News
Australia's Malaysian refugee swap policy was thrown into disarray last night as
the High Court granted an injunction preventing the Government from transferring the first 16 asylum seekers until after a special session of the Court is held today. Hard to know the strength of the case being argued, nor the appetite of the High Court to really get involved in a domestic political shitfight, but in similar emergency cases back in the Tampa days the Court seemed loathe to really put the Government in the dock, no matter how dicey the legal backing. More to come.
Palestine's efforts to get the UN to hold a vote on their statehood next month poses a particular dilemma for Australia, who are torn between abstaining on the vote and just trying to pretend it's not happening or whether to vote, as we normally do, with the US and Israel. Palestine will almost definitely be successful whatever we do (barring a US veto in the Security Council), so it's really just a question of how much opprobrium we think we might generate in the Arabic world by voting against such a cherished ideal. Or else we could vote in favour of the resolution, but that would be about as surprising as Israel waking up tomorrow and unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state themselves.
Speaking of Israel, its claims to regional stability were looking a little shaky yesterday as the three week old protests against the cost of living in the country hit another highwater mark with
250 000 people taking to the streets to voice their anger at the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel's parliament is known for its volatility, so it will be interesting to see whether two time Prime Minister Netanyahu can still retain the confidence of his party if the country at large appears to have spurned him.
Syria is still shelling the living God out of Hama, with 300 people thought to have been killed since July 30. Whether they'll be able to kill their way out of this one, or whether we might be looking at an ultra-violent Grinch Who Stole Christmas style situation remains to be seen.
A helicopter carrying 38 people has been shot down in Afghanistan, the single deadliest incident for foreign troops in the war to date. It has been two weeks since the official commencement of the process of handing over control of Afghan security.
Fractious times in England, as riots tore apart the London suburb of Tottenham after the police shot and killed a man. It's been too long since this country's had a good riot I say. I mean, there was Cronulla, which we'll try not to think about, but we really just don't have that rich tradition of breaking shop windows and burning cars when we get angry.
In Somalia, riven by pretty much every single one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a small glimmer of good news as
the Islamist rebels known as al-Shabbab pulled out of the capital, Mogadishu, giving the formal government full control of the city for the first time in years. Al-Shabbab do still hold most of the south of the country - and are refusing to let aid through to the people dying there - but you gotta start somewhere...
The US was reeling on Friday after the ratings agency Standard and Poor's decided to drop the country's debt rating from AAA to AA+... which really isn't that big of a deal, but as this has never before happened to the US it's freighted with an awful lot of symbolic significance. One of their primary reasons for doing so was that the debt ceiling fight had shown the incapacity of the US Congress to reliably rule the nation in an effective manner, which obviously
set the two sides of the US Congress to yelling furiously at one another and rather proving the point. With that said, there's still plenty of outrage being directed at the ratings agencies themselves, especially after the Treasury discovered a $2 trillion hole in their calculations. People are still a little sensitive about the fact that these supposedly omniscient agencies completely failed to see the GFC coming, so people are beginning to question why exactly they have so much power. The US announcement was made after the markets had closed on Friday, so any negative impacts have been deferred for the weekend, but we can expect a bit more chaos today -
including, potentially, some further brutalisation of Spain and Italy and worries that Australian markets, already at their weakest level since the height of the GFC, could be poised to plunge every further. Although, on the plus side,
the IMF thinks we'll be in pretty good shape to withstand another GFC, so that's reassuring.
Features
Local hero Ben Eltham looking at
whether the Western world's newfound obsession with austerity might actually be the policy pushing us back toward recession.
The CIA tells the story of two agents, shot down by China on their first operational mission in 1952, who were
imprisoned for two decades while the Agency officially denied their existence. Fascinating moments in Cold War politics.
Oddities/Curiosities
A Swedish man has just been arrested for trying to build a nuclear reactor in his own kitchen. Not a big one, mind. He just wanted to see whether he could induce nuclear fission in his own kitchen. A man's gotta have a hobby.
Earlier this year, two photojournalists were given unprecedented access to North Korea and its peoples. Of course, this meant that they wandered through a stage managed set of situations designed to make the country not look like an abyss from which no light escapes, but they still found themselves with the freedom to paint quite a frank picture of this country in collapse. I think the word you're looking for is "bleak".
Video
Yeah, I'm just gonna start this week by throwing down Sesame Street style. You know how they do it.
[Picture courtesy of the self-explanatory
Brokers With Hands on their Faces]