These women and kids are all here under duress, and I’m not even sure about the dog.

If you’re a member of an industry group and you’re being interviewed by the local rag (the Maribyrnong Mail) about protests by local residents involving your industry, you’d want to have the best possible shot at winning people over […]

It took me a while to get through Judith Ajani’s The Forest Wars (MUP), partly because of my habit of having four books on the go at any one time, and partly because it’s more of an economic history of an industry than a history of conflict. Far from being an exciting account of […]

I had to laugh at this comment from Hideki Moronuki, the Japanese Fisheries Agency’s chief of whaling today:
He said the pair would also be given an opportunity to try whale meat while aboard the ship, if they chose.
Ah, yes. I try this tactic on my son almost every night: “But how do you know you […]

It looks as if the Rudd Government’s ‘freshness’ might not just be cosmetic after all, with several announcements today demonstrating a new ideas in health and the environment.
First, there’s Peter Garrett’s mooted plastic bag ban. While the whole whalewatching debacle raised doubts about Labor’s commitment to micro-environmental causes not just Kyoto-sized PR ones, I’m happy […]

I can’t resist sharing this titbit from the completely deranged wingnut blog that I read for comic relief.
It starts:
One hundred scientists from around the globe aren’t drinking the Goracle’s Kool-Aid, and have petitioned the UN to stop pushing the global warming hoax, and the hysteria associated with it.
Yep, 100, count them. Led by Australia’s very […]

I whinge about the AGE op-ed pages a lot. I realise the Australian (formerly the Government Gazette) and the Hun are full of horrors, too. It’s just that the AGE is my daily dead-tree read of choice, and as a consumer I feel the need for some of that fact-checking and investigative journalism on which […]

Ever since November 24, the survivors of Howard’s mongrel pack of blogosphere hangers-on have been trying to regroup. They’ve been like the Grande Armée retreating from the snows of Moscow in 1812, desperately trying to find ways to stroke their monstrous egos with delusions of moral and intellectual dominance even as their heroes in Canberra […]

The Opposition is warning that the Government’s plans to involve our navy in a bit of whalewatching might lead to hostilities with Japan:
“I would be very concerned about sending war assets, warships and air force planes down to look at the Japanese whaling fleet in terms of how is that going to escalate the diplomatic […]

Everyone knows the fable of the emperor’s new clothes. I first learnt it from the wireless, in the old 2BL children’s session that used to be on about 7.25am every morning in the show that Russ Tyson (?) compered. I’d listen to it after I got woken up to get ready for school.
Anyways, an American […]

It would surprise me if a pundit somewhere hasn’t already observed how symbolic it was that Kevin Rudd’s first act as prime minister was to commit Australia to Kyoto. You know how it would read … new generation, recognising the dominant issue of our time, that sort of thing.
The symbolism was significant, but not because […]