News
The war of words. Is there any more tired and beleagured phrase in political reporting? If you see the phrase "war of words" you can pretty much guarantee that the words being warred over are useless, irrelevant bickerings and base political point scoring, designed primarily to excavate what last little engagement you had with the political process. So it was with great joy that I noted
the fallout from Thursday's protest fracas has now become a "war of words"! Someone who probably didn't do that much wrong has resigned, someone is quibbling over what time that person called another and someone else is quibbling with that person's account. And if I lay facedown in an empty room in the middle of a desert it would probably have more chance of having a positive outcome on the future of Australia. On the plus side, it's usually a good indicator that the story will soon be gone from our lives - oxygen isn't really capable of burning itself. Although if we're really lucky, we might even get to see some leadership bloodletting in the meantime! I mean, we all remember Utegate, right?
Things are going from shit to worse in Syria, with the weekend witnessing
the formal abandonment of the long-thwarted Arab League observer mission, which has been followed by what appears to be
wholesale conflict in Damascus' outer suburbs and various other restive towns across the country. Hard to know exactly where the country goes from here – aside from wholesale self-immolation – with Russia still promising to veto any UN Resolution that would demand Assad's departure and the Arab League unlikely to stage any military intervention of their own. With over 5000 people already dead and the rate of violence only seeming to accelerate in the past month, shadows of the infamous
Hama massacre are being cast long over the meltdown.
The British phonehacking scandal has migrated to the Sun for the first time, with
four of the fetid paper's senior editorial staff having been arrested over the weekend. These days the charges are more related to police bribery than phonehacking itself, but it's good to know the Sun shared its stablemate's commitment to ethical transparency.
In a bid to prop up his ailing bid for the Floridian primary (and if we're to be entirely honest, the Republican Presidential nomination)
Newt Gingrich has received the endorsement of former rival Herman "The Hermanator"/"The Sex Pest" Cain. Hard to know whether this will be enough to overcome a double digit deficit in the polls, but I imagine the Republican establishment is breathing a sigh of relief that the nightmare scenario of a Gingrich candidacy is looking increasingly unlikely.
Yemen's political crisis inches another step closer to resolution, with
soon-to-be-former President Saleh arriving in America, purportedly for treatment relating to last year's bomb attack on the Presidential compound, but largely to get him out of the country before the election of his successor on February 21.
While Iran is toying with the prospect of letting international observers back in to check over its nuclear program, there's
growing concern that the region's other Islamic power, Saudi Arabia, could be eying off its own nuclear deterrent. The only problem being that, unlike Iran, we like Saudi Arabia. Despite it's dismal human rights record and horrific attitude towards women. But boy are they helpful when we need to kill some terrorists!
Features
An exceptional piece on the Australia Day protest evacuation and why it showed Gillard at her best, but also explained why everyone dislikes her.
An explanation of the significance of the Russian protests and the Kremlin's efforts to neutralise them in the lead up to the March "elections". Man, nothing is easy in that place, is it?
Oddities/Curiosities
Bad-ass toddler alert: 13-month-old Aleeyan, with a grand total of six teeth,
hit the news after biting the head off a snake. He is going to be a menace at school.
Charming family tradition - the man who designed Saddam Hussein's bunker was
the grandson of the woman who designed Hitler's bunker. Uh, following the family business isn't mandatory, you know guys?
NASA has just released an incredibly high definition picture of the Earth. Whose glory isn't really conveyed by the miniaturised version below. Still, it's pretty and shit, innit?
Video
Newt Gingrich: The Rap. The weirdest thing about this is that it sounds like he managed to find actual black people willing to record this for him. N to the E to the WT.