#116767 by hipotecas on 11/29 at 2:15 am: “The Kyoto Protocol: The U.S. versus the World…”

In response to Kyoto, Australia’s new prime-minister Kevin Rudd is attending the United Nations climate change conference in Bali next week (earthquakes + tsunamis permitting, uhh) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d237e506-9aa0-11dc-86cc-0000779fd2ac.html

But he still faces some opposition at home from the failed Liberal Neocon coalition in opposition. They still support the US stance and they have a temporary majority in the senate until July next year when the new senators take office.

Their new leader in opposition, former defence minister Brendan Nelson, is an avid admirer of Condoleeza Rice who somehow rubbed him up on board one of the visiting US navy ships and conned him into buying   two fleets of jet fighter aircraft from the USA, neither of which are much use to Australia.

His opinion in general is “We in my view we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations…” and, although that was said in regard to indigenous native peoples’ issues, you can be sure it applies to all other matters which they have meddled in and they are now, more than ever, quite happy to dump the consequences of their own actions onto future generations of Australians . http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/29/2105652.htm

Australia set to ratify Kyoto Protocol - Newly elected prime minister intent on changing Australia’s climate stance: “Australia’s new prime minister Kevin Rudd has wasted little time getting to work on an election pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions…....” http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071126/full/news.2007.285.html

They regard Afghanistan as an allied operation with a clear objective - to prevent the Taleban from returning to power in a country where it allowed al-Qaeda the freedom to plan its attacks.

Isn’t this ‘freedom to plan its attacks’ shtick getting a little old? Any Internet cafe will let you do that and I don’t recall any reports of flight simulators being found in Afghanistan.

It’s high time to admit the only sound reason for being in Afghanistan is to clean up the mess the US and other super-rogues have made of the world.

Don’t look to the last of Bush’s litter of poodles, my dear leader Stephan Harper, to admit this. He’s still ‘with you’...your government that is.

By the way, the “Breakdown of election results” in the BBC article (see link) only represents the legislative assembly (congress). Although the tally of votes for the Liberal-National coalition and the Labor party seem accurate, the BBC has entirely missed the minor parties, the Democrats, Family First and the Greens, in the senate http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/results/senate/

The Greens is a successful minor party in the senate http://greens.org.au/intro/ and, in the preferential voting system in Australia, they are often listed ahead of either of the major parties in individual voting. The other main minor party (the Democrats, ha ha) was wiped out after failing to adequately represent voters’ wishes in opposing former PM Howard’s Neocon policies!!!

Democrats to lose party status after 30 years - “For the first time in 30 years, the Australian Democrats won’t be represented in either house of the Federal Parliament. They are set to lose party status after being wiped out in Saturday’s vote, failing to poll 2 per cent of the vote around the country…...

Such is the state of the Democrats that on the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) website the party is now referred to just as “other”. Leader Lyn Allison conceded defeat and resigned yesterday, and her deputy, Andrew Bartlett, has been forced to admit that his career in politics is over….” http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/26/2101885.htm?site=elections/federal/2007

Also see http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/

Kevin Rudd’s signature on the Kyoto climate treaty will be a huge slap at the face of George Bush.

#Quote: “Mr Rudd is expected to go back to the policy of refusing to sell uranium to any country not in the NPT…... This in itself might conflict with Australia’s new commitment to control global warming, as nuclear power is one way of reducing greenhouse gases….”

The issue of the use of uranium benefitting global warming is extremely dubious as the resultant radio-active waste stays around for millenia. Meanwhile, the very existence of enriched uranium nuclear fuel is an ever-present potential threat as regards terrorits and conversion into nuclear weapons by rogue states (like the USA???).

In Australia, the former Howard Neocon government had intended to build some 25 nuclear reactors around the country and to rely on the country’s own production of uranium instead of coal which it also mines. Needless to say, it was an unpopular policy and especially as one new reactor was already built in the southern suburbs of Sydney! (search ‘Lucas Heights reactor’).

However, Indonesia, China and India are all building or about to build nuclear reactors for electric power generation (as well as Iran, of course, uhh). But there is already an international trend to forming an orgainzation to control uranium enrichment by doing it in a third-party country. Its basically a new ‘oil cartel’ but what is new, eh.

As it is, nuclear fission technology is expected to be superseded in the next 30 years or so and that was the driving reason for the former Howard government desperately trying to find needs to dig up and sell off as much Australian uranium as possible. Again, it was meant to be the ‘thin end of the wedge’ as regards seeing such power generation as permissible despite current advances in solar-thermal technologies.

Well, there Truthdig goes again, uhh - depending on the BBC for its stories when some of the best reporting was actually done in the US media Suaturday as Australia slept. Nevertheless…....

#Quote: Apology - “Another signal about Australia’s intention to change its policies is that Mr Rudd is likely to make a formal apology to the country’s indigenous people, the Aborigines. This is something that Mr Howard refused to do…... And it is likely to reinforce those campaigns around the world that want apologies for other colonial and historic policies….”

As the Sun rises on the western side of the international date line (the West Pacific), much change has already taken place Monday in Australia. The ‘boots on the ground’ mini-martial law “intervention” foisted on remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory recently by the former Howard government as a kind of covert land-grab of traditional native tribal lands has seen the resignation of the chief minister (governor) of the NT and the first-ever appointment of an indigenous woman, Marion Scrymgor, as deputy chief minister. http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/NT-deputy-Scrymgour-makes-history/2007/11/26/1196036806597.html

Meanwhile, in late ballot counting in Sydney, the former prime minister John Howard has lost his seat in parliament to a woman ex-TV anchor and journalist, Maxine McKew,  and his Neocon coalition is in utter disarray. http://www.alp.org.au/people/nsw/mckew_maxine.php Her husband is a former national secretary of the ALP (Labor party).

Anyone, and everyone, with any significant political relationship with Bush, except the morons here, are losing their political clout and credibility at an astonishing rate. So why can’t we get rid of these criminals ourselves?