Aussie PM dumped by own party

[Magda Hassan]

The photo revealing Shorten's grim expression just prior to entering the room to vote was one for the ages. As journo Tim Lester (from my home State of Tassie) noted yesterday, Shorten hates Rudd, Rudd despises Shorten, and for Shorten to re-empower the man who would happily drop him off a cliff into a grey ocean would be a large bottle of bitter pills to swallow.

Good . I hope he chokes on them. Rudd should drop him off the cliff. Apart from being a duplicious two faced traitorous power mad Machiavellian wrecker he spends waaaay to much time visiting the US embassy to take his marching orders to have any thing to do with Australian politics. I'm pleased he did what he did last night though. Now he can just ffffffade away. And hopefully take his other traitorous friends of Washington with him.

A change for the better, it seems to me, from afar. How'd this happen?! I mean, we rarely expect good outcomes in politics, these days! Might this have any effect on how Oz deals with Assange at all. Any other likely practical effects - other than not so supinely taking orders from D.C.?

Well, it was very interesting the way it happened. Gillard was never going to be accepted by the voters for a number of reasons but primarily the way she achieved office. She lacked legitimacy. The voters love Rudd. And in their eyes he was taken from them.  There was no way the voters were going to vote for Julia. The party absolutelywould have lost office. But Rudd was so hated by a section of the party that many refused to have him back even if that meant losing office and the government changing to the far far right. As it is 7 ministers resigned their portfolios and several leaving politics altogether rather than work in his government when he was elected to the leadership (again) last night. However, there were enough Rudd supporters and there were enough pragmatists who defied the death wish of the others. The person who was a prime mover behind the coup removing Rudd, Bill Shorten,  this time supported him and used the knife against Julia. He is preserving his own tenuous hold on his seat too and has his own leadership plans. One of the cliques that was dead set against him was the Washington/Zionist clique. For their liking he was far too independent of the US and too close to China and he speaks Mandarin too and has a Chinese son in law. His missus is a millionaire several times over so he is not in the game for the money and can't be bribed. He was outraged that Australian passports were used by the murderers of the Palestinian man in Dubai and was demanding answers. He also wanted Assange to have all the legal and consular protections available. While Gillard was slandering Assange and saying that Assange had broken laws and must be punished Rudd was saying that no (Australian) laws were broken. I hope he does some thing concrete for Assange now he is back in office. For sure Assange would have been gladly handed over to the US on a silver platter by Gillard and company. I will be watching with interest if he keeps his independence or caves in to the pressure. I don't suppose too much will be done in the short term as there is a federal elelction in September and this can also be brought forward to August. He still may not actually survive the election. Certainly the opposition are dirty players here and have the big money behind them. But if he wins the election it will be a most interesting time.