News
Already fevered speculation about the likelihood of a K-Rudd tilt for the leadership has
gotten positively histrionic over the weekend, with MPs of all stripes and seniority seeming to weigh into the mix, Andrew Wilkie announcing that he had chatted with Rudd about the prospect back in November, fellow Labor MP Steve Gibbons unveiling
a very strongly worded condemnation on his website,
Victorian MP Darren Cheeseman calling on Gillard to stand down and a damaging/endearing video being leaked online showing Rudd swearing his arse off while trying to record a video for Chinese New Year a few years back (attached at the bottom of the post), which may or may not have been released by Rudd's supporters depending upon how much backwards directed intrigue you're willing to impute in to the political process. Some think there'll be a challenge at the Labor caucus meeting next Tuesday or, at the very least, a very frank exchange of words followed by a ceremonial lynching of Rudd and all his supporters.
The unrest in Syria has been creeping toward the previously calm centre of Damascus, after
the funerals of protesters killed after Friday prayers were yesterday themselves fired upon. Which always seems like a pretty irrevocable moment in any campaign of state terror. Meanwhile, Assad continues to prepare for an impossible referendum designed to ensure his ongoing hold on power while people are too scared to leave their houses to vote.
Say what you will about the Spanish, but they really know how to protest. With unemployment firmly in the 20s and an economy that is at best stagnant, over
a million people took part in protests across the country against changes to labor laws designed to try and kickstart the country's fortunes.
Say what you will about the Brazilians, but they really know how to party. Carnival gripped the nation's capital over the weekend, with
more than two million people taking to the streets of Rio to have the time of their goddamn lives. Consider it a protest against boredom.
Relations between Israel and Iran remain perilously fragile, with Israel continuing to maintain that they will preemptively attack Iran's nuclear facilities if they so choose (
despite Britain and America's protests) and
Iran using the weekend to take its battleships on a cosy cruise down the ever-vital Suez Canal to see Syria. It's just like the Labor leadership struggle, but with planet-shaping consequences.
Germany, the primary/only financial engine in the EU,
increasingly appears to be pushing the Union to force Greece into default, which could allow for its potential excision from the beleagured economic zone. Which seems a little brutal, but, on the other hand, keeping Greece around at this point is like taking the kids and spouse on a family road trip with the decaying corpse of your grandfather nestled in the backseat, so perhaps it's a little justified.
Features
Barry Cassidy gives the frankest appraisal yet of the current leadership movements and numbers in the Labor Party.
The Atlantic looks at the intervention in Libya and
why it has forestalled any effective involvement in Syria.
Could economic stability soon be a thing of the past, like culottes, the music of Meatloaf and witch-burning? Quite possibly, as the rise of computer-driven microtrading (the trading of stocks in timeframes less than the human capacity to react i.e. below 950 ms) leads to an era of extreme crashes and recovery.
A Wired profile of an increasingly prominent and unnerving phenomenon.
Oddities/Curiosities
The immense capacities of the human body, etc. A Swedish man has survived for two months in a snowed in car without any food by
sending his body into a hibernation-like state.
Been a while between meals? Feeling lethargic and irritable? Blood sugar levels dangerously low? Well, the phrase "dangerously low" might be truer than you think, with recent research indicating that
90% of juvenile offenders had lower than average blood sugar levels. Moreover, researchers could predict with 80% accuracy which ex-cons were going to go and commit a violet crime just by looking at their glucose levels. So, I dunno, perhaps that Snickers bar
is a good investment. You're doing it for your co-workers.
Video
And here it is, the video we've all been talking about: Kevin Rudd swears the shit out of a message to the Chinese people.