IT'S NEWS O'CLOCK IN THE PLACE TO BEEEEEEEEEEE
News
Does Australia still have a Government? Damn right. And now that everyone's had a chance to get over the ball-tearing excitement and ball-shrinking length of yesterday's press conferences, we can finally look about and try and work out what the next three years (or possibly much, much less) are going to look like. Gillard is set to
announce the make up of Cabinet next week. Current hot tips:
Rudd to Foreign Affairs (did you know he can speak Chinese?! What a talented fellow) and
central part of the Rudd hit-squad, Bill Shorten, to anything that will make it easier for him to depose Gillard in a couple of years time. Boy, this is just like the Roman Senate. Let's just hope
she's had her Weetabix. Meanwhile the Liberals have decided to forgo Abbott's promise of a "gentler" polity and are
sending their attack dogs out to stir shit up. Brandis thinks the Gillard government has "as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team", although he decided not to specify in what way a Coalition government with an almost mathematically indistinguishable two-party preferred share of the vote would be different. One thinks it would probably help if someone deigned to inform them that it's over and that they lost. The Libs are due to have a party room meeting tomorrow where technically both Abbott and Bishop's positions go on the line, but the buzzword this week seems to be "stability" and
neither are being challenged. Meaning we'll have to wait a while yet before Turnbull bodily evicts the man. Boy, this is just like the Roman Senate.
NSW inches ever closer to allowing gay couples to adopt. It's been knife-edge a lot of the way and now the legislation has to go back to a very delicately balanced lower house, but all things going well, some point over the next week, NSW will boldly step in line with any amount of scientific evidence that suggests
children raised by same-sex couples suffer absolutely no ill-effects.
The UN has admitted that it hasn't been doing a particularly stellar job of
preventing mass rape in the Congo. This is not really a surprise - by and large the UN is as effective in preventing wartime atrocities as a sack of wet newspaper - but it's a stark reminder of the ongoing awfulness in a country that is still dealing with the tail end of the
most brutal armed conflict since World War II.
On a cheerier note (I guess), a Japanese journalist who has just been released by the Taliban, managed to trick his captors into letting him teach them how to use Twitter so that
he could send a message to the outside world. I knew there was a reason I was
keeping my account. Next stop: Afghanistan!
And while we're talking about the healing power of technology, police across the European Union have staged raids on the homes and computers of suspected pirates in
a massive anti-counterfeiting raid. The best part about coverage of these sorts of events is the way in which everyone seems absolutely aware of their futility yet seem at a loss as to what else to do. Perhaps they're just in a holding pattern until the hyper-secret, retrograde and slightly terrifying
ACTA kicks in to action. For further background as to why this is such a bad idea, lookie
here.
Features
A piece pleading for some measure of sanity and restraint in the media's hyperbolic reactions to Tuesday's election result. ALthough, tell this to The Age, which leads today with the headline '
First cracks appear', as if it is somehow astonishing that the assortment of parties and individuals currently comprising the Lower House might have differing agendas. As Bob Brown points out, in the new Parliament it will be well within the capacities of the Opposition to propose and pass legislation with minor party support. This
will be fun.
An excellent and unnerving New Yorker profile on the secretive, ultra-Christian group that unites significant portions of the US Congress.
Oddities/Curiosities
A haunting and moving series of
photos from the Vietnam War.
A haunting and moving UK study of the links between a
dude's ability to dance and the likelihood he'll get laid. Worth it for the video demonstrating "bad dancing".
Video
Sometimes I try and find something educational and informative for you guys. Other times I just find a video of babies eating lemons for the first time. Also enjoyable, the comments from the fun-hating puritans accusing these parents of child abuse.