Monday 11th of November 2024

Blogs

out for a duck .....

out for a duck .....
"A vote for me is a vote for the coalition.”

a retiring john winston rattus

the great reversurgerator.....

the great reversurgerator .....

Embracing Iraqi interests would mean giving up the Washington dream of a wide-open, Wild-West, virtually unregulated Iraqi economy bloated with energy revenues and ripe for the picking by international investors. Two out of three Iraqis want their energy sector -- the source of 90 percent of the country's revenues -- to be developed by the state. But the United States didn't invade Iraq just to have another Arab country with massive oil reserves controlled by a state oil company and huge subsidies propping up its citizens. So the conflict will continue.

going down with the ship .....

going down with the ship .....

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled,
And a staggering piece of insight
Kept running around in his head.

When the flame of truth hits the ship of state
And the tides of time are turning,
They tend to bucket the captain
When the ship is what is burning.

Bruce Petty, 1972

all smoke & mirrors .....

 

all smoke & mirrors .....

Hockey dismisses 'flawed' WorkChoices findings

The Federal Government has rejected the findings of a new report into the impact of WorkChoices in services industries.

The study by Sydney University's Workplace Research Centre found that on average the earnings of retail workers have fallen 18 per cent and hospitality workers by 12 per cent, since the introduction of WorkChoices.

team rattus .....

team rattus .....

This is what they call "teamwork"?

Mr Costello said he had not spoken to any colleagues in the past week to offer his services as leader if Mr Howard stepped aside.

"The meetings didn't involve me & I didn't know they were taking place,'' he said.

"This Government is a team & the team is led by John Howard & me.”

I Started It, Says PM

a loopy lapdog .....

a loopy lapdog .....

Yesterday, bushit’s latest loopy lapdog, General David Betrayus, lied to the world.

He used faulty statistics & cherry-picked intelligence to argue that American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Betrayus said we're making major progress & we have to stay the course. Sadly, independent assessments show that things in Iraq have gone from bad to worse (see below for more on how Betrayus stretched the truth).

water futures .....

water futures .....

So a handful of trans-national corporations, backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are aggressively taking over the management of public water services in countries around the world, dramatically raising the price of water to the local residents and profiting especially from the Third World’s desperate search for solutions to its water crisis.

Some are startlingly open; the decline in freshwater supplies and standards has created a wonderful venture opportunity for water corporations and their investors, they boast.

vail serventy .....

vail serventy .....

Scientists baffled by arrival of rare seals

Taronga Zoo marine specialists are fighting to save the life of the second Antarctic leopard seal to be washed up on a Sydney beach in a week.

Found stranded yesterday morning at Clontarf, the gravely ill female had been badly mauled by a cookie-cutter shark. The zoo is already nursing a male leopard seal that was found on Tuesday last week on a beach at Wattamolla in the Royal National Park: it had also been attacked by a cookie-cutter shark.

missing in action .....

missing in action .....

President George W. Bush is fond of reminding us that no terrorist attacks have occurred on domestic soil since 9/11. But has the Administration's "war on terror" actually made us safer? According to the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, al-Qaeda has fully reconstituted itself in Pakistan's northern border region.

Terrorist attacks worldwide have grown dramatically in frequency and lethality since 2001. New terrorist groups, from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia to the small groups of young men who bombed subways and buses in London and Madrid, have multiplied since 9/11.

Blowin in the Wind

Having just returned from Sydney and literally stood in front of the imposition of martial law in Sydney, and witnessed the spin both governments have used to vindicate police tactics in Sydney, I'm not surprised how Howard's Henchmen are attemting to influence by propaganda the Australian public's interpretation of the forthcoming Petraus report.

It looks like our foreign minister is using the "information" gathered by these journos as "evidence" of coalition success in Iraq.

[SMH extract]

Australia has expressed hope that the United States will soon be able to start reducing troop numbers in Iraq as the result of what the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, yesterday described as the success of the so-called surge in American personnel during the past eight months.

APEC .....

APEC .....

The Premier of New South Wales,

Mr Morris Iemma,

Parliament House,

SYDNEY. NSW. 2000.

Dear Mr Premier,

the peculiar relationship .....

the peculiar relationship .....

"No American President Can Stand Up to Israel"

These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.

Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.

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