There are experts. And then there are experts. When it comes to Islam and/or national security, these days just about anyone can pass themselves off as an expert. But how do the real experts behave? 

Some months back, a number of Muslims in Australia and New Zealand were approached by a leading expert in political Islam. William Shepard is a retired associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Labor commits to new global warming deal 

The Federal Opposition says it is willing to commit to a new international greenhouse gas emissions target, even if big polluters like China and the United States do not sign up. 

On the critical issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program, Tehran and Washington are now engaged in a game of geopolitical chicken, which favors hard-liners on both sides, making compromise more difficult, escalation more likely and war - by accident, if not by design - a greater possibility than before.  

Labor says Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey's admission the government is running a fear campaign over ALP union links exposes its fearmongering ahead of the election. 

Launching a new round of Liberal advertising attacking Labor's union links, Mr Hockey told reporters: "Our fear campaign is based on fact.'' 

After four years watching the disastrous consequences of the invasion of Iraq unfold, it's easy to forget the atmosphere of panic in which the war was sold to the American public.

The main U.S. disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a news briefing on California's wildfires that no journalists attended. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing. 

from Crikey On November 1 last year, The SMH carried a front page interview with Peter Costello in which the Treasurer said the commodities boom was over.  

Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general ran into trouble Thursday when two top Senate Democrats said their votes hinge on whether he will say on the record that an interrogation technique that simulates drowning is torture.  

The Prime Minister's curious facial twitch during the not-so-great debate on Sunday evening set the radio talkback phone lines ringing on Monday. Some people called it a spasm. Others thought he'd been about to drop from a heart attack. 

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new "Armageddonites," fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about. 

Mr Cheney made his remarks in a wide-ranging foreign policy speech during a conference on Middle East policy hosted by The Washington Institute, a research organization. During the 25-minute talk, he also took aim at Syria, accusing it of using “bribery and intimidation” to influence the upcoming elections in Lebanon, and made the case, as he has in the past, for the administration’s muscular approach in prosecuting terror suspects.

US troops in Iraq are not an occupying army. At least not technically: not legally.

Coalition troops are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government & that's important because being an occupier brings with it a host of rights & responsibilities under international law.