from Crikey ….

Military reshuffle: Abbott's 'Operation Sovereign Borders'

The Coalition has today responded to Kevin Rudd's PNG agreement on asylum seekers with its own announcement of "Operation Sovereign Borders".

Australians might view Detroit's decline with only passing curiosity but it offers an object lesson in the need to nurture economic competitiveness, writes Julie Novak.

Shocking Things Wall Street Financiers Say Off the Record About Their Bloated, Corrupt Industry

A new survey shows how brazenly immoral Wall Street is.

An ex-CIA officer convicted by an Italian court of kidnapping a terror suspect in 2003 has been detained in Panama.

So, just why are we having this debate?

Why not just give Christmas Island to Indonesia?

from politicoz ….

Tony Abbott has been quiet since his statements about a 'so-called market' on invisible substances, but Coalition spokesmen Greg Hunt and Joe Hockey have been doing the media rounds, painting the government's move as "a complete con, a complete fix, a complete fiddle".

from the shovel ….

The disposition matrix is a complex grid of suspected terrorists to be traced then targeted in drone strikes or captured and interrogated. And the British government appears to be colluding in it

When Bilal Berjawi spoke to his wife for the last time, he had no way of being certain that he was about to die. But he should have had his suspicions.

from Antony Loewenstein …..

Earlier this month, as Americans celebrated our Independence Day holiday, the true scope of American independence became visible. The revelations of Edward Snowden, and the elite reaction to those revelations show that Americans are not a truly free and independent people, our major media are not free or independent, and neither are the supposedly sovereign nations of Europe free or independent states.

One of the state's smallest newspapers has found itself in the middle of a row over an anonymous anti-Muslim rant that it published.

The internet allows for greater public participation in government. But ours continues to show it is not ready to talk.

It is hard to find a historical comparison for the stunning turnaround in federal politics of the past two weeks. We’re not talking just polls here, but the change in the debate, in the psychology, in the way whole political armies, and their massive caravans, have had to manoeuvre in hasty and sometimes messy fashion.