Over 80,000 ["man"-made] chemicals are used in everyday products. We handle them, they're in our water, our food and in the air we breathe. It's impossible to escape them. But now there's growing concern that these chemicals are not safe.

An environmental group has renewed its calls to ban dredging, after a report about its impacts on the Great Barrier Reef.

from Crikey ….

The U.S. plans to increase its support for Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen:

Treasurer Joe Hockey says every aspect of the tax system is up for review in the wake of a Federal Government discussion paper which suggests Australia relies too heavily on corporate and income taxes and not enough on consumption taxes like the GST.

The study of making choices has been a philosophical pursuit for millenniums. It was one of the important subject of Greek philosophy and this subject, in which determinism and free-will do battle, is still prominent today. 

Great to see Alan Ramsay back at the Sydney Morning Herald, out of retirement (?). It's possible that the SMH decided it needed a bit more substantial meat to its commentaries on the news and on politics, as some of its younger opinionators are mostly fence sitters. Their butt must be hurting.

Andrew Cockburn has written a must-read book. The title is Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins. The title could just as well be: How the US Government and US Military Became Murder, Inc.

If only the 24 women murdered by their partners or former partners in Australia so far this year had died in a plane crash we might hear about them and have some debate about how to address this systemic issue.

Oo roo Malcolm Fraser, the King Of Nareen

got the best stock prices Vic's ever seen

by lowering the fences in his stockyard

Wool over eyes, without pulling too hard

Oo roo Malcolm Fraser, Straya's Prime Minister

clambering to power by methods quite sinister

Threw out Whitlam and his social reform

Made back-stabbing Canberra's political norm

Oo Roo Malcolm Fraser, noted Humanitarian