The Australian Labor Party (ALP) lost its majority in the Australian parliament in September this year, and had to cobble together a fragile coalition. One likely reason for this loss of power is the apparent ALP disunity when it suddenly and unexpectedly overthrew their Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and installed Julia Gillard, only weeks before the national elections (1). To add to the suspicion surrounding this infighting, no convincing explanation was given for this foolhardy action. According to the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, this coup was conducted by "faceless men" (1).

Just as american politicians want Bradley Manning executed because he revealed crimes of the US government, they want Julian Assange executed. In the past few days the more notorious of the dumbshits that sit in the US Congress have denounced Assange as a "traitor to america."

What total ignorance. Assange is an Australian, not an american citizen. To be a traitor to america, one has to be of the nationality. An Australilian cannot be a traitor to america any more than an american can be a traitor to Australia. But don't expect the morons who represent the lobbyists to know this much.

Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.

The cables portray Mr. Putin as enjoying supremacy over all other Russian public figures, yet undermined by the very nature of the post-Soviet country he helped build.

Even a man with his formidable will and intellect is shown beholden to intractable larger forces, including an inefficient economy and an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.

In language candid and bald, the cables reveal an assessment of Mr. Putin’s Russia as highly centralized, occasionally brutal and all but irretrievably cynical and corrupt. The Kremlin, by this description, lies at the center of a constellation of official and quasi-official rackets.

UK operations in Afghanistan are criticised in US State Department files released by the Wikileaks website, according to the Guardian.

The paper is one of several around the world carrying the latest data to be published by the whistle-blowing site.

It includes criticism of David Cameron and inappropriate remarks by the Duke of York about a law enforcement agency and foreign country, it says.

Publishing the files risks national security, the Foreign Office says.

However, former British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer said the leaks were merely embarrassing and would not "make any difference at all" in political terms.

picture by Andy Leonisky

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had a reputation for being suspicious and paranoid even before everyone was out to get him.

Everyone, in this case, is the US - where government lawyers are hoping to prosecute on espionage charges - and the European Union, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a Swedish rape investigation.

When one declares that his robes are the most beautiful, made of the finest silk, so glorious that they compete with the sun - sometimes a little blond-haired boy with a most serious look about him declares that it seems to him that the Emperor has no clothes! And we see, slowly at first, then an unstoppable surge of laughter and finger-pointing by the common people who, for all their ignorance and all their flaws, know enough to put on clothes before going out in public.

Red faces in Washington? Well yes, almost certainly, and probably in a significant number of other capitals too, not least in the Middle East where a series of leaders and senior figures in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi are quoted as urging Washington to bomb Iran's nuclear programme.

This avalanche of cables from the internal, supposedly secure e-mail switching system linking US embassies abroad with the state department and Pentagon in Washington is a nightmare for US diplomacy.

from Crikey .....

Electricity privatisation: Keneally piloting death star that is Labor

Candace Sutton, a former NSW government media adviser, writes: