Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"How easily the mighty can fall. One minute you are touted to head the International Atomic Energy Agency, the next you are about to become embroiled in an international bribery scandal!" Richard Tonkin

A former senior police officer who worked as a detective at the Australian Crime Commission is in court next month on 16 charges relating to the theft and supply of drugs. The Australian Crime Commission was set up in 2003 to deal with threats posed by nationally significant crime.

"In today’s world, only national governments are large enough to be able to do so with any assurance that the pension assets will actually be there when workers retire. I am enough of a social democrat to believe that if there is an economic service or benefit that citizens value extremely highly and that only the government can provide, then the government should provide it." J Bradford DeLong

"The latest conflict between protesters and Japanese whaling vessels occurred on January 15 when a grenade-tipped harpoon was fired near Greenpeace activists off Mawson Coast, part of the Australian Antarctic Territory." Dale Mills

"It may surprise the reader to know that a majority of Americans support a stronger United Nations, believe in international co-operation, favour spending money to help out poorer nations and even support the International Criminal Court (ICC). All this despite the current Bush administration’s pronounced displeasure with the UN." Chris Saliba

"With ‘Bomber’ Beazley finally seeming to be ready to declare Labour’s own ‘phoney war’ with the government over, the benign picture of the situation in Iraq painted by Hill is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, whilst the difficulty confronted by the ‘coalition of the willing’ in trying to work out how to extract itself from the disastrous mess is matched only by scale of the problems it has created." John Richardson

"This Sunday, I head for Indonesia with four others. We are part of a delegation from Australia participating in an exchange program arranged by those fabulous folk at the Australia-Indonesia Institute." Irfan Yusuf

How will President George W. Bush’s administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the United States that now compares to that of Richard Nixon’s administration more than thirty years ago. Aryeh Neier

The issues surrounding the possibility of a pandemic of the H5N1 strain of avian flu are extraordinarily complex, encompassing medicine, epidemiology, virology, and even politics and ethics. Moreover, there is tremendous uncertainty about exactly when H5N1, which now primarily affects birds, might mutate into a form that is transmissible between humans, and how infectious and lethal it might be. Henry Miller

Specialist in Pacific media and journalism and their contexts, Dr Mark Hayes, is a very close Region and Fiji watcher, as well as traveller Out There, attempts to make sense of what's going on in Fiji, one of the three Pacific Forum countries (the others are the Solomon Islands and Samoa) scheduled to hold elections during 2006. Dr Mark Hayes

"Any 'diarists fancy doing an analysis of which former Howard staffers are now working for Big Pharma? Or any former staffers of other pollies for that matter? How many former pollies and political staffers have gone on to drugs after politics?" Craig Rowley

"Acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile said this week the government would consider removing the “anti-evergreening” amendments to the legislation enabling the Free Trade Agreement with the US. These amendments were introduced to ease enormous public concern about the USFTA’s potential to undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)." Robyn Clothier

"If Byron Bay locals thought they had it bad with visitors, they should spare a thought for the people of Mecca in central-western Saudi Arabia. Each year, over 5 million people visit this sacred Muslim city." Irfan Yusuf

"Whilst the government moved quickly to set-up independent inquiries into the events surrounding the appalling DIMIA scandal, its leader in the Senate, Defence Minister Robert Hill, and the ADF have sought to maintain a veil of secrecy over unspecified allegations of torture and possible execution of ADF prisoners in East Timor, way back in 1999." John Richardson

"It is sorely tempting to accept Professor Mirko Bagaric’s thesis that Australians would not benefit from a Bill of Rights... But his capstone argument appears to be that there is no point in us having a Bill of Rights, as our politicians as ‘lawmakers’ would simply find ways to subvert those rights!" John Richardson.

Who are you, John Howard? It’s been close to ten years that you have been Prime Minister of Australia, ten years of listening to you talk, debate, argue, disagree, spar with enemies, deny, explain, console, assure, and yet, after all those words, I’m still at a loss as to who you really are.

Any contributors who are not registered on Webdiary will be under Guest Contributors for the now. Please let us know if there are posts missing from anyone's archive or if there are registered users' posts which are still not archived under their name.

"Has the United States transcended the laws of economics? As the New Year begins, the US continues to race ahead of its rich-country counterparts. The gargantuan US trade deficit? No problem. In 2005, it widened further, and the dollar only strengthened. Low investment and a deteriorating primary education system? Not to worry. The super-flexible US economy keeps managing to produce more with less." Kenneth Rogoff

Several Adelaide-based US Defence Corporations are disguising themselves as small businesses to "loophole" US Legislation, according to a US Survey.

"The almighty American consumer had another banner year in 2005, helping sustain global economic growth, albeit at a slower pace than in 2004. As in recent years, he consumed at or above his income level, and the United States as a whole spent well beyond its means, borrowing from the rest of the world at a feverish pace in 2005 – more than $2 billion a day." Joseph E Stiglitz

"The international monetary and financial system has witnessed tremendous change over the recent decades. Rapid expansion in cross-border capital flows, continued financial innovation, and deepening financial markets pose increasing challenges not only for national policy makers, but also for international financial institutions. This has been particularly true of the IMF as it seeks to serve its global membership, and it has triggered a critically important discussion of the Fund’s strategic direction." Jürgen Stark