Sixty percent of polled Australians say it's well nigh time our defence forces came home from the quagmire in Mesopotamia.

George W Bush has been quoted as claiming similarities between the current situation in Iraq with the Tet Offensive era during the Vietnam War. This is a major admission from the American administration that events in Iraq are clearly degrading and causing more than a little concern in Republican political circles.

Human remains - some reportedly as large as arm or leg bones -have been found at the site of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York.

Global warming is now clearly a real issue. Why do I say this? Well, it must be because John Howard is admitting so, judging by his subtle, but defined sidle up to the stance.

Unpredictable National Party Senator, Barnaby Joyce seems to be moonlighting on his constituents. He appears to be sidelining as a financial advisor.

A disturbing article in the Guardian concerning the reprehensible procedure known as ‘extraordinary rendition’. It’s not sufficient, in my mind, that this process is hinted at as having occurred or might have occurred. It happens. Present tense. Read the article and you’ll get a repetition of yet another tale of a human being being spirited away on a clandestine flight to a part of the world where normal standards of behaviour simply don’t exist. Where people…..human beings…..are treated as semi-sentient animals from whom information is to be extracted. What fascinates me more than anything else in regard to this disgusting process, is the collusion between supposed hated enemies. The US will align itself with whomever it needs to to achieve any unstated aim. Publically reviled enemy states like Syria are freely flirted with in this process of ‘extraordinary rendition’. This, above all else, is what makes the process of intelligence gathering in this manner all the more appalling.

As a member of the so-called civilised western society of humanity, I am appalled at such behaviour, yet I know full well many, many more, especially those in authority in the most powerful nations, are not. They sanction it! All the while they stand resolute, claiming that “American does not condone torture ”. So much bullshit! It’s a time-honoured understanding that America will do whatever America has to do to protect it’s own……even unto its own. The lines have become badly blurred and no ends is justified by the means.

I don’t care who you are or where you’re from. Who you’ve lost to what fundamentalist action in what time frame and under which government. When we surrender humanity and all it stands for, we’ve surrendered the right to call ourselves human beings. Condoning the behaviour I allude to above is tantamount to surrender.

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Truthdig - Reports - After Pat’s Birthday.

Read it. Honour the memory of a man who died believing what his country fed him. He died misled. He died a lie.

"It is a storm in a cup ... no worries, mate, in Australian“

No one can sack me, says defiant Hilali | News | The Australian.

Why is the Australian media so het up over the purported – translated no less – statements by a cleric of a religious sect which is a minority in this country?

So, if she isn't being pulled by a fresh opportunity, did McKew feel pushed by changing times at the ABC? A new managing director, Mark Scott, was appointed in July, and this month announced anti-bias guidelines for the broadcaster.

McKew quiet about life after Aunty | Media | The Australian.

Valid question, I’d suggest. Especially given Scott’s black-and-white view of media presentation and his reticence to be seen as anything but plain vanilla. In his recent speech to that doyen of conservative thinktankism, The Sydney Institute, Scott was quoted as stating his new editorial guidelines …

would encourage diversity "ensuring the ABC is the town square where debate can flourish and different voices [be] heard".

Clearly Scott doesn’t have a great opinion of current ABC journalism ethics. I’d say Maxine won’t be the last of the current crop of ABC journalists to seek other pastures in which to graze. Why dine where the food is always plain and boring?

CATHOLIC schools have raised fears of government interference in their religious affairs after John Howard pledged $90 million for school chaplains, a move the former premier, Bob Carr, called a retrograde and divisive threat to the separation of church and state.

Catholics and Carr wary of school chaplains plan - National - smh.com.au.

On initial assessment, my thoughts were that yet again, this Howard government is attempting to manipulate social mores in order to sway ideologies. It is a mark of this government, to install greater conservative influences within the base levels of society. Non-secular religious influences, conservative school practices, raillery against women’s rights to self-determination of issues regarding their own bodies, and so on. It’s yet more fundamentalism running rampant out of Canberra. Even to the extent that this morning I hear Howard claiming that while he’s all fired up about this ‘Chaplain’ idea, he’ll reserve the right to dole out the money to those schools and individuals they wish to choose. In other words, he’ll decide the suitability of the person’s ideology, thanks very much.

To me, Chaplain means sky-pilot as opposed to what is genuinely needed in our education systems, both public and private, which is trained counsellors. Not bible-bashing pulpit thumpers. I’m with Bob Carr. Governments of any stripe must not indulge in boundary pushing on that imperative standing between church and state. Provide proper, trained and independent psychological support to school communities, but leave religion to those who really feel the need.

My current job allows me to tele-commute, which is to say, due to technology and a compliant employer, I get to work from home.

Courtesy of the Guardian’s Hilary Osborne

The ABC has axed its popular comedy show The Glass House.

ABC News Online.

Here’s a prime example of Labor not effectively using it’s brains before engaging its collective mouth. Pg 77; Pg 79 and then Pg 83

Probably. Most privatisation of publically held instrumentalities under the current federal government have had elements of obscene haste about them – the Telstra debate stands out – sufficient to draw the tags of ‘unethical’ and ‘immoral’.

In the presence of senior American officials at a dinner at Canberra's Old Parliament House, Brendan Nelson warned the Australia-US relationship would suffer if Australia did not stay until the end with its allies in Iraq.

ABC News Online.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is welcome to attend tomorrow's crisis talks on the plight of the Murray Darling basin

ABC News Online.

It’s an afterthought, and a direct insult to the Premier of the State which has the most to offer to the Murray-Darling river system, through discussions on the massive water storage and catchement zones allocated to the cotton industry on the Queensland-NSW border.

This week, the Senate sits primarily to debate the private members bill promoted by Senator Kay Patterson(Lib) and supported in kind by Senators Natasha Stott-Despoya (Dem) and Ruth Webber (ALP). The Bill, Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, offers much hope for suffers of genetic disease, but poses deeply divisive ethical questions.

First Tuesday in November and the last thing on my mind, or in fact of interest to me, is the horse race which gives Melbournites a day off work. I'm much more interested in what the board of the Reserve Bank will say about Australia's climbing inflation rate.

A Victory for Freedom or a huge collective sigh of relief from the coalition leadership triumverate? I’ve noticed the few blogs that I scan have all made mention of the show trial verdict to hang Saddam Hussein. ‘What the hell’, I thought, ‘I’ll wade in too!’

A one thousand year drought. That’s how the water summit held today in Canberra views the current dry in Australia.

Donald Rumsfeld is the first of the scapegoats America's now proven lame-duck President will create in response America's electorate's sharply defined rejection of his policy on the Iraq war.

Mr Howard made it clear he respected Bono's rock star status but that respect only went so far: "I don't accept preconditions from anybody."

Herald Sun.

Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t object. Bill Clinton didn’t object, Even ‘Dubya’ didn’t object to meeting with Bono to discuss global poverty and the importance of developed nations honouring the already agreed 0.7% of GDP allocation to resolution of global poverty.

Little Johnny Howler does, however. The arrogance of the man knows no bounds.

Amidst the passing of a resolution in the Senate for David Hicks to be brought home, Phillip Ruddock finally agreeing to speak directly with Terry Hicks, Attorneys-General meeting in Perth also calling for Hicks to be released & brought home, Little Johnny Howler states that Hicks cannot be tried here in Oz for alleged crimes which weren't crimes at the time he was captured as a POW, nor are crimes against US civil law.

My only response is - "So What?!!"

I missed the news last evening due to visitors, alcohol and good chat. I did, however, manage to catch the last legs of the interview on Lateline between Maxine McKew and Bob Carr, former NSW Premier and self-confessed avid Ameriphile.

Many people don’t like Carr because of his politics, or his almost sycophantic love of all things Americana, his passion for Gore Vidal or any number of other excuses to belittle a man who obviously has intellect. Whether or not he made a fist of political life in NSW is irrelevant to me. I’m a Queenslander. However, ten years at the top of the tree in State politics has to speak volumes for the man, if not his political bent. I happen to like listening to him speak. He’ll never speak on a subject which he isn’t 100% full bottle on, and when he does speak, it’s with assuredness, confirmation and authority. In other words, he’s worth a listen. Seeing as I missed most of the interview, I’ve downloaded the whole thing from the Lateline site. Thank you, Aunty. Despite having to appear even more politically correct than ever under the Howardian appointed Managing Director, your services are still well and truly worth my eight cents each & every day.

Carr – avid American watcher and aficianardo that he is – pulled no punches. In my experience, he rarely does. Damning the Bush administration for its adventurous, expeditionary, evangelistic zeal for spreading the message of truth, justice and the American (Republican) way throughout the Middle-East. Blaming that zeal for wrecking America’s standing in the global community, which it most certainly has. His view on the adventurism of the Bush led, Cheney inspired lunacy which has seen America fail in Iraq, perhaps carrying on into a concocted scenario in Iran is more than a little disquieting.

I did find what he had to say about the forthcoming NSW state elections in March 2007, and the success of Morris Iemma, to be just a little wishful, as was his claims about Beazley winning off the back of IR, Climate Change, etc. Not that I’d decry any socialist victory, but I find those two to be long bows, quite frankly.

It was good to see and hear him speak again. It’s interesting that the media, and not just our dear Aunty, seek out our former political leaders more and more often these days. Surely a sign that the current incumbents can’t be trusted to speak their minds honestly any more. I for one will be watching the predictions of Bob Carr – America in the M/E, Iemma in NSW and Beazley in the Federal sphere – with renewed interest.

On the Iraq front, it seems that Bob Carr was right. The American military look likely to take over the formulation of policy in regard to that non-quagmire quagmire. Not before time either. In fact, immediately the flowers and sweets failed to materialise in March 2003, the Military ought to have been handed the reigns by the politicians who wouldn’t know shit from clay about military sponsored regime change.

The adventure in Iraq has failed. To my mind, was always bound to fail. The similarities between Iraq and Viet Nam are too strong to ignore, despite the politicians all claiming other wise. Both will remain in history as foolish adventures in cultural confrontation, which America believed it could change through sheer military power. America is not a colonial power and never will be. She doesn’t have the ethos to manage, only dominate. Management takes finesse, domination takes only strength and ability. There hasn’t been an administration post WW2 which displayed more than rudimentary interest in management, only in domination. One without the other is always doomed to failure.

Now for the exit from Iraq. Hopefully, soon, before too many more lives are wasted in this futile exercise in empirical fervour.

I sort of half-watched Insiders this morning, having begun a water change in the aquariums just as the program started. The guest was only Peter Costello, someone I regard as an also-ran on the Australian political scene, so nothing missed there. However, when I heard him mention climate change, I stopped what I was doing and paid attention.

The day in question being last Tuesday, November 7, 2006. A momentus day for United States politics, but also for the global community. The Neo-Con experiment can be now seen to have failed and failed spectacularly with great loss of life, enormous expense and ruination of reputation of not only a nation and culture, but many, many individuals as well. All due to adventurism and some mis-led evangelistic fervour for a world dominated by Pax Americana.

The Prime Minstrel is singing sadder tunes these days.

 "We will not interpret this decision as being any sort of constitutionally green light to legislate to the hilt," John Howard on the High Court ruling dismissing the States and Union case against the use of Corporations powers by the Commonwealth. –ABC News

I’m in agreement with Peter Beattie and Mike Rann, in their calls for a constitutional convention in the aftermath of yesterday’s high court decision validating the governments Workchoices legislation in constitutional terms. Justice Michael Kirby, one of two dissenting judges, said it well.

"once a constitutional Rubicon such as this is crossed, there is rarely a going back".

This decision places enormous pressure on the constitutional federalism this country enjoyed before yesterday morning. John Howard’s claim, and I notice today, Peter Costello’s claim, that this government doesn’t want to take this decision any further in constitutional terms, doesn’t mean that it won’t. This decision opens doors, or more pertinently, opens a Pandora’s Box. Kim Beazley may well tear up the Workchoices legislation, however, the precedent has now been set. Governments post-Howardian now know they can exploit the constitutional gift of the Corporation’s Powers. Australia’s constitution, such as it is in these days, is sorely in need of amendment, in my view.

The neo-conservatives who helped convince President George W. Bush that the US military could be used to spread democracy are now lashing out at what they see as the incompetent way the Bush administration has fought the Iraq War.

I heard this story on the morning news. I can’t say I was at all surprised, at least not that the Neo-Con dream of a Pax-Americana turned out to be a nightmare. I am surprised though that the architects of the Iraq Invasion, the people who first pushed and petitioned for the seeding of American-style democracy through armed regime change should turn on the person they deliberately setup as their scape goat so quickly after the Republican stranglehold of that very same American democracy at home was broken.

"While I think it's probably not viable at the moment, I think it will become viable within a 10- to 15-year time frame. And I think that's why we have to start planning now because if we were to leave it 10 to 15 years to start planning for the construction of these facilities, by then it may well be too late."

Thus spake  Martin Blakeman from the mining company Newera Uranium following the release and presentation of Ziggy Switkowski’s report on the Prime Ministerial Taskforce on uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy.

You really do have to ask yourself who pulls whose strings when it comes to deciding who comes to this country, and the manner in which they come.

Currently listening to ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra. Geraldine Doogue’s style makes this radio current events and political expose` style program well worth catching. Today’s subjects – a nuclear Iran. Is it worth tolerating or removing?

The so-called ‘Cold War’ ended with the nineth decade of the 20th century. Glasnost and Perestroika instigated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 led the world to believe that a new openness was pervading the former Soviet Union, leading to a better relationship with the western world in both political and social terms. Ian Fleming would feel sadder today then when he wrote his Bond novels. Or would he?

The findings of Commissioner Terence Cole from his inquiry into “certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-For-Food Program” have been delivered. After having been advised 35 times of seemingly untoward occurrences taking place in regard to Australian grain exports to Iraq, before, during and after the coalition invasion of that country, the Howard government and its officers has been found to be clear of criminal involvement.

Let's take a good close look at this little piece of sleight-of-hand by a corporatised former government instrumentality, and arguably the largest of the Big 4 banks in Australia today.

Your Bannerman spends a great deal of the working day listening to ABC Newsradio, either for it’s news content, or more particularly for the broadcasts from Parliament House in Canberra. While many may not consider such broadcasts rivetting listening, I personally find it fascinating to take in the machinations of our elected representatives. Particularly Question Time over lunch. It makes for some light entertainment to laugh at the ‘Dorothy Dixers’ and arrogantly ignorant rejoinders from the Government benches to questions posed by the Opposition.

Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day;
Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way.
Oh, Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be.
Oh, Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me?

or

 Monday, Monday, so good to me;
Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be.
Oh, Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

"Kevin Rudd and Julia have been very good frontbenchers of mine," Mr Beazley said. "I intend that they continue to be and then I intend them to be ministers."

Kimbo has clearly studied the works of Sun Tzu.

49 votes to 39, Kevin Rudd has taken the ALP leadership from Kim Beazley. Are we now set for a replay of 2003–2004, with a new, fresh approach to leadership for the party? An unsettling six to ten months for the Howard government with a new catalyst in the changed ALP leadership? Are we going to see Labor move forward into a position of greater strength and ultimately take government in 2007, or are we likely to see yet another near miss, as with Latham? Is it even fair to Kevin Rudd to draw that parallel? Time will tell.

It’s been a disjointed day for your Bannerman. Firstly a network failure at the coal face followed by a very late start to the working day, which thanks to a faster than November broadband plan passed…..well, faster than expected.

"It is time to rehabilitate the word 'compassion' into our national vocabulary,"

NEWS.com.au.

Is this an indication of the new leadership style? A return to a less conservative style of socialism? The Bannerman’s initial impression from reading Farr’s article was ‘Uh oh……welfare state’. I’m sure that’s not the case, but impressions count and initial impressions more so. Of more specific interest is the use by Rudd of the Menzies analogy.

“Menzies would never have legislated this. Menzies would never have the gall to legislate this. Menzies would have recognised that there is such a great breach in the social contract involved in this legislation, he could never have done it."

Now this, I find, is very telling. Rudd does not intend to take the Beazley line of attack. Simply arguing ideological differences from a vague standpoint because it’s the Oppositions job to ‘oppose’ government. Rudd’s line of attack looks distinctly as though he intends to draw the parallels and differences between Labor and Liberal – especially the hard-line, hard-right brand of conservatism characterised by the Howardian government – in stark black and white. This is good. This is Chifley-esqe.

The Bannerman sees the light up on that hill shining just a little brighter this morning.

David Hicks’ legal team has been granted an urgent hearing in the Federal Court, in a bid to have him released and returned home to Australia by Christmas. The hearing, in which Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer are to be sued for failing in their duty of care to protect the interests of an Australian citizen abroad.

Bannerman dislikes intensely highlighting the works of other bloggers, purely because there are very few, in the B-man’s eyes – who warrant attention being drawn. However, and this will not become a regular occasion, attention is drawn this morning to Dunlop’s Murdoch-sponsored bandwidth boon.

As always, Bannerman is not especially enamored by Dunlop’s style, however, he realises that not everyone has the same sense of delivery as he does. Allowances must be made. Let us take issue with the content. Citizenship, specifically Australian citizenship. A multicultural nation we most certainly are, more as a result of the egalitarian approach to distressful events in other parts of the globe from which people of all races, colours and castes fled. Post World War Two many persons immigrated to these shores from European countries devastated in that conflict. Following the Vietnam conflict of the seventies, many South-East Asian peoples fled oppression to come here. And so it’s gone.

Bannerman often vacations on the Queensland border, where great wines and good food are paramount considerations. The ethnicity of that region is primarily southern European, the original immigrants being sometime, if ever, english speakers who came here after the war. They brought their cultural mores with them. Wine-making being one. Bannerman hesitates to state that english was an immigratory necessity in 1946. One wonders how many Italian newcomers, for instance, could actually speak english, let alone know why the large star on the flag has seven points, for example.

The Australian Jewish communities posed a valid question in their submission to DIMIA on this subject.

“The proposition that Australia introduce a formal citizenship test begs the vital question of what it might test for, and how.”

And just who will formulate the basis upon which this test seeks it’s answers. Just what IS the ethos here? Is it really, as Howard stated, to determine just who will and won’t be prepared to defend the country should the need arise? A ridiculous assertion in Bannerman’s eyes. No, this citizenship test/affirmation/entry criteria is yet more ideology from the Howardian stable of staunchly pro-American, ethnically divisive, exclusionist ideals for which Australia is most definitely not known and admired, but for which Howardians desperately yearn. And the timing is just right. The Yanks are introducing a re-vamped test as well. What better opportunity?

The politics of Fear and Loathing are being taken to a new level. Not only will we decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come, we’ll decide by ameri-centric ethos who get’s to become a second-class of citizen and who remains as a citizenship pariah. The politics of disgust!

Bannerman is smiling sardonically at the responses from the usual media suspects in regard to Kofi Annan’s farewell speech today at the Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri.

Bannerman is watching the seven o’clock ABC news bulletin. He notices the ubiquitous and inevitable media whore, John Winston Howard getting his face on the screen yet again at the Tasmanian and Victorian fire fighting fronts.

Blithe and banal, he shakes hands, chortles with firies who fought the blazes in 1985, saying they don’t look that old and makes a general glad-handing display of himself. Personally, Bannerman believes the old man needs a hair cut if he’s going to appear on television every night of the week.

On the Opposition side of the strait, Kevin Rudd makes a brief appearance in Gippsland and what’s the first thing the media do, but suggest to KR that his presence is a distraction for the firies from their important and difficult task at hand, and perhaps he shouldn’t have come. So….Rudd makes a brief call at one base station at Dargo, and he’s a distraction. Howard drops into Whitfield, Wangaratta and across the Bass Strait to north-eastern Tasmania, and he’s not??! Hmmm…..

Let’s be quite honest. JWH has his dial on the box every night of the week. As Bannerman says, ‘Get a bloody hair cut at least!’ To the media, Bannerman says ‘Wake the fuck up!’

Bannerman’s Federal member in the House of Reps happens to be Andrew Laming. A one term incumbent, Mr.Laming can sometimes be seen on Old Cleveland Road waving at cars in the peak hour rush. Why elected or wanna-be elected persons do that escapes the Bannerman, but many things about the political animal do.

Only a matter of time, is the way bannerman has viewed this occurence. With the much vaunted, yet clearly flawed Joint Strike Fighter delivery date being pushed further and further out – now slated for 2013 – Australia’s defensive capabilities were always going to be left wanting. This is a re-run of the late 1960’s purchase of that era’s leading edge tactical strike aircraft, the General Dynamic F-111.

"Mr Howard's responsibility is this: one, admit to the Australian people you've got it wrong; two, explain to the Australian people detail of the new strategy,"

ABC News Online.

"All of us want to find a way to bring America's sons and daughters home again," Gates said after taking the oath of office as defence secretary from Vice President Dick Cheney at a Pentagon ceremony. "But as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for decades to come."

CNN.com.

Bannerman and his squeeze have returned! The wilds of Queensland’s Granite Belt were delightful…..for the first five days. Then came Boxing Day and the clammering hordes from coastal and interstate suburbia.