As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, might have been the first.

From the SMH

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has been branded "incredibly old-fashioned" for implying that housewives still do all the ironing.

Mr Abbott made the comment in a dry cleaners in the NSW town of Queanbeyan yesterday, as he warned of higher electricity prices under the government's emissions trading scheme.

from Crikey .....

A quarter-billion dollar rort and the media plays dead. Wonder why?

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

Gerard Alexander: Why are liberals [US democrats mostly] so condescending?

What's harder to understand is why these illegal actions, like virtually all the actions of the US military in Afghanistan, are largely ignored by the rest of the world. During Obama's recent State of the Union address, the war that will soon see some 75,000 Americans at the front got one scant paragraph. That was right after the president solemnly declared: "We've prohibited torture."

Try telling that to the Afghanis. 

The director of US national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad.

Assassinating Americans is just as illegal as assassinating non-Americans.

The leap here is not to victims of a different citizenship but to the legalization of murder.

http://www.alternet.org/story/145556/top_10_problems_with_america_killing_its_own_citizens

This story is particularly troubling. Ten white missionaries, from Idaho no less, went down to Haiti. In the chaos and the destruction, they just grabbed some young Haitian children and tried to leave the country with them. They were found out trying to cross the border into the Dominician Republic. Now, they are stuck in a Haitian prison, cloaking themselves in the "Lord's work."

Visiting British climate change commentator Christopher Monckton has attacked the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme (ETS), arguing part of it is unconstitutional.

Lord Monckton is using a speaking tour of Australia to question the need for countries to cut carbon emissions.

He told a gathering in Canberra that a provision in the ETS that allows the state to expropriate land is against the constitution.

I did try to sit through the Blair show. An unfortunate combination of Asiatic high emotion and feminine fragility made me feeble. I had to walk away, knocking over a large goblet of dark red wine, the colour of blood. It stained the beautiful wooden floor. From TB, then, the final words. I Did It My Way and Je ne regrette rien. So long folks. The Tory poster of Blair as the devil man now seems prescient.

Is it finally light at the end of the Afghan tunnel, or an oncoming express train?

Total confusion erupted last week as the US, NATO, the UN and the Kabul government all issued differing views on new plans to end the nine year Afghan war by bombarding Taliban with tens of millions in cash instead of precision bombs.

One thing is clear: the US and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan in spite of their fearsome arsenal of high-tech weapons and war chests of billions of dollars.

Lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen are living up to their legendary reputation of making Afghanistan the graveyard of empires.

from Crikey .....

Australia rolls out the welcome mat for war criminal retirees

Antony Loewenstein writes:

When Obama's elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending "a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building." These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an "indisputable part of Israel forever."

Tony Blair was heckled today as he refused to express any regret for the Iraq war and insisted Britain would ultimately be able to look back on the conflict with 'immense pride'. 

There were cries of consternation from witnesses watching the official inquiry into the conflict as the former prime minister rejected the chance to note his sorrow at the loss of British lives.

Chairman Sir John Chilcot had to tell audience members to be quiet during Mr Blair's closing comments, in which he insisted he stood by his actions in the run-up to the 2003 war, despite the 179 British troops killed in the conflict.