I find the legal machinations that governments have gone through over the last seven years, since 9/11 quite fascinating.

In Australia we had a period of time under Howard where the immigration minister did some things that were quite amazing and logic defying as well as humanitarian defying.

I just came across this article by an American lawyer that is truly amazing.

Here are a couple of pars:

"Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain's lawyers in August of 2004. We call it "the Document." It appeared in a stack of unclassified materials that the lawyers had requested from OFAC. Six weeks later, after the government realized its blunder, FBI agents personally visited each of the lawyers and made them return their copies of the Document. But the agents made no effort to retrieve copies that the lawyers had given to two members of Al-Haramain's board of directors, who lived outside the United States.

I can't publicly reveal what's in the Document because, well, it's a secret. I would be committing a crime -- a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 -- if I were to do so. But we assert the Document as proof of allegations we have made that in March and April of 2004 the National Security Agency conducted warrantless electronic surveillance of attorney-client communications between a representative of Al-Haramain and two of its attorneys, and that in May of 2004 the NSA gave logs of those surveilled communications to OFAC."

When you see stories like this one, you have to wonder how close we all are to a serious societal meltdown.

The UK government is meeting with supermarket chains to encourage them to stockpile basic foodstuffs in anticipation of supply chain failures caused by a national truckers' strike.

The big issue here is not the strikers but the fact that the infrastructure is totally reliant on one strand of the supply chain. And what do they say?: "We are only seven days food supply away from revolution"....

On the way home tonight from buying a new battery for my laptop from the Apple store in Woolongong I got caught in a traffic jam. It was at the end of Agar's Lane - about 2 or 3 k's from my house. I found out that the local pre-school teacher had come too fast into a corner where the council are doing some road work, and lost control of the car. The car skidded, hit an embankment and rolled. Fortunately the driver was ok.

The local fire brigade was at the scene doing traffic control while a tow truck manoeuvred to get the car right side up in order to tow it.

I got all this from one of the fire men as I was waiting.

We started to chat.

He told me that unknown to most of the people in NSW -  the state government changed the regulations a couple of years ago and that now the NSW Fire Brigade is not allowed to attend motor accidents that are outside of towns. They have deemed that the Bush Fire Brigade is to attend accidents on the highway outside of Berry, for instance, rather than the NSW Fire Brigade.

What this means is that if a car has an accident on the highway at say, Foxground, about 10k's outside Berry, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Bushies.

The problem is that the Bush Fire Brigade typically takes longer to get to the scene of a fire than the NSW Brigade because they have different performance criteria. They also have different equipment, and often have to call the NSW guys in after they have arrived. Bottom line is that the NSW guys have more equipment. And they also get paid. Clearly the NSW Government is penny pinching on costs and it is putting you and I at risk.

They are both volunteer organizations, but in the case of the NSW Fire Brigade, the guys get paid an hourly rate for their community service rather than being total volunteers.

A couple of years ago when there was an accident on the highway outside of Berry and the driver was incinerated. He died. There was a truck driver who called in the accident to the emergency phone line. The local NSW guys were ready to go within 8 minutes but couldn't attend. The Bush fire guys took over 20 minutes to get to the accident.

This is not to in any way put down the Bush Fire Brigade. They do a marvellous job. But according to the guy I was talking to the point is that all the NSW guys have to live within one k of the Fire Station, and the Bush guys don't. And they have the specialist equipment that is required for some of the more critical accidents.

This seems to be another case of the Iemma government trying to scrimp on costs and putting the public at risk.

Paul Keating called him recalcitrant. But Dr Mahatir Mohammed, the ex PM of Malaysia, certainly knows how to hit the rational high notes when he gets going...

Here he is talking about the US:

Why are they called theories when so many of them are actually facts?!

Here is a very interesting take. Why? Because it is really about the people who have been put into place to do things, rather than about the events themselves. When you get the people being appointed to positions of power it is rarely, if ever, by accident.

This story is about the guy who is Hank Paulson's chief of staff. Very interesting history he has too...

Who do you think was one of the Bush Administration's key players on the economy?

If you say Paulson or Bernanke, you might be half right. But there's another no-name lurking around in the background who tends to be doing the wrong thing at every key moment in the covert history of the Bush (or should we day "Bush League") Republic.

His name is Jim Wilkinson. He helped organize the GOP "protest"/obstruction of the Miami election recount in 2000. He was the White House's key media spinner at the Doha Coalition Media Center in 2003. A reporter from Texas said he used techniques first perfected by Stalin. He was an architect of the Republican convention in New York in 2004. He was later dispatched to keep an eye on, and act as "dissembler-in-chief" for Condi Rice.

But at a crucial moment in the history of the Western world, Mr. "I work in the shadows" Wilkinson became chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs embed in the Cabinet.

Read the rest of the story here.

Well, I moved to Berry in January, and I thought that I was going to be part of a beautiful small community where life just meanders on blissfully...

How was I to know that a proposed by pass to the town would change that...

The problem is that some residents on one side of town don't like the decision that the RTA has made about the building of a by pass road to take the trucking traffic away from the town. It seems like this is being driven by several people who are mainly from Sydney and who have weekend houses and are concerned about the proximity of the new road impacting their real estate values. One of the people is apparently connected to the Labour Party in Sydney and is trying to stir up discontent in the town and then motivate his buddies in Sydney.

Here is a video that was shown on State Line putting forward the views of the people who want the RTA study to stand.

William Wordsworth wrote sometime in the 1800's:

The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers...

I remember the quote from school some 50 odd years ago - so hopefully it is right.

But the point is that it so true of us today. We are all pre-occupied with spending, with self, and not with what is really happening.

What is really happening is that Dick Cheney and his buddy, George, are moving the world ever closer to not just another war, which would be bad enough, but a nuclear war.

And whether Iran is good, bad or indifferent, nuclear is not an option in my book. Nor is another unprovoked first strike on another country.

Here is what Paul Craig Roberts has to say about it. (He was the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury during Reagan's time in the WH). Its worth reading the whole article...

The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression--a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran."

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans."

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney’s visit with the kingdom’s rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors."

And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney’s planned attack on Iran.

The Iranians don’t seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases and Saudi oil fields.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney’s long-planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government’s explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats’ refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.

Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack" on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime’s claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Hitler’s lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for many months.

Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime’s case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime’s desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.

If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electricity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime’s lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.

In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.

Just as the world could not believe Hitler’s next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran’s only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi’ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr’s Iraqi Shi’ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi’ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation.

On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler’s planned attack against Poland, Cheney’s attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs’ dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.

Last night an old friend of my wife stayed overnight. They knew each other back when they were both doing PR in the music business.

The friend has been working in Canberra for some years now, for the Federal Government. (Even the Government needs PR!)

She remarked about the change from Liberal to Labour and how it has personally affected her. There was an internal announcement that the minister would be visiting the office so everyone should be on their toes. The staff was expecting the minister, as was the norm during the Howard years, to walk past all the offices and go into the senior bureaucrat's office for a meeting. Surprise, surprise. Julia Gillard went up to each person in the office, shook hands and introduced herself. And then told each person that if she wanted information on a specific topic that they should be prepared to be called directly to provide that information. Direct, personal, non-threatening and totally refreshing.

And more pointedly this comes after apparently a lengthy period during the Howard years, where there has been a growing level of needing to comply with a political imperative in order to ensure that annual bonuses were available to staffers - corruption of intent, if not provable, illegal behavior.

Apparently Penny Wong has done the same thing. As I would expect all other ministers. Strong work ethic, smart people working to generate a new sense of what is right in the legislative capital of Australia.

Now all we have to do is to kick out labour in New South Wales so that the state can recover from the same indigence that developed under the Liberals in Canberra.

All political parties are the same it seems. All run by people who get in power because they provide a shining light of honesty, truth and righteousness. But after a while the rot sets in and they fall in love with the free travel, the commonwealth cars, the gofers and the huge pension plans that come with the job. 

Interesting story about John Edwards in The Guardian. I'm  not sure whether it was placed by people who are pro-Edwards or anti-Edwards. Maybe Edwards is trying to position himself as a VP for either Obama or Clinton - as the left winger to balance their right wing tendencies, particularly Clinton...

John Howard was, for whatever reason, what seemed to be a slavish follower of George Bush.

Read this essay called Bad, Worse, Worst to get one person's view on what is wrong with Bush and the American Presidency.

What is interesting about it is the concept that Bush wants government programs to fail so that they can be privatized. To me that is one of the legacies of the Howard government in Australia. Let's hope that under a new government this will not continue.

Here is a sample of the essay:

    A government program that actually and effectively serves the people is an intolerable thing to George, because that is the single best argument against privatization. If we know anything at all after all these gruesome years, it is that Bush simply will not tolerate the existence of any fact or idea that might disrupt the spinning, clanking, gear-grinding clockwork inside that craven pretzel-dented bone-sack that wobbles above his spindled, slumping shoulders. If he doesn't already believe in something, or if something contradicts the popsicle-stick infrastructure of his beliefs, whatever it is can basically go to Hell, because it isn't going anywhere else.

    He vetoed those bills because they were going to work, period, end of file.