First up from the God Machine this week is a look at the unfortunate ways in which social-conservative activists are responding to American women's economic empowerment.

Israel’s Fraying Image and Its Implications

Remarks to a Seminar convened by The National Interest to Discuss an Article by Jacob Heilbrunn

Before Sir David Attenborough recently warned us about the lunacy of endless growth, I was writing a long article about this very subject and how to accept and prepare for the values of restraint... Unfortunately my computer is reaching the end of its useful life and as I was saving the pages it froze and killed off what was a rather angry rant...

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/attenborough-endless-growth-lunacy-20130525-2n3pg.html

It would be troubling enough if Tony Abbott's shilly-shallying on electoral reform had merely killed off hopes of making overdue changes to the nation's electoral laws.

Is there a Left in America today?

There is, of course, a Left ideology, a Left of the mind, a Left of theory and critique.

But is there a Left movement?

The cardinal’s colour rose all afternoon. He smiled once or twice after negotiating a difficult passage. He clasped and unclasped his hands, never quite in prayer. He droned. He snapped. He stared at the six members of the Victorian parliament’s family and community development committee with a gaze that seemed focused somewhere south of Macquarie Island.

Very few Australians will have heard of Burdekin Investments, one of the thousands of low-profile post-box companies that makes its home at Ugland House, a resort-style office building in George Town, the capital of Caribbean tax haven the Cayman Islands.

Christopher Pyne has clearly been pondering the fate of Sodom.

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don't have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night. A possibility might be "terracide" from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

As Ford calls it quits Australia today (shutting shop in 2016), no matter who would get the gig to govern this country in September (note: the Liberals/conservatives have gone completely bonkers) , one needs to be a lateral thinker in order to improve urban transport of people — improve our air quality and mitigate global warming at the same time. 

Sloppy Joe Hockey’s 15 biggest Press Club furphies