Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Whilst Australian citizen, David Hicks, continues to endure his 4^th year of illegal imprisonment and torture in America’s Guantanamo Bay gulag, a new report by Joshua Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall, has found that, based on data supplied by the Pentagon, that "55% of the detainees have not committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies." John Richardson

"Queenslanders in 2005 discovered that their public health system was chronically underfunded, poorly run and in some cases it provided dangerous and even deadly services for those who turned to its hospitals for attention. Two Commissions of Inquiry (the first shut because of the apprehended bias of its Commissioners) and a wide-ranging administrative inquiry were instituted after a whistleblower nurse, Ms Toni Hoffman, told her local MP about the disastrous surgical exploits of an overseas-trained doctor, Dr Jayant Patel, who had become infamously known to some of his colleagues as Dr Death." David Solomon

"When I was last in Israel, I stayed in a Jewish village in the north of the country. The children from the nearby Arab town attended the village kindy and the Jewish farmers sold produce to shopkeepers in the town. Security was always a consideration – the village was surrounded by a fence which the men of the village patrolled every and all night – but generally there was no problem." Sue Hoffman

""India everywhere" was the theme at this year's World Economic Forum. In the West, there is so much focus on China that India's achievements are often acknowledged only as an afterthought. As if to underscore the point that political stability must triumph in the long run, the Indians plastered Swiss buses with the banner: "India: The World's Fastest Growing Democracy."" Kenneth Rogoff

"When you fight with the rels, it tends to be nasty. What makes it worse is that you often can’t help ending up feeling the pain you joyously inflict on them. It’s a bit like scratching your face to squash a mosquito sucking the blood from your cheek." Irfan Yusuf

"The election of the militant and hitherto extra-parliamentary group Hamas in the Palestinian territories reminds us of what democracy cannot achieve. No one in a more established democratic state is surprised if one’s own side does not win. Democracy is about competing parties, and, unless they form a “grand coalition,” they cannot all win. But what if an election’s winners have no intention of abiding by the rules that are part and parcel of the democratic process?" Ralf Dahrendorf

"Ang Lee has directed a film quite unlike anything that comes out of the US. There is a very disciplined way to Lee’s direction in that he stays true to his characters in every shot. So powerful is the Lee technique that it is easy to miss some of the most breathtakingly beautiful scenery because your focus is riveted on the characters." Roger Fedyk

"For political history buffs, I believe this is the first Private Senators Bill in the names of 4 Senators from four different parties (all of whom also happen to be women)." Senator Andrew Bartlett on the RU486 legislation being debated in the Senate today.

"Terrorism is likely to define the year 2006 as much as it has every year since 2001. Years from now, historians will likely label the opening years of the twenty-first century the “Age of Terrorism.” As with any new era, we do not yet fully understand what is happening and why. While most of the world recognises the problem, there are very different views on its causes and cures." Steven Metz

"If you have lived in such a society all your life, it is easier to presume every other place is the same. It is therefore little wonder that so many Arab and Muslim groups are calling for such crazy things as a ban by governments on the publication of the cartoons." Irfan Yusuf

"Football is not only the world’s most popular sport, but also probably its most globalised profession. It is inconceivable that Brazilian, Cameroonian, or Japanese doctors, computer scientists, blue-collar workers, or bank tellers could move from one country to another as easily as Brazilian, Cameroonian, or Japanese football players do." Branko Milanovic

"On 31 March 2002, in between the two Passover holidays, the Hamas dispatched a suicide bomber to my home town of Haifa. My parents, Haley and Shimon, and my sister Adi went out for lunch at the Matza restaurant on that day. At about 14.45 the terrorist entered the restaurant and blew himself up. My mother was very badly hurt and my father was critically wounded. My sister and 14 other people perished in that attack. Only someone who has been through that experience can understand what we have been through since then." Eyal Shiran, translated from the Hebrew by Sol Salbe.

"Jensen uses his high profile position to make some extraordinary claims. He claims to speak for God. He claims prescience as to the ultimate fate of the Anglican Church. He calls for like-minded person’s to engage in a struggle where either the Anglican Church perishes or those Anglicans who are homosexuals do." Roger Fedyk

"Some may have tried to blow it off as a political beat up, but that would be a big mistake. This story just gets bigger each day as anyone closely following the Cole inquiry into bad business by sanction busting bribe-payers would know. It is the biggest scandal we've seen for many years." Craig Rowley and Richard Tonkin

"Macroeconomic policies, financial globalisation, and changes in labour market institutions have exacerbated inequality in recent decades, not only in income and wealth, but also in access to education, healthcare, social protection, as well as in political participation and influence. Even within countries experiencing rapid economic growth, an array of factors, exacerbated by tremendous demographic changes, has conspired to transmit inequality of knowledge, social responsibility, and life chances from one generation to the next." Jomo K.S.

"Concerned that the Bush administration might be misleading everyone about the Iraq war’s costs, just as it had about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaida, I teamed up with Linda Bilmes, a budget expert at Harvard, to examine the issue. Even we, as opponents of the war, were staggered by what we found, with conservative to moderate estimates ranging from slightly less than a trillion dollars to more than $2 trillion." Joseph E Stiglitz

"That’s it. I’ve decided once and for all. In a show of Islamic solidarity, I will not drink at the Slip Inn. After all, a Danish newspaper published 12 nasty and offensive cartoons. As a result, I refuse to drink at a pub which has anything to do with Denmark." Irfan Yusuf

"Despite the vast incompleteness of our knowledge, recent research suggests that most people think that they know far more than they actually do. We freely admit to not knowing everything about how a helicopter flies or a printing press prints, but we are not nearly modest enough about our ignorance." Frank Keil

"Hamas’s rise to power and the question of whether it will ditch terrorism and renounce its aim of destroying Israel is evocative of the experience of the IRA in Ireland. The Irish group and its political wing, Sinn Fein, switched from fervent extremism and undeniable terrorism to power sharing and in the process abandoning their main aim: the removal of Britain from Northern Ireland." Yehuda Litani, translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe.

Our General Manager's monthly update on site traffic, publishing, Webdiarists, finances and Margo.