So a handful of trans-national corporations, backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are aggressively taking over the management of public water services in countries around the world, dramatically raising the price of water to the local residents and profiting especially from the Third World’s desperate search for solutions to its water crisis.

Some are startlingly open; the decline in freshwater supplies and standards has created a wonderful venture opportunity for water corporations and their investors, they boast.

Scientists baffled by arrival of rare seals

Taronga Zoo marine specialists are fighting to save the life of the second Antarctic leopard seal to be washed up on a Sydney beach in a week.

Found stranded yesterday morning at Clontarf, the gravely ill female had been badly mauled by a cookie-cutter shark. The zoo is already nursing a male leopard seal that was found on Tuesday last week on a beach at Wattamolla in the Royal National Park: it had also been attacked by a cookie-cutter shark.

President George W. Bush is fond of reminding us that no terrorist attacks have occurred on domestic soil since 9/11. But has the Administration's "war on terror" actually made us safer? According to the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, al-Qaeda has fully reconstituted itself in Pakistan's northern border region.

Terrorist attacks worldwide have grown dramatically in frequency and lethality since 2001. New terrorist groups, from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia to the small groups of young men who bombed subways and buses in London and Madrid, have multiplied since 9/11.

Having just returned from Sydney and literally stood in front of the imposition of martial law in Sydney, and witnessed the spin both governments have used to vindicate police tactics in Sydney, I'm not surprised how Howard's Henchmen are attemting to influence by propaganda the Australian public's interpretation of the forthcoming Petraus report.

It looks like our foreign minister is using the "information" gathered by these journos as "evidence" of coalition success in Iraq.

[SMH extract]

Australia has expressed hope that the United States will soon be able to start reducing troop numbers in Iraq as the result of what the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, yesterday described as the success of the so-called surge in American personnel during the past eight months.

The Premier of New South Wales,

Mr Morris Iemma,

Parliament House,

SYDNEY. NSW. 2000.

Dear Mr Premier,

"No American President Can Stand Up to Israel"

These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.

Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.

‘a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal’, without targets.

Remember that joke film clip that President Bush made for the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in 2004 wherein he made a mockery of the search for WMD's...looking under a chair in the Oval Office and so forth?

Well, it turns out that that was about as seriously as he took the CIA and their intelligence that there were no WMD's in Iraq before he sent us to war.

Russia uranium deal makes good sense: Downer

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says the nuclear safeguards agreement signed today with Russia paves the way for the export of at least $1 billion worth of uranium a year.

The agreement has yet to be ratified by federal Parliament and by Russia's Duma.

It stipulates that Australian uranium cannot be sold on to any other nations or used for weapons.

Perhaps the most ridiculous statement to have emerged from the neo-conservative regime that runs the Republican Party is that bin Laden and his gang of terrorists murdered thousands of innocent Americans because "they hate our freedoms." If you are a Fox News Channel viewer or a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage/Michael Medved radio show listener you have probably heard this refrain at least 10,000 times.

But Americans were much freer decades ago, before the governmental Leviathan became as gargantuan as it is now. Why didn’t Muslim terrorists attack us then, if they hate our freedom so much? Whey did they wait until 2001?

11 charged over Chaser APEC stunt

Eleven people from the ABC TV program The Chaser's War on Everything have been charged with offences under the new APEC legislation.

Eight ABC cast and crew members and three hired drivers have been charged with entering a restricted area without justification.

The group was arrested after staging a fake motorcade through Sydney's CBD and were stopped near the InterContinental Hotel where US President George W Bush is staying.

Kevin Rudd -

Labor’s Mandarin-speaking leader Kevin Rudd upstaged John Howard today in a show of linguistic one-upmanship at a state lunch for China's President Hu Jintao.

The Prime Minister's own speech went down well. But when Mr Rudd started addressing the leader of one quarter of the world's population, fluently in his own tongue, the effect was stunning.

US report slams security in Iraq

There has been another sobering assessment about Iraq, with a new report saying the country's security forces will not be able to operate on their own within the next 18 months.

The independent study was done by 20 retired senior military officers and chiefs of police at the request of the US Congress.

It says while the Iraqi Army shows promise, it will not be able to take over security on its own within the next 12 to 18 months.