‘President Bush today said his
landmark nuclear cooperation agreement with India marked a crucial advancement
in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons - ensuring for the first time the
presence of international inspectors at civilian nuclear reactors. 

But administration officials
conceded that the agreement was not everything the U.S. had hoped for -
permitting India to keep eight of its 22 reactors under wraps as secret
military sites. 

‘Stung by growing criticism of his Iraq policy which has
manifested itself in all-time low public opinion ratings, President Bush last
month embarked on a tour in which he delivered five speeches outlining his
"Plan for Victory" in Iraq, as well as offering a defense of his
decision to invade Iraq. "It is true that much of the intelligence [used
to justify the invasion] turned out to be wrong", Mr. Bush said in the
fourth of these speeches. "As President, I'm responsible for the decision
to go into Iraq." 

 
‘Never before has one word, or
its relentless repetition, done so much for one man as the word `terror’
(`terra` in Texanese) has for this Texan from Crawford that now resides in the
White House. No other single word, it seems, is so much responsible for Bush`s
continued fame among certain naive American quarters. 

Whether it is the external or
internal policies of this administration, the word terra remains the
cornerstone of all its past, present and future plans of action. Be it
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Katrina, domestic elections, passing of sham
legislation, the Guantanamo Gulag, the discovery of torture dungeons or the
scandal of spying on own citizens, no crisis has ever been strong enough to
withstand the magic mantra of terra, terra, terra. 

‘The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7,
2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into
abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that
Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and
persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib
prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the
consequences of President Bush’s decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the
Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and “outrages upon personal
dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” 

‘"Terrorism" has been made The Issue of the
Year, for which Americans are expected to tighten their belts, pay countless
billions in taxes so the U.S. government and its allies can arm to the teeth,
and suffer an escalating repression of their liberties. 

Yet who the terrorists are
supposed to be remains vague and shadowy. Their only apparent common
characteristic is that they are swarthy and foreign; no Nordics need apply. 

‘Acting with impunity and wielding the moral authority of
pedophiles, Bush and his fellow Neocons have decimated what was left of
America's good name while severely crippling our nation’s capacity for
advancing and protecting human rights. Setting a sanguineous course in their
reckless pursuit of wealth and power, they have afflicted humankind with their
perverse agenda. With alarming consistency, these sociopaths have demonstrated
their utter disregard for humanity and the well-being of our planet. 

While the US has a history of
imperialism, deep cruelty, and mass murder, including slaughtering one million
civilians in the conquest of the Philippines, legalizing the institution of
slavery, and committing the Native American genocide, by World War II America
had arguably begun to demonstrate a reasonable level of commitment to
humanitarian ideals. While it was a long, painful process, Abolitionists, Women
Suffragists, Populists, Labor Activists, Civil Rights Protestors, and the like
forced the United States to strive for truly noble causes. From the end of
World War II up until the 1960's, one could reasonably conclude that the nation
primarily responsible for the defeat of militaristic fascism in both Europe and
Asia had earned a degree of moral authority, in spite of its remaining flaws.’ 

‘Britain's New Statesman magazine
has put together a powerful package of stories detailing how the government of
George W. Bush's beloved disciple, Tony Blair, is "persecuting innocent
people, tearing up our freedoms and undermining the judiciary." The basis
of the stories is a new, blistering report from Amnesty International on the
degraded state of civil liberties in the UK today.’ 

Blair's
Dark Kingdom

‘The congressional elections this coming November is the
last chance for Americans to reaffirm the separation of powers that is the
basis of their civil liberties. Unless the voters correct their mistake of
putting both the executive and legislative branches in the hands of the same
party and deliver the House or the Senate to the Democrats, there is nothing on
the domestic scene to stand in the way of more power, and less accountability,
being accumulated in the executive. 

The Democrats have been a totally
ineffective opposition and might not inspire any voter response other than
apathy. Rather than vote for a cowardly party that is afraid to defend the
Constitution, voters might simply not vote at all. 

‘To their credit, Israel, AIPAC, the Bush Regime, powerful
families (with names like Koch), the numerous multi-millionaires in Congress,
powerful lobbyists, think tanks, major corporations, and the 1% of Americans
who harbor 38% of the nation's wealth have done a phenomenal job of convincing
a majority of the poor and working class that they are fortunate to have the
privilege of fighting over the remaining crumbs of the economic pie after the
ruling elite gorge themselves. 

Despite the 13% of Americans living in poverty, 46 million
without health insurance, and approximately 3 million homeless wandering our
streets, the gallimaufry ruling the United States according to the Golden Rule
(he that hath the gold maketh the rules) has artfully convinced "Main
Street" that it "doesn't get any better than this". 

‘The American Civil Liberties Union
has released documents that prove that top Department of Defense officials
endorsed interrogation methods at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that the
FBI described as both abusive and illegal. 

“We now possess overwhelming
evidence that political and military leaders endorsed interrogation methods
that violate both domestic and international law,” said Jameel Jaffer, an
attorney with the ACLU. “It is entirely unacceptable that no senior official
has been held accountable.”’ 

‘In the movie Flamingo Road, Joan Crawford
says to her husband "Why don’t you be honest with the people? Why don’t
you teach them to run their own state?" David Brian replies "Honey,
the honest men get eaten up. There’re too many other men waiting, watching,
probing for the soft spots, the graft. No, it’s better to be one of them." 

Waiting and watching is a useful
strategy. Wait and watch for a flock of ducks to fly over. Wait until the birds
are in your line of fire. Wait and watch until stocks reach an appropriate
price before buying. A burglar waits and watches until your car or home are
unoccupied. The state waits and watches for its chance too. 

‘Okay so the UAE was one of only
three governments to recognize the Taliban, and the UAE royals have been pals
and houseguests of Osama bin Laden, and the gold that was used to finance the
9/11 attack was transfered through Dubai, and the government has a history of
giving a nod and a wink to terrorists "traveling" through the
country, and two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE, and...

Oh, well, "1984" is
fiction no longer.  There is no truth in the Bushevik Administration. 

‘A decade ago we had a significant succession of truly inspirational governors general; we looked to the ABC for excellence in broadcasting, to the universities to foster critical minds and to the CSIRO for scientific research of high integrity. 

If John Howard were a true conservative, he would have sustained those traditions. Instead, he has debauched them. Today we have an invisible governor-general, universities corrupted by their scrabbling for money, an underfunded ABC and a CSIRO where those who are genuinely concerned about global warming are expected to bite their tongues. 

‘With no political opposition to speak of, Howard's
conquests have been in cultural life, with historiography thrown in. Siding
with an unchanging clique of far-right commentators, he has effectively stifled
debate about Australia's bloody colonial past while deriding the "black
armband theory of history": that is, the truth of a genocidal racism that
continues to devastate the Aboriginal people. His patriotic, or "put out
more flags," campaign is pure George W. Bush. Schools have been ordered to
erect flagpoles, and on "Australia Day," January 26th, which
"celebrates" the "settlement" of another people's country,
flags are distributed and often displayed with gormless aggression.