Saturday Salon
An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Death penalty barred by federal legislation
The Senate has passed, in a whisper, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Torture Prohibition and Death Penalty Abolition) Bill 2009. The bill is largely symbolic, creating a new federal offence of torture (which is already a crime under any number of [...]
Uncommon sense on Israel/Palestine from an interesting source
Yesterday, prompted by a link Paul Burns provided on my One day that shook the world thread, I did a Google search for reviews of Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky. Not surprisingly, many such reviews were on Trotskyist websites and [...]
Editorial interference by the ABC's chairman
ABC Chairman Maurice Newman made a few comments yesterday that may go a long way to explaining some of the pressures editors and producers at the public broadcaster may be under – specifically on the issue of anthropogenic global warming [...]
Polls show privatisation hurting Bligh, and Rudd
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/03/softvswitched1.jpg1.jpg" Possum has obtained the polling conducted by UMR for six Queensland unions on the impact of Anna Bligh’s privatisation plans on Labor’s vote. It’s not good news for Bligh, and he suggests, not good news for Kevin Rudd [...]
One day that shook the world
Twenty-five years ago today, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by a unanimous vote of the CPSU Politburo. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive chronicle and analysis of Gorbachev’s time [...]
I won't add my condemn to your condemn XLIII (mid week edition)
Well, it’s Wednesday already and we haven’t condemned, so it must be long past time to condemn again. Here’s a 43rd open condemnation thread. What’s been worthy of condemnation this week so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, [...]
Coalition shows it doesn't care about equal pay for women
Writing in Crikey the other day, Eloise Keating suggested that “if Abbott wants to woo women, he should start with wages”: Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Australian women earned just 82.5% of the average male rate [...]
So, how about that hospitals plan?
Tony Abbott’s performance in question time today, and the timing of his parental leave thought bubble more generally, suggest that his major imperative was to switch the topic of debate from health. That’s despite the Coalition running a very active [...]
Reaction to Abbott's parental leave plan
As noted, Abbott’s International Women’s Day announcement of a paid parental leave plan has created a lot of debate here on LP [read previous threads here]. And it’s attracted a lot of commentary in the wider blogosphere and media. Gary [...]
Monbiot vs. the solar entrepreneur, with a bit of Rickover thrown in
Those of you interested in feed-in tariffs for solar energy might be interested in reading the multi-post discussion between George Monbiot and Jeremy Leggett on the merits of Britain’s feed-in solar scheme. In a nutshell, Monbiot takes a line that [...]
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