Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

 An absolute prohibition against experiments on prisoners of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions, but President George W. Bush stripped war on terror detainees of those protections. Some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" also had an experimental quality.

The purpose of this essay is to dethrone the king, not kill him. Man is a tool making animal. Capitalism, money and free markets are tools. They have their strengths and they have their weaknesses. We should not idolize them. We should not let them run our society.

What becomes immediately obvious is that there is more agreement than disagreement. Nevertheless, it has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link, and laying the issues out clearly explains why so many people are so cautious about the emissions trading bill.

Remember a few years back when that journalist threw his shoes at Bush in a traditional gesture of contempt?  The scene was replicated by one of Howard's questioners, who hurled his shoes in Howard's direction, yelling "That is for the Iraqi dead"

It was always a long shot but it is dispiriting seeing the same old obstacles and smoke screens as the last time and the time before and the time before right back to the very start.. Ultimately the peace talks, if they are about anything at all, are about one big real estate deal. 

For the last nine years, Coalition governments have lauded the possibilities offered by a centralised Afghan democracy with a powerful government in Kabul. But the cultural and ethnic dynamics of Afghanistan make this a very difficult and unlikely outcome.

One other point, however, is worth repeating. They will act in their own best interest, but are not out to overcome or crush us.

I don't deny that the war streak might eventually kill us all. In the meantime it will cause untold misery on a vast scale. But there is another side to our nature and we all know this. I think the old religions are right when they teach there is good and bad in us all. It's just that the mix varies enormously. 

The argument that is made is that the patients are diverted to the private sector, so it saves the public hospital costs. What really happens is clear when we look at the details

While Abbott has suggested the Libs will accept Harry Jenkins back in the chair, if Abbott decides to play his usual gutter game, he could vote against a Labor nominee. If one independant abstains, the vote will be tied.

A war between “good” and “evil” is a cosmic war. A cosmic war is not a war over land or resources as such a strong army cannot prevail in a cosmic war. The battle ground of a cosmic war is the mind.

"We need to do better in providing information to the Australian people, to help them understand that asylum-seekers are not to be feared, and that their numbers are small compared to the 50,000 overseas visitors who overstay their visas every year,'

This victory has proved that when we mobilise in numbers, we can demand far more from unsustainable Australian companies. Right now we're considering what more GetUp could achieve in the next few years.

By broadcasting his claimed success in having the Islamic centre moved he's demonstrated how much power can fall into the hands of a religious crank, and how easily such a person could make the world wobble.

Australia is a small country and we cannot afford to waste lives or resources. We have growing threats much closer to home than Afghanistan and we should be concentrating on these threats. We should be fighting real terrorists, not chasing ghosts or nation building in distant countries that are no threat to Australia.

We've just been informed that the site will be migrated to new hardware sometime in the next 7 days - the exact date is pending. This will incur some downtime, and may result in unforeseen issues with the site. If you notice anything wrong with the site over this period please let me know at gm-at-webdiary.com.au

A new dawn in Australian politics?

If, as expected, the conservative indies indicate in public and solid form whom they support very shortly, who will have the better chance of forming stable government and what will be the results?

"So what the committee is recommending to Australia is not only we completely remove the suspension - which we haven't yet done - but we entrench in the constitution a provision so that never again can race discrimination law be suspended in Australia." (Graeme Innes)

Had ALP policy allowed Julia Gillard to publicly and passionately slam Tony Abbott to the canvas on this issue, we may not be in the political deadlock we now find ourselves locked into until we go to the polls again.

The twenty first century is about collaboration. Unfortunately, our system actually works against collaboration. We demand differences in policies. We demand an entertaining circus, with each party at each others’ throats.

By the time I reached the front of the queue and received my ballot papers, I was finally convinced of what was the right thing to do.  Steeling myself, I walked straight to the slots and lodged my vote.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who should know better, criticise the NBN because it is not going to generate the sort of returns that private investors would be seeking. I wonder if Charles Todd’s Overland Telegraph suffered the same criticisms. If you recall it cost £480,000. But it was decades before the Overland Telegraph generated a positive return on investment. Annual revenues from telegraph traffic during the first decade of operation were only £12,000. (Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co.)

I do have a vision for Australia. And I won't be consulting the telephone book to refine it, and I won't be asking you to suspend belief unless it is written down. The Greens are the smaller party with the big ideas for Australia, up against the bigger parties with the small ideas. That's why, next Saturday, Australians who seek an assured, secure and exciting future, should go to the ballot box with a new purpose in mind and vote Greens! (Senator Bob Brown)

If everything  from a political leader's mouth comes from an arsehole, why not vote for an egg? Get a giggle from the Sunny The Egg campaign ad on Youtube and you'll be in the mood for Jessica Rudd's Campaign Ruby.

A special Election 2010 update from the Democratic Audit program at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

While Halliburton (name-morphing into subsidiary KBR) was co-ordinating worldwide infrastructure projects from Adelaide and assisting the Coalition of the Willing to invade Iraq, our State Government's leader Premier Mike Rann was taking advice from a prominent US Homeland Security Advisor named Scott Bates. Bates, a prominent architect in the implementation of democracy into post-war Kosovo, was rumoured to be Hillary Clinton's intended successor as U.S. President.