News
The Victorian Liberals have decided that principle - or the appearance of principle - is more important than simple political game-playing and have announced that
they will be putting the Greens last on every ballot paper in the Victoria election. While
the real implications of this may be modest, it certainly challenges the idea that winning three to four seats in the lower house was a likelihood for the Greens. Meanwhile, polls show - as they tend to do in immediate proximity to an election - that
the Liberals are suddenly within striking distance of the sitting Government and/or another deliciously hung Parliament. Which would at the very least provide an exciting coda to an event that has, to date, incited all the thrill and community passion of your average state cricket match.
The OECD has delivered a stinging report on Australia, hassling us for keeping the GST and the proposed mining tax low, spending too much and not giving enough money to the unemployed. They're also skeptical of the way in which the NBN is being set up, although overall the plan meets with their approval. They also called yo' mamma fat, but I wouldn't take it too personal.
Julia Gillard's been having a photo op frenzy on the Asian side of the Pacific rim, hobnobbing with all the big bosses, and, of course,
getting to chill with Barack Obama. At their one-on-one meeting, they reaffirmed the great friendship of our two nations, the need for further cooperation, trade etc. etc. and then Obama showed her his new music video.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed. After almost twenty years under house arrest and just after having watched her political party being banned so as to allow the military government of Burma to claim a "resounding" "victory" in the recent "elections". As opposed to Suu Kyi's resounding victory in the 1990 election, which was what got her arrested in the first place. The Burmese military are assholes.
Russia: don't mess with them. Over the past few days, various Kremlin sources, including Putin, have started dropping some really heavy-handed hints that
they've dispatched an assassin to track down and kill a double agent who betrayed the nine Russian sleeper agents discovered in America earlier this year. While Russia claims that it hasn't assassinated anybody since the late 50s, the convenient way that obvious enemies of the state have of dying in strange and unfortunate ways (
ingesting a highly radioactive polonioum isotope anyone?) would seem to suggest the country still remains a fan of Joseph Stalin's heartwarming maxim: "Death solves all problems. No man, no problem". No arguing with that.
The hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, is gearing up again, with Saudi authorities expecting somewhere in the vicinity of 2.5 million people to arrive this year. While no problems have so far been reported, it doesn't seem to be a proper hajj without a human stampede killing a few dozen people, so watch this space.
Features
And you thought Baltimore was bad... well, if you watched The Wire you did. Anyway, meet Detroit. Hub of America's motor industry, birthplace of Detroit techno and a crumbling symbol of American post-war urban abandonment which these days sees some 350 reported murders carried out every year. Investigative magazine, Mother Jones, has
an excellent profile of the city, written around the police's killing of a seven year old girl during a botched raid earlier this year. That was, of course, being filmed for a reality TV project. A long, but moving and worthwhile read.
An interesting article in Foreign Policy arguing that
the real way to resolve Afghanistan is to resolve Kashmir first. Which is perhaps the only conflict that might be harder to resolve than the conflict in Afghanistan.
Oddities/Curiosities
I realised the other day that I'm not sure I ever actually saw Mary Poppins; whether I did or not, the memories are so distant, so hazy as to be basically irretrievable. But even so, I knew enough to realise that the headline '
Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke' was worthy of investigation. In a sequence of events that would only really make sense in a musical or an acid trip, here you have a twinkly-eyed but definitely 84 year old man idly passing out on a surfboard, drifting far out to sea only to wake up with porpoises pushing him back to shore. Porpoises. Fickle beasts. Oh so willing to help out when potentially crazed octogenarians fall asleep on surfboards, but where were they when Harold Holt/Jeff Buckley needed some aquatic intervention? Huh? Huh?!
Sydney has commissioned someone to produce a composite picture of the 'Face of Sydney' by merging images of some 160 000 people into a slightly off-putting, beigey blend. Here is the final result. I feel like I'm looking at the end point of some sort of dystopic, homogenised future.
Video
I think the best thing about the Internet is the way that it exposes you to the vibrant nutbar population of the planet while still keeping them at a safe distance. No having my earlobes sucked on the tram by a man wearing pants as shoes for me! And with that said, meet Colleen. She had some rather dire predictions about November 6, but if you like your conspiracies carried out by spiritual demon beings called Draconians and Reptilians, then this is the seven minute verbal onslaught for you.