Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I've never seen so much media at a protest, I guess the media and the cops were waiting for us to cause trouble. They were mostly disappointed. This protest was generally peaceful (except for those idiot gate breakers). There were almost as many police as protesters and a kind of PA informing us as we entered the protest zone that we were entering a 'protected area' and would have to follow police directive, this was neither here nor there for me until I wanted to leave.

Proud to call ourselves a Labor Government and proud of our union heritage and union links, always ready to fight against conservative forces, who simply don't accept our core values and who represent the interests of the privileged and the powerful and friends, they are circling again, as the Liberal Party prepares to launch another attack on the rights of Australians at work. 

"The simple systems which sustained people in monetary poverty but in reasonable harmony with nature and the seasons and with what was sustainable and what was not have only been suborned and abandoned on a global scale in the last 100 years or so."-   Rob Scott

"When giving Sienna a bath, Sienna needs assistance to get undressed.  Her nappy and clothes need to be ready.  Her hearing aids and glasses needs to come off.  Her hearing aids need to be turned off.  The cloth around her gastrostomy needs to be taken off.  I lift her from her wheelchair onto the toilet chair, then wheel her to her bedroom, undress her in there and then wheel her to the bathroom, where her bath is ready"- Jewels Smith

"Like all anti-censorship campaigns, Tharunka emerged from a particular political context. From today’s perspective, it appears like the period piece it is, and my early defiance seems optimistic, even naive. Nonetheless, I still believe that direct action and resistance is the best way to counter censorship in whatever form it comes." - Wendy Bacon

"A global movement of climate justice organizers and direct actionistas has been building People Power against the root causes of climate change for quite some time. In North America, our fight to stop climate change and fossil fuel extraction is happening right now all over the country" - Scott Parkin

"The power of, and results possible through peaceful protest reported from around the world seemed to galvanise the UK public in such a way that an all-encompassing demonstration which took place this past weekend (March 26th) in London attracted half a million people." - Amy Freeborn

"I had no idea how this story would end or what I would discover when I finally sat down at the computer and started to type. I now know that torture not only permanently scars the torture victim, but it also leaves its mark on everyone who comes in contact with that person."  - Jason Leopold

I want to help others see that it can be done, if you want it enough.I am only a pensioner, with a child that's most bedridden, and yet I can run this farm on the principles of permaculture and communalism. We don't make any money, but we don't have big expenses

 An absolute prohibition against experiments on prisoners of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions, but President George W. Bush stripped war on terror detainees of those protections. Some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" also had an experimental quality.

For the last nine years, Coalition governments have lauded the possibilities offered by a centralised Afghan democracy with a powerful government in Kabul. But the cultural and ethnic dynamics of Afghanistan make this a very difficult and unlikely outcome.

"We need to do better in providing information to the Australian people, to help them understand that asylum-seekers are not to be feared, and that their numbers are small compared to the 50,000 overseas visitors who overstay their visas every year,'

"Today, guided by my values, I want to share with you how I intend to move Australia forward to a stronger economy, with sustainable growth that delivers for hard-working Australians." - The Hon Julia Gillard MP, Prime Minister for Australia

"The case against BP Alaska involved a major oil company with strong political connections," West said. " We had several investigative avenues available to us that in my judgment as a veteran senior manager with the EPA Criminal Investigation Division would likely have led us to find criminal culpability on the part of a number of senior BP officials and to felonious behavior by this major corporation."

"Our broad mission is clear:  We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies.  That is our mission.  And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear:  We’re going to deny al Qaeda safe haven."" - US President Barack Obama

"There are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of thesestories, each as important as the other, each with its own hurts, itsown humiliations its own traumas - and each united by the experience ofa childhood without love, of childhood alone."- Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

"To me, this is both a statement of fact and an article of faith, an aspiration. Because it’s only if you believe in the fair-minded mainstream that you can create content for it. And even if you sometimes doubt this is what “most people” think, then, in fact especially then, it’s still important to maintain belief in the better natures of our fellow citizens."- Julian Morrow

It now seems almost certain that, if it has not occurred already, within the next several years enough warming will be locked into the system to set in train positive feedback processes that will overwhelm any attempts to cut back on carbon emissions. Humans will be powerless to stop the shift to a new climate on Earth, one much less sympathetic to life. (Clive Hamilton)

Hubris nurtured by groupthink is the Achilles heel of publicly unaccountable power. The only known human cure for its toxic effects is the free circulation of differing viewpoints, courageous conjectures, corrective judgments, checks and balances, the institutional humbling of power. (John Keane)

My claim to expertise on this is simply that I am, as far as I know, the only writer to have sampled the different conditions of these three regimes, or samples of regime; the kind of government as I'll start right out by phrasing it, considers the citizen essentially to be the property of the State. (Christopher Hitchens)

If recent news reports are accurate, some form of that day of reckoning may soon be upon us as now-Attorney General Holder weighs the possibility of appointing a federal prosecutor to probe the Bush administration’s use of torture during the interrogation of detainees captured in the “war on terror.”

Australia’s grim record on health care for Indigenous people is by far the worst of any developed nation. Developed? How can a country be “developed” when it leaves so many of its children behind? Australia has not provided its citizens with an equal opportunity for primary health care, education, housing, employment, let alone recognition and a life of dignity.

Yoo, who is a visiting law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., asserted that the President had unlimited powers to prosecute the “war on terror” on American soil and could ignore constitutional rights, including First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press and Fourth Amendment requirements for search warrants.

We are still in the midst of understanding the consequences of the global financial crisis and the actions of governments (including Australia's) in response to it. Importantly, it remains uncertain to what degree Australia's comparatively successful performance in navigating through this catastrophe has been due to regulatory foresight or just good luck. We would do well not to discount the possibility that a "good roll of the dice" left us without more significant system failures such as those seen in Britain. In future crises, we may not be so lucky.

For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe. (Reihan Salam)

"The Obama administration agreed to reprocess the documents, but it continues to withhold many key details related to the Defence Department's use of torture methods. In some documents, the Obama administration has withheld details that were previously disclosed by the Bush administration." - Jason Leopold

Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities. (US Global Change Research Program)

While the economy boomed, it was easy for politicians to talk about reward for effort; and no one paid too much attention as they generously rewarded their own efforts. Their sanctimonious prattle about welfare cheats and mutual obligation also had plausibility – until they were revealed to be far more skilled in the art of the rort than any single mother or unemployed teenager. (Frank Bongiorno)

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades. The global crisis demonstrates that the leaders of major powers had missed the signals that called for a perestroika. The result is a crisis that is not just financial and economic. It is political, too. (Mikhail Gorbachev)

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end. (President Obama)