Casting aside any hesitation about an aggressive interest rate cut, investors sent stocks soaring to their highest gains in five years on Tuesday as shares of financial firms surged in the hopes that the Federal Reserve has finally taken hold of the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 420 points. 

Adding to the litany of complaints about one of the nation's primary counter-terrorism safety nets, a Justice Department audit has concluded that the FBI provided the government-wide terrorism watch list with incomplete, inaccurate and outdated information about suspects for almost three years. 

Florida's Democratic Party chairwoman on Monday officially buried the possibility of redoing the state's disputed January presidential primary, saying there was no practical or affordable way to conduct a new election. 

US Vice-President Dick Cheney declared the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq a 'successful endeavour' during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people. 

'If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour ... and it has been well worth the effort,' Cheney, an architect of the invasion, said after meeting Iraqi leaders. 

America’s days as the world economic hegemon are winding down.  

The sad thing about this mess is that it was completely avoidable.  

from Crikey ….. 

Bear Stearns and the decline of American prestige 

Stephen Mayne writes: 

from Crikey ….. 

President Chickenhawk 

Jeff Sparrow writes: 

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice & Defence Secretary Robert Gates are due in Moscow today for talks with their Russian counterparts. 

The quite probable next president of the United States continues to demonstrate why we should all be very, very afraid.  

Did you ever lie awake worrying about the prospects of Dubya forgetting how to breathe one night and the world being subjected to the terrifying reality of President Cheney?  

With preparations begun for the first military-commissions trial for detainees at Guantanamo - six "high-level" prisoners who could get the death penalty - the customary attacks on the fairness of the proceedings there are mounting here and abroad.  

Adding to the discord is the refusal of Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser for the military commissions, to exclude any evidence against the defendants that has been extracted through waterboarding. 

Tony Blair is to lead a new international team to tackle the intractable problem of securing a global deal on climate change which would have the backing of China and America. 

The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with great success - the power that money and the - apparently unlimited - support of the United States government bestows.  

Almost everything seems to be going wrong for the American economy at once. People are buying less, but most things are costing more. Mortgage rates are rising, the dollar is falling and prices of key commodities like oil are leaping from one record high to the next. 

The moral bankruptcy of our new cardboard cutout Prime Minister has been revealed to all those with eyes that see. 

Yesterday, slavishly abetted by the feeble & inept ‘leader’ of the opposition, Brendan Nelson, Kevin Rudd perpetrated one of the most shameful & immoral acts ever committed in our nation’s Parliament, casting a stain on our country & its people. 

Five years since the conflict in Darfur began, BBC News website's World Affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds asks why international concern has not been translated into effective intervention. 

The deep concern about Darfur felt internationally has not been matched by a similar determination to intervene.