The world has never looked better for the Big Five oil companies.  

After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Mr. Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.

On July 18, 2008, The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians – 12 times the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi holocaust. 

Nikita Khrushchev said the Soviet Union would bury us, but these days, everybody seems to think that China is the one wielding the shovel.  

The People's Republic is on the march - economically, militarily, even ideologically. 

Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes — just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously. 

The banks are bankrupted.  

The government's debt has been pawned off to the Chinese.  

The nation's military, under the weight and demands of the Iraq disaster, is about to shatter into something like a gajillion bits 'n pieces.  

A House panel Wednesday voted to cite former top White House aide Karl Rove for contempt of Congress as its Senate counterpart publicly pursued possible punishments for an array of alleged past and present Bush administration misdeeds. 

Liberal MPs are denying that Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's job is under threat after his apparent backdown on emissions trading at yesterday's shadow cabinet meeting.

Last week Dr Nelson foreshadowed he would push for a tougher policy on a carbon trading scheme, in direct opposition to leadership rival Malcolm Turnbull. 

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama reiterated his support for an open-ended US military presence in Iraq over the weekend, further narrowing his professed differences with the Bush administration and Republican presidential candidate John McCain. 

Congressional negotiators agreed yesterday to a ban on a family of toxins found in children's products, handing a major victory to parents and health experts who have been clamoring for the government to remove harmful chemicals from toys. 

from Crikey ….. 

LNP: new name, same dribbling hicks and hacks 

President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a refreshingly old-fashioned despot.  

He favours one-party rule, a police state based on fear, secret surveillance, summary arrest and interrogation of anyone too religious, rubber truncheons, electroshock treatment, needles under the fingernails, and, at least once, the boiling alive of a recalcitrant witness.  

Before leaving office George W. Bush will issue a mass pardon, the largest collection of presidential pardons in American history.

Bush will pardon himself, Vice President Cheney, and a long list of officials involved in torture, eavesdropping, destruction of evidence, the CIA leak case and a range of potential crimes. 

from Crikey ….. 

Australia is a laggard not a leader on emissions trading 

Thomas Hunter writes: