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I have tended not to follow the news about asylum seekers. Or, rather, I've tended to follow the headlines and to think about it abstractly, as a political issue more than a humanitarian one. Given I once technically defrauded the Red Cross, my humanitarian credentials aren't perhaps rock-solid. But I do care. It's just that the grotesque ruck of ( Read more... ) -
You call that a dust storm?
Apparently there was some sort of dust storm earlier today, which reminds me of a video I saw earlier in the year. This is what today's Broken Hill-begotten dust storm might have looked like at its source ( Read more... ) -
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Miranda Devine's latest thinkpiece lists the scientific heavyweights advising Senator Steve Fielding on global warming:
What misgivings did [Professor Bob] Carter and three other scientists advising Fielding (the climatologist William Kininmonth, the former head of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Centre; the hydro- ( Read more... ) -
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John Quiggin reports that a Stateside friend has given up on The Washington Post because of its decision to run a 'substance-free rant' by Sarah Palin about Obama's emissions trading policy. Quite so. Reading the offending column for myself, I noticed something that nobody else, least of all the WaPo's editors, seems to have: it never once mentions ( Read more... ) -
'Obama Derangement Syndrome' (cont'd)
A follow-up to my follow-up, courtesy once again of Melanie Phillips:
Despite Obama’s belated condemnation today of the brutality being meted out, his remarks were far too little, far too late and still far too inadequate. As Mladen Andrijasevic notes, his strategy of engaging the regime remains, regardless of how many protesters have been killed ( Read more... ) -
'What we want is facts'
I've met David Burchell and once a took a class of his (which, for various reasons, I didn't enjoy). And, though I didn't share his politics, I found him very affable and intelligent. But his column on Iran in The Australian today is not just wrong but disingenuously wrong. In fact, it's disingenuously wrong in exactly the same way many US ( Read more... ) -
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I meant to hold forth about this last week:
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cFormidable Opponent - Don't Ask, Don't Tellwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorStephen Colbert in Iraq
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By Allah, what balls
It seems Khamenei and his cronies photoshopped the Ahmadinejad rally yesterday to inflate the crowd numbers, which had already been inflated by Basij militiamen and other Regime ringers. It's not surprising, really: manipulation of images has long been a trick of authoritarian regimes (now you see Trotsky, now you don't). But they may have more ( Read more... ) -
'Death to the Dictator!'
I've seen many stories about Iran's presidential election with headlines like 'Ahmadinejad accused of stealing poll', as if there were doubt about the veracity of the results, or as if his opponents were merely sore losers. The New Yorker's Laura Secor explains why this is wrong. She leaves out some of the evidence (the synchronised communications ( Read more... ) -
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Two probably unrelated stories have caught my eye. First, Sweden's Pirate Party got 7.1% of the Swedish vote in the European elections the other day, putting it in fifth place. The Party's agenda is simply 'to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected' (h/t: Hilzoy). ( Read more... )