‘In the Caspian Basin and beneath the deserts of Iraq, as many as 783 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be pumped. Anyone controlling that much oil stands a good chance of breaking OPEC's stranglehold overnight, and any nation seeking to dominate the world would have to go after it.

from the SMH ……

Bishop shows hand on teachers' pay .....

Mark Davis Political Correspondent

from the Sydney Morning Herald …..

‘John Howard has told his party room he could secure the release of David Hicks any time but says that would be wrong because the terrorism suspect should face a trial first.

Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, defended the fact that evidence obtained through coercion can be used in the “show trial” of David Hicks.

from Buzzflash …..

‘The first and most lethal fact is that the Earth (with very minor exceptions) is a planet wide Dictatorship of the Rich. This is the number one critical variable of our species! Less than one percent of the population is now and always has been controlling effectively all of the planetary wealth. This is nothing to debate or argue about. Not to see this lose/lose reality is not to see the sun.

from the ABC …..

Meanwhile, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says it is best that people do not comment publicly on the case.

"We would expect that in Australia, we don't expect that people would be out there arguing in relation to a person who has been charged with offences about the appropriateness of it," he said.

Qantas consortium won't guarantee jobs …..

The director of the consortium bidding to take over Qantas says he cannot give a concrete guarantee about jobs.

The consortium made up of Australian and foreign companies has voluntarily agreed to submit the deal to the Foreign Investment Review Board, despite saying for some weeks it did not need to.

PM says carbon trading part of climate change solution …..

Prime Minister John Howard has signalled that Australia is likely to be involved in a carbon trading scheme as part of tackling climate change.

Mr Howard has promised Australian workers and industries will not be unfairly disadvantaged if there is a price on carbon.

‘Zionism's drive to create a state for the Jewish people was designed to serve two purposes. The most fundamental of them was to provide a refuge that would ensure the well-being and security of the Jewish people, wherever they were endangered by the ever-recurring historical cycles of murderous global anti-Semitism - most recently, of course, the Holocaust. Beyond that, the Jewish state of Israel was to be a moral exemplar for all mankind, "a light unto the nations," the model of the kind of state that a liberal, well educated, sophisticated, and morally sensitive people - "the people of the Book" - could create.

‘In his State of the Union address to the nation, President George W. Bush made some disturbingly inaccurate statements about the fight against terrorism that distort the threat's reality. He continues to hail the break-up of the al-Qaida terror network as a major victory, and he has now conflated the Islamist Sunni and Shia terror organizations, misrepresenting them as a unified force against the United States.

from the Sydney Morning Herald …..

‘Photos & articles depicting Saddam Hussein's execution shown to inmates at Guantanamo Bay, including David Hicks, were provided for their "intellectual stimulation", the US military said.

The existence of the display of the articles & photos, & an accompanying message saying liars would meet the same fate, garnered international headlines after they were revealed by Mr Hicks's legal team on Thursday.

from the Sydney Morning Herald …..

‘John Howard’s plan to take control of the Murray-Darling Basin threatens to put him on a collision course with the mining giant BHP Billiton, which uses millions of litres of water a day without paying for it.

His plan for the Commonwealth to take control of the river system includes cracking down on the unsustainable extraction of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

from the Centre for American Progress …..

‘Three years ago, President Bush delivered the State of the Union containing the infamous 16 words that alleged Iraq was developing a nuclear program. During the following summer, the insurgency was picking up steam, the search for WMD had turned up nothing, whistleblowers like former Ambassador Joseph Wilson were beginning to question the administration's motives, and the White House was hitting back against its critics.