compensation to the family of Juso Sunanovic, who the company claims died of a brain hemorrage while playing table tennis in Iraq.

The revelation is the latest in a situation filled with procedural errors.  Pte Jake Kovco's body was moved from the scene of death before MP inspection on orders from the commander of Australian armed forces in Iraq despite an MP command that the location remain undisturbed for investigation purposes.  After being ceremonially escorted to a waiting plane, his body was accidentally substituted with that  of the Halliburton employee.