from Crikey ….. 

Civil liberties groups to A-G: ASIO refugee assessments unjust

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people’s resistance to the war on democracy.

The benefits of being rich are numerous, and probably don't need a great deal of explanation from me. The ability to travel the world at the drop of a hat is, I imagine, one of the many advantages great wealth brings, as is the possibility of doing away with a number of the banal inconveniences that plague everyday life. Not having to get out of bed at the crack of dawn for work has its appeal, as does eating the best food and never having to cook any of the damn stuff.

Miranda Gibson is today sitting on a small platform 60 metres high in a Eucalyptus regnans beneath Mt Mueller in central Tasmania. She has been on the platform for more than four weeks and intends to stay until the tree is cut down or governments keep their word that the tree, its wildlife and the mountainside forest in which it sits are protected.

Just over the ridge from Miranda are the Styx River and its Valley of the Giants, named after the kings and queens of the eucalypts, which tower up to 100 metres high - that is, as high as a soccer field is long.

Courage is a virtue and heroism is admirable, but do we have a right to demand them? Which of us cannot look back on his or her own life and remember decisions, or compromises made, or silences kept because of cowardice, even when the penalties for courage were negligible?

If we are cowardly in small things, shall we be brave in large? Have we the right to point the finger until we have been tested ourselves? When we read of the seemingly lamentable conduct of the captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, who left his passengers to their fate, do we say, ''There but for the grace of God go I''?

The Gillard government has conceded for the first time that poker machine reform agreed to with the independent Andrew Wilkie in 2010 will struggle to pass the Parliament.

Mr Wilkie last night met the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to discuss the reforms and will meet her again today in Melbourne.

He reiterated his threat to withdraw support for Ms Gillard if reform was not legislated by May 8 but failed to detail what that would mean inside the Parliament.

''I'm not going to mince my words ... if the government fails to honour its agreement with me then I may well walk away,'' he said.

David Cameron will spell out his vision of "moral markets" today, as he enters the intense political debate over how to create a more "responsible capitalism".

In a long-awaited speech in London, the Prime Minister is expected to call for reforms to create a new "popular capitalism" and say the Government is prepared to intervene to make it happen. However, he is also likely to stress the benefits of free markets and to reject what he regards as the heavy-handed, statist approach favoured by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader.

Leaving the beach on a recent Saturday afternoon on a day when a bright deep blue sky reached down to meet blue water, I walked through a beachfront hotel, through the bar and then a large room filled with poker machines. As always with gambling rooms, it was dark, with most of the light coming from the garish machines. The room was packed.

It was an off-putting contrast between beauty and the beast for someone who only gambles once a year (Melbourne Cup) and cannot see the pleasure people get from poker machines, but has no right to patronise them.

In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can't blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

The Queen's decision to bestow the Order of Merit on our former PM is self-interested. With luck, it will expedite the monarch's demise, Bruce Haigh writes .....

I've heard the term ''political junkie'' thrown around a lot over the years - and it's my generation, and perhaps the one before it, that really live up to the term ''junkie''.

Teresa Gambaro's wrong-headed remarks about migrants are symbolic of a wider problem with Coalition attitudes.

How did Teresa Gambaro's father smell? Let us survey the evidence. His first Australian job was as a farmhand in the hot, sweaty climes of north Queensland. It's unclear how long he stuck at this, but it must have been quite some time because it gave him enough savings to buy a small fish store, which rapidly grew into an impressive seafood business.

It was Napoleon who once called us a "nation of shopkeepers". To judge from the reaction to Antony Worrall Thompson's pilfering from Tesco, we are actually a nation of shoplifters. Still, celebrity shoplifting is a source of hilarity, not outrage.

In the 10 years since the Guantánamo detention camp opened, the anguished debate over whether to shutter the facility - or make it permanent - has obscured a deeper failure that dates back more than a century and implicates all Americans: namely, our continued occupation of Guantánamo itself. It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba.