Australia is in the box seat to crack the US sugar market, leaked trade documents show. But, in return, it may have to allow US companies to sue Australian governments in international tribunals, a concession it has not been willing to make until now.

It is still not clear why Tony Abbott seems determined to trash Australia’s hard-won reputation as a good citizen of the world, but there can be no doubt that he no longer cares what our erstwhile friends and neighbours think of us – provided that he can achieve his short term domestic objectives.

from Mike Carlton ….

John Pilger: Apartheid Did Not Die

Video

Apartheid Did Not Die is a 1998 Carlton Television documentary, written and presented by John Pilger, which was directed and produced by Alan Lowery, which provides analysis of South Africa's then new, democratic government.

There was a time young Americans would stitch a Canadian flag on their backpacks and pretend to be Canadian so they would not be blamed for the awful things being done by their government.

It may now be time for Australian travellers to pretend to be New Zealanders, though the flag trick would probably not work.

His smile was like sunshine, but Nelson Mandela was made of steel. It was his strength of character, repeatedly tested throughout his long and impossibly full life, that made him one of the towering political figures of our time.

No secret, compelling need for inquiry

The Abbott Family

Australia's debt ceiling will be scrapped altogether after the Greens struck a deal with the Coalition Government to break the impasse over increasing the debt limit.

I believe one of the books that George Brandis has in his collection of tomes bought at the government expense is 1984... He and the rest of the Abbott government are of course on the wrong side of Orwell's concepts.

from Crikey ….

the war on whistleblowers – it’s come to Australia …..

Everything the mainstream media thought they knew about the Thomson case has been thrown on its head by Day Two of the trial. Will it last until Day Four? Peter Wicks reports.