what a difference an electon makes

With the Australian Parliament currently hamstrung by a Liberal/nationals majority in both houses, here is a far from comprehensive list of reasons why absolute power corrupts absolutely. The again I am in shock because that bastion of trite journalism, 60 minutes, has finally declared the Iraq war "LOST", how will the Howard government recover, I suspect by repeating the same mantra that it has for the last four years, wasnt our fault, nothing to do with us, look at the progress, they had an election.

Why I love checks and balances.

I keep waiting for the tidal wave of corruption to crash upon the shores, but it just keeps on rolling, getting larger and more ferocious as it enters the shallows, but still theres no sign of it landing. Since the November elections in the US, the checks and balances have meant that the past practices of the Bushies are now being exposed to a plethora of shining lights, and it just keeps getting brighter and ever so much weirder.

ie the resignation of Randall Tobias, the top foreign aid adviser in the State Department, the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized by some for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.

The State Department's statement said simply: "He is returning to private life for personal reasons." Nothing to do with being named as a a regular with a washington $300-an-hour prostitute ring, still “I’m sad today,” said one person close to Tobias. “The president loves him and Condi absolutely loves him.”

Paul Wolfowitz: the casting couch affair plus

Wolfowitz Deputy Doctored World Bank Climate Change Reports
Juan José Daboub, a strong advocate of the Iraq war, was rewarded with a managing director post when Paul Wolfowitz took over the World Bank. In that role, Daboub appears to have been Wolfowitz’s designate to drive the conservative agenda.
Daboub has started to come under heavy criticism from the Bank’s executive directors for pushing a hard-right agenda that stands in stark contrast to many of the Bank’s long-standing policies. In addition to his efforts to undermine family planning policies, Bank scientists are now disclosing that Daboub also tried to eliminate references to climate change in official reports

Sacking of eight US attorneys: this one gets better and better the longer it goes on, roping in everyone from Karl Rove to Alberto Gonzales, who did a Downer and couldnt remember 60 plus times when giving testimony to a senate commitee in a spectaculary inept performance of his spectaculary inept performance. Already claimed the scalps of a few within the department and caused a senior advisor to plead the 5th. And despite the Justice department claiming to have released all emails relating to the affair a good month ago, they just keep dumping more emails out there, except those which they claim to be "destroyed" in contravention of several laws of the land. This one gets funner by the week, especially as Karl rove refused to testify under oath, or with a transcript or in front of the public and has signalled that he will fight this one through the courts, hilarious. The theres the plethora of prosecutions of Democrats prior to the November elections, which turn out to be somewhat politcal in their nature as they get thrown out by appeals courts.

Iraqi Reconstruction Performance: In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

Condi Rices refusal to testify before the Senate on Pre-war inteligence and Prewar Inteligence: her answer, "ive already testified". So now we know, all questions have been answered and thats that folks, what they said before the war, still stands, what they said in the few minutes after the war started is good enough for ya. Add in to this mix the downplaying of a 30% rise in terrorism this year as revealed by the annual McClatchy report, which Condi is planning on either not releasing (an impossiblilty) or burying, which contradicts everything that has come out of the Whitehouse and Condis mouth in the last four years.

Jack Abramoff: still going strong, still scandaling up the place and still getting Republicans raided by the fbi and still likely to get more placed inside with large men named Bubba.

another Karl Rove special, giving political briefings to appointees at federal agencies: in contravention on a half dozen laws (mainly the Hatch Act) and spread across a dozen layers of the Bush Admin.

Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch: how heros are manufactured in the Bushies image, till the truth is revealed.

Iraq: Slam dunk, where do you start and when does it end? Maybe with George tenants new book refering to the Bushies "despicable and dishonorable" conduct, but no, it will just keep getting better as the Bushies begin a smear campaign against their fall guy. The investigations on Iraq and the global fiasco it has become have barely started, we are only just getting to the beginning of the processes, and we are still waiting on the report that examines the political aspects of the run up to war (only two years late and still in the throws of being permanently shelved by republicans)

Gitmo: nearly a hundred of the prisoners have been cleared, but they still aint free, coz of a hundred different reasons.

No child left behind: no corruption practice left unused to ensure federal funds fall into the right republicans freinds hands.

Plamegate: still going, no final report released, and only the one Bushie in the line of a jailhouse backrub, so far.

Walter Reid: only the best urine and mould for our GI's to soak in.

Torture: and its variations on Gonzales declaration of the Geneva convention being quaint, watch for a any of the upcoming "terrorism" trials to be aborted over the dubious practices to gain testimony, eg Padilla.

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/04/candidates_on_torture.html

The role of contractors in Iraq: no ones even scratch the surface of this one, hearings on blackwater and haliburton are in their absolute infancy.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/05/ma_365_01.html

Huricane Katrina: the carpet is being brushed over and under with this debacle.

each and everyday, more and more is revealed, still talk of impeachment is barely discussed with any serious intent (despite numerous states and citys voting to impeach the Bushies) and only over the exagerated wailings of those venal weasils, the GOP. Support the troops, impeach Bush/Cheney.

da

oh my god theyve killed jesus...u bastards

hugh's little laugh

Hugh Morgan, the PM's free market point man on all things nuclear, finally came out of his bunker to explain a few things about what he and ron walker have planned for australia's new nuclear industry.

Firstly, he slyly hinted at the first port of call for his companies dollars, a repositry for the worlds nuclear waste in the vast area between WA and SA, chiefly because it is geologically stable, but equally as important for Hugh is australia's stable political climate. So Premier Rann, balls in your court, take all the worlds nuclear waste, dump it in your desert and make Hugh a tidy profit or not, with the high court willing to override any states objections in favour of the federal sphere, go fuck your self way underground, just make sure you provide the infrastructure, free of charge and all will be well.

The funniest part of his answers came from his unashamed abuse of public fear of the consequences of global warming to push his nuclear barrow, he is a complete climate skeptic. "I believe there has been some climate change", however he disputes any link between human activities and warming or change, he calls Inconvient Truth "a monutmental beat up" as is global warming. He said that on "many occasions when the comunity has got it wrong, and has still been prepared to pay for it" and he is just the man to push the barrow load of cash in his direction.

His instant dismissal of all alternatives is so Howard like, dovetailing all arguments into the nuclear funnel, its not difficult to realise why we have so few solar collectors on our roof's and so little concrete evidence of our government taking any energy scource, other than those approved by the minerals council and hugh, seriously. The simple fact is that we can already supply our energy needs via alternate means, we just need a method of storing the power on days of peak use (and thats around 57 days a year on average) which requires much more investment to develop and are surely closer than clean coal or nuclear, such carbon blocks in water make for great storage vessels for heat, and I aint no genius, so surely there are ways and means to this end. Its just that while people like hugh have the PM's undying love and ear, there will be no way for the government to provide anything like the support the country needs to develop the myriad alternative fuels, and that is yet another shameful legacy of the Howard regime. Like the Bushies freinds in the coal and oil industry writing his energy policy, our PM is trappped inside a bubble of deceitful minds, all probing away at the public purse to fund their own particular sectors and alternate workable solutions be damned along the way.

One does get tired of the tired old line that baseload power can only come from three sectors, nuclear, coal and gas, it places innovation in a straightjacket and is as much bullshit as can be found in a million viewings of an inconvient truth. The old ideas are just ridiculous self justifying ideological positionings, such as Malcolm Turnbulls calls of "unilateral" when the whole world is talking climate change, or his "destroying industry" crap through emmsion targets, which hugh took up with gusto.

If you wish to cut emmisons from your toaster by 60%, you therefore must only use 60% of your toasters power or you must throw out your fridge in order to use your toaster. Its the only way people. Alternate energy and emmision reductions without damaging our economy are in hughs words "pipe dreams". Bullshit and double bullshit, green scources of energy make that sort of idea complete scare mongering idiocy, a kilowatt of wave, geo-thermal or solar eneergy make your toaster go with those cuts in emmisions readily avaiable, even with existing technology. Dont fall for the fear, go with your head and not your ever so easily spooked wallet. The extremists on this side are not the greenies, its the lobbyists for the traditional energy suppliers, like Hugh, when ideas are denounced with no regard for the sense they make, you know you are dealing with a zealot, but unfortunately a zealot with the ear of the prevailing powers that be.

take this rate rise..and reserve it

Of course the big news of the day is Keith Richards snorting his fathers ashes chopped inwith coke, way to go keith senior....

Ok so I am big enough to admit that the Reserve Bank got it wrong this morning, with consumer spending increasing at twice the anticpated rate and unoffical inflation running at a predicted 3.5%, well above the target range and from every quarter pressure has built, not slowed as predicted. Now the Reserve are simply sitting by playing a waiting game for the "Offical" quarterly results, I call them out on this, they are big fat prolongated fules. When a big black dog bites you on the arse, you dont wait a month to get postal confirmation of the dogs breed and then tell it to shoo, you hit the muthafuka on the head with the only weapon you have at hand and in this case, its the reserves only weapon, an interest rate hike. Will it mean that next month when the worst is confirmed we will need to wack that foaming dog with a double stick, a 0.5% hike. Could be, if the reserve is honest, not just playing political games in an election year.

Come death, come

In the age of strawmen, where Malcolm Turnbull rages on

malcolm "clearfell" T: Now, you will find economic rationalists who say you should not put any money into irrigation and that you should let irrigation die. There are people who say that, I promise you, and there are people on the left in the Labor Party that don't want to invest in irrigation, they'd just rather buy water back for the environment and, again, let irrigation die.

as though there were a hoard of ALP economists braying for the destruction of all the earths water supply, well let me introduce a random strawman to answer the question, why the darkness beneath Bluhamsters title (eg come death, come). It has been asked of me, I just cant remeber who asked. But anyway, that little phrase has been with me since childhood when I started reading the books of Sven Hassel, a danish author who wrote of his time in a penal regiment of the waffen ss. A few weeks back I went for a search through the trash heap that is my abode to see if I still had any of his novels resting in any of the multitude of book piles, no biggee, just a sunday afternoon diluted by rain and in need of a book and a desire to see wether the writing stood the test of time, I rembered being enthralled by the brutality of the ideas and the manner in which he portrayed war, a unique writer from my perspective who opened up a world of alternate history that still captures my interest to this day.

One of the main characters, the Legionaire, a french algerian muslim, in the moments before battle would place his prayer beads in between his teeth and mutter beneath his breath, "Come death, come." A fatalistic prayer along the lines of allah inshallala, knowing that in the heat of war, death rides along side and is the only constant. This being an election year, this being a year when war is with us each second (though fought on other shores, as is so typically, wonderfully, australian), and my state of being so, well, fragile in many respects, I have assumed the words as my mantra. Better than my usual, "kill me jesus, u muthafucker", and in a world indecently anxious to pour money, time and efort into killing in ours or gods or dick cheneys name, a fitting one for the times. As "some people" say, its now a hell of a lot easier to kill a million folks, than it is to save them.

and so I return to the season of strawmen, where any and all government ministers throw out utter shit, like malcolm and his phantom army of rational econmists who run the ALP, his phantom army of unionists and extreme greenies who work behind the scenes to formulate ALP policy, to Malcolms phantom world where no one has ever heard of climate change and so condemn the ALP to destroying the economy, unilaterally. To these phantom phrases and ideas which are rarely challenged in the media, I say, if you vote liberal at the next election based upon any of these ghosts, come death, come.

http://www.svenhassel.info/

Behind the scenes in Iran.

Few people understand the reasons behind the soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970's, history has been overshadowed by the victors re-writing and the events of september 11, yet a replay is underway as we speak. In 1978-9, the Carter Administration began supplying the ragtag opposition in Afghanistan with arms and training a full six months before the soviet invasion, in the desire to see and force the soviets into an act, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, described it as seeking to give the soviets a black eye for the american defeat in Vietnam by embroiling them in a similar quagmire, which they duly fulfilled. In one interview he describes his delight in seeing his work pay off at the announcement of the soviet troops rolling across the border at christmas 1979. Now we are seeing something similar happening in Iran, although as the article points out the similarities are closer to Nicuragua durring the Regan years, I cant help but think with the Whitehouse straining at the bit for a reason to "intervene" in Iran, the afghan comparison is closer, and the disaster awaiting, nearer then we think.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html

Car company questions?

So why are our car companies not even bothering with proven technology to create cars that people want by the bucketload? Why, if sales of GM and Ford are either stagnant or plummeting (especially in the US where both those companies have hit rock bottom in market share), and they have both had the exact same amount of time as the Japanese (1994 start date) to produce a hybrid/alternate fuel vehicle, do both companies insist that they know what there customers want and they are not for the turning (sorry maggie)? Could it be a bush related ideological seizure that will send these two grand old companies to there doom, not that they could be accused of the veering left at any point in the recent past.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7f31b08c-e216-11db-af9e-000b5df10621.html

Disprove this, muthafucka

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/50013/

GW Bush - Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots

This picture is to distract homeowners from 2morrows interest rate rise

bought and paid for by Who Do U Trust Pty Ltd (a Santo Santorum Investment Vehicle)

The press (well, the UK press) finally join the dots and expose the blatant hypocrisy of the Bushies in their pursuit of a suitable trigger for war, and as a confirmation for my post of yesterday, come more details of the reason why there are 15 british sailors enjoying the high life in Iran.

I am still unsure of why the Poms are, seemingly so willing to shoot the breeze while in captivity, isnt it meant to be name, rank and serial numbers or has my avid watching of WW2 films led me up another garden path of self deception. If you cant trust hollywood propoganda, what the hell can you trust.

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

But then thats all the way over the other side of the world, whereas here, right here, right now, we have a major problem, his name is Rudd. According to our ever so clever enviroment minister, Malcolm "clearfell" Turnbull, this Rudd chap is going to completely close down all industry by the year 2012, which is just in time for the earth to be destroyed, according to Aztec legend.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will not set targets that are going to devastate the Australian economy. if Australia were to set a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions unilaterally, without the rest of the world joining in, that would devastate our economy.

Who could disagree with that, very few people have made it into power on the back of policies to "devestate" the country, although I believe serial arsonist, Torch Hendry, came close to being voted PM in 1915 with his catchy slogan, "I will pour petrol on your children and burn the country to ashes", but we were in a time of war and the populaces nerves were a bit frayed. I have looked at Rudds policies and some pages do mentioning killing selective people and blowing up some landmarks, but only some, and only those owned by extremely wealthy slave owners, like Malcolm.

Also, Rudd, seems to think that many people overseas have heard about global warming and climate change, unlike Mal, who thinks that only Australians have read a newspaper in the last ten years

PAUL BONGIORNO: We're the biggest emitters on earth at the moment.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: We're not the biggest emitters on earth at the moment. That's completely untrue. The reason we do have big emissions, let me finish, per head of population, is because we have so many energy intensive export industries.

see take that, Paul, we are not the worlds biggest emmiters, its a big fat lie, we have BIG emmisions because we are big emmiters, so when you add the two together it may look bad on a per head of population scale, but really halve what we do by subtracting BIG emmisions from energy industries and you have a realistic appraisal, so that puts paid to that, once and for all.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy.

Take that tony abbot, even Mal thinks you are a cunt. But then its Malcolm who was a director of a company which engaged in clearfelling large swathes of the Solomon Islands (but only for profit), who is now planning on giving the same company money to plant (but only 4 profit) the trees they chopped down.

from last nights

4 corners on david hicks

LT CDR CHARLES SWIFT, DEFENCE COUNSEL FOR SALIM HAMDAN: If you've written a crime so broad that everyone is guilty, you're guaranteed not to have anyone escape punishment in our rationale, but if you think about it for a second, you should have already known it.

The Australian Government has always insisted that Hicks had to stay at Guantanamo because in 2001 he had broken no Australian law.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: It's fundamentally wrong to make a criminal law retrospective.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But Hicks' lawyers have argued the charge he's now pleaded to does exactly that.

MAJ MICHAEL MORI, DEFENCE COUNSEL FOR DAVID HICKS: Material support for terrorism is not an offence under the law of war. It's not an offence under Australian law. So now they're creating it with the Military Commission Act in 2006 and they're applying it to conduct back in 2001.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The US Government disagrees.
But isn't it fair to say that this charge results from -

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: The Military Commissions Act.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: - the Military Commissions Act -

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: Right.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: ..which is a 2006 Act and it's referring to actions taken in 2001 which were not at that time offences under this Act?

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: They were violations of the law.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Which law?

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: The - the extra-territorial application. And for somebody to say, "This doesn't have any application to me," means that they didn't have any sense that the conduct in which they were engaged was criminal.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But the US State Department's most senior lawyer cast doubt on that. When asked about the specific charge Hicks has now pleaded to - material support for terrorism - he conceded that in 2001 there weren't enough laws on the books to charge those who trained with Al-Qaeda.

Can you understand, though, why people might make the distinction between this offence and a very serious offence? It's not what people would normally consider to be a war crime?

JOHN BELLINGER, LEGAL ADVISER, US SECRETARY OF STATE: That's really what's so difficult here, is that - I think, now that we all look back in retrospect, we find that there were gaps in our laws both domestically and even internationally, and we have all had to scramble to fill in those gaps, but I don't think that we should simply say "Well, it's too bad, looking back that on September 11, that we didn't have enough laws on the books and that therefore these people who all trained in acts of terrorism" ought to just go free."

weekend of hypocrisy

"The Australian public have been told now for five years that David Hicks is a dangerous terrorist," Mr Rann said. "What I want to know from the Federal Government is, what are the conditions of his release? What are the parole conditions? Will he be under supervision?"

Alexander Downer said yesterday that being involved with terrorists "is a very, very serious matter". But then, as a sceptical attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said, he was "given a sentence more appropriate for a drunk-driving offence".

"Whether he was a foot soldier or more important than that, none the less he was definitely working with the terrorists who were seeking to destroy our civilisation,"Mr Downer said.

Treasurer Peter Costello is also taking a hard line. "For those people who say poor David Hicks, I say the poor dead and their families that died in the World Trade Centre," he said.

"I consider anybody who goes and fights for al-Qaida to be dangerous," Mr Downer said.
"I mean, al-Qaida is the world's most vicious terrorist organisation."

from ever so demure herald-sun "SYMPATHY is wasted on David Hicks, who abandoned his family in Australia for terrorism training in Afghanistan, a man who conspired to identify Western targets for Osama bin Laden's fanatical al-Qaida. It was his intention to be an agent of Islamist terror -- which means he was prepared for Australians to die in the name of his adopted cause." What a pity none of any of that was ever raised as a charge, or even insinuated (except in a statement obtained under torture by another detainee whose testamony was proven false by MI5 and who repudiated all he said once out of Gitmo, still a false hearsay convictions better than no conviction at all)

Hypocrisy of the week though goes to:

GW Bush

his outrage over the 15 Britons captured by Iran (maybe in Iranian territorial waters, maybe not), while neglecting the 6 Iranian diplomatic staff kidnapped in Iraq by US forces, over the strenuous objections of the Kurdish PM who invited them to be there, and the, at least, 20 more Iranians kidnapped by US forces in Iraq, all of whom have disapeared into that legal black hole of US/Iraqi "justice" or whatever it is that they are calling it now. What ye reap so shall ye sow, eh King George.

From Terry Jones, an English perspective:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2047110,00.html