Montalto is the high peak above Thomas Jefferson's little mountain of Monticello. From this lofty perch you can see Jefferson's life shaped in the land. Far to the right, in the valley, there's the third president's boyhood home, Shadwell.

As you gaze on Monticello itself, 400 feet below and almost a mile distant, you observe the brick Palladian villa. This is not the predominant element. That prize goes to the vegetable garden, a 1,000-foot-long terrace, 80 feet wide, suggesting Noah's ark perched post-flood on Mount Ararat.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, has condemned the Government's new bikie laws as "very troubling legislation" that could lead to a police state and represent "another giant leap backwards for human rights and the separation of powers - in short, the rule of law".

Mr Cowdery's warning comes after a second wave of anti-bikie laws passed through Parliament this week, this time providing for penalties of up to five years' jail for members of a proscribed gang who "recruited" members.

Barack Obama will revive the heavily criticised George Bush-era military tribunals for detainees at Guantánamo Bay but will make them fairer, according to US officials.

Obama suspended the tribunals within hours of taking office in January, ordering a review of the military commission system. But he stopped short of abandoning the process altogether.

These are the photos the American Government doesn't want you to see.....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11944.htm

Recall that immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials put out the official version of what had motivated the terrorists. "They hate America for its freedom and values," they cried. The anger and hatred that had motivated the attackers had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy, U.S. officials claimed.

Pope Benedict XVI upset the schedule on his first day in Israel by leaving an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem early on Monday night after a leading Muslim cleric called on him to condemn the "slaughter" of women and children in the recent assault on Gaza.

The pontiff walked out, a spokesman noted, because Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi's speech was a "direct negation" of dialogue and damaged the Pope's efforts at "promoting peace".

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has alleged that elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a US operator who had tried to destabilise his late wife Benazir Bhutto's government back in 1989.

In fact, as premier Bhutto had "warned America about Osama bin Laden in 1989 with a call to then US president George H. Bush", Zardari said on NBC's Meet the Press programme Sunday.

The Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, proposed a cigarette tax increase last night as he called the Government's early election bluff by announcing the Coalition would block one of the biggest revenue-raising measures in the budget.

from Crikey .....

Afghan War update: civilian assassinations, warlords and napalm like substance

Overland editor Jeff Sparrow writes:

Just when you think the war in Afghanistan can't become any more obscene, it suddenly does.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives says she was misled by the CIA about the use of harsh methods during terror interrogations.

Nancy Pelosi has been under pressure to clarify what she knew since one of her aides said she had been briefed in 2003 that the CIA had waterboarded suspects.

Critics say the methods amount to torture and that officials who authorised them should be prosecuted.

Ms Pelosi has herself condemned the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

from Crikey .....

UK terrorism laws are a failure

Greg Barns writes:

In the frenzied and irrational world that was post 9/11 politicians in the US, UK, Australia and other democracies told us that draconian anti-terror laws were needed to protect the community from further attacks by extremist Islamic terror networks.

President Barack Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops allegedly abusing prisoners, reversing his position after military commanders warned the graphic images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger soldiers.

The pictures show mistreatment of detainees at locations beyond the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

As an ideology, as public policy, laissez-faire capitalism is in crisis. Unlike in the 1930's, no alternative model is today available to replace it, which leads to the thought that what is presently playing out is perhaps more a reinvention of capitalism than its definitive disappearance. Can we imagine the return of a contemporary form of "liberal socialism"(2), or of a Walter Lippmann-style capitalism, named after that American intellectual whose theses were much-discussed during the 1930's?

As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.

The blonde joke is dead

Taliban stocks rise with the massacre of the Pashtuns

Benjamin Gilmour writes: