It’s time for another weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Side discussions to sandpits, please.
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It’s time for another weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Side discussions to sandpits, please.
John Quiggin 
As the weegend is upon us, the least discussed election in history, in SA, sees an unlikely return to government for Labor as the scenario overwhelmingly most likely.
Apart from a feisty hand from Premier Weatherill, there was the case of a botched campaign from a tentative Liberal opposition.
But my belief is, Abbott cost the Libs their chance in this tight, tight election with his contemptuous attitude toward SA workers at Holdens. I do not think people here will think they have been”liberated”when their jobs are gone and they have to deal with whatever butchery Abbott will get to perform on the social security system.
What personally alarmed me, was the continuing sequence of stories concerningthe NSW jihad against public housing tenants, though: the latest came today from the Illawarra Mercury, with news of up to $150 per week rent rises for public housing
I am so fed up with the Tory contempt for ordinary people, typified on Lateline tonight by one Josh Freudenberg .
Stephen Lewandowsky writes about how the acts of cyber bullying, trolling and other nefarious activities can disrupt scientific advancements.
Rog, I wonder if the reactionary modernists are not more to be pitied than hated, “know they what they do?”.
@rog
The article is disturbing in its substantiated allegations and implications. I mean this in the sense that I fully support the scientists and authors. What is more disturbing are the replies; all denialist, all science-rejecting, all scientist hating, all pitiless, remorseless and without sympathy or empathy for the scientists who are just people doing their job properly. It shows what a tsunami of hatred is directed towards anyone who unearths objective evidence that there might be a few problems with the B.A.U. (Business as Usual) consensus. We really have entered the age of Endarkenment with the unleashing of these forces.
The Geneva Initiative presents a well thought-out and comprehensive proposal for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ian Lustick and Tariq Ali, in contrast, argue for a one-state solution.
Jerome Slater defends the two-state option against Lustick, as do two Israeli peace activists.
What is clear is that advocacy of one-state solutions is (a) becoming increasingly decoupled from any kind of positive program to improve the human and political rights, and the human predicament, of the Palestinians for several decades to come; and (b) is gambling on some kind of “eucatastrophe” at some unspecified time down the track (“probably by the end of this century” says Ali) under regional and global political conditions that nobody can realistically predict.
Just another example of why I detest the ALP:
ALP fans would have no idea that under the PNG constitution they have human rights and that pursuant to section 57 a Court can initiate its own proceedings to ensure those rights are protected. Their constitution extends to everyone in PNG, not only to citizens.
Justice Cannings is running an inquiry and the Australian Government has had a hand in trying to shut it down.
I also note that Tony Blair has just received about US$6million to ensure that US companies have a stranglehold on the supply of energy in Africa.
No wonder “they” “hate us for our freedom and democracy”. I’m not that keen on our “freedom and democracy” either.