Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Mental health services around the world are largely based on the assumption that being upset or disoriented is a sort of condition like medical illnesses. Here in Australasia, we imported this perspective from overseas, actively suppressing more holistic Maori and Aboriginal understandings about human distress. We did so despite numerous studies that show that recovery rates from "mental illness" in "underdeveloped" countries are far superior to those in "advanced" societies." John Read

"After three years of military engagement in Iraq, 2,314 US soldiers had been killed. The equivalent figure for Vietnam is 1,864. The death toll in Vietnam really accelerated from the fourth year onwards. There are significant differences between Iraq and Vietnam, just as there are certain similarities. What kind of lessons are available in comparing the two events?" Bryan Law

"The fires of the Middle East must not be allowed to distract the world’s attention from the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, which it demonstrated by its recent test of a long-range missile. Yet that is what appears to be happening." Joseph S Nye

"The problem lies not in seeing the solution, but in getting to it, because powerful and often violent minorities on both sides oppose it."

"A remarkable incident has emboldened Chinese journalists. Earlier this year, the government suspended publication of the newspaper Bing Dian Weekly, provoking unprecedented open protest, which received extensive media coverage worldwide. Even more surprisingly, the government, under the pressure of public opinion, has allowed Bing Dian to resume publication. The editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief were sacked, but the open questioning of the legitimacy of the government’s authority to regulate journalism is bound to have a profound impact. " Li Datong

"For any poor segment of the world economy, getting attached to the global container network is an immense opportunity. But it is an opportunity that requires that everything – infrastructure, scale, public administration, governance, and foreign knowledge of your production capabilities – work just right. And if you have not first built up the social networks that enable your workers and their bosses to know what kinds of manufactured goods would generate high demand in the rich post-industrial core of the world economy, it doesn’t matter even if you are attached to the global container network.": J Bradford DeLong

"Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is one heck of a right-wing propaganda piece. Next to Dostoyevsky's The Possessed it is possibly the best right-wing novel ever produced. It should be read as a companion piece and de-tox from The Communist Manifesto . It should also be read with caution. I came away from reading it with an unwell feeling. I had something like the moral horror Camus intended for the reader to feel in reading The Outsider . The book is alien and unnerving at times, bordering on the surreal. I read it when I was 17 and I wish I hadn't. Propaganda does harm to supple young minds." Solomon Wakeling

"Indonesia recently witnessed a pair of dramatic releases: one a radical Muslim cleric from prison, the other a saucy men’s magazine from its editors. Both Abu Bakar Ba’asyir and Playboy are now out on the streets and in the public eye, but neither is as significant as its opponents claim. Their releases and the public debate to which they have contributed, however, cut straight to the heart of the ongoing struggle for Indonesia’s self-identity – a struggle which has taken a dramatic turn of late. ": Nathaniel Myers

"The Communist Party leadership has decided that in the next decade hairdressers, accountants, karaoke hostesses, tour guides, and movie directors will be the new pillars of economic performance. As investment growth slows and export markets endure their unpredictable business cycles and protectionist moods, China will increasingly rely upon consumption for creation of jobs and income – and the service industry is where most consumption occurs.": Stephen Green

"Is today’s globalizing era coming to an end? If so, it may not necessarily end with a repeat of the slaughters of the last century, but with an economic retrenchment that brings economic stagnation and consigns billions of people to grinding poverty. Various candidates have been proposed for the role of globalization’s assassin. But one little noticed, yet likely, aspirant has been sneaking up on the world economy: the growing tendency to limit the free circulation of people, to 'fence in' the rich world.": Branko Milanovic

"Happiness is something we all want but what is it exactly? The dictionary defines it as a 'state of wellbeing'. But is that something which any of us can have all of the time?": Roslyn Ross

"At the highest levels - the FIFA World Cup, Olympics, and Tour de France – sport can be boiled down to a duality of good and evil. It is a clash of material greed, weakness and corruption vs the spirit of fair play, heroics and pride. Nowhere is this more apparent than football with its universal appeal. A type of Gnostic dualism is at play as fate runs its course through the contest from the opening whistle to what can be the devastating last three seconds." Stephen Smith

"Everyone I meet claims to love trees - I mean really love trees - yet collectively the human race behaves as if it abhors green things. If you take a step back from whatever biome you are in at the moment and look at the entire Earth and its forests through recorded history, you will see that the relationship between humans and trees looks Strangely Like War (the title of a recent book on forests by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan).": Joan Maloof

"The banner reading Mission Accomplished across the top of the Halliburton Watch site might almost be enough to help Scott forgive the Australian Government's aggressive stance in protecting the company that the Pentagon has now rejected. His case, however, is expected to resume in the Federal Court within several weeks." Richard Tonkin

"When football matches – at least those that must produce a winner – end in a draw, a penalty shoot-out must resolve the matter, as this World Cup has demonstrated so dramatically. The shoot-out’s individual competition for heroism or misery is really alien to such a team game as football, but it is accepted as a necessary way to resolve the stalemate. But when it comes to elections – which ideally should always produce a winner – there is no such device." Ralf Dahrendorf

"Would you be happier if you were richer? Many people believe that they would be. But research conducted over many years suggests that greater wealth implies greater happiness only at quite low levels of income. ... Perhaps Warren Buffett spent less of his life in a positive mood than he would have if, at some point in the 1960’s, he had quit working, lived on his assets, and played a lot more bridge. But, in that case, he surely would not have experienced the satisfaction that he can now rightly feel.": Peter Singer

"There’s a lot of bombing the bejeezus out of all sorts of people around these days and Webdiarists seem to be much keen on discussing it.": Malcolm B Duncan

This is Alexander Downer's speech last night to the Centre for Independent Studies. Worth a debate?

"The simplest thing any leading opposition figure with both real guts and sense could do is praise the "masses" for their civic spirit - but then, go on to explain exactly how the democratic process itself was designed to aggregate/sift personal experience, remind the audience that the mass media is controlled by the powerful, and is thus not necessarily a trustworthy guide to broader issues, then ask them to vote on personal experience, alone!": John Henry Calvinist

"Any Indian able to read this article should consider himself lucky, because India’s politicians have succeeded in keeping a majority of the country’s population thoroughly illiterate (as well as poor and unhealthy). Instead of providing quality elementary education for all, our policymakers are more concerned with enacting caste-based measures aimed at short-term political gains.": Arindam Chaudhuri

"As the current "development round" of trade talks moves into its final stages, it is becoming increasingly clear that the goal of promoting development will not be served, and that the multilateral trade system will be undermined. Nowhere is this clearer than in a provision that is supposed to give the least developed countries almost duty-free access to developed countries’ markets. The coup de grace was delivered by the world’s richest country, the United States, which once again decided to demonstrate its hypocrisy. " Joseph Stiglitz and Hamid Rashid

"Many people rightly regard the annual G-8 (Group of Eight) presidential summit as the closest thing we have to a functioning world government. So it is a shame that these meetings tend to be so scripted and dull, with so little room for the informality needed to make genuine progress on tough issues involving world peace and prosperity.": Kenneth Rogoff

"Suddenly, it seemed, the US Supreme Court had started the job for him without warning or any chance of a fair hearing according to decently accepted principles of international law actually accepted by actual international lawyers actually. The Ship of State was adrift without a Ruddock." From Chapter VIII of the Chronicles of Nadir, as told from the grave by Tom Lewis.

"This year’s World Cup has proven once again that football is the world’s most popular sport; it has also proven that football is probably the world’s most globalized 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