This is a long, but very important and revealing analysis of the international legal manoeuvring behind the military onslaught now being waged against the Afghan people by the Bush {now Obama} Government.

from john passant ….

The born to rort party is back in charge and all is right in the land of the long boozy taxpayer funded lunch, dinner, wedding, party, anything.

''Remember that 40 per cent of all the carbon dioxide going into the oceans goes into the Southern Ocean. It's going to hit high, and hit hard,'' she said.

The explosion of hydraulic fracturing in the last several years, according to a new report, is creating a previously 'unimaginable' situation in which hundreds of billions of gallons of the nation's fresh water supply are being annually transformed into unusable - sometimes radioactive - cancer-causing wastewater.

Propaganda campaigns from vested interests have unduly influenced the past three election results, and the mark of the Australian plutocracy doesn't end there, writes David Llewellyn-Smith.

What image of Palestinians would viewers, who have a smattering, or if any, knowledge of the Palestinian struggle, gain after seeing Dror Moreh’s documentary, The Gatekeepers?

After Rio Tinto had its approval to expand a mine in the Hunter Valley overturned by a court, it entered into a flurry of correspondence with the NSW Government. The government joined with Rio to appeal the decision and now wants to change planning laws to favour mining companies. The Global Mail applied under FoI to have the correspondence released - we got a big no.

Power is a drug and the way to be in power is to control... Power does not like individuality beyond the realm of its influences. Power does not like individual sustainability, nor does it like people being in charge of their own destiny... 

President Barack Obama ridiculed House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Thursday for refusing to allow a vote on a funding bill that would end a three-day government shutdown, saying the top Republican in Washington is in the grip of conservative "extremists".

Goldman Sachs' boss Lloyd Blankfein has warned that a failure to raise the nation's borrowing limit would be "extremely adverse".

from The Monthly ….

what Labor hasn’t learned …..

As the planet warms up, as the US economy is being held hostage, as the world is basically going bonkers (Aussie vernacular meaning mad, absurd, delirious demented, foolish, idiotic, frenzied, kooky, nutty) in many places as usual, should it not be time to reflect on our idiocy — er, I mean legacy... ?...

May be it's time for a beer.

It might seem like a world away but the impact of the US government shutdown is being felt much closer to home.

Former researcher at Melbourne's La Trobe University, Michael Lazarou, now works for the National Institutes of Health in Washington where he is researching Parkinson's disease.

This week he travelled to Perth to present some of his findings at the ComBio science conference being held in the city.