Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Whereas Europeans, with crime rates well below American rates for the past half-century, could long afford to be relatively “soft” on most crimes, they have seen their crime rates increase sharply during the past twenty years. By contrast, American rates have fallen, in part because of greater use of punishment." Gary S Becker

"Albert Einstein once said, “I have no special gift, but I am passionately curious.” Certainly, Einstein was being tremendously modest. But, just as certainly, curiosity is a powerful driving force in scientific discovery. Indeed, along with talent and interest, as well as mathematical or other quantitative abilities, curiosity is a necessary characteristic of any successful scientist." Helga Nowotny

"Keeping Arundhati Roy in her place - out of school, out of print, on the street - is not simply a case of not being able to see past appearances. Postmodernism contends that war and politics arrange appearances in hierarchies of value/acceptability to justify the way the world's goods are divided." M. F. McAuliffe

"Those first Indonesian military failures were however neither a reliable indicator for Indonesia's ultimate military plans nor for its capacity to execute these. Soviet and American supplies of new weaponry and the training of Indonesian military personnel in the use of these seemed to turn the military balance in Indonesia's favour." Arie Brand

"The family had decided to keep quiet about the mystery surrounding Jake's death, preferring to let the Army handle the media questions, but a string of incredible mistakes has culminated with the body of Judy's son not being sent back to Australia where the family was waiting to retrieve the coffin. Judy Kovco now wants Australians to know exactly what has happened in the six days since her son was killed, and the circumstances under which he died." Darryl Mason

"Africa received $520billion in aid between 1960 and 1997, the equivalent of six Marshall Plans, and finished up even poorer than before. For some 50 years, foreign aid programmes have been a standard feature of Western dealings with the Third World in general and Africa in particular. The ‘goal’ was defined as assisting modernisation and development. Half a century on Africa remains a basket case with levels of poverty rising, not dropping, virtually across the entire continent." Roslyn Ross

"Some people still think of wage subsidies as a welfare hand-out. But these subsidies are very different from social assistance and social insurance programs. Although such programs have been substantial in Europe and the US, the working poor remain as marginalised as ever. Indeed, social spending has worsened the problem, because it reduces work incentives and thus creates a culture of dependency and alienation from the commercial economy, undermining labor force participation, employability, and employee loyalty. What is needed is higher employment and pay through higher demand for the least productive workers." Edmund S Phelps

"The tragic figure of the novel is not the sufferer of mental illness but her spouse. Without proper support, there may be more truth in this scenario than fiction. The question I want to ask the forum is: what can be done to ease the burden on family members of those with mental illness, by governments, the mental health system and by the community at large?" Solomon Wakeling

"Rumsfeld’s mistrust of the European approach contains a grain of truth. Europe has used the attractiveness of its Union to obtain outcomes it wants, just as the US has acted as though its military pre-eminence could solve all problems. But it is a mistake to count too much on hard or soft power alone. The ability to combine them effectively is 'smart power'." Joseph S Nye

"The image of the Papuans as a bunch of savage, stone age and illiterate tribes persisted in American ambassadorial reporting from Indonesia right up to the so-called 'act of free choice' in 1969 and helped to gloss over the fact that this so-called plebiscite was an obvious fraud." Arie Brand

"Indos, still more of whom have voted with their feet since 2000 and migrated overseas, taking their skills with them, largely assume and operate on the assumption that indigenous Fijians will dominate government in the foreseeable future, so they have to accommodate themselves to it or get out." Dr Mark Hayes

"British interests were still threatened in Canada, which the American Colonies shortly after purporting to declare independence had invaded (one of their first of many demonstrations of a bellicose foreign policy evident even today), the Spanish and their Caribbean and South American interests were sometimes a fickle friend and later a foe and there was the ever-present threat that the French would launch a nuisance attack on His Majesty’s possessions in the Great South land." Malcolm B Duncan

"Fewer debates over economics would be needed if the world spent more time examining what actually works and what does not. Almost everywhere, debate has raged about how to combine market forces and social security. The left calls for an expansion of social protection; the right says that doing so would undermine economic growth and widen fiscal deficits." Jeffrey D Sachs

"Why are neuroscientists, molecular biologists, geneticists, and developmental biologists – men and women whose discoveries have forever changed the way we understand ourselves – so uneasy about their futures? The crisis in morale among today’s medical scientists stems not from money problems, nor from the stage of development of their fields, nor from the level of research that is being conducted, but from these scientists’ failure to form themselves into proper, humane communities." Robert Pollack

"Some books I love from page one, some books I hate just as quickly. John McArdle's book is in neither category. It is a ripping good yarn and it is true." Roger Fedyk.

"Do we add value to our lives as a Nation and as individuals by not making our shores a safe refuge from the repression of Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Burma and any other country with a mind to manage its Nationals by the gun? Do we improve our status in the eyes of the rest of the world (except the gun-toting country these PEOPLE are running and hiding from), by rejecting out of hand, the upturned face of a frightened child, running to escape his own countries guns?" Daemon Singer

As more time passes with neither the value of the dollar declining sharply nor market forces beginning to shrink America’s current-account deficit – which may well reach $1 trillion this year – two diametrically opposed reactions are emerging. Most international finance economists are becoming increasingly frightened that a major international financial crisis could erupt. Indeed, they fear that the scale of that potential crisis is becoming larger and larger." J Bradford DeLong.

"One of the most difficult things in the world (apart from getting the top off an old milk bottle without tearing it or throwing up) has always been sexing a beaver. Corder, however, was an expert beaver-sexer and had, from an early age (strangely on an exchange trip to a wheat farm in Canada), learnt that the key was that beavers (naturally because of their diets) always smell of fish." From Chapter V of the Chronicles of Nadir, as told from the grave by Tom Lewis.

"Marks & Spencer, a supermarket and clothing chain with 400 stores throughout Britain, recently announced that it is converting its entire range of coffee and tea, totaling 38 lines, to Fairtrade, a marketing symbol of “ethical production.” The chain already sells only Fairtrade tea and coffee in its 200 Café Revive coffee shops. It is also boosting its purchases of shirts and other goods made with Fairtrade cotton. The announcement came during “Fairtrade Fortnight,” a two-week promotion of Fairtrade products that included speaking tours by farmers from developing countries, telling Britons how Fairtrade has assisted their communities." Peter Singer

A scandalous and brutal Bill has been proposed by the Howard government to block all access to Australia of all asylum seekers arriving by boat, both for processing their claims and for settlement if these claims prove true. We need a dozen Liberal and National MP's in Parliament to become confident enough to Cross the Floor and block this legislation; and we need two Senators to Cross the Floor and block the passage of this Bill - no matter how its amendments try to obfuscate the sneakiness of its contents.

"Though the idea of self-determination had been an important factor in keeping Papua, at any case for the time being, out of what was then still the United States of Indonesia, the Dutch were in the first half of the fifties far too optimistic about the time they would have to prepare the Papuans for this. They were thinking in terms of gradual evolution that would require a few generations. In 1954 the New Guinea Government opened a School for Civil Administration in what was then Hollandia (now Jayapura)." Arie Brand

"It has become fashionable to claim that the nation state has lost its place. Globalisation, it is said, means that nations can no longer control their own affairs. They must join with others, as in the European Union or ASEAN or Mercosur, and they must increasingly rely on global institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation." Ralf Dahrendorf

"James Lovelock’s major concern is rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, what it is likely to do to us, and what we in turn can do about it. That is, if it is not too late already to avoid a runaway greenhouse effect." Ian MacDougall