The Liberal MP, Peter Slipper, is likely to become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives after Labor's Harry Jenkins resigned this morning, shocking the Parliament on its final sitting day for 2011.

Labor MPs will be asked to approve Mr Slipper's nomination at a special caucus meeting scheduled for 10am.

If Mr Slipper gets the nod from Labor MPs, and enough independents as expected, it will change the fine balance of the hung parliament because Tony Abbott will lose two numbers on the floor.

Gus's picture of a stencil by annon.

Senior Liberals are closing ranks around Opposition Leader Tony Abbott after accusations by Liberal MPs that he is leaving them in the dark over important policy decisions.

In the Coalition party room yesterday, Victorian MP Kelly O'Dwyer and Paul Fletcher from New South Wales questioned the economic wisdom of retaining the Government's superannuation boost while, at the same time, dumping the mining tax that funds it.

The decision was made outside the party room by the Liberal leadership group - although key finance spokesman Andrew Robb was excluded from the phone hook-up a fortnight ago.

picture by Gus

The frozen “cryosphere” of the Earth, from the Arctic sea in the north to the massive ice shelves of Antarctica in the south, is showing the unequivocal signs of climate change as global warming accelerates the melting of the coldest regions of the planet, leading polar scientists warned yesterday.

Gillard and Abbott are settling their 'mega-narratives' but their key phrases do not ring true as shorthand for what it's all about.

Julia Gillard is apparently going forward with ''fairness''. It's a word, if it sticks, we will soon be as sick of as ''moving forward'', because it is the nickname for the ''meta-narrative'' - story or myth - Labor wants to sell to the public.

The CIA has suffered the catastrophic loss of two distinct spy networks in Iran and Lebanon, official sources admit. Dozens of agents have been captured and there are grave fears that they will be executed, ABC News revealed last night.

"History teaches us the greatest force the world has ever known for creating wealth and opportunity is free markets.

So we seek economies that are open and transparent.

We seek trade that is free and fair. And we seek an open international economic system, where rules are clear and every nation plays by them."

Barack Obama

Address to the Australian Parliament

November 17, 2011

meanwhile .....

I am same-sex attracted. We should all disclose sources of bias and potential conflicts of interest up front in a transparent manner. It's a shame so many politicians, commentators and members of the general public aren't called upon to disclose their bias before declaring what is good for hetero and homosexual members of society.

from Crikey …..

Occupy crackdowns perfectly illustrate the movement's claims

US MPs on patrol outside a Brisbane hotel .....

My condolences to the People of Australia

The lock step between the major political parties over Australia's continued presence in Afghanistan has effectively neutralised the war's potential to politically damage successive Liberal and Labor governments.

So far. But sniff the political wind today and you might just smell the potential for change.

Afghanistan remains an immensely unpopular war with Australians.

Thirty-two Australian Defence Force personnel serving in Afghanistan have been killed. Hundreds more have been wounded.

Britain has formally opened talks with the Syrian opposition movement as international pressure continues to mount against the beleaguered regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Frances Guy, a former ambassador to Lebanon, met members of the exiled opposition in Paris yesterday. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, is to meet members of the Syrian opposition in London next week when they will also hold talks with senior officials in Downing Street.

For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we've suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.

The NATO invasion & occupation marks the ruinous "rebirth" of Libya's standard of living. That is the forbidden & unspoken truth: an entire Nation has been destabilized & destroyed, its people driven into abysmal poverty.  

The objective of the NATO bombings from the outset was to destroy the country's standard of living, its health infrastructure, its schools & hospitals, its water distribution system.

And then "rebuild" with the help of donors & creditors under the helm of the IMF & the World Bank.