Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I am here to issue a national call to arms: and that is for the nation to bind together as one in a national campaign against unemployment. While government must take the lead, everyone has a part to play. And our end point is clear: to do whatever it takes at the global, national and local level to support local jobs and to help those who lose their jobs to retrain and to find a new job. (Kevin Rudd)

Obama, the EU (and Rudd?) face two issues: first the plethora of extreme weather events around the world, including fatal fires and floods, inherent in accelerating climate change, and second, a massive well-funded disinformation campaign, which has provided governments an excuse to undertake no mitigation measures or over more than 20 years.

According to the Medical Journal of Australia over 2,000 Australians die every year while waiting to be admitted to hospital emergency departments. No wonder doctors are frustrated. What would happen if we were faced with a large scale disaster?

Camaraderie, altruism, singing, mediation, a belief that things will turn out well (even if only after death) are all techniques confirmed by science. However, we felt betrayed by religion and turned away. We realised that not only is there no God, but that religious institutions were often as venal and corrupt as secular institutions.

"Ultimately, the challenges of the 21st century can't be met without collective action.  Agreement will almost never be easy, and results won't always come quickly. But I am committed to respecting different points of view, and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms.  That's how we made progress in the last few days. And that's how we will advance and uphold our ideals in the months and years to come." (President Barack Obama)

In the surreal, bizarre and frequently deadly world of Middle Eastern politics, and against a backdrop of decades of compromise, incompetence, failure and corruption by secular movements like Fatah, the rise of ultra-conservative, ultra-nationalist Islamist factions such as Hamas and its Lebanese counterpart Hizbolla have signalled a tectonic shift in power relations in the region.

Between the counterterrorists’s Achilles Heel exposed at Sydney Airport last week by the biker brawl, and the failure of the communications system installed at Sydney's most-ever likely time to face a terrorist attack, is it possible to maintain faith that other counterterrorism systems and practices are going to work as and when they're supposed to?

As to Hanson herself, you have to wonder at the cultural background that created the woman she was: women’s upbringing and enculturisation (and men’s), gender relations, and politics in general over the last couple of centuries and post ww2 in particular, perhaps against a sort of back drop of the sort of stuff that Prof Marilyn Lake discussed, concerning the Henry Lawson Bronzed Anzac / Pioneer myth and its sidelining of women...

Malcolm Turnbull and others baying for the blood of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, should think long and hard about their arguments. They appear to be saying that it is ok for officials of a government department to secretly and probably illegally, launch an investigation into the Minister to whom they are accountable. In the case of Mr Fitzgibbon, the intelligence gathering on him also smacks of racism. Mr. Fitzgibbon is friendly with an influential Chinese woman, a Ms Liu – so what?

As we look for solutions to the global situation it is becoming increasingly clear that the only way forward is a new path. We should listen to those who predicted the collapse nearly forty years ago. We must be willing to change and support those who are showing us some direction.

A far more effective control of the danger of climate change would be to tax all emission materials (oil, coal etc) at the point of supply, start at once, and at a low rate that would not panic the natives.

The Afghan people are fighting us because we are the foreigners. We are pushing people into the arms of the Taliban and inflaming the situation with the likelihood of spreading the war into surrounding countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

Some of the now confessed bastardry of Australian banks has now been exposed, at the highest possible level. The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, chose his words carefully – and spoke politely – when he did that late yesterday. But those who heard him had no doubts about what he was really saying.

Reading, ’riting and ‘rithmetic are not the objectives of an education system. Rather, they are by-products. What an education system must primarily do is foster a love of learning – the skills and attributes that a child learning to walk has, but appears to lose with age.

There is little evidence the “climate change skeptics” worry too much their misunderstanding of climate science may lead to the death of billions and the likely demise of civilization . The legal status of disinformation campaigns aimed at the promotion of substances of proven fatal global consequences, such as ozone-destroying CFCs, or greenhouse gas levels pushed up to near-40% above their natural level, is unclear. The lack of suitable laws to prevent ecocide may yet prove to be the Achilles heel of global civilization.

Under pressure over the huge bonuses paid to executives of failing companies, the Government has finally announced it will take action. Mounting community outrage at huge payments to departing executives has led the Federal Government to announce an inquiry into the issue — but first it will pass law to give shareholders more power over payments.

Shouldn’t we be using the anti terror laws to control these thugs? We should make their clubs illegal and destroy the club houses. Anyone known to belong to an outlaw bikie gang should face the same penalties as those belonging to terrorist organisations. There is no difference – both use violence and terror to intimidate the rest of the population.

Peter Faris QC, also writing in today's Australian, asserts that the combination of the Haneef incident and this one demonstrates that the AFP are not capable of overseeing Australian counterterrorism procedures.  His worries about the exposure of Sydney airport as an easy terrorist target are worth contemplating. (Updated)

Whenever I've encountered those who feel that there are too many people on the planet … I've issued them with a polite invitation to do themselves in as the only ethical approach. This is because those who feel that there are simply too many people inevitably feel that there are too many of somebody else’s family, class, ethnicity or nation. ... [T]he problem is constructed as “too many of them” rather than "one too many of me".

"Till midnight tonight, in every bar in Australia, the drinks are on me!  Simply wander down to your "local" and tell the bartender "this is Kevin's Shout" and not only will my Government reimburse the pub for the booze, but you can even take the receipt home and use it as a tax deduction. "

Kevin Rudd has certainly nailed his colours to the masthead with his article The Global Financial Crisis published in the February 2009 edition of The Monthly. As a plain language account of the dominance of neo-liberalism in Western political economy over the last thirty or so years it is exemplary.

The election will be very close. Anna Bligh may scrape in with the help of Green preferences; the alternative will be disastrous for Queensland. Let us hope that the ALP learns from this election and works out how to manage both the economic crisis and the climate change crisis.

Limiting carbon pollution is the next step in the plan to ... revitalize our economy. But the fossil fuel industry has already signaled that it will spend whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo. To jumpstart our economy, we need bold action from our leaders. (Repower America)

Most of us would agree that there is a limit to the number of people this planet can sustain. It may be 10 billion or 100 billion but there is a limit. The only debate is about the size of the limit and how we prevent the human population from reaching the limit and destroying the planet.

In this month's update, among other matters, political donations, government advertising under Howard, electoral redistribution, parliamentary privilege, and whistleblower protection.

One of the ALP’s 2007 election pledges was to deal with perceived loopholes regarding political donations. In 2008 Senator Faulkner said, "Reforms to the donation disclosure regime are a priority because, in order to be fully effective, they must operate by the start of the next financial year." So, what happened in the Senate yesterday?

Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them. Today, the religion, culture, language and identity, which successive generations of Tibetans have considered more precious than their lives, are nearing extinction; in short, the Tibetan people are regarded like criminals deserving to be put to death. (H.H. the Dalai Lama)