Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

“Ok, this is going to be controversial. No, it isn’t, just an old guy blowing off some egotistical steam”. This is part of the internal conversation that I started when Margo asked whether I wanted to present what I regarded as a private/business project as a Webdiary piece. What follows is the story of Roger Fedyk's musical journey and his recent recording of an album of contemporary Christian music.

As another September 11 anniversary comes and goes, a figure purporting to be Osama makes his first appearance in years. Is he real? I was particularly interested in this piece by Ramzy Baroud, enough to write to him and ask if he'd mind us publishing his piece on Webdiary.

How to live? How to die? What's the best way to live? Chris Saliba reviews Pamela Bone's Bad Hair Days, her account of her battle with cancer.

In this address to the Commonwealth Law Conference, The Hon. Justice Michael Kirby examines problems presented to the law by advances in biotechnology and biomedicine with particular reference to demands for (1) intellectual property law protection over genetic data and its applications; (2) the right to procure, and conduct experiments using, embryonic stem cells; (3) access to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to identify in embryos serious hereditary diseases; and (4)  access to new anti-retroviral therapies essential in treating HIV/AIDS.

The APEC thuggery results from a Labor and Liberal conspiracy to destroy our civil liberties and give police untrammelled power to serve political ends. I've been warning of this on Webdiary for many years. We saw with Haneef that now, police and/or government lawyers are prepared to lie under oath to the Courts to get their way. And the NSW Labor Government's disgrace started long before Iemma.Have a look at the start of the rot, under Bob Carr, in 2002, when Howard was revving up his 'terror' laws.

On August 3, Penguin's publisher Bob Sessions rang me with a shock request - could I update Not Happy, John! in three weeks? Huh? I said I could if my old Webdiary friend and collaborator Jack Robertson  agreed to come on board. He did, and the book goes to the printer this week. So, it's hardly in my personal interest for Howard to resign before the election. The book is a critique of his government, sure, but John Howard is the symbol of that government. And then there's the title! My guess is that he'll stay on. What's yours?

Later I saw another old lady asking police if she could go to David Jones.  They told her it would be always there and it would be best if she went home. Kindly old ladies being discouraged from David Jones?  That's not the Australia I grew up in!  I saw the reassuring sign that "it costs no more to shop at David Jones" but security guards blocked me from leaving via the Elizabeth Street doors.  How bizarre.

Then it got really ugly. The police moved into the centre of the intersection and formed an outward moving circle, forcing the protesters to the curb.  I ended up trapped amidst protesters and media, shepherded into a corner with armed and mostly unidentifiable police (many police on the day had no ID badges, and I have footage).  Nowhere to move to, and cops in riot gear moving in behind them, and the chopper overhead, I was beginning to get scared.

"In the 80s, my wife and I, together with our daughter, went to China to work. We particularly like Beijing. We like the atmosphere of Beijing, her people and her culture. Twenty years later, my little daughter has now married an Australian Chinese. My son is also now enrolled to study at the Fudan University in Shanghai. My youngest son, who is still in junior high school, usually he is rather naughty and does not like to do home work, but recently he has also started to learn the Chinese language." Rudd to Hu

7 August 2005 Margo update:  Janet Albrechtsen has joined Bolt -  see 'Pass baton to Costello'. Last weekend's Newspoll was a shocker for the government, and speculation is rife that next week Howard will either call an election or stand down. The Chaser proved that the emperor has no clothes - eerily reminiscent of the Bush visit to Canberra in 2003, when security waved what looked like a camera in without a security check and the AFP dressed civilians up to look like cops. Howard is about appearances, not reality.

The latest update from the Democratic Audit program at ANU on how our democracy is working, including 'Be honest, Minister!' Restoring faith in government in Australia

Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist (Kenneth Boulding).

It seems incongruous that constant warnings about the terrorist threat should lead to APEC staging itself in the very place most likely to be a magnet for such acts. However, APEC has good reason for not meeting on some tropical island. Far from seeking to avoid the week long APEC chaos diary, the event seems to have a fetish with securing these set pieces. As I shall argue here, APEC serves the cause of military urbanism.

'In a landmark decision, handed down on 30 August 2007, the High Court has upheld the fundamental human right to vote, finding that the Howard Government had acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally in imposing a blanket ban denying prisoners the vote.' 

Hello, and welcome to Spring! I'm finishing off my project this weekend before getting back to Webdiary, but just couldn't resist posting this transcript - an interview between Charles Wooley and the PM on the pulp mill. How tricky is this for our tricky PM?

Environmental change on earth is as old as the planet itself, about 4 billion years. Our genus, Homo, has altered earthly environments throughout our career, about 4 million years. But there has never been anything like the twentieth century. (J.R. McNeill) 

Matt Howard from Iraq Veterans Against The War is in Australia at the moment speaking out about his involvement in the Iraq war. A public meeting was held at Melbourne University on Thursday 23^rd August to hear Matt discuss his experiences of the war and the US military, with question time afterwards.

The Federal Court’s decision that the Australian Government can not cancel a person’s visa on the basis of an innocent association should be the end of the matter, according to the Law Council.

The Government's priority is to tackle climate change without damaging Australian jobs and living standards. Nuclear power could make a significant contribution to this challenge.

All questions of the limits, boundaries and scale of the human economic enterprise hinge on whether or not the economic system can be understood independently of its physical context. Can human economies grow forever? If not, what determines their boundaries? If so, what happens to the natural world?

... most Sydneysiders are wondering why [the APEC leaders] couldn't have chosen one of the dozens of luxurious islands of the far north to hold theirconference, now the full scope of the staggering security measures that will lock-down half of the city's center for10 days are being made public.

"Australians should be proud of what we are achieving at home to meet the climate change challenge" Alexander Downer in the Age this morning. Is he right? UPDATE: CSIRO and BoM report on the future for Australia

Mortgages and families don’t have three or four-year terms. What Australians have said four times already is that, when it comes to workplace relations, we want the real system of checks and balances comprised of State and Commonwealth powers.

A new High Court judge, the ramming through of the NT "Emergency" legislation, and the role of the Senate are among the matters reviewed in the latest update from the Democratic Audit program.

David Marr’s impassioned opening day public lecture at the 2007 Byron Bay Writer’s Festival, exposing and condemning Howard’s suppression of free speech and dissent, ended with a call to action to the assembled literati to fight Attorney General Ruddock’s proposed amendment to the Film and Literature Classification (i.e censorship) Act. … When Marr ended to loud applause and the crowd was exiting, flushed by the call to arms to defend free speech, I began to distribute two flyers I had prepared critiquing two journalists … who would appear later in the Festival program.