Today's surprise rise in the country's growth figures has prompted a war of words in Federal Parliament over what exactly is responsible for the jump.

The increase in growth of 0.4 per cent for the March quarter means that Australia has avoided falling into a technical recession.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the growth would not have happened without the Government's economic stimulus measures, including cash handouts and infrastructure spending.

Dick Cheney continues to insist that "enhanced interrogation" kept Americans safe and, until now, has had some success pushing this nonsense. But if you examine the timeline for Abu Zubaydah from the time he was captured until he was subjected to American-style torture you will realize that Dick Cheney is completely, utterly full of shit.

With the stroke of a pen Tuesday, Obama created the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission, an 11-person panel that will plan and carry out activities to mark the 100th anniversary, in 2011, of the president's birth.

His widow, Nancy, watched as Obama signed the bill in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

The Federal Government says it will consider a request by the US President, Barack Obama, for Australia to resettle some of the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

It is believed the request was made a week ago by the US embassy to the Prime Minister's senior adviser on foreign affairs, defence and national security, Philip Green.

It is the third request by the US  but the first by Mr Obama for Australia to help close down the prison camp set up by the Bush administration to house captives in the so-called "war on terrorism''.

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

On 27 December, 2008, Israel launched a wide-scale military offensive against the population and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Operation 'Cast Lead' lasted 23 days and was the biggest Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip in nearly 42 years of occupation. 1,414 Palestinians were killed, including 313 children.1 The evidence obtained by PCHR strongly indicates that the overwhelming majority of these victims were civilians.

Here, a man called Glenn Beck is 10 seconds into his daily talkshow, and already he's reached a rolling boil. "What are the mainstream media missing?" he wonders, bounding onstage like the Duracell Bunny. "I mean, besides EVERYTHING? You are not going to BELIEVE some of the crap that's going on in the world today!"

The theft of public money by Members of Parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the "leak." Why?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened his nation's first military base in the Gulf Tuesday, boosting the naval presence along strategic oil routes and in pirate-infested waters off the Somali coast.

The new naval base outside the United Arab Emirates' capital, Abu Dhabi, is France's first major foreign military installation since the 1960s and its first outside Africa. It is expected help safeguard vital Persian Gulf shipping lanes. It also puts France in position to play a higher profile role in calming the growing tensions between Iran and Gulf Arab states.

from Crikey .....

By 2010, ASIO will have doubled in size

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

It's been a fairly tame Estimates hearings so far. Only those with patience and a remarkable capacity to stay alert for hours on end will have gained anything. And I'm talking about all the participants, from senators to bureaucrats to journalists.

from Crikey .....

Israel's "useful idiots" in the Australian media

Greg Barns writes:

Back in the days when the hammer and sickle flew proudly, the Soviet Union would spend big dollars on paying for journalists, academics and diplomats to see for themselves the "workers' paradise". It was part of a long term and relentless strategy by the Communists to win the propaganda war against the West.

"One of the great attractions to patriotism, it fulfils our worst wishes. In the person of a nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat while feeling we're profoundly virtuous." Aldous Huxley

Iraq ............... 1,300,000

Afghanistan ....       35,000

Pakistan .........        5,500    

Vietnam ......... 

Guatemala .....

Chile .....

Honduras .....

Philippines ....

The hypocrisy of our politicians is simply breathtaking ....

Between 1945 & 1992, the US conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests & mounted two nuclear attacks on the defenceless civilian populations of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

from Crikey .....

AFR defends the indefensible on bank fees

Adam Schwab writes:

Australia's leading banking journalist, the Financial Review's Andrew Cornell, undertook a valiant, albeit flawed defence of banking exception fees yesterday.