Musharraf’s departure will highlight the problems that confront the country, which is in the grip of a food and power crisis that is creating severe problems in every city. Inflation is out of control and was approaching the 15% mark in May 2008. Gas (used for cooking in many homes) prices have risen by 30%. Wheat, the staple diet of most people has seen a 20% price hike since November 2007 and while the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation admits that the world's food stocks are at record lows there is an additional problem in Pakistan. Too much wheat is being smuggled into Afghanistan to serve the needs of the NATO armies. The poor are the worst hit, but middle-class families are also affected and according to a June 2008 survey, 86% of Pakistanis find it increasingly difficult to afford flour on a daily basis, for which they blame their own new government.

Other problems persist. The politicians are weak and remain divided on the restoration of the judges sacked by Musharraf. The Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, is the most respected person in the country. Asif Zardari 9the caretaker-leader of the People’s Party who runs the government and second richest man in the country) is reluctant to see him back at the head of the Supreme Court. A possible compromise might be to offer him the Presidency. It would certainly unite the country for a short time.

Over the last fifty years the US has worked mainly with the Pakistan Army. This has been its preferred instrument. Nothing has changed. How long before the military is back at the helm? [More]

From outside of America it is obvious that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is a bad thing because it is economic insanity to spend ten times more than is “needed” for defense. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked what have we got these weapons for if we don’t use them. To make the MIC richer, to create giant profits, that’s the main reason. Wars are just the excuse to justify the money flow.

In Australia (& Britain) we think we’re smarter than that but both our progressive governments ask what have we got this coal for if we don’t use it. Coal made Britain great and it’s making Australia very rich and inside both countries there is a powerful web of union, political, financial & industrial groups that have grown rich and are committed to keeping the coal power economy going. Power as a metaphor for power. In both countries this web is at the centre of the “Union Industrial Complex” (UIC) that runs the countries. Anglo-Australian companies like BHP are in there with their $15 billion profit. UIC leaders like Michael Costa want to prove Climate Change is false by making a new 40 year commitment to coal.

But there are also nice, reasonable people, like Penny Wong (Minster for Climate Change), who say we must find a carbon capture solution because the world is going to burn more coal (5th Aug 08). Read that again. False logic. A safe cheap method of massive carbon capture may be scientifically impossible (especially in the short term) but, like the MIC, the Union Industrial Complex doesn’t care about results - it just wants huge profits and it’s in control.

Does Bush believe that ‘victory,’ which to him is apparently an Iraq with a western-style democracy, forced upon it against the will of the people, has been achieved? That is too much of a stretch even for the intellectually-challenged Mr. Bush to believe. But using Hitler’s ‘Big Lie’ theory, perhaps he hopes that U.S. citizens will buy it.

The ‘Big Lie’ theory comes from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography, and is this: "in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation… more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” So if Mr. Bush would have us believe that a new democratic Iraq is dawning, he is telling ‘the big lie.’

But perhaps neither of these explains the president’s apparent willingness to accept a troop withdrawal timeline (he calls it a time ‘horizon,’ apparently believing that the U.S. citizenry is too stupid to know he means timeline). The youthful, dynamic Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is ahead in the polls; his Republican opponent, the awkward, elderly and decrepit John McCain, has not been able to spark any excitement on the campaign trail. McCain is a stalwart supporter of war, any war it seems, and foresees the U.S. occupation in Iraq lasting for generations. Perhaps it has finally dawned on Bush that this is not what the American people want; perhaps someone has finally gotten through to him; perhaps someone has penetrated his inner circle of yes-men and women, and has made him realize that a campaign platform of more of the same death, blood and destruction, is not selling too well even in middle America. [More]

We, the Jet Ski Veterans for Truth, aim to destroy McCain’s candidacy. We resurrect the evil but ingenious tactic of the Swift Boat Veterans in their 2004 character assassination of war hero John Kerry: transform the candidate’s greatest strengths into disgusting liabilities. As an organization, we have been careful to avoid honesty at every turn, including our origins. None of us are jet skiers or veterans. We may not even be an “organization.” We may not even be a “we,” but a lone crackpot with a laptop...

McCain’s greatest purported asset is a heroic narrative as an airman shot out of the sky over North Vietnam, then imprisoned in the “Hanoi Hilton”. This tale seems impervious to inquiry; we’re supposed to salute his courage and endurance and go all misty-eyed...Part of the Hanoi story is how McCain refused an offer of release so he could stay with his fellow detainees. Yet that’s exactly where the Jet Ski Veterans for Truth work their greatest magic: McCain’s decision wasn’t valor. Some dare call it dereliction of duty...What the hell was McCain doing, refusing release from those enemy hands in the midst of a war he so strongly supported?... His fellow warriors were risking their lives down in the mucky, booby-trapped jungles and deltas, yet McCain chose to hang out in his cell with a few other PoWs. Why didn’t he jump back in the cockpit and do his job? You might say McCain refused to report for duty...

McCain pushes his “experience” as his most vaunted asset, but it’s the most easily demolished. For McCain could only acquire all that experience by growing so aged and feeble. The talk-show joke on McCain casts him as the mean old man chasing kids off his lawn. Yet this disease-riddled grouch probably can’t hobble that far - he’d have to dispatch his bodyguards to torment the kiddies. Though “only” in his early 70s, the pile-on of decades has been cruel. [More]

The Australian Minister for Climate Change Penny Wong was in Sydney speaking to a full house of 400-500 avoiding the elephant in the room. Penny signed Kyoto, for which the audience gave her great applause. Then she began defending the coal industry, saying we have to create a market price for CO2 emissions, spend most of our research money on "Clean Coal" and trust the market to come up with a solution. It won't, Penny.

George Monbiot yesterday gave the crucial figures that need repeating. Capturing (+ burying) carbon from existing coal plants (if it works) will cost A$151-259 per tonne of CO2 whereas the Australian Govt is talking about A$20 per tonne initial price for CO2 emissions. The coal burning power stations will always choose to pay $20 or $50 or $100 per tonne rather than install carbon capture systems that will cost $150-250 per tonne.

Dr Ben McNeil, ARC QEII Research Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre UNSW, gave the crucial evidence. He was chosen by Penny to give the big picture of the science. At one point he asked "why, if the car industry spends 4-5% on research, why does the mining resources industry spend only 0.3%". Because they know carbon capture is not going to work, Ben. Because even if a technological miracle makes it possible it will cost at least an extra A$150-250 per tonne, doubling or tripling the current retail price and that will be more expensive than existing solar, wind, hydro technology.

This is the elephant that Penny Wong and most Australian and British government members are furiously avoiding, planning and announcing new coal burning stations - the British in Kingsnorth and the Australians in Latrobe - even though their scientists are telling them it will always be too expensive to make them clean. It's like they've entered into an international pact with Coal. This is madness and Penny with her calm, reasonable argument is in the middle of it.

I rang some businesses that install solar cells and discovered that sales have been down in most states except for Queensland where there has been a surge in sales. That's because in Queensland the state electricity authorities are paying a high "feed in tariff" to the homeowners for the excess electricity their small system feeds back into the electricity grid - a bit like the German system (where you can make a profit on your system). The Queensland system is not that generous but it is increasing sales. What if every Labor state did it? What if Penny made sure they did? I'll ask her tonight at a public forum in Petersham, Sydney.

Across the rest of Australia many people cancelled their orders but there's been an increase in the number of retirees buying. Their income has dropped below the cap so they can get the $8,000 rebate. And some who cancelled say they'll be back in a year or two when they retire. Ah, there's that baby boomer generation again - rock and roll on a solar cell.