from Crikey ….. 

Anti-coal activists pose a political threat. That's why we're being spied on …..

When you have already spent half a million pounds on rent, £300,000 on furniture and £2.3m paying your staff, an extra £8m on unexplained "administrative expenses" might seem to be stretching credulity, but that is what Tony Blair has told Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which as a consequence has received a rather smaller cheque from the former Prime Minister than it might have expected.

If you enjoyed a cup of coffee this morning, it might interest you to know it took 140 litres of water to produce that cup. Such a simple but profound equation.

It is strange, strange, strange that when it comes to the most important subject on the planet, the basis of all life - water - governments, international agencies, economists, scientists and businesses have consistently underestimated the growth in global demand, and the growing stress on supply.

It's the biggest story in the world, yet mostly what we talk about is money: debt, growth, superannuation, savings, stockmarkets, gross national product, housing prices, wages.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration has let Australians down ... again ....

Can the government's health watchdog really be trusted to provide authoritative advice for Australian women on the safety of breast implants? The crisis in confidence about the implants comes at a time when faith in the calibre of government advice is lacking and the level of trust between the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the public is shaky at best.

Fairfax reports on a company, Serco, whose primary aim is to punish refugees in its care:

How we Australians love a winner. Especially if that winner triumphs against the odds. And so we celebrated wildly when the erstwhile captain, Ricky Ponting, dived across the crease to seal his first Test century in two years – an act of dogged determination that held the added advantage of figuratively raising a big rude finger to a legion of doubters who blamed him for the demise of modern Australian cricket.

This Wednesday, January 11, 2012 marks ten years since the opening of Guantanamo Bay, and although in 2009, President Obama announced its closure within the year, it still remains open. 

A Sydney-based friend wrote the following letter to members of the Labor Party in early November 2011:

“Dear Member

What can possibly justify the relentless U.S. diplomatic (and mainstream media) assault on Iran?

The Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, has secretly pushed for increased surveillance by federal police intelligence officers of environmental activists who have been protesting peacefully at coal-fired power stations and coal export facilities.

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

We urgently need you to write in support of the SBS series “The Promise”

In a scorching complaint that cites internal company memos, parents say their child died because Johnson & Johnson issued a "phantom or stealth recall" of tainted Children's Tylenol, buying up the drugs from stores on the sly without issuing a recall, "so the general public, ignorant of the dangers, would continue buying and administering these brand name drugs to their children."

Offshore processing is not a solution and will not stop people dying at sea.