The prospect of a John Howard video turning up on Youtube at 5am is about as enticing as the news of a new Osama bin Laden video turning up on Al Jazeera's doorstep. Just as chilling a prospect and, for that matter, just as irrelevant in the final washup.

This took place during my downtime last month, and I had trouble tracing it back to its source, but John Howard used the D word for the third time on June 15. That's three times in the past six months, but none of them in a constructive light.

It was in an interview with journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was in response to a query about the foot-in-mouth Defence Minister Brendon Nelson's announcement that Australia would not be joining the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

As the coconut dessicates, possibly terminally, John Winston Howard has uttered the D-word for, as far as I can tell, only the second time. (Here's my report of the first.)

It came in his virulent response to criticism of Australia's human rights record contained in the latest Amnesty International Annual Report (as I noted last week), where his use of fear for political purposes was compared to, among others, that of Omar al-Bashir.

Ever worried about all these new anti-terrorist laws? Ever worried that their wide-ranging discretionary powers would be used for entirely non-terrorism related reasons? Well, it happened in Australia this week.

The Australian cricket team was threatened with action under the Australian Passports Act 2005 if they went ahead with this September's planned tour of Zimbabwe.