from Crikey …..

How fares the War on Terror?

There was a moment on Tuesday evening – hours before the first public hearing of the Senate inquiry into corporate tax evasion – when Treasurer Joe Hockey and his advisers should have sensed a firestorm approaching.

The origins of humans (homo sapiens) makes for legends in our own minds, including denaturing life with rabid religious beliefs. Here, there is some resonance between the Abrahamic religions and the "myths" of ancient Greece and Rome, with equivalents of various legendary origins, in the region — especially in Mesopotamia, but also in Egypt. 

It's the same the whole world over, it's the same

The rich man gets the money

And the poor man gets the blame

Tony Abbott has said that only the Coalition could stem the flow of asylum seeker boats because other governments would “succumb to the cries of the human rights lawyers”.

The prime minister admitted that vessels continue to depart for Australia, saying that the government has “largely stopped the boats”, a step back from previous comments indicating they have been stopped altogether.

The Israel Lobby and its associated neo-con war criminals will block if they can the
nuclear energy agreement, worked out by Putin, Iran, and Obama, which has the promise of bringing to an end the US orchestrated crisis over Iran’s development of nuclear energy.

from Civil Liberties Australia

Govt produces ‘worst legislation so far’ …

Louiseville, Kentucky: Senator Rand Paul promised to be a different kind of Republican on Tuesday, launching a 2016 White House bid that he said would highlight the conservative principles of reduced government and spending as he vowed to break up "the Washington machine."

Mr. Putin has methodically targeted, through charm and cash and by fanning historical and ideological embers, the European Union’s weakest links in a campaign to assert influence in some of Europe’s most troubled corners. One clear goal is to break fragile Western unity over the conflict in Ukraine.

Pauline Hanson, the figure of popular racism from the 1990s, spoke at the Reclaim (White) Australia rally in Brisbane.  This is significant.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing right in the Middle East these days. There seems to be no hope left, and no fervor. All that was pure was dragged through filth. All that was great here was stolen or smashed by the outsiders. Enthusiasm had been ridiculed, then drowned, or burned to ashes, or shattered by tanks and missiles.