‘At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers.

One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

from Crikey …..

How the Texacutioner discovered his heart

Jeff Sparrow writes:

So President Bush has commuted the two-and-a-half year prison term facing Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, calling the sentence "excessive".

‘What a great day for peace enthusiasts! A new envoy to the Middle East has been appointed for the Quartet, and it’s no other than the former British PM, Tony Blair. Blair, the man who gave the Israelis the green light to flatten Beirut.

Blair, the man who started an illegal war in Iraq. Blair, a man who, according to the Geneva Conventions, is to be held personally responsible for more than 700,000 dead in Iraq for failing to 'protect civilian populations against certain consequences of war’[1]. A man who is supposed to be charged for genocide at The Hague. That’s right, a man who should end his life behind bars is now becoming a peace envoy.

‘The Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, is not able to say whether general health checks of indigenous children will be compulsory as part of the Federal Government's plan to clean up remote communities.

In an interview on the Nine Network this morning Mr Abbott said the Government wanted all 22,000 indigenous children in the Northern Territory checked and that he hoped their "good parents" would ask for the health assessments.

In an interview with the Financial Times, former World Bank President. “little paulie” Wolfowitz - who resigned in scandal after granting a substantial pay raise to his girlfriend - "vowed to continue in political life."

Getting tough … State Transit buses have been converted into "mobile holding cells" to be used during the summit in September.

Photo: Nick Moir

Cages on wheels: APEC plan to keep the peace

Edmund Tadros

June 29, 2007

‘The CIA worked with two of America’s top Mafia mobsters in a botched attempt to assassinate the Cuban President Fidel Castro with poisoned pills, according to previously classified documents released by the spy agency yesterday.

The extraordinary details of the 1960 plot were contained in more than 700 pages of documents that revealed some of the agency’s past illegal activities, including the targeting of foreign leaders, wiretapping of US journalists, CIA break-ins and thefts.

‘Sometimes numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can.

Long-serving Sydney political journalist Alex Mitchell writes:

This is the last throw of the dice for John Howard. He is doing one big favour for the mining industry that he has faithfully served in public life for the past 30 years, by rolling back Aboriginal ownership of their tribal lands.

Cynically, cruelly but utterly predictably, he’s doing it under the hypocritical colours of humanitarianism. (Very similar to the invasion and occupation of Iraq sold as “spreading democracy”).

Sacred Children and flimsy hearsay

Guy Rundle writes:

In all the debate surrounding the Little Children Are Sacred report, one assumption has held amongst all participants -- that the report is well-founded and clear-eyed.

The more I plough through it, the more I'm beginning to doubt even that.

from Crikey …..

Make no mistake, Howard's NT plan is a new apartheid

Guy Rundle writes:

‘Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to comply with a presidential order regulating the handling of classified information might be scary were it not so ludicrous.

‘Here is the first paragraph from today's New York Times article on our latest offensive, based exclusively on the claims of our military commanders:

The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

‘An Army officer with a key role in the U.S. military hearings at Guantanamo Bay says they relied on vague and incomplete intelligence and were pressured to declare detainees "enemy combatants," often without any specific evidence.

His affidavit, released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.

Bushit’s maladministration is laying the groundwork for an announcement that “aussie tony” is to be appointed as a special Middle East envoy for Palestinian governance & economic issues, after he steps down as Britain's prime minister, following two months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, according to U.S. officials.