I spent 23 years in the CIA. I drafted or was involved in many of the government's most senior assessments of the threats facing our country. I have devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat. 

We rightly honor as heroes those who serve our nation and offer their lives to protect ours. We all 'support the troops.' Yet the first step for any commander is to understand the enemy.

Iran has condemned US presidential candidate John McCain for his remark that one way of killing Iranians was to export cigarettes to Iran, the official news agency IRNA reports. 

Iran Condemns McCain Over Ciggy Remarks

It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1m under George Bush's administration. 

The brouhaha surrounding the Iran issue has been taken up several notches on account of this missile launch, but let’s look at how much of a real danger it really poses.

The word began spreading across Wall Street trading desks on Monday morning: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant companies at the heart of the nation’s housing market, might be in trouble. 

The following statement from Leonard Peltier was read at the Oglala Commemoration.  

June 26, 2008 

Greetings my relatives, 

For five years, from 1995 to 2000, Wendy Craik, 58, was executive director of the National Farmers' Federation. Four years ago John Howard's government appointed her executive director of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission.  

A year later it appointed the National Party's battle-scarred political warrior, Ian Sinclair, 79, the commission's part-time president. Both Craik and Sinclair are still there. Taxpayers fund Craik's annual salary, now $340,000.

A major development unfolded this week, with Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki floating, for the first time, a call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.  

from Crikey ….. 

Morris Iemma is an ex-premier, bereft of life, no more, etc.  

Alex Mitchell writes: 

Blood and Oil has several important advantages over Klare’s earlier and well-researched book.  

First, the 52-minute presentation is tight, clear, and well-integrated – suitable for home use, classroom use, independent and even corporate television broadcast. 

Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

Anyone with any knowledge of Iran's history and culture will know that it will not be bribed or bullied into doing what the West wants.

It has no reason to trust Western promises, and having endured the suffering of the Iran-Iraq War, is unlikely to buckle under any pressure, military or economic, that the West would be prepared to impose.

Tony Abbott today pointed to the premiere of the ABC's The Hollowmen as an indication of how the Rudd Government has performed in its first year in office. 

Mr Abbott was sentimental about the Howard legacy and quoted Margaret Thatcher as he spoke of his plans for a new book, to be released next year under the working title Conservatism After Howard, outlining his ideas for what he calls 'evolutionary conservatism'.

from the SMH …..

Paul Borg and Barry Oakley (Letters, July 8) are worried about the various reactions to World Youth Day. The Prime Minister wants us to show respect to the Pope.  

Organisers had been expecting 150 people, but instead a rowdy crowd of about 1,000 has turned up to a meeting on the presence of convicted pedophile Dennis Ferguson in their Brisbane community. 

Police Minister Judy Spence and Acting Police Commissioner Kathy Rynders were shouted down by the crowd at the meeting in Carbrook, a suburb on Brisbane's southern fringes, last night.