NSW police now have special emergency powers to bug or track people for up to four days without a warrant. 

Under the biggest shake-up to the state's surveillance laws, police will have up to four days to monitor people before needing to apply retrospectively for an emergency warrant from a Supreme Court judge. 

The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel.  

In the first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a call from a neighbour warning him to hurry to the house he had almost finished building. By the time he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. More than 100 Israeli security guards held back local residents. 

The US always likes to pretend it is the innocent victim, attacked or about to be attacked for no reason at all. Next on the list are the hapless Iranians ….. 

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.  

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

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: 

Last week in Washington we got a rare look inside the global private banking industry, whose high purpose it is to gather up the assets of the world's wealthiest people and many of its worst villains, and shelter them from tax collectors, prosecutors, creditors, disgruntled business associates, family members and each other.