The Centre for American Progress reports …..

“Americans are worried about debt and believe it is just going to get worse. "The public is more worried about falling into debt, particularly from medical bills, than about being the victim of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster." According to a new poll sponsored by the Center for American Progress, 86 percent "insist the number of Americans having trouble with household debt has gone up in the last five years." Unfortunately, their worries are well-grounded in reality. The average American savings rate in 2005 was negative 0.5 percent, "the lowest since the Great Depression."  As everyday expenses continue to rise, the problem of debt will continue to burden working Americans.

‘In Iraq, officials said Wednesday that U.S. and coalition forces as well as an increase in sectarian violence were behind the surge in civilian casualties cited in a U.N. report.

The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq said nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and June in a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

‘When we last left off, our gallant crusaders, Bush Wayne and his trusted confidant, Dick Grayson-Cheney - oil executives by day, freedom fighters by night - had earned yet another significant victory in their divinely inspired war on terror. 

Another “corner was turned” as our heroes sent on a one-way trip to paradise that diabolic villain, the elusive, brilliant mastermind of the evil Iraqi insurgency, the once-invisible man known only to us mortals as al-Zarqawi: the (unelected) leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

 
‘US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".

Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us ...that these civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."

‘The fight over the Hamdan ruling heats up - as fears about its reach escalate.

David Bowker vividly remembers the first time he heard the phrase. A lawyer in the State Department, Bowker was part of a Bush administration "working group" assembled in the panicked aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Its task: figuring out what rights captured foreign fighters and terror suspects were entitled to while in U.S. custody. White House hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and his uncompromising lawyer, David Addington, made it clear that there was only one acceptable answer. One day, Bowker recalls, a colleague explained the goal: to "find the legal equivalent of outer space" - a "lawless" universe. As Bowker understood it, the idea was to create a system where detainees would have no legal rights and US courts would have no power to intervene.

The following piece was written by a friend of mine from America, who recently was proud to become an Australian Citizen.

It is sadly ironic that a “New” Australian has the courage to speak out in the face of our government’s shameful deeds, whilst so many of us who had the good fortune to be born & raised in this great land remain steadfastly silent.

‘I had the privilege recently to become a citizen of this country, one of the finest in the world in so many respects. I am proud to call myself Australian, but I have some questions of Mr. Howard and Mr. Costello and Mr. Downer and the rest of the "Leaders" of this land.

‘The U.S. government has been, and continues to be, a major supporter of state-supported terrorism, favouring retaliatory or pre-emptive aggression over mediation in the world court, and avoiding accountability by excluding itself from the globally accepted definition of terrorism.

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government is powerfully scrutinized in Distorted Morality, a scathing thesis presented by renowned scholar Noam Chomsky.’

our little prime hypocrite was at it again yesterday ….

Answering a question about the horrendous terrorist attack in Mumbai, the deputy opportunist once again took full advantage of a supine media to spruik his favourite lines on the dread of terrorism, giving his fear meme a good kick along in the process.

PRIME MINISTER:

Ladies and gentlemen, can I just start by repeating the sense of horror that I felt when I learned the news of the terrorist attack in India. I send my sympathy, and that of the Australian people, to our friends in India. It's a reminder that no country anywhere in the world is immune from the possibility of a terrorist attack. It doesn't matter what the foreign policy of the country is, it doesn't matter whether it's a democracy, or what form of democracy it might be, all countries are subject to terrorist attacks.

It’s often been said that it’s inappropriate to speak ill of the dead.

But during Ken Lay’s funeral yesterday, the Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson gave new meaning to that tradition.

The crazy Reverend compared Ken Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr & Jesus Christ, & said “his name would eventually be cleared."

"History has a way of vindicating people who have been wronged." said Lawson.

‘The cash-for-peerages scandal paralysing Britain's Labour Party moved perilously close to Tony Blair's door when the London Metropolitan Police yesterday arrested Lord Levy, the Prime Minister's confidant, party fundraiser and Middle East envoy.

The news 10 Downing Street has been privately dreading for months came after the police spent all day interviewing Lord Levy at a north London police station before releasing him on bail without charge.

Prisoners at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay
have been subjected to “systematic physical, psychological, sexual, medical
& religious abuse”, according to a report released this week by the US
Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

The report - Report
On Torture & Cruel, Inhuman & Degrading Treatment Of Prisoners At
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - is the most comprehensive primary-source account
of abuse at the facility. The report cites declassified statements from
detainees still at Guantanamo & from their lawyers. According to the
report, Guantanamo detainees have been:

“The Bush Administration has decided to grant all
detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre protections offered by the
Geneva Convention,” our ABC breathlessly headlined on tonight’s News.

Guantanamo
Detainees Entitled To Geneva rights, Says US

Whilst “auntie” continues to
confirm its superficial role as a message board for government spinmeisters,
real journalists elsewhere were reporting the truth of this latest episode of
bushit “smoke & mirrors” …….

‘Little has changed in the imperialist tendencies of
American foreign policy since the founding of the United States of America in
seventeen eighty-nine. The fledgling United States opened the nineteenth
century by stealing the continent of North America from the Indians, while in
the process ethnically cleansing them and then finally deporting the pitiful
few survivors by means of death marches (a la Bataan) to Bantustans, which in
America we call reservations, as in instance of America's manifest destiny to
rule the world.

‘Des Browne, the defence secretary, conceded yesterday
that the deployment of 3,300 British forces into the Taliban heartland of
southern Helmand has "energised" the Taliban.

His sombre assessment came after
a week in which a sixth British soldier was killed in the province, and as he
prepares to announce next week the dispatch of reinforcements to the country,
including extra air cover and engineers.

Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal,
the officer in charge of British troops in the region, also admitted the
resistance was proving unexpectedly tough. He said: "If we were honest, we
didn't expect it to be quite so intense. But at the same time, we have trained
for it. "