Last night I attended a training session for Human Rights Monitors volunteers. Dale was brilliant, coaching us on how to observe an event as a team, telling us what kind of questions we could hope to get from police, reinforcing our neutral standpoint. Through his efforts much harm might be averted.

The volunteers came from all walks of life; a fair few lawyers, students, nurses, ages ranging from eighteen to forty;

We'll be the ones wearing bright orange vests, videoing and writing down what we see happening around us.

Here's what the NSW Police expect us to see.:

[AGE extract]

Bushit claims that al-Anbar province in Iraq had been written-off to al-Qaeda some six or eight months ago.

Continuing the outhouse’s usual propaganda, bushit continued to justify the butchery in Iraq by linking it to 911.

"Yes, it's a very bad poll for the Coalition ... I recognise that," Mr Howard told Sky News today.

"What it does though is to encourage me, enthuse me to work even harder to convince the Australian public that the future prosperity and security of this country would be better under a Coalition government."

Forty years ago, Aboriginal Australians were recognised (by Anglo-Australians) as Australian citizens. Many Australians, including Aboriginal Australians, thought the days of racism and dispossession in Australia were numbered. They were wrong. Aboriginal Australians remain a marginalised community, unprotected from colonial ideology and laws that violate basic human rights.

Bush hails success on trip to Iraq

US President George W Bush raised the possibility of a reduction in US troops in Iraq during a flying visit to the war-ravaged nation en route to the APEC conference in Sydney.

But he insisted combat force levels would be decided based on the recommendations of his commanders in Iraq, and not by "nervous" politicians in the Democratic-led US Congress.

Life in claustrophobic Baghdad 'jail ....

Thousands of volunteers - all Sunni Arabs - have been stepping forward and offering to protect their own neighbourhoods. Some are former insurgents who have switched sides.

Others are young unemployed men who have had enough of the violence.

It is a remarkable turn-around that so many now want to co-operate with the Americans, the very people they had previously been trying to kill.

Few average Americans have been changed, however, by what the CIA does in our name. Blame that on the tight official secrecy that continues over how the CIA extracts information. On July 20, the Bush administration issued a new executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using these techniques - without disclosing anything about them.

On Monday, President Bush will visit Australia to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The White House is using the trip to try to influence the Australian election, where Bush’s good friend John Howard is pitted in a contest against Labor leader Kevin Rudd.

Howard was an early supporter of the Iraq invasion and has remained one of Bush’s few solid foreign allies. Prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Howard weighed in, claiming a Bush reelection was needed in order to “stay and finish the job” in Iraq.

Paul Keating, the former prime minister and architect of the current APEC structure, said those complaining should "grow up, count yourselves lucky".

"Here you have leaders representing 60 per cent of the world gross domestic product, a massive power grouping, coming to your city to discuss world affairs, and we think it's a bother? Really?" he told the Herald. "Look who's here - the President of the US, the President of China, the Prime Minister of Japan, the President of Indonesia, the President of Russia.

Cabinet ministers have launched a robust defence of Britain's role in Iraq, rebuffing American criticism that UK forces had failed in their mission.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, took the unusual move of writing an editorial in the Washington Post yesterday, insisting that Britain was on track to hand over Basra to Iraqi authorities "within months".

It's worth comparing the vital statistics (though not on CNN or Fox News): Syria has accepted almost one and a half million Iraqi refugees - caring for them, providing them with welfare and free hospital services - while Washington, when it isn't cursing Iraq's prime minister, has accepted a measly 800 Iraqis.