Wendi Deng

Had to laugh at this. Every anti-Howard pundit's dream has come true. Abbott and Costello are hitting the road together at last.

First, some pure comedy gold. Rupert Murdoch's Sky News reports that the Liberals want Peter Costello to take over the leadership. And how do they know this? Because Rupert Murdoch's News Limited reported it!

Will Peter Costello be able to convince the plebs that he has not orchestrated this takeover very carefully since last November? With Murdoch's help, yes.

Will a leadership takeover boost sales of his upcoming book? Oooh yes, especially if he comes across as The Nice Guy Who Should Have Won The Election.

This news comes just a day after Tony Abbott wrote an OpEd in Rupert Murdoch's Australian which basically sealed the deal. As the Canberra Times reported it:

For most of yesterday, Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott's phone was switched off.

Caller after caller got the outspoken shadow minister's voicemail and if some of his colleagues are to be believed more than one of the messages left there were of the unprintable variety.

Abbott's ''tribute'' to former treasurer Peter Costello, as deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop labelled the Quadrant essay published in edited form in yesterday's Australian, described Costello as the Coalition's ''best political asset''. It's worth nothing that he managed to deliver backhanders, not only to current leader and apparent non-asset Brendan Nelson by using the present tense and failing to mention him even once but also to Costello by qualifying the praise with ''now that John Howard has gone''.

This apparently thinly-veiled attempt at wooing Costello pleased those of his colleagues who are dearly hoping against hope that he will return to lead them from the wilderness. But it sent a few others into orbit.

Abbott, of course, has been the #1 fan of his former boss, which explains this frosty Canberra resception:

In a move some saw as an attempt to play self-styled kingmaker, Abbott went to see Costello recently to persuade him to stay. Second-hand reports suggest that Costello was amused, nothing more.

In any case, the deal is done. but will this be enough to put the Libs back in contention?

Errr.... no.

But you have to give them credit. At least these power-hungry bastards realise that the media narrative is what it's all about. Labour wonks are still fixated on policy, as if that's what the Plebs want. Get real! We want entertainment!

Meanwhile, Dr Haneef is set to sue Australian taxpayers for several million dollars (well, who do you think is going to pay for it?) for all the entertainment his long-running saga provided us. Fair enough. This shit doesn't come cheap.

Hooray!

A legal brief has been sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging former prime minister John Howard committed a war crime by sending troops to Iraq.

A loose alliance of peace activists, lawyers, academics and politicians is behind the brief, organised by the ICC Action group in Melbourne.

Organiser Glen Floyd says Mr Howard should be held accountable for sending troops to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.

"We have produced a 52-page brief of evidence which states to the chief prosecutor of the criminal court that we allege John Howard's actions are war crimes under article 8 of the Rome Statute," he said.

Democrats Senator Lyn Allison says the legal brief sent to the ICC is justified.

Senator Allison, who is one of several eminent people supporting the move, says accountability is important.

"This action has been taken to hold those accountable for their action, so it's essentially our prime minister - he was the one at the time [who] was the executive of government, made the decision," she said.

'It wasn't put to the Parliament and as we all know, it turned out to be unjustified."

A similar brief has been sent by a group from the United Kingdom regarding former prime minister Tony Blair. The United States is not a signatory to the court.

The NSW division of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War has supported the move.

You can visit the ICC Action website here.

Lord Nicholas Stern:

"It's really nice to be outside of politics so you can refer to people like John Howard as appalling."

Remember Dick Honan, the Manildra CEO who in 2003 secured government subsidies for ethanol production after donating more than $300,000 to the Liberal Party? Alan Ramsey called it "the ultimate in old-fashioned driveway service: $30.86 million of public money in 16 months".

Although Howard initially denied meeting Honan, it was later revealed that the pair had at least seven face-to-face meetings.

Despite the scandal, however, the ethanol subsidies remained in place. Cars started sporting ETH-NOL bumper stickers and the stigma attached to the word disappeared as the need for alternative fuel sources became clearer. There was limited opposition to mandatory ethanol blending, and even many die-hard Greens were on board for the ride.

In 2006, Howard government introduced legislation that compensated producers for a 38.14c-a-litre excise on ethanol. Now the whole program is under review. But don't expect a big slap-down for Dick Honan:

In recent years, Manildra has been far more even-handed, and in 2006-07 Mr Honan gave $347,000 to Labor and $244,000 to the Coalition.

There are many problems associated with Ethanol as an alternative fuel source, but the major one today is that when farmers stop growing food to produce ethanol, it drives up the cost of food. But the CEO of the Dalby Bio Refinery, a man with the unfortunate name of Kevin Andrews, is having none of that:

"The price of rice has doubled in recent weeks and not one drop of alcohol for biofuels has come from rice."

Of course, the price of rice has doubled because land is being farmed for other purposes, and because the price of other staple foods has doubled, sparking riots in many parts of the world. So why are these big Aussie refiners still being disingenuous?

The push for agrofuels is driven by the same vested interests that have pushed fossil fuel addiction — and now seek to increasingly replace fossil fuels with biofuels without altering the highly unjust and unsustainable global system that got us into this mess in the first place.

The solution to this mess is second generation biofuels, biofuels produced from non-arable land, and other alternative energy sources. If we approach this problem energetically, scientifically and morally, we can simultaneously help solve our global warming predicament. The moment is now!

The Reuters headline says it all: "Fed tone may send food and gasoline prices higher". See? It's not the economic realities that drive the interest rate cut, it's the tone of those who deliver it that's the problem. Talk about shooting the messenger.

The increases in food and fuel costs have triggered protests around the globe.

"There had been so much hope that they would say something that would give us some sort of indication that they were done with this insanity," said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover.

So what do US fund managers like Peter Beutel do in this climate of fear and uncertainty? Do they tuck their heads in and promise to take a more responsible stance in future deals? No, they look for a new opportunity to exploit. And the new buzzwords are "Emerging Markets" even though analysts admit such investments are already over-priced:

"This bubble, like all bubbles, will not be justified by long-term value but at least will be one of the least flaky bubble cases ever," Grantham, chairman of fund manager GMO, wrote in a note to clients.

"Perhaps once in a career any self respecting strategist, even a one trick "mean reversion" one like GMO, should have a go at predicting a major divergence, a true bubble. And this is ours."

And when that bubble pops, it will be all the Fed's fault too.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Dibb is obviously worried about cuts to his old Department's budget. He says Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith is being "complacent" about national security in "our part of the world":

Some of the world's major concentrations of military power and potential hot spots are in Asia: for example on the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Straits and between India and Pakistan.

But are Korea, Taiwan, India and Pakistan really "our" part of the world? Does Australia really need to get involved in these countries' problems, assuming they ever do flare up into war?

The region now spends more than $285 billion a year on defence (more than NATO, excluding the US) with China alone accounting for $128 billion of this amount (next come Japan with $43 billion, South Korea with $26 billion and India with $24 billion).

Yes but US military spending dwarfs all that, and Australia is right up there (particularly on a per capita basis).

At least one former defence minister, Kim Beazley, thinks a regional arms race is taking place.

Well, he would, wouldn't he? Beazley is just another of the military spending racketeer mobsters in Canberra. And these guys are terrified that Australians might start to realise that the biggest threat to our national security is actually our own aggression towards others.

In the forthcoming Defence white paper it is important that we do not allow our advanced conventional war-fighting capabilities to be sacrificed on the altar of the trendy, so-called new security agenda.

In other words, we need to keep pretending that Indonesia might invade us any day, that China might nuke Darwin next Friday, and that tanks, aircraft, ships and guns are the way to defeat the threat of terrorism. What a load of bollocks.

Pack it in, Paul, and get a real job.

I mean what sort of loser even reads Mike Whitney:

Yesterday, when Wright took the podium at the National Press Club, he knew he'd be taken to task no matter what he said. He knew that every word he uttered would be twisted by the media to make him look like a hate-monger, or worse, a racist. But Wright faced his critics with dignity and delivered another barnburner. By the end of the speech, everyone in attendance was on their feet applauding wildly for the man the corporate media has chosen to destroy.

You can watch the full video of Wright's speech here (not the edited FOX version) and make up your own mind about whether the man is insane, or just speaking the truth that people in power (and others) don't want to hear.

It's a pity Obama didn't stick with Wright: he would have lost the Dem nomination, of course, but he could have taken a big slice of the Party out the door with him, maybe joined up with Al Gore, and launched a successful White House bid as an independent.

But like Atrios says today:

This election is going to be much much stupider than the last time. Last time much of the stupid was at least nominally about serious issues, this time it's just all about the stupid.

Sometimes life's like that, isn't it?