A Note from Down Under

This is from an email I received recently from an Australian acquaintance regarding their ouster of John Howard:

John Howard govt is likened to US Republicans where as Kevin Rudd is likened to US Democrats .... i guess both parties serve the same master ... but the lesser evil of the two would have to be Kevin Rudd ....

... i did some time in Canberra in IT working amongst the government and my current job takes me there every now and then ... i get to privy some information that floats underground ...

if John Howard had won this election he was going to merge Aust.Federal Police (AFP) with Aust.Customs (ACS) with Aust Immigration (DIMIA) to form one organisation body called HomeLand Security (i wonder where he got this idea from) ....

ok USA it is your turn soon ... send a message to your govt... i.e. if you can get past those rigged voting machines (which luckily we do not have in Aust) ...

Dealing with the Dick, Dancing with the Devil

A report out of Australia says that The Big Dick made some kind of deal to get accused terrorist and Gitmo detainee David Hicks to plead guilty so as to keep him out of the news until after Australia’s elections, as part of another deal with Australia’s prime minister John Howard.

Hicks will be released from an Australian prison on Dec. 29 as part of a plea agreement reached in March. The first detainee convicted by a Guantanamo military tribunal, Hicks was given a seven year jail sentence but a judge suspended all but nine months of that. Hicks was held at Guantanamo for five years before going to trial.

An unnamed military official told Harpers, "One of our staffers was present when Vice President Cheney interfered directly to get Hicks' plea bargain. He did it, apparently as part of a deal cut with Howard."

"I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America," the official continued. "And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade."

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.