‘I sometimes remember these
almost endearing fools when I find myself faced with another kind of war lover
– the kind that has not seen war and has often done everything possible not to
see it. The passion of these war lovers is a phenomenon; it never dims,
regardless of the distance from the object of their desire. Pick up the Sunday
papers and there they are, egocentrics of little harsh experience, other than a
Saturday in Sainsbury’s. Turn on the television and there they are again, night
after night, intoning not so much their love of war as their sales pitch for it
on behalf of the court to which they are assigned. "There’s no
doubt," said Matt Frei, the BBC’s man in America, "that the desire to
bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially
now to the Middle East . . . is now increasingly tied up with military
power." 

‘Senior Shiite politicians said
today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the
Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the
country's leader in the next government. 

It is the first time the
Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top
job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans
and some Shiite leaders. 

 
Phone-tapping bill on the way ….. 

SMH
March 30, 2006 

Police and intelligence agencies
are to be given sweeping new powers to tap the phones of innocent people who
come into contact with terrorism suspects, although a bipartisan committee
urged substantial changes to the proposed laws. 

Addressing our federal Parliament this week, John Howard
said: 

“My job as Prime Minister of Australia is to represent
the interests of my country and to interact with the leaders of other countries
to the best of my ability. And in Tony Blair I have found a man of courage, of
moral purpose, of high intelligence, of a capacity to articulate with great
clarity the challenges of the contemporary world.” 

Our little flatterer went on to
quote Blair’s great friend, the Anglican priest, Peter Thomson, who allegedly
said: 

‘Psychological torture, sleep deprivation, brutality,
severe sexual humiliation, and murder summon visions of a dank dungeon in a
remote region of pre-invasion Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, replete with evil
inquisitors and hooded executioners. However, those manifestations of horror
did not spring forth from the Axis of Evil. They are actually drawn from
official post-9/11 US policy. Despite its fabled commitment to human rights,
the United States government has been committing and enabling acts of torture
for half a century. Not even Superman had the power to snatch “Truth, Justice
and the American Way” from the crushing jaws of imperialistic ambition and
avarice.

Ironically titled, Albert McCoy’s A Question of Torture probes and exposes the
extent of “the Land of the Free’s” involvement in human torture over the years.
Only a mainstream media 90% controlled by five major corporations (whose
executives and major stockholders are amongst the de facto rulers of the
America’s so-called republic) could so effectively maintain the illusion that
the United States is the world leader in protecting human rights. Somewhere out
there, David Copperfield is burning with envy. Rest easy, David. They are
running out of magic. Destroying our Constitution and reversing the
humanitarian gains achieved by millions of Americans with a social conscience
throughout our nation’s history, the Bush Regime is extinguishing the candle of
hope America once offered to humanity. Despite the exhaustive efforts of the
media handmaidens, people are taking notice.’ 

Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert

‘How three young men from the UK
ended up in the world's most notorious prison. 

Every American Should Be Required
To Watch This Video. 

This docudrama shows the sadism
and stupidity of the US and British soldiers. The guards behave with the same
cruelty you expect to see from SS officers in lurid second world war movies. It
takes a moment or two to realize that these events reflect the reality of those
held in Americas notorious gulag.’ 

‘When President Bush signed the
re-authorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum
saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform
Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. 

The bill contained several
oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special
terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The
provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often
the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the
administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain
dates. 

‘They keep telling us 9/11
changed everything. But even in this Photo-shopped age of unreliable narrators,
much remains the same. The assassination of President John Kennedy, the Crime
of the Last Century, occurred in plain sight, in front of thousands - yet
exactly what happened remains in dispute. The Warren Commission found that Lee
Harvey Oswald, fellow traveller of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shot
Kennedy with a cheap Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from a sixth-floor window of the
Texas School Book Depository. The commission found that Oswald, who, two days
later would be murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, acted alone. 

‘Two of America's top scholars
have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's
pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive"
role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action
against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their
article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.  

Professor John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and
author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S.
Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life. 

It’s time to resolve “Iemma’s
Dilemma”. 

Why not immediately resume
“Scully’s Gully”, declare it a sacred site & rename it “Gallipoli Heights”:
a multi-purpose public venue dedicated to the promotion, preservation &
veneration of core Australian values, including our contempt for the folly of
war, PPAs & well meaning but incompetent politicians.