Grahamy is trying to walk the line of pleasing the establishment and injecting alternate views into his site.He is trying to raise the status of OLO by getting high profile people like Julie Bishop to write articles here but his problem is this growing awareness by us of how corrupt the Western system of Oligarchy has become.

Bankers control the West and they create all the money for our system to function.They can decide who survives or perishes.To a degree I can empathise with Graham but the stakes at this point in our history are extremely high.It is not only the threat of Nuclear War but also the loss of our freedoms and decmocracy that are at stake.Since 911 the USA has almost destroyed it's Constitution and any rights US citizens had.The same is happening here.

Some months ago Saul Eastlake attempted to deride myself because I took him to task on the inequity of our banking system.When he could not win the debate he insisted that I disclose my identity.I gave my first name but that did not satisfy Saul.Why is a name important when debating ideas?

Why not Graham contact some high profile people here? http://www.globalresearch.ca/ Prof Michel Chossudovsky writes some brilliant and honest articles.Also contact Prof Michael Hudson who visited our RBA in 2009 and asked them why they cannot create our new credit so our debt and taxes can be lowered? Why were our RBA so silent on this most important issue?

A very salient riposte James.

However, OLO is only and will always be but an 'opinion' site. Going on Minister Bishop's contributions in the past, there is next to no chance she will engage, or answer your challenges.

Besides, and I am sure you would be aware, only one side of politics is 'loose with the truth' and only one politician is a "Liar".

James, the last NIE is 5 years old, and didn't equivocally say what you say it did. There is a new NIE which isn't publicly available, but the details of which appear to be reasonably well-known http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/15/exclusive_new_national_intelligence_estimate_on_iran_complete.

I think Julie's sources of information will be far better than yours on this issue.

On her comments about Iran's existential threat to Israel you can check out her sources at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/17/iran-israel-zionist-insult-humanity and http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1683733/Israel-a-cancerous-tumour-Ahmadinejad. The Wikipedia entry on some of his earlier comments makes interesting reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel

I guess the poverty of your excuses is underlined by your "trust me, I'm a lawyer" argument.

Irrespective of which, you are not entitled to call opinions "lies". If you are a lawyer you should understand that.

Graham, you persist in misrepresenting my arguments. I did not call opinions "lies" but referred to the specific claim that Iran had called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" as a specific example of a lie. Neither did I claim that because I was a lawyer my opinions should be "trusted" any more than the next person. The point I made was that as a lawyer I was interested in the evidential basis of opinions. If they lack that basis they tend not to have much utility.

As to whether Ms Bishop is better informed than me on foreign policy issues, that is a classic example of arguing without any evidence. You don't know what I know, much less whether it is more or less than Ms Bishop. Readers will be able to judge for themselves how well- informed her arguments are. Your assertions will not give her credibility that is otherwise lacking.

I don't propose to respond further because clearly you are impervious to reasoned debate.

Here's some more fact checking for you James - she didn't say that Iran had called for Israel to "be wiped off the map". I gave you the links to what she was quoting, which I found by a little use of Google.

From the stand point of a disinterested observer, it seems to me that James O'Neill is the one who is << impervious to reasoned debate>>.

He makes a number of claims and when he is called to account, responses with something akin to “I’m taking my bat and going home”.

And Bonmot, cheers from the sidelines.
As someone else might have said: surprise, surprise!