Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I can't tell you how I know, but I was informed that the NATO missiles were on their way round ten minutes before the rest of the world heard it.  Sitting on my couch, with the laptop on its arm, watching the live al Jazeerah feed, I witnessed what I'd read as a Facebook message on my comp become reality on a TV screen.

China has illegitimately, purely because vastly more powerful, taken possession of Tibet and oppressed the Tibetan race and almost extinguished Tibetan culture for the bogus reason that both Tibet and China were conquests of the Mongol empire.  When Marco Polo visited China it was to the court of Kublai Khan that he gravitated, because China was perhaps the most important part of the Khan's empire and he spent a lot of time there.

Certainly if Assange could be  prevented from gaining asylum, it makes it so much more difficult to re-establish the rights of others also seeking asylum, elsewhere ( which could partly also explain the Australian government's timid response to Assange's plight).

As a matter of simple logic (something I think I'm a bit better at, despite the last sentence), the reactions of the Australian political class to those few deaths, whether or not those reactions are genuine, are in their own way spectacular and instructive.  And edifying.

By dipping into that credit the United States could finance the means to force recovery, and obtain massive side benefits. I realise the U.S. has lost heart, doesn't have the will for anything of the kind, but let's fantasize.

Look at what the good guys, the Russians, are doing.  They seem ready to help Assad work though the problems besetting the country and put such reforms in place as will allow all citizens to enjoy similar human rights, but do it realistically, doing what is feasible in the social and historical context.

One of the very scarce reports on what is going on in prisons in Papua came earlier from Oswald Iten, a journalist with the Swiss quality paper Neue Zuercher Zeitung, who was imprisoned in Jayapura for twelve days in December 2000. He had allegedly violated the conditions related to his tourist visa (he had been making photographs and since he was a journalist that counted as working without a work permit). I can’t recall that that report got much attention in this country...

Would I suspect Military propagandists of timing the withdrawal with the calculable resurgence of the song's popularity to trigger a fee-good sensation surrounding the departure of the invasion?

I think the time to start establishing a world government has come. It’s not going to be particularly fast or easy, but it is a path to many of our global problems that we do need to bring to the centre.

Their reasons for why Israel should be abandoned have been getting thinner for some time now. It has now reached the point where they can point at a single man. People who talk like this have concluded that the Jews are not worth the trouble and they have already primed themselves for what that means.

What’s driving this show of meanness? You might say it’s just what the electorate—or some loud part thereof—wants. It seems like there are some seriously angry voters out there these days, and I’m sure the recession is taking a toll on people’s patience and generosity. And yet, I suspect this is no fleeting trend, but something with deeper ideological roots. In short, I sense Ayn Rand. (Firmin DeBrabander)

With challenges like these confronting mankind, can we continue with a business as usual approach? Are the current institutions capable of addressing these challenges? I think not. To fix these problems governments will need to raise a lot more revenue.

...even science fiction writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley or Doris Lessing did not envisage a civilisation that would knowingly, against the best scientific evidence, devastate its own atmosphere and ocean system as comprehensively as has been and continues to be done through anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.

Israel is not about to dissolve like a pillar of salt as if it was the old apartheid regime in South Africa. Israel is not the old apartheid regime in South Africa and those who would suggest this racist lie must be confronted.

Sadly for our politicians and media we do have a nation run on the rule of law, therefore appeals to the highest court are legal and binding and it would be hard to see how our High Court would consider it legal to break the law the High Court handed down in November last year that says the law applies to all in our territory and natural justice applies even to those we jail on Christmas Island.

I look back on the week somewhat amazed, both at the events and the strange treatment of them in the press and wonder what lies in the future, as a sort of lawlessness now permeates once civilised societies.

Hiya, Webdiary tragics. I wondered if any of you are feeling as strange and disbelieving as me while watching what happens when the emperor is seen to have no clothes. Is there a media debate going on about what inquiries our nation needs to have in the wake of the British revelations?

In the Tweed and Byron Shires there are a lot of Greens. They are everywhere. They are like blowflies at a Barcaldine barbeque. They even have their own newspaper, the Echo. It is the only openly politically aligned newspaper around. While one can respect their industry they show all the hallmarks of their party, including a marked intellectual cowardice.

Despite the appearance that western culture is revelling in bloodlust, perhaps people should be asking their neighbours what they think of this.  Maybe it's the company I keep, but I'm getting a sense of strong disagreement with the glorifying.

Richard Koo says that if government stimulus stops now we will face another downturn in the global economy. He says governments should continue with their fiscal stimulus until private sector borrowing reaches more normal levels.

I have a vision for the Arabs:.One people, one nation,one country encompassing the middle east and north Africa. As such it would right many wrongs, provide equity, dilute extremism, and usher in a new world order.

A friend of mine has been shot around 100 meters away from Almokhtar clinic. Nobody can take him to the clinic and no ambulance can reach him. Mercenaries keep firing at the people who tried to help him, shot in the stomach, bleeding in a house nearby. Is this how Libyan life ends now?

Faith restored as banners burn..

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.

One other point, however, is worth repeating. They will act in their own best interest, but are not out to overcome or crush us.

I don't deny that the war streak might eventually kill us all. In the meantime it will cause untold misery on a vast scale. But there is another side to our nature and we all know this. I think the old religions are right when they teach there is good and bad in us all. It's just that the mix varies enormously. 

A war between “good” and “evil” is a cosmic war. A cosmic war is not a war over land or resources as such a strong army cannot prevail in a cosmic war. The battle ground of a cosmic war is the mind.

By broadcasting his claimed success in having the Islamic centre moved he's demonstrated how much power can fall into the hands of a religious crank, and how easily such a person could make the world wobble.