Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

If everything  from a political leader's mouth comes from an arsehole, why not vote for an egg? Get a giggle from the Sunny The Egg campaign ad on Youtube and you'll be in the mood for Jessica Rudd's Campaign Ruby.

While Halliburton (name-morphing into subsidiary KBR) was co-ordinating worldwide infrastructure projects from Adelaide and assisting the Coalition of the Willing to invade Iraq, our State Government's leader Premier Mike Rann was taking advice from a prominent US Homeland Security Advisor named Scott Bates. Bates, a prominent architect in the implementation of democracy into post-war Kosovo, was rumoured to be Hillary Clinton's intended successor as U.S. President.

Australians is a grand and absorbing feast of a book. There were many sections that I lingered over slowly, savouring Keneally’s gift for bringing such a wide cast of characters to life, making the book a real experience. Keneally also writes in a witty, almost lapidary prose that is most appealing.

Tolstoy argues that no class of man has the right to punish or sit in judgement upon another, and, from out of the crucible of complexity which he has painstakingly built his story, gives a conclusion almost point-by-point worthy of a lesser evangelist.

Chinese Democracy will not be an instant classic ... . It’s Guns N’ Roses for the twenty-first century with all the rock you were missing but less of the sort of arrogance that led Axl Rose to release songs like the over-produced My World ...

What’s the take away? For Costello, he has learnt that the Liberal party has a cult of the leader. Too many in his party saw Howard as a virtual god. For the reader, we have discovered not to trust the promises of a hungry politician, for they'll step on anyone's neck to get to their desired destination. Voter beware!

The controlled environment of this program is much easier to cope with than, for example, the incredibly difficult Speakers Corner or the Domain here in Sydney, but it may be that Rudd would cope even in that forum.  

"... and a delay in mining operations that resulted in reduced freight" wasn't sent to the SEC, but was added in a later Halliburton media release. What mining operations might that be? Uranium, do you think?

This well researched book is meant to help labour activists rediscover history, not, Mason says, “to piously learn lessons” but to see where activism leads, what reactions various patterns of revolt bring. He notes that when work becomes humane, fair and representative, the red fire tends to be quashed. If only more would listen.

Following Levin’s story is like listening to a brilliant but eccentric genius talk to themselves. You have to pay attention, as she mixes insights with throwaway one-liners in equal measure. This is a serious book that often asks you not to take it too seriously.

The Occupation of Iraq is an insider’s story, a book written from an Iraqi’s point of view, watching with obvious angst as his country plunges into murder and mayhem. In it he describes the bewilderingly complex relationship between Iraq’s three major groups, the Shi’a, Sunnis and Kurds, and further, the factions within those groups.

Mark Lynas' "Six Degrees: our future on a hotter planet" works systematically through the impact of warming the planet one degree at a time through the range of predictions for the next century. Key sentence: "none of the continent of Australia - except perhaps the extreme north and Tasmania - will be able to support significant crop production in the four-degree world because of heatwaves and declining rainfall."

Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, says: "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down". On the face of it, a deeply unlikely ambition, and not one that is borne out by the quality of the writing. Along the way, however, it does raise some important questions about the nature of morality, and the relationship of morality to religion.

Since everyone else seems to be compiling lists, here's a space to write your own personal top ten list for 2006.

Solomon decides to go back to reviewing classic novels after all: "Kubrick played up the comedy in the novel and Lyne played up the tragedy. This speaks of something lacking in the work as a whole. The only genius of the work is in the selection of such a taboo topic, not in its execution – bar a few lines of brilliance."

"Christianity in its many forms, Hindu and Muslim faiths, and traditional religions or beliefs, are of enormous influence in the Pacific, and anybody seeking to really understand the Region who ignores or neglects the very strong religious currents Out There is making a category (fatal) error. One of those currents concerns the impacts of contemporary fundamentalist or pentecostal, often US-origin or influenced, globalizing, often direct satellite broadcast delivered, 'religious' operations.": Dr Mark Hayes

"2006 brings us the political commentary that we deserve – The longest decade by George Megalogenis. It must be read by anyone who wants to be literate in contemporary politics, not, I suppose, because it brings anything new to the table but because these little excursions in to the recent past are necessary once in a while to quell our appetite for politics as entertainment." Solomon Wakeling

"Murray Bookchin, political philosopher and activist, died last Sunday aged 85." Obituary by Hamish Alcorn.

"In judging Fitzgerald, it is necessary to look at his work in its entirety, acknowledging that his later virtues for the most part make up for his earlier vices. Racism may be wrong but racists are still people, complex and changeable. Some prejudices may be unclear to the casual observer, forming part of the common ethos of the time. Fitzgerald's work shows a late-blooming but rising awareness of race issues and the injustice perpetrated by racial stereotypes. If we are not judged by our most mature moments, by what should we be judged?": Solomon Wakeling

"Albert Camus's The Outsider is usually billed as a disturbing work about, well, an outsider. Meursault is nothing of the sort. He is a normal person. He could be one of Howard's battlers. His attitude to life is one that ignores social stigmas. Most people do.": Solomon Wakeling

"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

"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

"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

"After spending three years incarcerated at various locations by the US Army, you’d expect this book to be one long vituperative tirade. Despite Moazzam Begg’s hardships, the former Guantanamo prisoner comes across more an impatient rather than angry man.": Chris Saliba

"Cathy Trask's single-minded pursuit of her own self interest should make her, in some of her aspects, a feminist heroine. Cathy chooses prostitution as a business because she can't abide the thought of living as a blissful house-wife with her husband. She finds the thought of spending her life with her husband and his friends, with their gentle philosophical musings, unbearable. Who could blame her?" Solomon Wakeling

"Isabel is granted the opportunity to do whatever she wants with her life, thanks to her cousin Ralph Touchett, who organises for her a small fortune in inheritance from his dying Father. He does this from a desire to see her fulfill her true potential, because it amuses him. He is portrayed as loving her but from a safe distance. Economically, Isabel is male, not female, making her squandering of her fate all the more tragic. She is allowed to marry someone poor, who ruins her, thanks to the whim of her cousin who made her rich." Solomon Wakeling

"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

"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.

"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

"Wildfires do not respect state or national borders around the world. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) nominated 1997-98 as the Year the Earth Burned, because of all the fires that year. Yet despite and because of Australia’s own record of disastrous fires, Pyne says that she stands out among developed nations as having kept a tradition of controlled burning, and of not attempting elimination of fire from the land as other nations have done. This has made Australia something of a beacon to US fire officers. “For 30 years” he says, “the recognition has been widespread within the American fire community that fire’s attempted exclusion was a mistake; and the appreciation has grown that the fundamental error was not that fire agencies suppressed wildfires but that they ceased to light controlled ones.”" Ian MacDougall