Leaky leaders are pissing off their early followers who now want them out of office for their bungled wars.

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The article leads in referencing Bush and Blair, and the facts seem to support the claim that they've lost popularity. But why add Steven Harper? He was not a leader who gained popularity following 9/11, since his party, the CPC, not only was not in power in 2001, but didn't even exist. Furthermore, the only data referenced in the linked article on Angus Reid demonstrates that his popularity has actually increased since the CPC was elected. I don't care for the CPC myself, but citing it in the opening lines as support for this article's claim smacks of wishful thinking. For a chronically divided country like Canada, with 4 major political parties, 41% support is actually pretty high.

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I'm still greatly shamed to be an Australian, given the way idiots keep voting for bloody John bloody Winston bloody Howard. Damn him and his bloody 'Australian values'. He is such a divisive, weaselly, mean-spirited little knobbesticke and he infuriates me no end.

The reason he's still getting positive poll numbers, though, is that we really have no opposition. Two reasons for this:

Firstly, the leader of the opposition, Kym Beazley, is fat and unattractive. Our last (very briefly) leader of the opposition looked shifty. And the Australian electorate, stupid as they are, don't want to vote for a fat man or a man with a crooked mouth. No, far better to have Howard and his legions of darkness. This is no surprise, of course. The effect was pointed out in what, the 60s? By Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451: TV viewers want telegenic leaders.

The second problem is far more serious, and has the effect of discouraging the serious thinking voters. It's quite infuriating, but the opposition has no policy. Talk about this with any Australian who has in the past voted Labor, and they'll get to it with gritted teeth. Labor (our left) is just Liberal-lite (our right).

If only they'd stood up and spoken out, on just about any issue! Particularly the Iraq war, of course, but anything would have helped. But no, they wiffled along mumbling about "our policies are like theirs, only, errrm, milder and better, somehow". The stupid bastards could have stormed the Parliament, washing the detritus away on a tide of public outrage.

But no, they had to keep referring to polls. Polls which told them, somehow, to aim for the same demographic as that held by Howard. So vast numbers of staunch Labor voters felt abandoned, the base sifted away, and Howard emerged triumphant.

And the really ironic thing is that neither Beazley (fat) nor Crean (shifty) nor Mark Latham (the previous non-incumbent), are stupid. They're all intelligent men, Crean surprisingly so. But Crean was undone by his demeanour (which belied his temperament and abilities, from what I'm told), Beazley is an old party hand who's good at politicking but woeful at speaking out, and Latham. Ahhh, Latham.

For a while there, it looked like we had a saviour for the Australian left. Latham spoke out (oh, man, did he speak out. My favourite line was when he referred to the sitting government, in their quest to Follow The Leader on Iraq, as "A conga line of suckholes". I imagine you don't often hear that sort of language in the US Congress). Latham had opinions, strong ones, and while not all the left agreed with everything, he was intelligent and honest and fiery, and made the sitting government look as toady as they are.

He was even starting to make good ground with the electorate, by the old standby of going out and actually talking to people. Not just in safe seats, but anywhere. He made the time, he talked to people honestly, and he listened. If he'd had more time he might have won.

But Howard won, and Latham got ill, and after rounds of surgery and a total (and undeserved) bollicking from Howard's attack dogs he gave up politics.

And left us with Howard and his "Australian values". Ptheh.

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I wonder how Chavez, Ahmedinejad, Castro or that Hezbollah guy would do. I suspect pretty damn good.
This article deals with two issues and it gets confusing:
1) how 9/11 blather exhorting voters to sacrifice reason and liberty in exchange for phony security has become transparent, and
2) widespread shift to the left and away from neocon elites gunning for New American Century hegemony.

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March 23 1976 marked a highpoint in our global civilization. On that day the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights [Human Rights] came into force. After how many millenniums of crawling and battling, after how many revolutions and dispensing of despots, after two major World Wars, we were finally able to put into words, finally able to codify, an agreed standard of civilized behaviours we expect of each other and especially so of governments.

This standard is under threat. As to those threatening this standard, we must understand “WHO THEY ARE, THEIR MEANS AND GOALS. And then organize to set things back right.

As a species, as a civilization, we did not come this far, just to turn back.

Organize to set things right again: http://360.yahoo.com/etisoppa

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watching this special on CNN about the NY fire companies involved in 9-11..

When you see the close up of the towers, it's amazing they didnt come down after that hit..the hole in the sides a huge

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Oh, that's right - our loyal allies don't engage in our silly democratic traditions so they don't have to worry about what the populace thinks, just so long as they have enough secret police, prisons and foreign support. They'd probably rather just forget the whole thing, since the hijackers all carried Saudi and Egyptian passports - forged, no doubt.

The Saudi Minister of the Interior did claim that "Zionists" were responsible for 9/11 - yup, the Israelis blew up the World Trade Center just to make Saudi Arabia look bad! I'm not sure how that plays to the domestic Saudi audience - the Saudi dissident of today gets to visit Prince Bandar's personal re-education chamber, so we're not too likely to hear from him.

Isn't it a bit odd that our 'two great allies' in the Middle East are Israel and Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia sells us oil, then takes the money and gives some of it back in exchange for weapons and construction contracts; some of that money goes to Israel and Israel sells weapons to lots of people; and meanwhile Saudi royals are funding Islamic terrorists through 'charity organizations' in the hope that Osama won't start bombing Saudi oilfields - and who is funding all this? Why, US and European consumers of oil - who else? Is that a correct use of the word, "irony" - our gas purchases ultimately ended up funding 9/11?

Politicians are not going to touch that one - nothing is as likely to cost one votes as telling the public the truth about themselves. We paid for it - oh, we didn't know what we were paying for; but we knew the oil companies had unpleasant associations with Saudi sheiks and African dictators, but we didn't need to know the details, and the media cooperated since the details were'nt in good taste and were embarassing to the owners and the politicians, and after all we needed the fuel to survive, didn't we?

It turned out that the oil companies had also, via Reagan in 1980, sabotaged all the movements towards alternative renewable energies and energy conservation that began in the mid-70's, and again the corporate media had decided that this story wasn't in good taste, and the energy barons were raking in the profits, and why rock the boat? Why not keep people hostage to foreign oil imports from despotic puppet regimes, since there was such a high profit margin involved?

Everything has a price, deferred or not - and every barrel of oil is going to end up costing a pint of blood if we continue down this path any further.

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THANK YOU, corrupt Liberal Party, for having thrown us into the hands of these neo-cons, in some cases neo-fascists. Crying in the wilderness since the early 1990s about the danger of the Reform Party, with no satisfaction in having worst nightmares realized.

It is very sad that young Canadians are dying in Afganistan so that Canada can following the superpower. Guess the only way to learn will be the hard way.

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How in the world can 40% of Americans still have a favorable opinion of GWB, the worst president in our nation's history and arguably the most hated person in the the world today??

It is truly staggering how out of touch with reality Americans are.

Anyone know if there have been any polls taken within any of our closest allies - Britian, Canada, Italy, etc - regarding GWB? I would expect that outside the fantasy world that most Americans inhabit, his poll numbers would be in the single digits among ordinary people.

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