Qantas has inked an alliance agreement with Middle Eastern rival Emirates aimed at stemming the Australian airline's losses on the highly competitive route between Australia and Europe.

After months of negotiations and endless speculation, Qantas today unveiled the terms of a 10-year alliance with Emirates on routes to Europe via Dubai, due to begin next April.

British democracy is in crisis. We cannot wish this away. The cause is a precipitous decline in respect for Members of Parliament and for the governments they form. Trust in our rulers has never been lower; faith in their competence is approaching nil. Democratic states cannot function properly in such circumstances. To see what is happening, look at what the polling organisations report.

from politicoz ….

Chinese consortium Shandong Ruyi is seeking to buy Australia's largest cotton farm, Cubbie Station, and the purchase now has the approval of the government.

On 19 August an IED strike took the lives of three New Zealand troops in Afghanistan.  Lost were Corporal Luke Tamatea, 31, Private Richard Harris, 21, and Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, 26, medic.

Jacinda was the first New Zealand female killed in Afghanistan.

Desmond Tutu has helped us see the true nature of what the former prime minister did to Iraq and increased pressure for a prosecution.

from Crikey …..

Five Australians died in Afghanistan the other day. It is time to bring the troops home now. Why wait till 2014? Nothing will have changed. If we cut and run now rather than in 2014 we will save Afghan and Australian lives.

These soldiers are dying for the ANZUS insurance policy.

It is not just Afghanistan. It is Iraq. It is refugees drowning at sea or suiciding in detention centres. It is building workers dying on unsafe sites. It is young gay people killing themselves because of systemic homophobia. It is our Aboriginal brothers and sisters dying 17 years earlier than us. It is them being beaten to death in lock ups. It is the ongoing genocide against indigenous people, for example the Intervention and the theft of their land for the mining companies.

The United States flew highly classified Global Hawk spy drone missions from the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh in South Australia from late 2001 until at least 2006.

The operations were detected by a group of Adelaide aviation historians who had a member monitoring aircraft radio frequencies 20 hours a day.

Too many Coalition frontbenchers are invisible - or worse.

NEITHER our Prime Minister nor our Opposition Leader is popular. That shouldn't worry us at all. Governing a country and taking it to a better place is not a popularity contest.

Would you like an upgrade? Please come into the chairman's lounge for some free food and soothing muzak. And let us know if we can give you an iPad - to keep.