There are those who write good news blogs and pretend they are providing balance, and there are those who actually work in Iraq:
News flash: Iraq is a disaster. I’ve been back one day, and the airport road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Americans […]

A guitar meme I would join if I had time. Thanks to the Flop-Eared Mule, of course.
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Apologies for the site difficulties over the last 24-hours. Something to do with something technical. Seems okay now, including comments, which people were having trouble posting.
While I’m here, let me also post my new email address: tim.dunlop-at-gmail.com
I’ll have to close down the other one in the next few days as we move out […]

In an opinion piece about opinion pieces and other matters of media diversity, Margaret Simons offers the opinion that fact rules, OK? On the whole, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to what she says, but I think she buries the key issue, misses the point about blogging, and produces some fairly sloppy writing. Here, […]

This sounds really clever:
DEMOCRACY, as it is played in Australia, is a dance between John Howard’s elephantine memory and the public’s attention span. But it’s not a mismatch. Howard is prone to backflip, a manoeuvre that seems to confuse friend and foe alike.
But what does it mean? Specifically, what does one sentence have to […]

Finally, some good news for the Democrats:
Rove Taking a More Public Role
Bush Adviser Playing Messenger for Second-Term Agenda
…Rove’s flamboyant remarks — in which he roused conservatives by saying liberals prefer “therapy and understanding” for terrorists instead of retaliation — has put President Bush’s top strategist back on stage. It’s a place where he has seemed […]

As I said below, my final guest-gig post is up at the Media Blog. (It even managed to obtain Evil Pundit’s approval!)
Many thanks to Hugh and The Age for having me. My impression is that it went pretty well and I have to say, it was interesting experience, by which I mean, […]

Sorry, just thought this was a nice bit of unreflective writing:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry yesterday warned Western countries not to prejudge the hard-line president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said the country’s nuclear policy would not change under his leadership.
So don’t pre-judge the hardline guy, okay?
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Thanks to a tip-off from Paul Watson (subbing at Rob’s place), I watched this report from SBS Television that aired a few nights back.
It’s about how the Australian Government is using anti-terrorism laws to enable its security services to “investigate” what it deems to be possible security breaches.
The results are extraordinary, and of […]

A little while back I had a post up about the defection of Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin.
On that post I received an anonymous comment from someone highly critical of Chen. My response was pretty curt, calling the commenter a coward for staying anonymous while attacking Chen who was obviously risking his life in seeking […]