December, 2009

I wrote here last month about 160 ethnic Hmong people – originally from Laos – being kept in detention in Thailand despite having been recognised as refugees by the UN and a number of countries having offered to resettle them. Today comes news that the Thai government has forcibly deported over 4000 Hmong people back [...]

I’m sure we’ve all faced the dilemma: how to reconcile the need to know what the enemy is saying with the prohibition against tipping money – even small change – into their war-chest? The advent of free media content online may be making people more and more reluctant to pay for newspapers and magazines, but the reasons for [...]

There has been mixed reaction to the outcomes of the Copenhagen Summit on climate change, although it seems reasonable to assert that it fell short of anything that could be seen as a ‘glass is half full’ result – perhaps one quarter full, with imminent danger of more evaporation occurring. The voices of the poorer countries certainly [...]

Greg Sheridan offers us a Christmas garland in the Oz today, a real classic, grouperus whitebaitus spectacularis, concerning Obama’s presidency. ‘he’s moved to the Centre’ thunders the bearded one, citing Obama’s deployment of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and his pro-just war Peace prize speech, and his statement that the US has been a guardian [...]

It’s hard to find a mention of it in the Australian media, but the death this week of Yegor Gaidar, former Russian finance minister and the man who did most to bring the market economy to Russia, shouldn’t go without mention. The Moscow Times has the fullest obituary, but you can also read about him [...]

The sad story of Tracey Greenbury, 33, killed by a shotgun blast to the back of the head by her partner,Leigh Robinson, 62, took another stepforward today, with a sentencing hearing for Robinson – whose defence was that he was chasing her with a shotgun, which went off accidentally, and who is appealing his conviction. [...]

The Tony Abbott “Winston Churchill” speech leaked to The Oz yesterday has been posted on the Liberal website, and apart from the predictable “bring it on” rhetoric over Labor’s ETS big new tax class redistribution mechanism, it also contains some curious observations on industrial relations. Tony, you see, wants to avoid being cast as an [...]

 When you click on – on any news website – the latest scandalous ad that has become an actual story (not going to embed it or even name the product, but it’s a car), you first get…..an ad, for something else. Which pays for the hosting of the video, which is an ad. The circle has [...]

While Tony Abbott’s grave misjudgement in elevating Barnaby Joyce to a position of economic responsibility in the Opposition is already becoming apparent – along with its dangers for Australia’s attractiveness to investors – the full extent of the Coalition’s policy shift is only now becoming apparent. This is not a lurch to the Right in [...]

The World Meteorological Organisation says that the most recent decade “has been the warmest since records began 160 years ago.” Tony Abbott says yesterday that “the world’s warming has stopped.” It’s seems almost certain that climate change will be a major political battleground throughout the coming election year.  Arguments about the effectiveness and impact of the [...]