Figuring that if Australia has 36%, and South Australia has three quarters of that, then our state must surely, apart from any other reason, be one of the most stragegically important places in the world.

How could any self-professed superpower feel anything but duty-bound to protect such an important asset, especially if it might one day depend on the ore for its survival ?  What an Achilles Heel the place could become if it's defence was left to the natives.

So we get B-2s on bombing simulations from Guam, a run of "joint trining exercises" that will turn parts of the State into simulations of the Persan Gulf and Afghanistan, Christ knows what monitoring the desert from just outside our vertical territory limit of 100km.

‘Recently, while watching Robert Greenwald's new film, "Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers," I began to grasp the enormous scope and implications of the corporate takeover of the war in Iraq. I asked myself, Why isn't this a huge issue for Americans of all political stripe? After all, making money off war, while American soldiers are dying, strikes many people as just plain wrong.

It's all in Greenwald's film: American tax dollars paying for the enormous profits enjoyed by a gaggle of well-connected companies that have revolving doors with the military and the U.S. government. Wars waged in our name creating ballooning CEO salaries, gigantic waste, and the loss of control of the role of the military. But the viewer is unprepared for the really shocking realization; the lives of hardworking, patriotic Americans are sacrificed, stupidly and callously, and soldiers are put in unnecessary danger all to make a buck - many, many bucks.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The episodes of Doctor Who that were screened on the weekends surrounding 6/6/06 concern the freeing of an ancient Beast from beyond the dawn of time.

The story, currently being broadcast in Australia, must have made many more people aware of the possible symbolism of the date than if it had been broadcast at another time. To achieve this would have required a considerable timespan of forward planning, and you have to wonder whether the writers and producers were simply timing for dramatic effenct and publicity or whether they may have been attempting to alert the populace to vigiliance of possible psychological manipulation of events emenating from that point in time.

‘This is a terrible story. Thomas Ricks, the highly respected Washington Post defence correspondent, could not be further from the grotesque antics of Michael Moore, yet his scrupulous account of the disaster in Iraq will fill the reader with anger. His research confirms how some extremely clever neo-cons in Bush’s circle were blinded by arrogance and ideological obstinacy. The degree of their irresponsibility, intellectual dishonesty, incompetence and lack of imagination is almost beyond belief. Virtually every decision they took has played straight into the hands of the West’s deadliest enemies.

from our ABC .....

Howard reassures growers on banana imports

Prime Minister John Howard has re-assured banana growers in far north Queensland that restrictions on the import of fresh fruit will not be relaxed.

The banana industry is seeking urgent talks today with the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service over the importation of frozen processed bananas from Vietnam, though authorities say these pose no quarantine risk.

From Antiwar.com

Blindly Backing Israel Against Iran
by Gordon Prather

Well, that tears it.

First we had Dick Cheney - the most powerful Vice-President we've ever had - nonchalantly tell a radio talk-show host just hours before the Bush-Cheney second inaugural: "Well, one of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it [that is, attack and destroy Iran's IAEA-safeguarded facilities] without being asked; that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability - given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel - the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

‘If you control the language, you control the debate. As the Bush Administration's Middle Eastern policy sinks ever deeper into bloody incoherence, the "war on terror" has been getting a quiet linguistic makeover. It's becoming the "war on Islamic fascism." The term has been around for a while - Nexis takes it back to 1990, when the writer and historian Malise Ruthven used "Islamo-fascism" in the London Independent to describe the authoritarian governments of the Muslim world; after 9/11 it was picked up by neo-cons and pro-war pundits, including Stephen Schwartz in the Spectator and Christopher Hitchens in this magazine, to describe a broad swath of Muslim bad guys from Osama to the mullahs of Iran.

From our ABC .....

US transfers control of Abu Ghraib prison

An Iraqi government spokesman says the US military has transferred control of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi authorities and the "prison is now empty of any detainees or prisoners".

"The Abu Ghraib prison has been officially handed over yesterday (Friday) by the coalition forces to the Iraqi forces and the prison is currently under the Iraqi administration," spokesman Ali al-Dabaqh said.

While he predicted victory, resurrecting a word he had dropped months ago
and using it 12 times in a 44-minute speech, Mr. Bush also cautioned that the road ahead would be fraught with obstacles.

But he put particular emphasis on what he said would be the consequences of a failure to ensure Iraq's stability, saying: "If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities."

‘George W. Bush has been faulted in some quarters for taking an extended vacation while the Middle East festers. It doesn't much matter; the man running the country is Vice President Dick Cheney.

When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney's unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice. Cheney's shotgun mishap, when he accidentally sprayed his host with birdshot, has gotten more media attention than has his control of the government.

When Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar and a "cast of thousands" of Australian dignitaries launched the Adelaide-Darwin in early 2004 everybody was talking about what a boon to Australian exports Mr Cheney's conquest of the Australian desert would be.  Of course, nobody was talking about uranium at the time....

Well, the inevitable has happened, and we're going to see boxcars of yellowcake trundling from Adelaide to Darwin within the next few years,   Immediately following the announcement of opening of a new Australian uranium mine (at Honeymoon in South Australia's far north east