‘The British Labour Party apparatchiks have come a long
way in a few years. The upper reaches of the Labour Party lead lives that bear
no relationship to the lives of their supporters. To the leadership, playing
around with extravagant sums of dough is, well, just normal. Why do bus
drivers, office cleaners, schoolteachers, and gardeners fail to understand
this? 

The political classes in Britain
(and no doubt the US) are beneficiaries of double standards and condescension.
They preach to working people about the importance of hard work and of paying
ever-increasing taxes, yet play footsie under the table with those whose job it
is to provide advice on how to squirrel away their wealth and earnings. 

With St Patrick's Day falling on the eve of the South Australian election, I'm having a think before I go for a drink, and I'm thinking that this election campaign has turned into the worst kind of Irish joke.

The "bread and circuses" environment created by the combination of the Festival of Arts, the Fringe, WOMAD, the Adelaide Cup (moved for the first time into this month)  have contributed to a city-wide mild sense of euphoria that has dulled the population to the action, or lack thereof, in SA's political arena.

Hell, the Liberals only started advertising on the telly this week.  Did they believe that blitzing the Sunday night movies and The Simpsons was going to reverse the effect  of Labor's incessant  media campaign? The media preview of the ad even misspelled Labour with a "U". Do they really want to win?

‘Even as he was telling Iran not to produce nuclear
weapons, President Bush was urging Congress to pay for a new nuclear weapon
designed to destroy underground military facilities. 

Although
the nuclear "bunker-buster" is still on the drawing board, Iran can
be expected to charge the United States with atomic hypocrisy during the
current war of words.  

Does anyone even remember why we
went to war with Iraq? 

Wasn't it to remove Saddam and
capture the Weapons of Mass Destruction? 

Well Saddam was removed &
there were no WMDs. So, why are we still there? 

Oh, I forgot, with the Bush
administration, war, death & hundreds of billions dollars spent on
contracts with Halliburton & other war profiteers doesn't have to make sense.

‘Tom Fox understood the kind of devotion and service to
humanity, particularly to the poor and the oppressed, that wearing the garments
of Christianity required. Bush, a man born of wealth and privilege has no
conception about what it means to labor, to sacrifice and to serve others. He
is all about serving those of his kind—the enemies of peace, the violent
oppressors of the poor and the just. Bush, like his predecessors, is taking
from the poor and giving to the rich; he is fomenting violence and death all
over the world - his actions, his life, cannot be reconciled in any way with
the teachings of Jesus Christ. Bush is an apostle of class elitism, of wealth
and empire, not of god. 

‘Introducing the Human Rights
report, Secretary Rice said, "How a country treats its own people is a
strong indication of how it will behave toward its neighbors. The growing
demand for democratic governance reflects a recognition that the best guarantor
of human rights is a thriving democracy," with rights such as accountable
government and a free press. 

The report, released in
Washington March 8, reviewed human rights achievements and setbacks in some 190
countries and regions around the world. It called the human rights records of
key Arab allies poor or problematic, citing flawed elections and torture of
prisoners in Egypt, beatings, arbitrary arrest and lack of religious freedom in
Saudi Arabia, and floggings as punishment for adultery or drug abuse in the
United Arab Emirates. Iraq's performance was "handicapped" by
insurgency and terrorism that affected every aspect of life, the State
Department said. 

From the ABC ….. 

No
need for ads on the ABC: Labor 

The
Federal Opposition's communications spokesman says the Government should rule
out the introduction of advertising on the ABC.

‘March 20 is the third anniversary of the Bush regime's
invasion of Iraq. US military casualties to date are approximately 20,000
killed, wounded, maimed, and disabled. Iraqi civilian casualties number in the
tens of thousands. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins. Tens of thousands of
homes have been destroyed. Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people had 36,000 of its
50,000 homes destroyed by the US military. Half of the city's former population
are displaced persons living in tents. 

Thousands of Iraqis have been
detained in prisons and hundreds have been brutally tortured. America's
reputation in the Muslim world is ruined. 

From the ABC ….. 

During the speech,
Mr Bush accused Iran of contributing to the unrest in Iraq, saying some of the
homemade bombs that are wreaking havoc in the country came from Iraq's eastern
neighbour.

First Francis Fukuyama, then Tony
Blair & now, here it is: a soul searching speech from the rodent on Iraq –
as close to a mea culpa as we’re ever likely to get. Maybe he has been taking
too many red ones? 

John Howard's Address To
The Deakin Society 

From the NY Times …..

Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat

BERNARD E. TRAINOR
MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: March 12, 2006 

 Reprinted from Halliburton Watch:

WASHINGTON, March 11 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Halliburton's KBR
subsidiary may have over-billed the Navy for labor costs during
clean-up work in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, the Pentagon's
inspector general reported March 3rd. The report said KBR's subcontractors had been billing for
labor at rates "significantly higher" than the prevailing market rate.

Hurricane Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on September 16, 2004 as a Category 3 storm.

‘The biggest pitfall in predicting the behaviour of
radical groups like the inner circle of the Bush administration is that you
keep telling yourself that they would never actually do whatever it is they’re
talking about. Surely they must realize that acting like that would cause a
disaster. Then they go right ahead and do it. 

“(The Iranians) must know everything is on the table and
they must understand what that means,” U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
John Bolton told a group of visiting British politicians last week. “We can hit
different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their
nuclear operation to take the whole thing down.” In other words, he was calmly
proposing an illegal attack on a sovereign state, possibly involving nuclear
weapons.’ 

From
the ABC ….. 

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip have arrived in
Canberra to begin their five-day tour of Australia.

The crowd of several hundred cheered and waved English and
Australian flags as the royal couple stepped out of the plane.